First Grow - Nirvana White Widow & Dutch Passion Mazar - 400w MH&HPS Cabinet Grow

This will be my grow journal for the next few months. Since I have no one in my life to share this with, I'm turning to all of you here. I would LOVE anyone and everyone to comment on any problems they might see developing or anything they see me doing incorrectly. This is my first grow of anything, be it marijuana or flowers, so I'm open to any and all thoughts or suggestions. Here are the details of my grow:

Grow Closet

4ft(width)x6ft(height)x2ft(depth)
(1) 50CFM bathroom exhaust fan for exhausting the closet itself - Mounted to the upper right of the cab with the exhaust flange poking out through a hole drilled in the top
(1) 44CFM 92x92mm computer fan w/ adjustable speed control for exhausting the reflector via 4inch ducting
SuperNova Reflector (glass bottom) w/ 4inch Flange & 4inch ducting running to exit the cabin
HTGSupply 400w MH & HPS system - MH for veg, HPS for Flower
(2) 19w CFLs @ 5600K
(2) 26w CFLs @ 6500K
(1) Digital Thermometer/Humidity Meter

The entire cab was caulked with construction caulk, and every inch of the doors was sealed with weather stripping. A single 3inch intake hole has been drilled in the lower right of the cab - There is no fan for intake. When the single 50CFM was running w/o an intake hole drilled, it sucked so hard that it was difficult to open the doors. B/C of this I figure I have no need for an intake fan - The exhaust fan will pull air from the outside on it's own. Because of the caulk and weather stripping there is virtually ZERO light to be seen from the outside when the doors are shut, even when all lights in the room are off.


What I'll Be Growing
Nirvana White Widow
Dutch Passion Mazar

What I'll Be Growing In & What Nutes I'll Be Using
Once sprouted the seedlings will go into starter soil (no nutrients) in a 16oz clear beer-pong cup. They will be transplanted once roots are visible through the cup into 1gallon plastic pots with a mixture of 40% peat based soil, 20% worm castings, 20% vermiculite, 20% perlite, and a tad of dolomite lime for pH control. As far as nutes go, I will be using EXCLUSIVELY Fox Farm nutes, Grow-Big, Tiger-Bloom, and Big-Bloom. I might add molasses later in the grow - not sure yet.

I'll be germinating via the paper towel method, and I'll start off with 5 of each strain for a total of 10 seeds. I'm hoping to take anywhere from 4 to 6 plants to maturity, giving around 50% loss to non-germination and males. I plan on vegging them until they are roughly 12inches tall under the MH @ 18/6, then switching over to the HPS and 12/12.

Let me know what you guys think of my setup and my plans for this grow. I'll get pictures up ASAP.

Sounds like a nice set up to me. Would be good to see a few pics though.

Best of luck!

Picture of the closet. The lights are on - notice the only light escaping is towards the lower left of the door.


Picture of the inside of the closet prior to anything installed. This shows the caulking job and also shows the 50CFM exhaust fan (a standard bathroom fan). Also pictured is the (2) 26w CFL's and the (2) 19w CFL's I've been screwing around with until my 400w HID comes. The HID unit, ducting, 43CFM exhaust fan, thermometer/hygrometer are not pictured in this. This picture also shows how I built the closet to have a smaller shelf on the bottom for supplies.


Picture of seeds Germinating in a paper towel on a plate. 5 Mazar, 5 White Widow. They were put in last night, as of about 4pm today 3-4 Mazar seeds had started to crack, 0 White Widow had cracked.


Random picture of some Marigold seedlings I threw in a milk jug to see if the 4 CFL's would do anything.

hiya pntballking01,
Im doing almost the exact same thing as u. Using the nirvana white widow
, in a closet with almost same dimensions as urs.
Im using a 400w HID and potted my germinated seeds yesterday. I only placed half of my seeds in kitchen paper just incase anything goes wrong, and that i should be left with 2 females (hopefully). Only thing i maybe shouldnt have done was use peat pots, cos they dry up far to quickly (lesson learned)...

Interesting to see how you do, with same tools as me really...

good luck and ill keep reading ur journal

UPDATE: All 5 Mazar had spouts coming out of their shell as of about midnight last night. They were then put into 16oz clear plastic cups with starter soil and sprayed lightly with water. As of about 4:30pm today all 5 White Widow seeds had cracked and started to show taproots. I will hold off to put them in soil until tonight.

