1st Grow: Organic with pics [Nirvana - Bubblelicious & White Widow]

[FOAM]

Bubblelicious / White Widow​

Seedbank: Nirvana

This is my first grow ever so I would appreciate it if you guys can kinda coach me threw this & help me make sure everything is doing well. I will be taking notes of every single thing that I do to the babies so that if I mess anything up I'll know what I did wrong. If I am doing something incorrect or there may be a better method of doing things then please feel free to give you opinions. I will be taking plenty of pictures over the next couple months & hope to make it a successful grow. I will be updating the time line of what goes on with the plants, along the way I'll probably have a few question that may need answered so I grant anyone permission to lean a helping hand.

The pictures seen below were taken over the last 4 days, just today I noticed that all of the seedlings have rooted threw the peat pellets. If anyone else on this forum uses peat pellets please shed some light on your methods of transplanting. I am not sure when I need to transplant them but I would think since the roots are already popping out its time too transplant. I will be going to the local organic store & pick up some FoxFarm soils & possibly some nutes. Can anyone please tell me when it will be time to start using nutes? I am considering going with the Advanced Nutrients or FoxFarm Nutrients, I can get the FoxFarm at the local organic shop but I think I would rather go with the advanced nutrients. If I don't have time to order them I will just pick some FoxFarm up, but if I have time to order the Advanced Nutrients what exactly should I get? I hear that the Kushie Kush is good but I'm not exactly sure what would be a good mix with that, can someone with experience help me pick out the correct nutrient mix. As for the soil I will be going with FoxFarm [FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Ocean Forest[/FONT] & Light Warrior, I am still a bit undecided. Any suggestions on a good organic soil mix would be greatly appreciated. I will be hoping to hear from you guys & I will keep everyone posted on the progress of my babies.

Supply List:
1. GrowLab Horticultural Grow Room - GL120
2. Air Coolable Xtrasun 6" Reflector
3. 68 watt CFL, 2700k / Equivalent to 300 watt
4. 400 watt MH
5. 600 watt HPS
6. Jiffy Peat Pellets & Dome
7. FoxFarm Ocean Forest
8. FoxFarm Light Warrior
9. FoxFarm Nutrient Trio-Soil Formula, 3 qts
10. GALAXY 600 WATT ELECTRONIC BALLAST
11. In-Line Booster Fan, 6"
12. 6 inch In-Line Fan 400 CFM
13. 7 Day Dual Outlet Digital Timer

Grow Journal Time Line

​

Germination Stage:
Shot glass method on top of DVR, Cup over shot glass to keep dark for 24h
Put 3 Nirvana WW & 3 Nirvana BL. WW all floated, BL 2 floated & 1 sank.
(9:30pm Dec. 5th)
Took cups off of shot glasses & checked to see if seeds sank to the bottom.
All 3 Bubblelicious seeds cracked open & all sank, 1 White Widow seed sank & none of them cracked open. Planted White Widow even though they didn't crack. Time to transfer soaked seeds into peat pellets.
(9:30pm Dec. 6th)
I gradually put 35ml of filtered water from the fridge on 6 Jiffy Peat Pellets, allowing them to expand about a inch tall. Placing one seed per peat pellet about 1/4th of a inch into the soil. I then take the peat pellets & place them into the container with the dome on top of it. The dome is placed into a spare closet with the door closed & wait for seeds to sprout.
(10:00pm Dec. 6th)
I checked the dome to see if anything has sprouted yet, as expected nothing just yet.
(8:30pm Dec. 7th)
Once again, not a one seed has sprouted yet, the peat pellets were dried out so I put 20ml onto each pellet. The pellets were a little damp but not soaked, placed dome back into spare closet and hope to see my babies tomorrow night. I also set my digital time up for ON 4pm / OFF 12pm giving 18h & 6h. I have the light plugged into the timer, the light is a 400 watt CFL.
(7:30pm Dec. 8th)

