First Grow - Hydro, Ebb & Gro, 2k watts, WW, AK47, NY SD & Platinum Kush - Videos

What's up all, I thought I would throw up a thread of my first grow progress, with weekly video updates. This is my first time growing, so any and all feedback is welcomed.

Set up details:
4 - 20amp circuits added
2 - 1k watt dimmable lighting systems
12 site Cap Ebb and Gro hydro system
14k BTU portable ac
home made cloner hydro system
home made ebb and flow hydro system
1 - 8 bulb 4ft T5 with HO bulbs
Currently using technaflora nutrients (Boost, grow, sugar daddy, thrive b1-red, magi-cal and a cal/mag sup)
I'm also using 29% h202 2x week to keep bacteria at bay.
Whirlpool RO system - generates 2.5 gal/hr of 5ppm water from 750ppm hard city water.
6" 240CFM
6" 440CFM
6''x8''x18'' Carbon Filter
12 x 12 home office converted to grow room due to location; straight run for electrical, next to laundry room for RO feed.

6x WW from seed
1x NL from seed
2x AK47 - clone
2x NY SD - clone
1x Platinum Kush - clone

I currently only have the main hydro system set up as I germinated the seeds, kept them under an AERO Garden light system for 5 days or so then moved directly into the CAP system and under the T5 since I didn't have the home made hydros set up yet. After another 5 days or so of T5, I switched over to MH and started at 500. 4 days later switched upto 750, then 2 days later was upto 1000.

They are really starting to smell, so I need to get my scrubber installed. I want to mount it up high in the room, but having trouble coming up with a solution.

My plan is to keep the best of each strain as a mother.
I didn't get any pictures the first 2 weeks, but here are the first 2 videos from 23 and 30 days in. They really jumped in growth when I increased PPM from about 400ppm to 820ppm at week 3.

I hope to add a video every week going forward.

Day 23
[video=youtube;TPQpXsKJs7Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPQpXsKJs7Q[/video]

Day 30
[video=youtube;uzFKRRq1DEo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzFKRRq1DEo[/video]

These things have really taken off - I am constantly spreading them apart and moving them around to best position each for optimal light. I know this can't be good moving between buckets like this, but I am extremely careful. I need to move my lights out a little more and get the spectrum spread between these things to give them room to grow more. I ordered 5 x 5 tent, this will ultimately be used for mothers/clones with the T5. There are already clear leaders in each strain I have, hopefully the ones from seed turn out to be female. These things have all hit 24" except for the dwarf in the corner, but its twice the width of all the other plants. Is it ok to start taking a couple clones from these things or should I wait out the 60 days? Lastly, I REALLY have to get my scrubber installed, these things are smelling, great! thoughts, comments, suggestions all welcomed.

Day 37
[video=youtube;1lsw3UlRqHQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lsw3UlRqHQ[/video]

Day 44 and the things are 36"+. This is 6 weeks and 2 days from seed for ww and nl, and all veg time for the ak47, plat kush and ny sd clones. I ended up getting quite a few clones out of these things, and could've easily taken more, but was overwhelmed with the quantity I did take being my first time to do it. Hopefully I get at least a 25% success rate, but at minimum maybe 10%. We'll see. I flushed the plants of the veg nutrients and loaded up the flower nutrients and set it to 12/12. I also switched the bulbs to hps. I was going to top these, but I think I've past that point and don't want to shock them too much, so will try that next round 2-3 weeks into veg. That seems to be the consensus. Finally, the tent arrived and I set that up. I made a little table and set up the T5 and an intake fan to get cool air into the tent and set the clones under a heat mat under 18/6 after 24 hours of dark, spraying them twice a day.

Feedback and comments all welcome.

[video=youtube_share;VpiAbKnuJuE]http://youtu.be/VpiAbKnuJuE[/video]

Day 53 and we're upto 48"+. I found 3 males, 2 of my WW and the NL, so now im down to 9 plants. I moved the plants around after removing the males to help spread light better, and the platinum kush wasn't able to hold itself up, it had been held up by the wall and filter and a plant, so when i moved it to the other side, it just fell over and started growing again. I should probably prop it up. I was debating on 5 gallon containers as well, since I now realize the standard is 1 gallon per foot. Well im close to 5' now and only week 2 of flower. I think I'm going to have problems with other plants as well getting root bound or whatever its called. Thoughts? I was debating on the CAP monster ebb and gro system, but Im not sure if its too late to move them or not. A few of the clones are well rooted, others not so much. I need to set up the ebb and flow to move them into in the next day or two.

