First Grow: Rubbermaids, CFLs, bagseeds!

Hey everyone! My boyfriend & I started our first grow four weeks ago with some bagseeds and we wanted to post here about the progress, because we're really loving this process! It's such a learning experience and we're here to soak up as much as we can.

So about the grow... we're growing sorta stealth in two 68L Rubbermaid containers flipped onto each other, with a myriad of things rigged up to keep it lightproof. We've lined the inside with a combination of a car sun shield reflector and aluminum tape (trying to keep costs down but efficiency up). We have a great vacuum going with a passive air intake (elbow joint) at the bottom and a 4" computer fan at the top, with a carbon filter made with an ice cream container (lol) on top. We're growing in a soilless medium (the name escapes me) and are feeding organic; bat guano teas & Gaia Green 4-4-4 to top feed. Ferts are definitely something I need advice on, as I am far from an expert! We had a bit of a scare a few weeks ago with a few leaves dying off on one of the hopeful ladies - after a good flush the problem seems to have stopped progressing though (knock on wood).

We have them on an 18/6 schedule currently to give them some relief from the LST we started, which is actually going great. Temperatures have been in the 76-80 degree range with the lights on, humidity has been around 80. With the lights off, we're down to about 65 with humidity about the same at 80ish. We were having problems with the humidity being too low, so we ran our room humidifier for a day and it seems to have done the trick.

As mentioned before, we just started LST training yesterday. After a 6 hour rest and a day in the sun, there are a bunch of new grow sites starting up and we're really excited! Here are a few pics... we'll keep you posted on the progress! Cheers!

Nice. Got a pic of the carbon filter? Been meaning to make one my self, need ideas. And i think the plants look overwatered, from the droopy leaves, but i could be wrong. Had to cock my head to see the images. For 4 weeks they look good.

Cheers

Hey! Thanks! Sure, I'll post a few pics of the filter. It's pretty basic - we just cut a hole out of the bottom of a round ice cream container, lined the hole with a Honeywell universal air purifier carbon filter cut to size, put the lid on the container and poked a bunch of holes through it, and duct taped the whole contraption to the top of our grow box (over the exhaust fan). It works like a charm, no smell whatsoever, and it didn't affect the negative pressure vacuum we had going at all. I also use a Lampe Berger as a back-up when people come over (it's basically a flameless candle that neutralizes... and I mean demolishes odour. Comes in a huge range of scents from basic neutral to anything you can imagine).

As far as the over watering goes, I suppose it's possible, but we have been routinely watering when the top inch or so of our medium is dry. I wonder if it could have been a humidity issue? The leaves were more droopy and less rigid than the over-watered plants I've seen, but I'm still super new so I could be totally wrong. lol. I'm also pretty sure I took that pic when our humidity was low. They don't look like that today, that's for sure.

I've attached a couple pics from tonight - a few of the filter, and a couple others of the (hopeful) ladies. If you can see, one of them has gone kinda yellow at the bottom - we thought it was nitro deficient, tried some nutes -> no improvement after a week, so we flushed the other day and the yellowing seems to have slowed down. Still not really sure what's going on with it, so if you have any suggestions... lol.

Sorry about the sideways pics though - they're straight when looking at them on my laptop... silly iPhones.

So an update;

We're still in veg, just about to switch over to 12/12. We've made a few upgrades to our grow box to make it perfectly lightproof, and we're pretty good to go. We had to call it quits for one of the (hopeful) ladies... she was always kind of sickly to begin with and we could never figure out the problem. Tried just about everything. I guess it just wasn't meant to be! The rest of them are super healthy (minus a bit of handling damage, lol) and growing like crazy.

Anyway here's a pic of the (hopeful) ladies before we tie them again. LST is awesome!

i wood veg for another 2 weeks b4 flowering . just a little more growth i think u need , more bud . good luck

pinkjackyle said:

i wood veg for another 2 weeks b4 flowering . just a little more growth i think u need , more bud . good luck

Click to expand...

Thanks Pink, we decided not to veg them longer due to the fact that we're working in a tight space and we expected a bit of further growth once they were in flower. I'm actually really glad we made that decision, because the 3 we have left now fit perfectly!

But as an update... so from our initial 5, we're now down to 3. We suspected one of our "final four" to be a hermie, so since it was actually our slowest-growing and smallest plant, we just got rid of it. Decided it was for the best to just call it. I can't believe our luck though - having 3 healthy, lush female plants from random bagseed. Most people I know who have grown from bagseed end up getting males. Beginners luck, maybe? The only regret I have is not cloning them... but this has been such a cool experience, I am definitely pumped to do it again.

Anyway, we're into Week 4 of flowering and things are looking great so far as I can tell! Not a yellow leaf in sight. Humidity is roughly 40%, temps are 25ish(C) during the day and about 15(C) at night. Switched over to Green Gold's 0-12-4 Bloom Bat Guano and love what we've seen so far. This is our first grow and it is under roughly 150 watts of CFL's, so I'm not hoping for (or expecting) huge yields or anything, but I do have a few questions...

How long will the buds look like this before starting to.. um.. look like buds? I'm assuming they will stay fairly small but when would I normally expect to see actual buds? Keep in mind they're at the tail end of Week 4 of flowering.

When should we start to see hairs turning colour? I ask because one of our plants has quite a few more hairs turning colour than the other two plants do... I'm not sure if they're turning early, if we have potentially 3 different strains (bagseed - who knows, right), or what else could be going on.

Anyway here are a few pics, iPhone shots of down into our setup & DSLR shots, up close & personal...

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