Seedling Stage:
This was the first time lights stayed on over night, went to check on the heat of the lamp. Light wasn't that hot, 2 bubblelicious seeds are starting to sprout. Will check back at 12pm.
(9:00am Dec. 9th)
Came home for lunch & checked to make sure timer was working properly, light off & leafs forming on 2 sprouted Bubblelicious babies. The other 4 have not sprouted yet.
(12:00pm Dec. 9th)
Took a peek to see how my babies are doing, the 2 Bubblelicious babies that already sprouted seem to be growing a little slower then I expected but are doing well. The other bubblelicious seed finally started breaking ground as well as 1 of the white widow seeds. So far 4 out of 6 are showing signs of life. I will check back tomorrow morning before I go to work.
(10:20pm Dec. 9th)
All 3 of bubblelicious seeds sprouted and formed leafs. All of the white widow seeds have broke ground and one of them is already forming leafs as well. Check back on lunch.
(9:00am Dec. 10th)
I noticed that the roots are already breaking threw the peat pellets. All seedlings seem to be doing fine except for one WW, all of the roots broke threw each peat pellet. The one white widow is a little yellow for my liking but it just sprouted today. Plan to go pick up a good soil mix from locale organic shop tomorrow or Saturday. Will transplant into 3 gallon pots once I have the right soils.
(7:00pm Dec. 10th)
I have decided to take the top of the dome off since all of the seeds have went into the seedling stage, I also turned the fan on in the room on high till my grow tent arrives.
(10:00pm Dec. 10th)
Picked up a bag of FoxFarm Ocean Forest today, decided to transplant all the babies into 16oz cups, each cup has 4 slits on the bottom to allow drainage. I left the peat pellets in there soil bags, filled each cup half way with soil & pushed holes in the middle of each cup to make it easier to place peat pellets into. Once all of the seedlings were placed into the cups I gently placed soil over the tops of the peat pellets till covered, I then softly tapped down the soil. I also gave each cup roughly about 125ml of filtered water each.
(12:00am Dec. 12th)
After reading the reply to my post I was suggested to raise the plants a little higher so I raised them, will check back in the morning.
(1:15am Dec. 12th)
Checked on the babies progress and it appeared I had them positioned wrong, all of the plants were leaning to the light so I placed them all directly underneath. Came back home for lunch & they all have seemed to straighten back out.
(12:10pm Dec. 12th)

 

[FOAM]

My girlfriend stopped by the hydroponic store today to pick up some good soil mix, unfortunately they only keep the FoxFarm Ocean Forest in stock. The Light Warrior will be shipped & expected to arrive on December 17th, two days after my GrowLab tent arrives. I plan to do the first transplant tonight using the Ocean Forest soil in a 16oz plastic cup, once the other soil is in my hands I will do a 50/50 mix in 3 gallon pots & do the final transplant. I took a few more pictures when I got off of work today, here they are for your enjoyment.

 

[FOAM]

I transplanted all of my baby seedlings into 16oz cups using FoxFarm Ocean Forest. I also labeled each cup "White Widow #1-#3" & "Bubblelicious #1-#3", the better of the seedlings are placed at #1 and the smaller ones placed at #3. This way I will be able to let everyone know which plant I am describing. I also bought a bag of FoxFarm Light Warrior but it is on backorder at the moment, should be able to pick it up next Thursday. Then I will transplant the seedlings once more into a 3 gallon pots, this will be the final transplant. Anyway I took a few more pictures, sorry for such bad pictures but I am using a iPhone to take them. I'll probably give them a week off of picture taking to see what kind of progress they make using the new soil.

 

[wowisuckatthis]

fill those cups to the top with soil and drop that light right on top, looks like a 42w 2700k cfl, it needs to be close like 2-3 inches away. next time you transplant drop the plant in the soil till its up to the round seed leaves, that whole stem will sprout roots from it.

 

[wowisuckatthis]

oh and with ffof i wouldnt start feeding till the 3rd week, its a fairly hot soil and the plants wont be able to take it too early, i like the fox farm line of nutes too the big bloom and grow big for veg and big bloom and tiger bloom for flower.