[video=youtube_share;hSD8Lit0DyQ]http://youtu.be/hSD8Lit0DyQ[/video]

Day 58 and the girls are coming in very nicely. I did notice some powdery mildew developing on some leaves on the outsides, I think I had my portable wall a little too close, choking off airflow. I have since moved it back, cleared all the leaves of this stuff I could find, and so far so good. Also, one of my HPS bulbs went out the other day. Not sure how long before I woke up if went out, hopefully it didnt shock the plants too much with some light leaking over from the second set up. It had a Metal Halide in it the next night, and by the 2nd night, an HPS is back in it, with a back up on hand. 6 more weeks or so and the WW should be ready to harvest. I need to research the other strains a little more to get an idea of flowering time, but I believe since their sativas, they will need an extra week or two. The clones are all well rooted now and are starting to take off. As always, thoughts, comments, feedback are all welcome!

[video=youtube_share;uH7Txwnd-P0]http://youtu.be/uH7Txwnd-P0[/video]

What? All this and no feedback from anyone? I'm suprised at that. You deserve some props for such a good looking grow/thread, my man.
Anyways, great job. Keep up the good work. Sub'd +Rep

I just stumbled on this and was surprised as well at no feed back? Looks good dude, one question tho, how hot is it on the plants on the right? I know your lights are vented, but just curious. +Rep and subd

pacificarage said:

What? All this and no feedback from anyone? I'm suprised at that. You deserve some props for such a good looking grow/thread, my man.
Anyways, great job. Keep up the good work. Sub'd +Rep

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback and rep!

SantaCruzed said:

I just stumbled on this and was surprised as well at no feed back? Looks good dude, one question tho, how hot is it on the plants on the right? I know your lights are vented, but just curious. +Rep and subd

Click to expand...

Thanks for the rep!

I'm not sure how hot it gets there at the top, but the entire room stays under 74 all day. I can place my hand on the glass and not get burned. I checked the space between the bud and glass this morning and there was very little room. Then after I read this, I went in and checked again and the bud was mashing against the glass, but there was no burning of it, thankfully. I moved it up a few inches, but I dont like taking the lumens further away from the shorter plants. I'm getting excited, the buds are just growing like crazy, I see major changes daily.

Day 65 and not much to report. The buds are getting fatter and crystals are starting to form. The tallest plant is 71" and the powdery mildew seems to be getting worse, but only on the outsides of my garden. I need to get that under control. The plants are starting to drink about as much water as they were at the end of veg, about 5 gallons a day, but they aren't sucking up all of the nutrients, as my ppm's shoot up after every feeding. Currently I manage that with 1 day of 5 gallons of water and solution, and the next day of just pure water. One more week and I will increase ppms for the last few weeks of flowering with the last week being plain water for flushing. I've been doing lots of research on when and how to harvest and feel I have a pretty good handle on that, but I'm always open to tips and tricks if anyone wants to share.

[video=youtube_share;QYjG0rruQHw]http://youtu.be/QYjG0rruQHw[/video]

Day 73 and I've been infested with powdery mildew pretty badly. I don't know why I put off dealing with it, but now it's biting me in the arse. I did some research and believe I know the cause and have taken actions to prevent future occurences and hopefully limit the damage. The first thing I did I was to trim up the bottom growth and placed a fan down low to push air up through the canopy. This was difficult to cut down so much, but I believe it was needed. I should've done it weeks ago. Another major mistake I was making was feeding them right before the lights went out, as well as one feeding in the middle of the night. Clearly a newbie mistake I wish I didn't have to learn the hard way. I also increased the AC from 73 to 79 to try and keep humidity in check. Finally, I got some green cure and have been using that trying to spray only the leaves. They have between 4 and 6 weeks left, so I hope I can keep it under control and not let it get into the buds too much. Once I harvest I plan to scrub down the grow room with bleach before transfering the clones into the flower area. I'm kidding myself to think this didn't get into the tent and affect those. What should I do, scrap those and just start fresh after the scrub down? I don't want to deal with this next grow. Oh and the tallest one is 73".

[video=youtube_share;ufrvhe91Bys]http://youtu.be/ufrvhe91Bys[/video]

Day 80 and the infestation of powdery mildew continues. I'm pretty sure it's too late. Looks like I'm going to have to soak my first batch in h202 as suggested in one of the master grow videos. I don't want to do that, but I think I don't have any other choice. I have had several falling colas, the weight just got too much and they would slowly fall until they snap. I finally smartened up and starte staking them all up. Next cycle, I'll have these stakes in and ready before they get out of control. I have definitely been learning a lot of what not to do's this run. I hope what I get is at least smokable by me. I don't know if I would want anyone else to have to ingest this. The buds are looking fat and crystalizing like crazy. The top of the tallest plant's cola turned albino right after last weeks video, or right before. No idea how to correct it, if thats possible. I do know the thing has almost doubled in thickness the past week, so it doesn't seem to be affected its growth, thank god. Clones are really taking off now, thanks to the addition of nutrients. I need to top again and maybe work on doing some lst?

