First Grow - Think Different, Amphetamine, Cash Crop under DIY 180w LED

I joined RIU after spending literally about a week straight of reading LED basics and learning the general steps to a first soil grow. Once I'm an established member I'll start a grow journal. My goal was to go as frugal as possible on this first run while still having a half way decent setup. If it goes well and I enjoy it then there may be some upgrades down the line.

Tent:
$50 ebay 2 x 3 x 5. Cheap quality but it works.

LED - 181 actual watts.
7 Cree CXA 2530s on 3 bars driven by Meanwell 185-700. Cobs running at ~ 40% efficiency I believe. One long Bar that is the length of the tent with a COB positioned approximately over where each girl sits. 2 side bars with 2 cobs each. Cost to build was $171 for the COBs, driver, heatsinks, wire, and COB holders.

Ventilation:
2 clip on fans
1 ventech 4" duct fan - this was my biggest regret. the product is absolute crap. will be my first upgrade.
1 4" carbon filter

Ladies: I'm growing all autos for ease of first grow and also because of the extra CBD from ruderalis. On any given day I have muscle soreness and joint pain from years and years of sports and my current training. I'm growing:

1 Crop Circle Amphetamine (NYC Diesel X Ruderalis)
1 Dutch Passion Think Different
1 Crop Circle Cash Crop (NL x Big Bud)


Any and all feedback is welcome! I'm at day 35 of the grow, attaching a few pics of the setup and the girls. The girls photos are when they were 2 weeks old except for the full shot of my tent, that's from day 30. I'll add more photos once I'm established

Pics from week 3

Pics from Day 30

Pics from day 35.....building those buds! Also added some LST

Hey guys,

Doesn't seem to be much interest so I haven't been updating but thought I'd post some new pics anyway. The buds are really starting to build now. Some of the fan leaves have yellowed and dropped off, they're starting to thin out a bit. These are at 54-56 days from when the sprouts first broke through the soil. I think they need another 2-4 weeks but as this is my first grow I'm literally just guessing.

Hey diy jay ur girls are looking nice! What nutrients have you been using?

DIYJay said:

Hey guys,

Doesn't seem to be much interest so I haven't been updating but thought I'd post some new pics anyway. The buds are really starting to build now. Some of the fan leaves have yellowed and dropped off, they're starting to thin out a bit. These are at 54-56 days from when the sprouts first broke through the soil. I think they need another 2-4 weeks but as this is my first grow I'm literally just guessing.View attachment 3798364 View attachment 3798365 View attachment 3798366 View attachment 3798367

Click to expand...

Very NIce!!

Mr Stop Out said:

Hey diy jay ur girls are looking nice! What nutrients have you been using?

Click to expand...

So I actually started by just using plain water. The bottom half of my pots were filled with kind hot soil so that provided all the nutes. I ordered a sample pack of nutes from green leaf nutrients (only had to pay shipping!) and I started using their grow nutes at 1/8 strength on week 4. Once they started flowering I switched to their bloom nutes again at 1/8 strength. Once a week I add a tiny amount of cal/mag.

VenomGrower6990 said:

Very NIce!!

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Thanks! Can't wait for them to be finished

Hey guys, sitting at day 75 now. A few days ago I started my plain ph water flush. I'm planning to chop them next weekend. I accidentally snapped a small branch off the NL Lights x Big Bud when I was turning the plant to water so trimmed it and hung it up to dry for 3 days. The branches were dry enough to snap so I trimmed out all of the stems that I could get (hate having stems in my stuff) and threw it in a jar to cure. Just from this small branch I pulled off 8.44g so I'm hyped for the big harvest. I'm sure i'll lose a bit of weight from the cure but even 10-15% water loss would still leave it at a quarter from this one branch.

Alright guys it's in the books! Decided to go ahead and chop the big guys and leave the smaller branches to catch up. Right at 11 weeks from sprout.



And here it is all nicely hanging. Amphetamine in the front, Think Different on the right side, and NL Lights x Big Bud hanging in the back



Attached Files:

looks good, nice results from 180 watts

God damn dude. Those are some chunky nugs! I'd say that's one hell of a first grow.
Do you mind if I ask which plant is the Think Different?

NateDerWeise said:

God damn dude. Those are some chunky nugs! I'd say that's one hell of a first grow.
Do you mind if I ask which plant is the Think Different?

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Thanks man! I'm excited to dry and weight them. The think different was the plant in the middle, her buds are just massive. The main cola is over 9" long and 8" around. Of course that's going to shrink quite a bit but looks promising. Most of the other TD colas were 6-7" long and 5-6" fat.