 

[FOAM]

fill those cups to the top with soil and drop that light right on top, looks like a 42w 2700k cfl, it needs to be close like 2-3 inches away. next time you transplant drop the plant in the soil till its up to the round seed leaves, that whole stem will sprout roots from it.

Thanks for stopping by my journal to lean a hand, that CFL light is actually 68w 2700k & is equivalent to 300w. It gives off 4200 lumens, the name brand is TCP, my mistake. Do you think it will be okay to add more soil into the cups, I wasn't aware that roots can be grown from the stem itself. I won't start feeding them nutes till about 3 weeks, I want to make sure they are looking healthy before I start nutes. Here is a better picture of my CFL light, I will take more pictures of my setup once I have everything hooked up. Still have to buy a few more things but I am just about done.

 

[wowisuckatthis]

i pouposly let my sprouts stretch about 4 inches before i put them into thier first home, 16 oz solo cups, so that i can get the roots down into the soil more and have a deeper stem that roots can sprout from, doing it this way seems to develop better root systems than keeping them real short from sprout, visit my veg box journal for pics of my roots ill be posting them here after i get done reading my subcriptions. on a side note planting them deep seems to help with the soil being dry evenly and more consistently all the way thru when it comes time to water, no more swampy container bottoms that kill roots.

 

[dsn]

Hey, Foam!
As wowisuckatthis said, You need to put light as close as possible. If the height of bulb is adjusted right, plants will grow fast, so You will need to check, if its not too close sometimes two times in a day.
Put Your hand under the bulb, if it doesnt burn, its ok for plants.

Sorry for my english, through this site I`m also learning it.
I`m not experienced, but there are few things, that I know, so could help You out.
Good luck!

 

[FOAM]

One of my plants doesn't seem to be growing as quickly as the others, lets call it Bubblelicious #3. I honestly think this is the plant that the root was snapped during transplant, I will keep a eye on it the next couple days and hope for the best. As for the other plants, they are all maturing very quickly. They already started the second set of leafs, especially the White Widow. I added a hand full of Ocean Forest to each cup & watered them each with 100ml of filtered water. I said I wasn't going to take anymore pictures but I can't help myself, on the shot with all 6 plants in the picture notice the shortest one, that is Bubblelicious #3.

 

[bestbet06]

question, your white widow seeds did not germinate but did sprout when put in soil correct?

 

[FOAM]

question, your white widow seeds did not germinate but did sprout when put in soil correct?

That would be correct bestbet06, all 3 white widow seeds did not crack during germination. I placed one seed into a Jiffy Peat Pellet. They are actually doing better then the bubblelicious & sprouted a day after. If I remember correctly the white widows started popping out roots 2 days later. They sprouted in the peat pellets, now they are growing more since transplanted into Ocean Forest soil.

 

[bestbet06]

do you think if you wouldve put the seeds straight into the soil they still wouuldve sprouted? i have a couple seeds that aren't germinating too

 

[FOAM]

do you think if you wouldve put the seeds straight into the soil they still wouuldve sprouted? i have a couple seeds that aren't germinating too

It really all depends, how many days has it been? From what I have read heat & darkness is a major factor in germinating seeds. I'm sure if I would have put them in soil first they would have still sprouted, possibly even better then using peat pellets considering how rich the soil is that I'm using. Where did you get your seeds from? I also heard that it can take up to 11 days for a seed to sprout, that is pretty rare though. If you need a little help germinating seeds properly here is a tutorial that I used. Good luck & I hope everything works out for you.

http://www.weedsthatplease.com/germinating.htm

 

[FOAM]

I understand that the light can cause the plants to lean towards the light but what does it mean when they are leaning away from it? I have noticed 2 of my plants, both strains (White Widow & Bubblelicious) have been leaning away from the light bulb. Can anyone explain what I am doing wrong for this to be happening, is the plants not being transplanted far enough into the soil the cause of this? Here is a picture of one of my ww plants to show what I'm talking about, PLEASE HELP! This has been going on for the last 2 days, the leafs on them seem to be healthy. Sorry for the dark picture but I didn't want to turn the light on because it was the lights off time.

