Thread: 2 amateurs armed with bag seed and a closet

Hi guys & girls! First I want to thank everyone who posts questions, answers, and logs on this message board. You have been an excellent source of knowledge and experience for an amateur like myself. Okay now on to the growing... and please excuse me when I ramble like I tend to do.

My friend and I just started growing one day. We had talked about it a little bit and then one day he shows up and says "Let's go buy a light". So we go get a 250W HPS bulb & ballast, some soil and small pots in a tray from Home Depot and get started. Actually he had a plant that he started at home in his room, in a shot glass so while we germinated and waited for sprouts we already had something to watch, which was nice for impatient people like us. The seeds are just bag seed so we don't know what to expect, though my friend talked to who he got the bag from and it's a strain he's been growing for a while so we're hoping for some good smoke.

We decided to set this up in my closet, so we cleared it out, hung the light, and then germinated the seeds. I won't post all the early photos because well they're pretty boring. Right now we are on Day #13 of flowering so this log is going to move through the first month pretty quick (the first month isn't exciting anyway). For now I'll post a few pics showing our progress and then maybe go into some more detail about the set up and what he have done to the plants so far.

We didn't have a clue what we were doing at first and made some amateur mistakes. But this was ultimately supposed to be a learning experience and we have learned very much. It looks like we'll get to smoke some buds as well so that's a nice bonus!

Here is a list of mistakes we made that I can think of off the top of my head:

• Planted seedlings too deep, and not necessarily with the root pointing downwards
• HPS is not the best lighting for seedlings and veg (but it did work well enough)
• Light was too far from seedlings
• Over watered them the first 1-2 weeks (I watered them daily, oops!)
• Ventilation is far from optimal, bordering on downright lousy

Luckily none of those were fatal mistakes, and despite our best efforts to hurt these things they have done nothing but flourish and prosper! What an amazing plant.

This is long enough for a first post, so here are a few pics to whet your appetite and I'll be back with more, probably later today after some lunch.

Thanks again to the people in this community. You're helpful and friendly and this grow would be pretty terrible without all the wisdom you've shared here.

ok, I guess because I'm new I can't post any photos yet, but rest assured I will post them. for now here are a couple of photos on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-grower/

the first pic there has been my wallpaper for a while now. they are shown from newest to oldest, so you might want to start at the bottom and go up. i hope you enjoy those till I can figure out how to attach photos here.

ok, i'm a little confused. does anyone know the rules about attaching files to posts? i can do it in some forums or threads, but not this one.

i'd like to post some pics here instead of flickr, but i might just keep them on flickr if i don't figure it out in a couple of days so i can keep the log going.

Hey, Canuck!

Glad you got the log up. Too bad that you wont be posting the earlier pics. I like them, and they contribute to 'thoroughness'...but I know what you mean. Most of the people on here perk up only for nice flower shots.

Anyway, I'm also very happy that there is someone on here who takes as much pride in his grammar, spelling and punctuation as I do. Honestly, I've slacked off here or there recently due to how frequently I post.

In any case, I will be following your log so keep it up!

Regarding the file uploading...I dont know what problem you are having, but I know the files can't be larger than 1.9mb or so, but you will get an error message to that effect if that is your problem. The other problem you might be having is if you are using a proxy server or anonymous proxy. A lot of them give you problems with uploading files.

Hope that helps.

Looking forward to the pics. Hope you can get some up tonight.




The Fog (TGF)

Hey TGF,

It is difficult to read some of posts here, but for the most part I only have to read things once or twice. Some of them are just terrible though and I give up. What can you do eh? We are a bunch of stoners after all.

I'll post some earlier pics for sure, not to worry! I should have said that the earlier PHOTOS weren't always exciting. It was really exciting to watch them grow from the beginning. Right now we are on Day #40/13 (13 of flower), so it was just under 4 weeks of veg and now it's been almost 2 weeks of flower and the number of pics we have reflects that. What I don't have are pics of is the setup itself. That's because the setup is pretty ghetto. The light is hanging on a coat hanger tied to shoelaces which are screwed into the supporting boards on the sides of the shelf at the top of the closet. It's a little more complicated than that (it can't fall, don't worry), you have to see a pic so I will take one tomorrow when the light's on and post it. I'm not joking... love, light, tap water, good soil, and some ferts from Home Depot will go a long way. We haven't measured temps, humidity, pH'd our water or any of those things you're supposed to do because we don't have the equipment or the money to buy it.


