Whatup yall? This would be my first post on rollitup but a LOT of what went into making my first grow successful so far I read on here so I'm truly appreciative of what everyone who posts their knowledge and experiences on here does. I hope this journal of my first grow can be just as helpful as I found others, but as I am still a noob I have some questions too.
I'm big into growing cacti and succulents and originally I thought I could use the gear that I had for keeping my cacti in good shape through the winter and that would be all I needed. I bought some PVC piping and some reflective bubble sheeting and constructed a home made "grow tent".
I had a nice variety of seeds including chocolope, durban poison, lemon jack and others that my friend who is an accomplished grower gave me hoping I wouldn't waste them considering I'd figured out how to grow cacti from seed which I would venture to say is a good deal more difficult. My friend stressed the importance of not disturbing the roots when transplanting so I made the choice to start my seeds in jiffy pots.
With this batch of seeds I used a mix of commercial potting mix, perlite and vermiculite with a smattering of blood and bone meal and germinated them in the jiffy pots which I think I will always do, the extra step of transplanting from a moistened towel setup seems like a waste of time and leaves more of a chance of fcking up roots. Anyway, I had great success with this batch as they all germinated on the heat mat that I placed them on, (not sure if this is helpful for cannabis or not) and placed them in my homemade grow tent under a 4 tube 48" t8 fluoro shoplight fixture.
After further study and consultation I realized I needed to move where I was growing and that I needed to change the lights I was using if I wanted to achieve optimal results. I was on a limited budget so I purchased a economic 400 watt hps/mh light fixture and planned to build my own cool tube which proved to be one of the most difficult parts of the project.
I was forced to move into a constricted grow space mostly in terms of height which I think will be the reason I start flowering fairly soon.
The 3rd photo above is after I installed the cool tube i made and set up the ventilation system which consists of a 250 cfm can fan sucking air out through the open ended cool tube and air being blown in through another 250cfm fan and spread around with an oscillating tower fan. It seems to do a decent job even though I have no direct airflow coming from the outside so Im basically just recycling the air in the basement but the temp stays around 77-80 degrees Fahrenheit and I've been able to maintain a humidty around 40-50 percent.
*Does this need to change for flowering?
I realized a little too late that the seedlings were being stunted in the jiffy pots and so have probably suffered minor stunting,
When transplanting I decided to moisten the seam down the side of the jiffy pot so I could easily rip it open and plant it into the larger pots. This method seemed to work without a hitch. Since transplanting I've had a few hiccups, most notably I think a plant suffered from being too close to the light and now has some curled/drooped leaves but seems to be recovering. I will post a final few pics showing the growth so far over the past few weeks.
Thanks for reading folks, hope you enjoyed
A few more questions...
Besides a few seeds in there its unknown who will be male and female, when is the earliest possible time to tell and how soon after begining the 12/12 photo period should I be on the look out to prevent males from spreading their pollen?
As you can see in these pics some of the plants are much more mature than others, should I take them out and put them under fluoros to continue vegging as I only have one hps fixture? Or should I just leave em' and get what I can from flowering them so young?
Thanks again,
and just fyi, my username does not in anyway reflect my religious or spiritual beliefs.
Cheers
I'm big into growing cacti and succulents and originally I thought I could use the gear that I had for keeping my cacti in good shape through the winter and that would be all I needed. I bought some PVC piping and some reflective bubble sheeting and constructed a home made "grow tent".
I had a nice variety of seeds including chocolope, durban poison, lemon jack and others that my friend who is an accomplished grower gave me hoping I wouldn't waste them considering I'd figured out how to grow cacti from seed which I would venture to say is a good deal more difficult. My friend stressed the importance of not disturbing the roots when transplanting so I made the choice to start my seeds in jiffy pots.
With this batch of seeds I used a mix of commercial potting mix, perlite and vermiculite with a smattering of blood and bone meal and germinated them in the jiffy pots which I think I will always do, the extra step of transplanting from a moistened towel setup seems like a waste of time and leaves more of a chance of fcking up roots. Anyway, I had great success with this batch as they all germinated on the heat mat that I placed them on, (not sure if this is helpful for cannabis or not) and placed them in my homemade grow tent under a 4 tube 48" t8 fluoro shoplight fixture.
After further study and consultation I realized I needed to move where I was growing and that I needed to change the lights I was using if I wanted to achieve optimal results. I was on a limited budget so I purchased a economic 400 watt hps/mh light fixture and planned to build my own cool tube which proved to be one of the most difficult parts of the project.
I was forced to move into a constricted grow space mostly in terms of height which I think will be the reason I start flowering fairly soon.
The 3rd photo above is after I installed the cool tube i made and set up the ventilation system which consists of a 250 cfm can fan sucking air out through the open ended cool tube and air being blown in through another 250cfm fan and spread around with an oscillating tower fan. It seems to do a decent job even though I have no direct airflow coming from the outside so Im basically just recycling the air in the basement but the temp stays around 77-80 degrees Fahrenheit and I've been able to maintain a humidty around 40-50 percent.
*Does this need to change for flowering?
I realized a little too late that the seedlings were being stunted in the jiffy pots and so have probably suffered minor stunting,
When transplanting I decided to moisten the seam down the side of the jiffy pot so I could easily rip it open and plant it into the larger pots. This method seemed to work without a hitch. Since transplanting I've had a few hiccups, most notably I think a plant suffered from being too close to the light and now has some curled/drooped leaves but seems to be recovering. I will post a final few pics showing the growth so far over the past few weeks.
Thanks for reading folks, hope you enjoyed
A few more questions...
Besides a few seeds in there its unknown who will be male and female, when is the earliest possible time to tell and how soon after begining the 12/12 photo period should I be on the look out to prevent males from spreading their pollen?
As you can see in these pics some of the plants are much more mature than others, should I take them out and put them under fluoros to continue vegging as I only have one hps fixture? Or should I just leave em' and get what I can from flowering them so young?
Thanks again,
and just fyi, my username does not in anyway reflect my religious or spiritual beliefs.
Cheers
