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Hi everyone,
Sort of my first grow, first diary here anyways. Had one semi-successful tent run back when I lived in Hawaii, but have since moved to California and am going to attempt a super lazy/no-additional-light balcony grow. Bought a bunch of seeds from Fast Buds since they seem to be the simplest/most loved here.
Tossed the seeds in some paper towels and a plastic bag and let them sit for a day on my kitchen counter. Both popped in 48 hrs, hadn't bothered to check them after the first day. Transplanted the seeds & tap root into some Jiffy starter pellets yesterday, now waiting for the girls to show their faces for the first time. Hopefully we'll have some first leaves coming out next week!
Nothing much to see here, plants have been moved into their pots (5gal fabric pots). Soil is FFOF with Myco & EWC mixed in. Read that FFOF might be too hot for young plants, but we'll see. They seem to be handling the transition without any problem. Sprayed the tops lightly after a couple days to moisten up the top layer. The 5gals took about 12 cups of water from dry, so letting them dry up this week before I start watering regularly. My balcony doesn't get much direct sunlight, so it stays a bit cool/not so bright for most of the day unfortunately.
Has anyone done a mixed indoor/outdoor grow? I'm considering putting them under a LED fixture I picked up for cheapo on Amazon for like 6 hours after the sunset, to prolong their light cycle a bit (we're basically at 12 hours of light right now in CA, roughly 530a-530p...
You can but it's not good for the plant to be moving it around all the time so your better off putting the light outside where the plant is if possable. It doesn't have to be a grow light either you can get away with just a normal flood light if your just using it for extending the duration of the day that is, or you can get led grow lights that have a IP65 rating.
My ambient temps dropped to 60* and it's been cold ever since... Can't tell if it's the cold or the stiff soil that's stunting the plants. They seem healthy enough, no deficiencies or anything, but stretching due to shitty amount of light (I get like 10 minutes of direct sun, if that), and growing REEEEEALLY slow.
When I say stiff soil, I mean I didn't properly amend with something to aerate the soil, so it's quite compacted. I added some EWC to FFOF, and didn't have any perlite on hand yet, but tossed the seeds in anyway. I imagine the roots are having a tough time digging in.
I also had the thought that I moved the seedlings outside too early (and right when it got cold here), so I imagine that probably set me back a week or so too. Might try starting two more after the soil that I mixed has a couple more weeks to cool off.
Do you guys think my auto will come out okay, what with the minimal light and cold temps ? I'm just going to let them go to see how it comes out. Probably going to start my second batch at the beginning of the year, and see if they do any better.
Anyone have any idea how cold temps would affect my growth this early?
I tossed my 3 day old seedlings into their pots (started in a Jiffy pellet), and the temp went from 70 to 60 and stayed that way ever since...
Thanks!
Cold temps will slow growth, but not really cause too many other major problems. As long as she/they are getting 5-6 hours of direct sunlight each day, they should be OK. If growth is slow due to the cold temps, obviously, your plants will require less feeding and less watering.
From an earlier question that I saw in your diary, I have successfully grown plants in mid winter by having them outside during the day and putting them inside just before sunset to get a few hours under a LED light, before placing them back outdoors when I went to bed, so that they were once again ready for the morning sun outside. Just make sure they are protected from overnight frost. While the plants will grow, it will be slow and they will be somewhat reduced in size. It is a good way to grow autos outdoors, out of the normal Summer growing season, as they will flower with the extended indoor/outdoor light schedule and not be as upset as photoperiod dependant plants. Also makes for an easy way to try some strains out before committing to a full on outdoor Summer grow and a easy source of fresh buds out of season. Hope this helps.... Organoman.
My ambient temps dropped to 60* and it's been cold ever since... Can't tell if it's the cold or the stiff soil that's stunting the plants. They seem healthy enough, no deficiencies or anything, but stretching due to shitty amount of light (I get like 10 minutes of direct sun, if that), and growing REEEEEALLY slow.
When I say stiff soil, I mean I didn't properly amend with something to aerate the soil, so it's quite compacted. I added some EWC to FFOF, and didn't have any perlite on hand yet, but tossed the seeds in anyway. I imagine the roots are having a tough time digging in.