Ok the file uploading thing is just strange. Here are pics so I don't have to explain it.

When I reply to a thread in the intro forum I see this: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/3...074effef_o.png

When I reply to this thread I see this: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/3...e26c8c88_o.png

I don't have any clue why that happens. Strange eh?

We didn't start taking photos until we had some sprouts and the date on my camera was wrong, so we can't rightly say when any of these photos are from up until Dec 11. We started on Nov 17... but Betty, the biggest one, had that head start in a shot glass for a week so she took off under the HPS and mode the rest look small.

Anyway I have 191 photos here and I don't know how many I will upload tonight. Check my flickr page later if you want, I've already started uploading pics. I'm tagging them sort of like I have them in iPhoto. Veg, everything (all the plants, or as many as fit in one photo), flower, and I'm tagging the month nov or dec as well. In iPhoto I tag them as Birds eye, side shot, and close up as well but I don't know if I'll get that much into the flickr photos or not.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-grower/

Till I figure out how to attach file in this thread I'll link to flickr images once they're uploaded. Anyhow that's it for tonight. I'll post more tomorrow.

Did I mention I tend to ramble?

edit: here's that wallpaper-worthy photo I mentioned before... it's not the first one anymore! http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-grower/335430150/

i've hit flickr's upload limit of 100MB a month, so the rest of the pics will have to wait until next year! ha ha.

they're tagged well enough that you can see what's what. next month i'll be more careful about what I do and don't upload so I can catch up... and hopefully i'll figure out this board soon so I can just post the photos here.

betty's definitely a girl though. these are a few days old, and my camera sucks, but she's got pistils at the top 4-5 nodes now.

flickr's down for maintenance so I can't get a link, but i think this will work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-grower/tags/pistils ... that is, it'll work when flickr's back up.

last post today... this was just too cool to wait: http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-...6/12/calendar/

flickr shows you a calendar view with photos taken on each day. i wish i set my camera's date earlier!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-...3/03/calendar/ (it thought it was 2003 for almost 4 weeks, nov 17 - dec 10)

hey canuck!

when you post dont use the quick reply go advanced, then you will see a small tab below where you type that says "manage attachments" that is the upload utility for the boards.

they look really good so far

Hey invision,

Thanks for checking out my/our log! They are looking good so far, and today I think I can see some trichs on Betty! I'll have to get my ass down to the mall and grab a microscope soon to be sure. Eventually what I want is a flowering cab like yours with one nicely trained plant and a small HID light. I have a veg cab w/ CFLs in the works and right now I'm experimenting with some clones in soil in it. Cuttings, soil, water, and a ziplock bag over the top under 2 daylight CFLs on 18/6. I hope they take root! I digress...

if you check out these photos you'll see that for some reason I can't attach files to this thread. I can when I reply to other threads. I changed my default reply to advanced already, and I'm not using quick reply.

What I see for other threads: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/3...074effef_o.png
When I reply to this thread: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/3...e26c8c88_o.png

For some reason I just don't have the permission to attach files to this thread. I'll have to find the board admin and see what's up since it's not because I'm a new member like I thought.


Ok back to the plants. When we started them they were on 18/6, and then for the last week or two of veg we put them on 24 hours of light. I was just reading this -> http://www.norml.org.nz/article304.html and it talks about the light and dark processes involved in breaking down CO2 and H2O to form glucose (and water). So can the 24 hour cycle actually harm your plants, rather than help them grow more? I was under the impression that CO2 was used when the light was on to produce plant and flowers, but now I am unsure.

