First Grow - Northern Lights x Shiva

Okay so I decided to give growing a shot, so I did a bit of research (on this site of course) and ended up picking the northern lights x shiva strain. My setup is not finalized; I will be touching things up as I go as per your suggestions. Unfortunately my camera wasn't working for the first few weeks, so here are the plants at about 2 1/2 weeks old. I planted in a soil medium after using the paper towel germination method (8/10 seeds, I think I accidentally killed one and one was a dud). I watered with just plain water for the first week, and since I've been using a fertilizer solution (BetterGro for Orchids (20-14-13 npk; I tried to find something like 20-5-5 for vegetation but no luck at lowe's). Lighting is an 85 watt CFL at 5500 K (daytime spectrum) and a crappy incandescent gro-lite that some guy at lowe's told me to get (it was only like 5 bucks so i dont give a damn). I should be getting a second 85 watter either tomorrow or the day after to replace it. I should note that the lighting was solely the incandescent for the first week.

Anyhow, the plants seem to be doing well regardless, the only dilemma being that some of the stalks are not as sturdy as I expected. Being in a college dorm, I had to be resourceful and thus used toothpicks duct taped together and dental floss to prop them up for now. A suggestion in the main forum was to keep a constant breeze on them, so tomorrow I will be picking up a fan for them.

And here of course, are the pictures:

Alright well all my new stuff came in today, and I decided to transplant my plants to their bigger pots as well as install the new lighting. Here's some pictures of what my setup looks like now; it is now lighted by THREE 85 watt CFLs. Additionally, although you can't really see it in the pictures, there is also a fan mounted on the wall aiming downwards at the plants.

first of all why are you spending any money on those lights, that gro lite really is only good for rooting clones in my opinion, and those 85 watters, just not enough.. What you need to do first of all, is, do you have like a bartle and james or lighting whole sale place in your area? Well find one, get 1 120v x 250 watt hps ballast with a Super ace or conversion bulb, it covers all spectrums, blue white, orange red and 120v plugs right into the wall..timer.

At a home and hardware store, in the garden department..(if you have one), find a 30-10-10 veg food, plant food is a choice. Then while your there, find a 15-52-15 for flower, plant food or miracle grow is a good choice. Do not follow th directions on the container on amounts..i use a table spoon for 2.5 gallons for fifty plants.

Nitrogen for veg and phosphorous for bud.

As for that fan, wind is great, but don't turn the fan on high and get a cheap thermometer and put at the plants.

the CFLs seemed like a cheaper way to get a decent amount of lumens; each of those lights puts out about 5000 lumens at 5500K. I'm trying to decide what light to get for flowering; I'd like to get a HPS bulb but I'm not sure what size to get or if it would just be more cost effective to buy different spectrum CFL bulbs for the fixtures I already have. I found this one website browsing across the forums and it seemed like a good deal, let me know what you think.

High Tech Garden Supply

ps the plants are very happy right now, the npk of my nutes is 20-14-13; its all i could find that had a high N. i'll be getting something else for flowering.

dont know if you already know or not but the plants were growing very long and skinny like that because your cfls are too far away good job on the transplant but i would keeps the lights within a few inches of the tops of your plants to prevent it from happening again.

that makes sense...i'll keep an eye out for that from now on. Anyways, here's another updated pic of my plants:

Your plants are looking nice also If I were to get an hps online I would go with HTGS but I would rather purchase it through eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180136925188&ssPageName=MERC_VIC_RSCC_Pr12_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT&refitem=180150097276&itemcount=12&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=StoreCatToStoreCat&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget

They have everything at eBay as they do in their shop or site.
Here is a pic of how far I kept my lights,



Check out my grow journal when ya get the chance,

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/29010-humboldts-growing-adventures-up-away.html

okay so here's pictures about a week later. I suspect that i've been using a bit too much nutes (see picture #3), so I've been using a large amount of straight water for the last 3 days to try and flush them. Also, I was a bit careless and it seems like one of the CFLs "burned" one of the plants that grew into it. You can sort of see it on picture 2; the affected leaves are seen coming in from the right hand side.

Other than those few problems, everything seems to be going splendid; I'll update in another week or so.

Oh and I am getting a 400w HPS for the flowering cycle; how big do you guys think I should let my plants grow until I switch them over to 12/12?

Looking good!

Concerning how soon to start flowering depends on how patient you are and your overall space, I vegged mine over 9 weeks and now I'm flowering a bushy bitch that's a lil over 2 foot, I've heard that plants in flower can double - triple their size but I haven't noticed this thus far as I'm on day 20 flowering and I haven't noticed any spurts in growth yet.

If interested check it out,

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/29010-humboldts-growing-adventures-up-away.html

Congratulations on the hps, did you get it from HTGS, I would like to know how it went because I'm thinking about getting one through them.

Keep up the good work!

I ordered a 400 watt hps from HTGS Monday night & got it today. I bought it from thier website because it was about $12 cheaper than ebay.

That's good to hear... I actually haven't ordered mine yet; I've gotta wait until I get home because they don't ship to PO boxes. I'll be ordering it in about a week though

Your plants look good.

okay so here's an update on everything. I got an ozium dispenser to help cover up the smell, but after a few days, I realized it didn't help at all lol. Since I leave tomorrow night for thanksgiving break, I started building a grow box (its almost done too). The plan for the smell is using an improvised activated carbon filter (see the DIY thing). Hopefully everything will turn out well and I'll be able to complete it before my flight comes (plus finish my lab report and take my dumb stats test). I'll have pictures tomorrow, and btw the plants are lookin good...

Yeah. i gotta agree but your plants look nice and healthy otherwise.

boatrowe said:

dont know if you already know or not but the plants were growing very long and skinny like that because your cfls are too far away good job on the transplant but i would keeps the lights within a few inches of the tops of your plants to prevent it from happening again.

Click to expand...

k well after a long time, i finally finished the grow box and salvaged my plants, they're lookin pretty good now. because i fucked with them as far as light goes (kiinda left them out too long woops), two started showing male signs (they were pretty obvious but i checked here just in case). so after disposing with them i've got 6 plants left. One of the plants i accidentally broke about a month ago, but it ended up topping it, so now there are two top colas, and its growing just as fast as the rest. I dunno its weird. Here are some pics of the grow box tho, and also all the plants in a lovely group shot:

nice man i just got my hands on seeds today iv been trying to find the rigth kind of weed i wanna grow wich is very hard i live in a small town but this fourm has been huge help i dont know a damn thing about nutes and how to get them or even what they are if you can give me like a noob run down on like fertilizers and plant food and what to get at my hardware store like what to look for on packages maybe questions i could ask someone working there without them knojwing what i want this stuff for lol be a big help... i think im goin to use your light system it seemed to work for you cheap and easy ... nice work on the box btw how bad is the smell i have an appartment but it has an extra room that i dont mind sealing off ... how many weeks were your last pics sorry for all the questions hope to get some help thanks yall