First CFL Grow - Help appreciated

KolorBlind said:

Man those buds look GREEEAAAT! I was wondering, did you have most of your lights up top? Or were some of them hanging down by the mid to lower parts of the plant?

Either way they all look great and your girl is a fuckin CHAMP for posing for that pic! Cant wait to show that pic to my wife and tell her that's what I expect after harvest time HAHA!!

Hope the smoke is great and please do give a full report when you come down

KB

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I had lights on top and on the sides. My 8 23w are up top and the 68w are hanging aroudn the middle of my plants - def think helped bulk up the lower buds. Hehe - my girl is a champ for putting up with my pot head antics. Hooray for her!

Cane'Bosem said:

So exciting. I'm waiting for the smoke report!
It's awesome to see your grow end up like this!!! I've got big hopes for mine. I'm using CFL's also. Check it out and tell me what you think.

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Will check yours out when i got alil more time. Thoguth ide post a few pics real fast though. So i thought this plant would be the biggest yielder but luckily I am wrong - some others are almost twice the size. but heres the first to come down.

Hell yeah dude I appreciate all the help on my thread,hope I can turn a yield like you one day. You are officially my role model.

can i smoke with you man...shes beautiful...do you trim leaves and shit when your in veg...cause i trimmed one of mine and now she looks better then before?

blinkimgonez said:

Hell yeah dude I appreciate all the help on my thread,hope I can turn a yield like you one day. You are officially my role model.

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Thanks! I hope you out grow me though so I can start learning from you. Lemme know when you have a link up.

bakedat420 said:

can i smoke with you man...shes beautiful...do you trim leaves and shit when your in veg...cause i trimmed one of mine and now she looks better then before?

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You in the SF Bay Area? Might be throwing a 420 harvest party

So according to my reading and Jorge Cervantes pot growing bible you arn't supposed to trim at all.

But then most people don't grow with CFLs in a small closet. I trimmed the bottom 2-4 nodes on my plant early on and then removed fan leaves throughout the grow - but only if they really covered a bud site and couldn't be bent out of the way. Night b4 harvest I took off all fan leaves - some people say this helps produce more resin? They also say to leave in 24hrs dark b4 harvest but that isn't really an option for me.

I'de try and leave the plant as is unless necessary or if your trying to thin it out in order to get larger buds instead of many small buds. From my observations the more shoots you take off the bigger the remaining shoots get. Oh yeah - I def cut off a buncha bud sites as well. If I thoguht a bud site wasn't going to get very large I often just pinched it off so that the rest of the budsites on the shoot would get alittle bigger.

Hope this helps.

awesome grow man. ive been watching since day one, im doing a similar grow, cfls, small closet space. im only on the 23day from seed though, still vegging, trying to decide when to start flowering, shes only a bit over 2inches right now, but bushy as ever...just dont want it to pass 2ft as im in a 1x1x3ft box. i can only fit like two plants in there. ive got some lowrider #2xAuto Ak47 Fems coming in the mail, so i want to have this and one of those almost at the same pace, since the auto aks will flower/harvest within 70-75 of seed...would like them both to finish roughly at the same time. how many lights do you have now, and whats the wattage for your flowering/vegging?

IpFreely said:

awesome grow man. ive been watching since day one, im doing a similar grow, cfls, small closet space. im only on the 23day from seed though, still vegging, trying to decide when to start flowering, shes only a bit over 2inches right now, but bushy as ever...just dont want it to pass 2ft as im in a 1x1x3ft box. i can only fit like two plants in there. ive got some lowrider #2xAuto Ak47 Fems coming in the mail, so i want to have this and one of those almost at the same pace, since the auto aks will flower/harvest within 70-75 of seed...would like them both to finish roughly at the same time. how many lights do you have now, and whats the wattage for your flowering/vegging?

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1x1x3' wow, you better start flowering pretty early. How many nodes you at? I currently have 4x23w in the veg box 1x1x2' and 3x68w + 8x23w in the flower room 2x3x3.

Here are some pics - I feel like I haven't been regularly updating on things i've been doing - got to cought up on my first harvest.

So I don't know what order these pics will be in but they are of the following:

Bud pics are of the next plant I plan on harvesting - should be ready in a week.

Few pics of the monster and I think my favorite plants - should be 1-2 more weeks for these two.

Pic of the short bushy plant - at least 2 weeks is my guess.

New plants in the flowering closet - 100% indica grown 12/12 from seed and topped, clone with 3 leaves/shotos per node topped (so three main colas now), clone of my short bushy plant put into veg much larger than the original, LST of a clone of the plant I just harvested. Also the clones taken from a flowering plant that were rooted/kept in 12/12 - these are starting to frost up.

In the veg area are two rooted clones - one is duck-footed (growing leaves with only 3 sections). Under my humidity dome I have cuttings I just took from the clone of the short bushy plant in the flower room as well as the top of the indica and the top of the tri nodal plant.

I didn't take any pics of the lasrgest of the first 6 I started - its looking lame all bent over in the back - I let it get too big and now I cant move it so its getting shitty light and blah blah blah. basically I dont' care about ti anymore lol.