When we look at this process a little closer, it actually involves two different chemical reactions. The first is called photolysis. In photolysis, water is broken down into oxygen (O), and hydrogen (H). Both light and chlorophyll are necessary for photolysis. This is called the light response. The second chemical reaction is called the dark response. As the term suggests, no light is necessary for the dark response. With dark response, carbon dioxide is converted into glucose, with the help of the hydrogen produced during the light response. The distinction between the light- and dark reaction is of interest to the home grower in order to gain insight into the manner in which the plants must be illuminated (and sometimes kept in darkness). The plants grow optimally only when a good balance is found between the light and dark reactions.

So these dark reactions that consume CO2 do not require light, but what I want to know is if the presence of light prevents the dark process from occuring. Anyone? After reading that I would stick to 18/6 in the future.



I'm looking at the photos now and recalling what we've done to these girls so far. We germinated a lot of seeds and planted about 20 that popped. We had 15+ in little square pots (they're not pots, I don't know what they're called) and then 4 in teacups, 3 of which sprouted. The ones in the teacups weren't planted very deep unlike the others and they really took off in comparison.


The teacups were pretty shallow, and they didn't have much soil so we re-potted those into some bigger coffee cans fairly quickly. I know rust is bad, but that's what we had so we used them and they didn't end up rusting like I thought they would. Despite their size the coffee can plants seemed to enjoy the new spcae and took off even more. Now we have 5 plants left and 3 of those are the ones you see in the pic there in the coffee cans, so the extra room may have made a difference. The light was probably a good 2 feet above them at this point.

I'd say about a week after that I started putting up aluminum foil. The day after I finished covering the closet I read how the foil doesn't help, and may burn the plants so I tore it down. I guess that's how it goes, right?


This is where we start doing more for the plants and reading more about caring for them, learning how they grow and use light, water, CO2 and that sort of thing. The best ones were transplanted into cheap 2 gal pots and put down in trays on the floor of the closet, which is lined with garbage bags. We have had a big fan in there most of the time to circulate air, and as often as I can I leave the window open for fresh outside air to get in. This is in my bedroom though so leaving it open at night isn't much of an option when it's 5-6 C (40 F).


Till now we had heard about topping and super-cropping, but that was about all. When I saw justaseed's SCRoG on here I just about shit myself! I was really eager to try out some LST and started training plants that we thought looked more female. The way these things can bend is just incredible, and the speed that they will turn up to face the light is pretty amazing too. Betty was quite big at this point and we didn't want to do anything that might hurt her, so she is our one naturally-shaped plant left. I ended up cracking the stem of one of them, but it recovered well and is bushier than the others because the top growth was stunted till it healed.

That's all I can think of to say about the pics that have been posted so far. There are 70-something of them on flickr, so the few I posted here are just for context and if you want to see more they are all there. I'm going to have some more coffee and look for pistils.

Awesome pics, man.

Glad you finally figured out how to post them. NOW you have to tell me how you posted them inside the text. I always knew you could, but I would like to know how. That would be cool... ...Ohh wait, I think I see how you did it...they are linked to the flickr site. I don't have any of my pics on any other site so I can't link them like that...I don't think.

So, like I said, I really like your plants. They look very healthy. Surprising that you don't pH your water or anything, but hey, maybe you got good 'buffer' soil. Plus, I've notice that some nutes tend to bring 7.0 pH water right into the correct range, so you generally don't need to adjust the pH.

Your camera doesn't seem too bad. Looks like good pics to me. Maybe you aren't using your macro function for the closeups? I'm sure you might know this, but maybe not, so just shooting it out there.

One more note, on the first post you mentioned pistils...I honestly could say that I had a hard time seeing any pistils and that they could have very possibly been males......but then you said you are seeing even more pistils now, so hopefully you are right and I was just having a hard time with the blurriness of the pics...and my own color-blindness.

Looking forward to more pics and better closeups! Be cool, canuck.

RastafarI

The Fog (TGF)

Hey TGF,

They are very healthy plants. They have had a lot of attention and we haven't spared any expense we can afford for them.


Betty is female alright! there are definitely pistils there and they are much larger now. She's just over 20" tall. I added some notes to the flickr pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/canuck-grower/tags/pistils so you can see where they are. I have some new pics posted there as well that are much better! I have been using the macro function, before that I couldn't get anything good that close at all. I got one really close up that I posted above, but there are 2 more, not as close but some sort of visible pistils. Betty has them on the top 4-5 nodes.