 

[wowisuckatthis]

to answer your question it could be a number of things, one of them being ambient light at dark time, they my be leaning towards a light source that they can get durring lights out, put a cardboard box over them or some thing durring the dark cycle. to solve the lean just tie a couple strings lightly around it and straigten them out and tape them to the cup to hold it up right. they look good otherwise, keep it up.

 

[hookahchill]

they look good, fill the cups up with soil. it will help. i use cfls and put them just about an inch away. did you take them out of the jifft peat or plant them in with the soil. i poke holes in the bottom of my cups for feeding. i always feed from botton. i will follow to see how they go. i had a few going and had to give them away but was able to keep the best one. beautiful. just pruned it this morning. so good luck enjoy

 

[FOAM]

they look good, fill the cups up with soil. it will help. i use cfls and put them just about an inch away. did you take them out of the jifft peat or plant them in with the soil. i poke holes in the bottom of my cups for feeding. i always feed from botton. i will follow to see how they go. i had a few going and had to give them away but was able to keep the best one. beautiful. just pruned it this morning. so good luck enjoy

I'm going pick up my Light warrior soil tomorrow, I'll top off each cup tomorrow. I placed the Jiffy peats into to soil with bag and all, roots were already popping threw. The plants that were leaning started to straighten back up the other day. Thanks to wowisuckatthis for making me aware of the ambient light issue. My off times are actually in the day time & I had a window with sunlight shining threw. Blocked the sun from coming in and they straighten up right away. Here are more pictures, they got bigger since last pictures taken. They are going on day 10 tomorrow, we be moving them into GrowLab very soon, just need to get a couple more things at the hydro shop for hanging my light. If look at the 5th picture you may notice a spot on one of the leafs, I'm assuming this is a burn from the light. Can anyone tell me if I should snip it off or leave it alone for now?

 

[wowisuckatthis]

there seems to be a slight heat curl on one of those plants, i think its the one with that heat burn spot. take them out of that box at night or open the top for venting while the light is on. other wards looking good.

 

[FOAM]

there seems to be a slight heat curl on one of those plants, i think its the one with that heat burn spot. take them out of that box at night or open the top for venting while the light is on. other wards looking good.

I never heard of heat curls before, I did notice a deformed leaf on one of my Bubblelicious plants. I will include a picture of that particular plant so please tell me if this is the heat curl you were talking about. I actually do not have my plants inside of a box at the moment, I have them sitting on a container on the floor with the fan on in the room. I plan to transplant them soon considering I have my tent hooked up, I will be placing them into 5 gallon buckets. I am a little confused to how much water I should be using inside that size pot, what is recommended for my size plants in that size pot? I went to my local hydroponic shop today and picked up a digital thermometer / hydrometer so I can manage the temperature & humidity. I ran it over night and the lowest the temperature got down to was 69.1 ºF, that was recorded at night time with the lights on. Is this a temperature too low for the plants, if so I can adjust my a/c. The highest the temperature reached was 77.5 ºF, don't really think that is a problem. I also stopped by home depot today & picked up another CFL setup so I can add a little more light on them, I have both lights hooked to a dual timer 18on/6off. I am looking into buying a 6" carbon filter fan combo off of eBay, seem to be a good deal for 185. It comes with a 424 cfm fan, air ducting & clamps, & also a 6" carbon filter. I will most likely be picking this up my next paycheck to finish off my tent, very excited to have everything finally taken care of.

Picture 1 is the plant I was talking about that might have heat curl, what are the dangers of a plant having heat curl. Do you think it will make it?

 

[wowisuckatthis]

wattering gets real tricky when u transplant into a large pot like that, the best thing to do would be to add some more perlite for drainage so the bottom dosent get swampy, then water small amounts at a time, like 1 quart per bucket, and wait til they droop just a bit before the next watering. and yes that leaf does look like heat curl to me, but its hard to tell from a pic. the heat increases rapidly in proximity to the bulb, i bet its a cooking 85-87 at the leaf surface level, try moving that plant to as far away from the bulbs as possible and see if it improves.