Gastanker said:

How many nodes you at?

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right now im at 10 but i have 2 more branches coming in, within the past 5hours these guys have spring up from outta nowhere almost.

just measured my baby, its only a bit over 2inches right now.

IpFreely said:

right now im at 10 but i have 2 more branches coming in, within the past 5hours these guys have spring up from outta nowhere almost.

just measured my baby, its only a bit over 2inches right now.

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I might start flowering now if I was you. Did you see the pics I took of my plants when i started? They were pretty small. Tons and tons of growth once you start 12/12.

yea i was noticing that earlier

sorry to double post in your thread.

but i heard it was a good idea to do 36hours of dark before switching to 12/12, have you heard of/done this before?

IpFreely said:

sorry to double post in your thread.

but i heard it was a good idea to do 36hours of dark before switching to 12/12, have you heard of/done this before?

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You're welcome to post as much as you like. I've heard that a 24 hr period of darkness causes the plant to show signs of sex earlier than if you don't. But why not just start 12/12 a few days earlier instead? MIght as well try it though if you don't have any other plants in the area to light stress.

well my issue right now is that my lighting system is screwed up right now, i need to build a hood and make my lights shine down, right now they are on the sides of the box. yeah i should have built a bigger box, i might expand this one after this grow, space is very limited. how are your babies coming along?

IpFreely said:

well my issue right now is that my lighting system is screwed up right now, i need to build a hood and make my lights shine down, right now they are on the sides of the box. yeah i should have built a bigger box, i might expand this one after this grow, space is very limited. how are your babies coming along?

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They are doing well. It's amazing how I can just sit infront of them and stare. I might be seeing things but I believe one of my plants is trying to show alittle purple. It's been really hot in the closet but I'll try leaving the appartment window open durring the nights so see if i can get alittle more color. The plant I just harvested is prety as hell and smells great and finished in a record time but the buds dont' seem to be nearly as dense as the ones that are taking longer. Really excited for my 4/20 harvest.

yeah i lose track of time just staring at mine. what kind of nutes are you using for the flower stage? and do you know what the average growth rate was once you switched to 12/12...like how many inches/cm they seemed grew over night? ive finally sketched out the best way for me to make a hood and adjust my lights to be shining down rather than to the sides, im going to head up to home depot sometime this weekend and get that taken careof. i just got two new branches over night.

IpFreely said:

yeah i lose track of time just staring at mine. what kind of nutes are you using for the flower stage? and do you know what the average growth rate was once you switched to 12/12...like how many inches/cm they seemed grew over night? ive finally sketched out the best way for me to make a hood and adjust my lights to be shining down rather than to the sides, im going to head up to home depot sometime this weekend and get that taken careof. i just got two new branches over night.

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Once I swtiched to 12/12 they just took off. In the midst of their growth spurt they were probably growing in height by an inch or two a day - Ide wake up in the morning and barely recognize them.

I've been fertilizing as follows -

I keep on hand three different solutions - the veg gallon has vigoro 24-8-16 dilluted to 1/10 strength the flower has Floranova one part bloom (about 2 tbls which i believe is around 1200ppm?) with an additional tbls of molasses, and my third solution is 1.5 tbls molasses and plain water.

Plants in veg get just the veg solution. Once I move them to 12/12 I give them 1/3 veg solution and 2/3 flower solution. As they mature I switch it to 100% flower. Last several weeks I slowly transistion to just molasses water. (75% flower, 25% molasses water then 50/50 then 25/75 till its just molasses water)

have you seen a large effect from the molasses? and where did you find floranova? i have like no hydro stores near me...well theres one but its a good 45min drive

IpFreely said:

have you seen a large effect from the molasses? and where did you find floranova? i have like no hydro stores near me...well theres one but its a good 45min drive

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Well I haven't expirimented without using molasses but I really don't see why I would. Seems like everyone says it helps from the new briany scientific growers to the old burnt out hippies I ask. Even Mr. Cervantes has a section in his book about it. Molasses is plant blood - refined sap. Blood sausage is one of the highest chaloric foods humans can easily digest - I would assume molasses is similar for plants - not to mention it feeds all the little stuff in the soil.

The floranova I got at a hydro store. Everyone raves about certain brands and organic nutes blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure though that if you maintain the right ratios of NPK you'll do ok even if its the cheap stuff. The floranova is 4-8-7 if that helps. I seemed to be doing pretty well with just the veg nutes and bone meal before I went and got the expensive nutes.

thanks for the advice!

Not too great but not too bad. I got 21 grams off this first plant. Would have been alil more happy had I hit that magic zip but then again at the beggining I wasn't expecting more than just a few grams per plant. And for less than 2 months seed to dry it's not so bad. Can't wait for my 4/20 harvest. I really think the rest of my plants will yield at least a zip each which gets me over the qp barrier. No kiddin - never would have thought.

Smoked a tiny tiny bud this morning and I'm a lil disfunctional. Definately energetic like I was aiming at but damn is it stoney as well. Reminds me of the goo my buddie grows - who knows maybe i mixed up the seeds and this is the spider goo. cant wait till its properly cured and I can show it off to my friends