First Ever for GardensGrow

Update: Fourth seedling has been established and is playing catch up. Lights are still at 2' above the plants for their seedling safety. I will be moving the light to about 1' (or closer?) from the plants tomorrow since all of them have shown to be well established and healthy.

Plants have been happily sun bathing under the MH (which is about 1' above the plants). Getting stronger and stronger each day!



Also, I thought that maybe if I named them all with female names then it would encourage them to go that way



Also, there is a small population of mayflies or something so I sprayed down "Sally" with this. If it doesn't hurt her then I'll use it on the rest.

Looking good. Growth is exponential now. That nice leaf development in the last 3 days will lead to a lot more growth coming in the next 3 days.

Thank Raul. Sally definitely didn't like the spray. It burned her tender leafs a little bit. I sprayed off the leaves with a lot of water so hopefully they can recover.

Turns out also that the flies are just general "fungus flies" and it's indicating that I'm probably over watering. Some of the leaves on the plants are looking a little sickly so I'm sure this is the case. To fix I'm going to let them get a little dry before the next watering.

Apparently Jessica got a little overspray from the 3-in-1 cuz she's a little burnt too. Doesn't help that I had the lights too close as well.

So Sally is looking dismal and Jessica will probably pull through. Michelle and Cindy are chugging along looking a little better after I lifted the light back to about 1' above.

I'm thinking about starting another seedling or two... Although if Sally dies I'm sure out of three I can get one female, which would be enough for me, but I'd prefer more.

I'll post the sad pictures tomorrow when the "sun" comes up

Yeah, too bad seeds aren't things most of us can "waste". Especially for a first grow, it'd be nice to start a couple times more than you actually want to finish. Then you could experiment through the germinating, sprouting, and seedling stages without fear of killing off all the plants. Seems like mine were the most fragile when they were young.

Here's what you can look forward to in the coming weeks though. I'm midway through week 6 of 12/12.

No kidding. I thought a light spraying with lights off would be okay; apparently not once the lights came back on. Oh well here are some pics (btw Hawk I can't see your picture)

Sally


Jessica


Cindy


Michelle

looking good for the most part. except for poor old sally, but hopefully she'll pull through for ya!

GG - I think Sally will recover. Just keep misting her with fresh water for a few days. I am guessing in 1 week that she will look no worse off for the experience.

I must confess that my first 20 high dollar seeds from 2 separate grows were wasted due to errors on my part. I had a few good outdoor grows after that, but from bagseed only. Now we have RIU and we have educated ourselves.

Keep up the good work!

labey and Raul, thanks for the encouraging words. Definitely with RIU, and screwing things up a little, one can learn the ropes fairly quickly.

As of today it looks like the new leaves coming from Sally's middle stem (is there a term for that area?) are be viable. So I think she'll make it, but with all the stress it might turn out that Sally is a dude! At least that's what I've heard stress can do to the plants. Let's hope not though

I will throw in my two cents worth: From the beginning as a seed, Sally had the DNA to either be male or female & that can never change. Stress can cause a female plant to produce male flowers in some cases, but the pollen produced by these female plants only contains female DNA. So, a female hermi can only produce female seed with her pollen. This same condition is forced with a chemical spay applied to female clones to cause pollen production used in obtaining feminized seed.

Hopefully, Sally will become an unstressed plant well before she/he is sexually mature, so I doubt that chemical burn on a seedling would cause any variance in male/female flower production much later in a plant's life cycle. If it did though, you could possibly end up with some valuable feminized seed.

Sorry if that sounds way too technical, but then I talk to my plants and call them ladies to encourage them to be so. So where is the logic in that?

Raul that makes a lot of sense. And I hope that you're right that she'll become un-stressed before it's time to flower.

Sally (front left) is starting to look like a normal plant again. Jessica (back left) recovered completely and is already ahead of Cindy (back right) in terms of size. Michelle (front right) is smokin' them all!

BTW, the node length on these ladies is ridiculously short. I can't imagine how many nodes they'll have when they're adults. Nice job Joey Weed (via HempDepot)!

looking good... hopefully neither of them are male. but it always seems like the one growing the fastest turns out to be male... what a shame. hopefully its not like that here. gl looking like you're on track

Thanks again labey. I've heard it both ways; some say that the females grow faster and some say that the males grow faster. Let's hope it's the former!

My largest of 6 plants turned out to be female and the male in her same strain was smaller. In the other 2 strains the males were both larger than the females. It seems like a mixed bag to me as to size and sex of a plant.

Great growth and recovery from the bug spray! You are ahead of me already at day 20 compared to where I was at day 26. My guess is that your roots might benefit now if they could expand out of those small pots into your earthbox.

Lookin' great!

Looks like they're starting to take off GG! I really don't think size is a good earkt determination of sex. This grow my biggest was a male, while last grow the two largest were female.
good luck, cb

RaulFarquhar said:

My guess is that your roots might benefit now if they could expand out of those small pots into your earthbox.

Click to expand...

Really? I think I underestimate the size that roots can get! I'm actually starting to debate using my Earthbox or not. I really like being able to rotate the plants around. I'm thinking that maybe when I make some clones of my females that I would put those in the Earthbox and LST two plants all the way down the length of the box.

Then again I've already got the Earthbox...guess I have to decide pretty soon.

Also I still haven't quite figured out at what time I'm supposed to take clones. I've read in the Grow Bible to try and grab clones before the plant starts flowering so that the clones don't have to revert back to the vegetation state. Anybody have any problems with taking clones after the flowering starts?

Thanks for all the help and wishes so far everyone! It really makes this a lot more fun.


P.S. I let the soil dry out a bit more than usual and it took care of my fungus fly problem.

Clones are better taken while the plants are in the vegetative state. Once they start flowering, they do not set new roots as easily. I see comments on RIU where some of the growers claim that it can be done, but most growers will tell you not to even try.

I am going to try to revegitate my plants after harvest by leaving about 4 or 5 inches of stem with a few lower fan leaves and a small amount of bud. I will then try cloning from the revegetated plants.

I can't really tell how big your pots are from the picture, but the roots normally run a lot deeper than the plants are tall. You could turn one of the pots over and gently let the plant and soil slip out of the pot and into your fingers to inspect the roots. I like rotating my plants around too, so repotting into 2 gallon size pots should allow enough root space to take you through harvest. It's just my opinon, but I think that your plants are definitely strong enough now to repot them before they get root bound in the smaller pots.

Hmmm, I think I have a plan. I'm going to try and take two clones from each plant (in case one dies) when they're big enough and then subject the clones to a 12/12 light cycle. This way I can determine sex and then I can take new clones before the mother plants go into the flowering stage. (I'm not that smart, I read it in the Grow Bible)

The pots are 6" in diameter. I just gave them a good watering this morning and they took off again. I think I will just put them in the Earthbox and then do my cloning thing once they get big enough.

Thanks for the advice!