Lucy (formerly known as plant #9) has some small pistils as well. She is only 12" tall, but very nice looking.

The other plants are Number Two and #4 (no name yet). There's one more that we think might be a male and aren't really paying attention to much. Didn't give it any karma or anything because if it's a girl, it's not one of the best anyway.

It's Day #41/14.

Today we got them some thrive alive, liquid karma, and foliage spray as well. we'll see how they look over the next week. We also took quite a few cuttings so they might take a bit to recover.

We got some rockwool cubes, a tray cover and some rooting gel and cut just over a dozen clones. They're under 2 daylight CFLs on 18/6. One of the lights is about an inch away from the cover, and the other is a good 5-6" away. I need to get a better fixture for them because right now most of what's holding them up is duct tape! I'll post pics when I can.

That's all for today!

-canuck

oh yeah and make sure that you click on the little All Sizes button above the photos on flickr to see the bigger sizes! those small ones on the main page are not the largest.

Day 43/16

Taking those cuttings and giving them some thrive alive and liquid karma seems to have helped out Betty and Lucy. All of Betty's new growth at the top has pistils on it and she's starting to smell really nice. Lucy has more pistils as well but I couldn't get any clear shots of them yet.

Another shot of Betty: http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?i...3600016zp1.jpg

One of the plants is male for sure, but we didn't clone that one at all so that's alright. Still waiting on a couple that we thought looked feminine but are taking their sweet time to start flowering. If we end up with 2 females that's just fine.

I gently tugged on a couple of the clones and they seem to be in there after only 2 days so that's a good sign. I've been airing them out a few times a day and wiping the moisture off the cover a couple times a day. Some of them are perking up from their droopiness.

We put 2 clones in one rockwool cube just to see if they would join together into a super-clone. Hopefully that experiment turns out well.

Well my buddy's here and we're going to smoke a so that's it for now.

-canuck

betty is gonna grow lots by the looks of things...

Hi Abattoir,

Thanks for stopping by. Betty still looks good after we took 12 cuttings from her. Since there are 12 more Bettys she will grow lots and lots for a while yet. heh. We are hoping that she'll concentrate her effort into one big cola though.

I've found 2 branches on her that have alternating nodes now, 2 1/2 weeks into flower. One of them is on a lower branch mid-way up the stalk, and the other is one of the new nodes near the top.

I'll try and get some photos up today. Imageshack isn't working for some reason so I'm going to finally try and ask an admin on this board what's up! Hopefully I'll be back later with some pics.

-canuck

Here are some pics from today. I still cannot believe how fast they are growing and I have been saying that since the first week!

Betty - over 21"




Lucy - about 13"



Tomorrow I will have been a member on this board for a full week, and hopefully I'll be able to attach pics here. If not then I might have to wait a week or so longer, guess we'll find out next year! Ha ha.

Happy new year everyone!

-canuck

nice log. Plants are coming along nicely.

Shov

Hey thanks for checking out the log shov.

Well now that I have 50+ posts and been around for almost a week I can finally attach some photos here. Fuck yeah!

So this will really be all for this year. Some that are a little older, around where the flickr photos left off. I have to guess that most of these are from the 3rd week. The aluminum foil is down off the walls so I had started reading this board and other sites by then.

I think that's Betty in the first, but I'm not sure when it's from. 2nd and 3rd are all the plants. The 4th pic is of a freshly trained plant. 5th is Betty with 2 of her friends in the background like bodyguards... except they're smaller than she is.

The containers between the pots are a sugar and yeast mixture for some extra CO2. My bedroom doesn't exactly have great ventilation so I'm not sure they're getting as much CO2 as they would outside. Now and then we will put a 2L bottle with some sugar-yeast stuff in the closet, but honestly I think that they are just fine without it. Better safe than sorry though. This first batch wasn't great and didn't put out all that much CO2. In a 2L bottle you can cap it and the stuff starts fermenting and putting out lots of CO2. Well, as much as you let out.

