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I am 2 weeks in now so this is a bit of a catch up.
I did start these in the traditional paper towel bed until I got a sprout and then transferred them straight to the aero kit.
This meant that the roots get access straight away to the nutrients in the tank. first few days I just had PH balanced water
The aero kit is easy to setup, 50l water, I have added half the nutrients to the water with the intention of upping this when everything has established, maybe about week 4, with half dose of Rhizotnic to help with root growth.
Germinated 6 seeds, 2 didn't crack and lost the 3rd down the bloody drain and that was the only one that did germinate......aaaargh mutha fu..... of 3 DrRay DR lemon, so needless to say will never buy these......might have just been bad luck, did everything as with the rest that did crack, guess sometimes its just not meant to be...
1 Skywalker cookie, 1 Girl Scout cookie, 1 dr widow, these are the babies you now see in the aero kit, I intend to cut some clones from my tent and stick them into the aero setup as soon as I can...
The sprouts are already looking healthy and are starting to shoot off at different angles so it all seem s to be going ok,
This is diary number two, as I have 9 in a tent on about week 8 right now, I am trying to get a nice rotation on both grows so I can harvest every 6-8 weeks.
This is all still a learning curve for me, but I think I have the beginning of green fingers!! lol.
The aero cellotex tent has a 125w MH bulb which is on 24 along with a water pump on a timer, 1 hour on 2 off, but I can change my timings as and when, I ran it 24hours initially but then figured the plants need their rest as much as they need their feed, not sure what works best right now, but thought that giving them a break for an hour or two, would allow them to relax and breathe a little, I just had visions of my babies feeling like they were getting water boarded.
Could almost hear the silent screams in between glug glug glug.....aaaaaaargggggghhhhhh.
Week 1 of veg, although only had one week from germination these are about 2" in height and starting to show good root production, they have been in the tank for 3 days now and are looking fine, I cracked 8 seeds that were my freebies from London seed centre, (thank you), although 2 of my DR Ray DR Lemon didn't crack and the third one I inadvertently washed down the sink, ffs.....aaaaargh.
Girl Scout and Skywalker cookies were straight out of the starting gate and look like nice strong sprouts, they shot up in the space of a few days, nice and tall and straight, they were started in a tissue blanket and then transferred to rock wool, before being put straight into neoprene collars and into the aero kit.
I just give them PH balanced water for a few days and then added half the recommended nutrient amounts into the tank along with half the amount of rhizotinic recommended, didn't want to scare the shit out of them so soon.
I had my 400w sodium in there for one night, nearly fried the little buggers, changed for a 125w MH bulb now, which runs a damn site cooler than the hps. but figure I can use the HPS for bloom, and remove the extra heat by adding a Flexi hose out of the cellotex room into the main tent and out the carbon filter. which is a nice strong extractor (it creates a small vacuum inside my bud box, the sides of the tent concave inwards), I generally turn off my tower fan at night to bring the temperature back up as its usually warmer during the day and colder at night but leave the extractor on otherwise it gets wet with condensation.
Update, I did buy a new 600w HPS with new ballast, but this I put in the tent with the 9 that are now in flower and moved the 300w led to the aero tent, they seem to be responding nicely so will just monitor as I go.
This is the beginning of week 3, I haven't done anything except stick my head in there to make sure the pump is still running, easy work. the pump is running 24 hours and it loos like a cheap piece of poop if I am honest, I have a backup, but rather not experience that. the root system is looking very well established and the stem is strong, I am going to fim or top these babies and I am pretty sure they are feminized so I can leave them in veg a while longer then flip everything at once, oh sorry, I am germinating 3 auto purple lemonades and a few freebies I got from my suppliers in the aero tank, it can hold 8 and only has 3 in it right now, no point in wasting the space.
I am going to have to leave everything in the aero tank until harvest as it would be a right pain in the arse to move the tank with plants into the tent.
So each grow is gonna be one in aero and one in the coco. unless I find a better plan.
I have invested in a Tds meter this week, see if it actually makes any difference, I use my ph pen every time I do a mix without fail and calibrate every few days, its nice to know what is going in and coming out of them, but it would be nice to know what proportion of nutrients they are taking up and see if I can tweak on future lessons.
Especially as the growing medium is just water with nutrients, I currently have no means of monitoring the solution, however I seem to be winging it. not to mention the different products from various suppliers, its a minefield.
So, this little experiment is going ok too, there are 3 large girls in here already (3 weeks from seed) and a couple of little seedlings I planted just to make up the numbers, the aero kit holds 8, but after trying to do 9 in the other one I thought, less is more.
The root system although slightly red (due to the nutrient solution I am guessing) as there is only that and water in the tank...would make sense uh, is looking really cool, it now sits in the upper tray of the aero kit as the hairs are so long now, about 300mm, but also the plants are looking healthy up top too, I have had to trim the largest of the fan leaves this week, they were getting ridiculously huge, when its the size of my hand I think it should come off, there are now plenty of upper fan leaves and I dont think this will stress the plant out too much, I am going to leave these in veg for another 3 weeks while the babies catch up, theres a couple of autoflwers just gone in and are now just getting established.
Once they get big enough I will flip the lot again, I am now officially out of seeds, everything I have bought is now planted and tbh, I quite like the process from seed to plant rather than cloning and I aint got a grip of cloning yet or timing to clone, more research required..... watch this space....chiao for now.
The aero kit is a winner, the plants are growing nicely and the root system is awesome, I am in love. Would I buy a second one, no, probably not, it seems to work well but I would like to venture further in my growing skills, I fancy trying to make my life as easy as possible, the aero kit does that, although I do have power outages and that means the pump stops working for the sprayer, I think super soil and just PH water is the way to go, keep things simple, I am thinking maybe a new LED light though, running the HPS is fine, but theres still a bill to pay.
@Ferenc, thank you, my other grow is going well too, this happened as a sideline of trying to heat up my tent, lol, ah well, loving the process and love reading the grows of the wiser. x
You can build a bad ass grow light fairly easily for half or even a quarter of the cost of what's available on the market... check out my build, I have pictures of my light in the germination stage. I got the cost down to about $250 on the second one I built. I used Samsung Horticulture L2 grow strips on the first one and Chinese strips bought from Alibaba on the second. The performance on both are outstanding. I also took PAR readings to compare with other lights... pictures of the graphs are on the germination stage of my grow as well.
beginnergrow