That's 10 or 10 for my first grow. Now I just hope they all sprout from the dirt.

good luck. looks like a good start.

yeah great start. I got all my 5 seeds through the soil this morning So im pretty happy with that.

good luck, and keep us posted

Day 3: As of this morning 3 of 5 Mazar seeds had just BARELY started to break the surface. The White Widow has been about a day behind the Mazar for germination and sprouting purposes. I put the WW in soil last night though, and are waiting for them to sprout. So as of right now, all 10 seeds are sow'd. I'll get some pictures once there's something to take pictures of (i.e. once they break the surface).

dam it, just found out the HID i have is 250 and not 400. Merde lol i had 2x light but i gave one to apal, thinking it was 400. Awell, NM....lol 250w is still enough for the small cupboard i have.

Sorry for rambling on in ur post

bummer mate, my HID is shipping from HTG supply today, should be here on Friday. My camera's gone missing, so no updated pictures tonight. Nothing has really changed though, still only 3 mazar out of soil with 2 still under and all 5 white widow are still yet to sprout. One of the Mazar sprouts is looking kind of funky - I'll have pictures tomorrow.

**EDIT**

Update: Day 3.5
I've decided I'll post pictures of every single plant throughout my entire grow when I post pictures on here - this way everyone can see how each is coming along individually and can give me advice on each. Each Mazar cup is labeled "M 1" through "M 5" and each White Widow is labeled "WW 1" through "WW 5". You should be able to see the numbers in each picture to tell which is which. Mazar #1-#5 immediately below, WW #1-#5 in the next post.

good idea, i wouldn't have thought of that one

looking ggod sofar buddie (i mean germination etc). See thru pots, good idea, never thought about that nice tip for next time though. See jhow ur roots are, nice...

cos u are growing with almost the same setup/seeds as me, it will be interesting to see how it all goes.

keep it up, and post pics every now and then ill be watching lol

gordon

More pictures coming soon. Also have a situation with one of my Mazar cups - to make a long story short, when I was moving a germinated mazar seed to the cup (Mazar cup #4), I thought I dropped it and, after much searching, could not find it. I put my last original seed into cup #4 (thinking it had no seed in it), which brought my apparent total down to 4 Mazar seeds. So, to replace the lost seed, I germinated one more, which ended up in Mazar cup #5. Everything moved along nicely, until tonight, when upon checking the cups I found not one, but two seedlings sprouting in cup #4. So what apparently happened is that when I dropped the seed, it fell into the cup, instead of on the ground where I was looking. Thinking that seed was lost, I had put another seed in the cup. So now I have two seeds sprouting in one cup, and at some point I will have to transplant them... but I have no idea when would be a good time. I do not want to kill the little seedlings by trying to transplant them into separate containers to quickly, but also do not want to wait until the roots are all entangled with each other. Any advice?

A quick note on the clear pots - this is a mistake, and something I will not do next time. Light can (and will) damage and kill roots. I didn't think about this prior to planting them, and as soon as I can my hands on some opaque cups, that's what these will be going in. Rather than transplant them, I will just put the whole clear cup setup inside an opaque one.

do it now buddie. Get a fork and ease the roots from underneath, repot then water...

LMAO at the seed carry on lol THC makes u do funny things

As i read the post u just done, it hit me before u said it, yep light. didnt think of it either. Maybe wrap the see thru cup with abit of paper??

I think I'm going to try and separate them tomorrow evening once they are totally up out of the soil. They are still a tad bent over at the moment after just coming out of the soil.

ahh kk. But u dont want roots starting to tie one and other up. If it was me id do it ASAP, but u say tomorrow so thats asap lol

Whats mazar, is that a variety or a manu?? not heard of that one. so u have 2 varieties? how many plants u hoping for??

Mazar is a Dutch Passion breed:

2nd price "High Times Cup" 1999
2nd price "Highlife Cup" 2002

This is an upgraded strain of our valued former Afghan/Skunk. We improved the variety in 1997. The taste is softer than before and we managed to improve on yield. The Afghani (Mazar-i-Shariff) part is a very short Christmas tree-like plant, 100% Indica and very resinous. The F1-cross with Skunk #1 gives the variety a bigger yield and better taste. Very good "up" high. As both parents are very consistent, the offspring are very consistent too.

THC = 19.5%, CBD < 0.1%

Update - Day 4
Everything looks to be going OK, other than my mix up with Mazar cup #4 as described previously. I'll be sorting that out tomorrow. Pictures follow in numerical order, Mazar first, White Widow second.

Mazar pictures from day 4:

White Widow pictures from day 4.

well pnt, looking not bad at all so far, i would switch to black pots rather then those clear drinkin ones and let every baby have its own place maybe move in your grow light a bit, looks like they start to stretch out lately.