[video=youtube_share;pfjAiFLnEUM]http://youtu.be/pfjAiFLnEUM[/video]

Don't scrap your plants. It is just going to be a bitch to deal with. When trimming, seperate all the branches with any sign of pm on them and ones that are clean. With the parts with pm, make that into hash using bubble bags or just run it into BHO. After you cut the plants, completely clorox the room and make sure you get ever spore, which is pretty hard considering the spores can attach to just about anything (moldy walls). Even being so, you may not get it all and may have to combat it again in the future but you may have to start switching to concentrates

Other than the pm, your setup looks bomb! Huge plants for indoors and I am definitely digging the video updates. For your next grow, you may want to LST the plants a little more so you dont have those baseball bats for colas, not that those are bad by any means, just heavy. Once again I am surprised there are not more comments on here.

Also the top of the cola turning albino could be due to light burn, pretty common on tips during the end of the life cycle, Just trim it off. nothing you can do to reverse that, just prevent.

Day 87 and two of the white widows had serious nutrient burn. The leaves on the top cola's all pretty much shriveled up and died. Several other leaves along those plantd also died off. I immediately starting the flush when I saw this. After one night of 10ppm water and 4 feedings, the water was up to 500ppm again, so I again drained and had another night of clean feedings. This time it shot up to 337ppm from 10. I left it in one more day and it reached 440, so I drained that and started with fresh water again. After one day of feeding its only about 100ppm. I never flushed once during this grow, now I know I need to do it at least every 2 weeks. As for the buds, they are just looking incredible. The tallest plant, a 6' 3" white widow has a massive top cola, and many thick side colas. I am estimating conservatively that plant alone will yield 8 O's. Also, now that most of the leaves are dried up and died on some of the plants, I can see that the powdery mildew is only affecting the clones I received from an outside source. I'm wondering if it wasn't anything I did after all. The plants I have from seed aren't affected other than the spots that directly touched the cloned plants, which are heavily infected with this. I think I'm going to just trash the vegging clones from those clones to see if those were the culprit. I'll be sure to still scrub down the area good after I harvest. Looking at the trichomes in my scope the last few days they have gone from all clear to half and half cloudy and clear. I'm so close! I did see 1 trichome that was amber, but all others were still clear/cloudy. I'm still 11 days from finishing 8 weeks of flowering, but these indica's are so close to being done. The sativa's didn't get nutrient burn, their leaves don't show any signs of maturing, but the trichomes are pretty close to the same ratio as the indica. I'm still going to let them continue for another week or so after the indica harvest, trichome condition permitting.


Sorry for the long read - very excited to harvest my first grow!

[video=youtube_share;eIq9kCby39A]http://youtu.be/eIq9kCby39A[/video]

Day 98 - as some of you probably have guessed - the powdery mildew did me in basically. The day after the last video I went into the room and realized the clones I had were just too far gone to be saved. Seriously covered in PM, leaves bent over covering buds, it was just ugly. Pretty frustrating, all this work, time, money, all flushing down the drain. I deserved it, I let the issue go, and you can't. Hard lesson to learn. I was ready to just pull everything up and look to the future with the next crop...but I couldn't just give up. I had to at least try and salvage what was left. I pulled 4 plants, the AK47 and the NYSD. I was as careful as I could be, but the shit just went everywhere, even though I cut each branch and gently placed into trash bags. With those 4 completely infested plants out of the room, I then began to surgically remove each and every leaf that had any trace of PM on it. This left a pretty bare room, with bare plants, only the buds left. I let them mature and ended up cutting them down this past weekend. I gave each branch a long and thorough h202 bath, rinsing each one off, and then had 3 fans on high blow on them for about 18 hours. I just finished trimming what I could salvage, and dont see any PM through my scope, but I'm still not sure I want to risk it. It was a good learning experience, I definitely learned alot and sadly lost most of my crop.

While the plants were being fan dried, I had a buddy and my girl help me take everything out of the grow room, we bleached the room, top to bottom. Everything was thoroughly cleaned and bleached prior to being placed back into the room. I now have 2 - 70 pint dehumidifers sitting on and draining into 5 gallon buckets. One for the tent and one for the room. At least I learned something...