I also had the thought that I moved the seedlings outside too early (and right when it got cold here), so I imagine that probably set me back a week or so too. Might try starting two more after the soil that I mixed has a couple more weeks to cool off.
Do you guys think my auto will come out okay, what with the minimal light and cold temps ? I'm just going to let them go to see how it comes out. Probably going to start my second batch at the beginning of the year, and see if they do any better.
Got some good growth this week. After taking these photos, I decided to try and top dress the soil with some FF Light Warrior+FFOF (50/50 with some Dr. Earth 2-2-2 mixed in). While doing so, I realized that the aeration in the new soil was VERY different from the soil in the 5 gals. I think I also overwatered it slightly after adding it in, so some white soil mold developed on the top layer after a few days. Will talk more about that in week 8's post.
So, after the white soil mold popped up last week (forgot to take pics), I got a bit concerned and started to read up. It seemed there's some division on whether the stuff is actually harmful. In any case, I decided to try and get rid of it - I scooped off any obviously infected bits from the top 2" or so of the pots, tossed it into my compost bins (dunno if that's alright for the compost, but I guess we'll find out!). After digging into the soil a bit, as mentioned in the previous week's post, I found that the original potting soil (which had been FFOF with maybe 30% EWC added and nothing else) was super compact and not well aerated at all - I knew this at the time of planting, but didn't have time to go out and get perlite, figured I'd just throw the seedlings in and see what came of it.
Anyways, while digging up around what I thought would be the "root ball", I found out that my roots hadn't extended out AT ALL for either plant! I'm assuming it's because the soil mix was just way too thick for the roots to penetrate? Maybe because of the cold? Maybe because of the Jiffy pellet netting that I hadn't removed?! (Do you even have to remove that stuff? I thought you weren't supposed to have to?)
So, I decided to take several actions:
1) Removed the netting from the Jiffy Pellet, which had literally 0 roots coming out of it
2) Set the seedlings aside, I scooped out about 3/5ths of the soil from one of the 5gal pots and added about an equal part of perlite and mixed it with the soiling remaining in the pot
3) Added some perlite to the soil I'd removed from the pot until it felt like it was properly aerated
4) Refilled the pot with this nice, much looser mixture up to about 2/3rds, then for the last third, added my FFOF/Light Warrior mix
5) Watered lightly and repotted the plant
6) Repeated the same for #2, which showed basically the same issues - no root ball to speak of, and couldn't see any roots coming out of the Jiffy pellet (weird, isnt it???)
Anywho, all this was done around day 50 or so, and the photos for this week are from today, about a week after the incident. It seems like both girls are recovering well enough, especially #1 - I think they might even be in a better spot than they were, since the soil was probably inhibiting their growth pretty severely.
I'm impatient, so I started another couple seeds with the new soil that I mixed, and will be starting another couple journals. They'll be an indoor/outdoor mixed grow - hoping that starting them inside will help them get established before they have to suffer through the cold. Please check 'em out if you have the chance!
Had a storm blow through with some hail! Fortunately I was home, so I brought the girls inside after they got their watering. Temps have been even lower than before, hovering around 60 during the day too. Growth this week has slowed to a crawl, maybe like 1/2" of height added to the top node this week. Hopefully next week will warm up a bit.
On the plus side, #2 seems to have caught up in growth a bit to #1 - she had been going super slowly and seems to have had a bit of a spurt, but is still a bit skinnier than #1.
Also, as you can see, I added some clover seed to my pots. Hope it helps a little bit, but we'll see!
Not much growth again this week. Maybe like 1/2 an inch in height, and I re-trained the stalk to try and wrap around the perimeter of the pot, just for fun. Getting some tiny new budsites popping up along the main stem, hopefully it'll get a bit warmer soon... Honestly, I'm debating on whether I should just kill these two slow goers and so I can reclaim the soil for a new set, and get the new batch started inside before subjecting them to the cold. I'll post this as a question too, but please leave me your thoughts below if you have any input~ I feel like I'm probably wasting my time on these two just letting them sit around like this.
CannabisConnoisseur