-canuck

Looking good keep it growing.
I have attached a pic of what i do for my cheapass co2. This way it stops the smell and foam getting into your grow room, the other benefit is you can see the co2 bubbling out of the second tub and that way you know when it is working. After a few days co2 production will die off a bit, just shake the pop bottle and it should get better. Once this stops working then change the sugar/yeast mix.

Hey LH, cool CO2 bubbler. I think I'm going to build one today if I can find some tube around this place. The last bottle I made up lasted for days and days, shaking it up like you said. If you cap it at night I think it helps too. Most mornings I can't even just open it or it will fizz like mad, have to ease it open over the course of an hour or two.

-canuck

I am glad to help. I am usually to lazy to stop my bubbler at night but it would be quite simple either tie the tube into a U shape over night or just swap the top with the tube in for a normal top and seal it.

LH: Yeah I'll just have an extra cap close by for dark hours. I can't find any tube around here yet though.


I got rid of the males today. The jury was still out on one of them but like I said before it wasn't a keeper anyway, and it still wasn't showing anything at all. Then I moved the 3 girls into just half of the closet and adjusted the light. It's closer to the plants right now but we can move it up as they grow.

The girls are doing great. I hope I'll be able to keep them all but I really have to sort out the odour problem soon. Well, it's not a problem yet which is why I have to do it pretty quickly. I don't have an exhaust in my closet so I'm going to opt for Postmandave's DIY odour neutraliser if I can find some polymer crystals.

I'm going to have to put a cab together so I can get a proper exhaust + carbon filter going. It would be better use of the light as well. I thought I would do it for the next grow but I might have to act sooner.

Betty is 22" tall now and just looks great. She has been a little short on soil since we put her in this 2 gallon pot so today I filled it up.

Lucy is 15" tall now and also has some alternating nodes I just noticed the last day or two.

Mercedes (the plant formerly known as #4) has some pistils barely visible on 2 of her tops. She is the last remaining plant that I trained, but since we cloned her she only has 3½ tops left. One of them is pretty small so it probably won't yield much.

The photos are:

1) Our hood & fan. A few days back we hoisted the fan up to cool the light so we can keep it closer to the plants.

2 and 3) The 3 girls. The 3rd one is of their profile.

4) Betty's profile.

5) One of Lucy's branches.

I'm posting more photos in the photo forum: plants in early flower, close ups of pistils and other shots

-canuck

4:46 and I'm waiting for those bastards to deliver the cabinet. I hate this 9-5 waiting bullshit, but what can you do? I can't wait to go buy food though. I'm out of pasta and cereal so that just leaves coffee and chocolate milk. :wired:

The temp in the closet was around 22 last night, and has been 26-28 most of the afternoon. Perfect, so I guess we do like the same climate as cannabis. Humidity is around 30% so we've been misting them and it goes up to 40% then down towards 30. They seem fine so I'm not really worried about it.

The fat man (my buddy) moved Lucy up with Mercedes so she's closer to the light and Betty has more room.

That's about all I guess. Pics:

1) All 3 girls yesterday, I only had time to snap this one and one of Mercedes before the light went off.

2) The girls today, Lucy up higher.

3) Lucy from the side. She's 16½" tall, skinny lass though.

4) Lucy, bird's eye view

5) Betty from the side. She's 23" tall.

-canuck

a couple more pics for you.

The first two are Betty's top and bird's eye.

Third is Mercedes from the top yesterday. Fourth is her from the side today.

Fifth is one of Betty's branches.

edit: remind me to crop before posting the photos next time! oops.

Got the cabinet! Mylared it and assembled it. I still need to light-proof the front with some tape or thin weather strip foam stuff. Sometime tomorrow I want to move the light and the girls over, but we'll have to see how it goes. It'll be a tight fit for sure. 30" W x 59" H x 17" D, which means there's only about 15-16" to actually work with inside the cab. :/

I'm not looking forward to cutting a 6" hole for the exhaust without a saw. I think a drill and a serrated knife might have to make do, heh.

Fat man if you read this then give me a shout tomorrow so we can go the grow shop and get this cab ready!