Lemon Skunk in DWC

Hi all,

1st off, I've cheated . . . I'm already over a month into this grow, so I'm starting by retroactively posting my journal for the 1st month.

I've grown before, but am no pro. Last grow was 2007, so it's been a while and I'm working with all new equipment, locations, and everything else imaginable, so I'm sure mistakes will be made. If anything, this grow journal will hopefully prove that you can fuck everything up and still get a little weed by the time you're done.

I bought my Lemon Skunk seeds (bred by Jordan of the Islands) in Vancouver, BC at the Vancouver Seed Bank in 2006. My current seeds are the result of my last grow, in which I allowed my plants to be pollinated and produce seed, as I'd burned through my 10 seeds that I'd bought by then and didn't want to loose the strain. I've kept the seeds dry and refrigerated since then, so they're still good and viable.

My 'veg room' is nothing more than a small stealth space-- 1st in a closet and then later on in a cabinet. The veg room is lit by a 48 watt LED array initially, and then later by some additional 23 watt CFL bulbs. I have a seperate flowering room that will be lit by a 400 watt HPS lamp.

Comments are welcome on this journal. I'm sure I'll need help, as, once again, I'm not too experienced at this yet and am facing MANY new variables.

Alright, I think that's enough for introductions. On to the 1st entry!

Ah, week 1 (more or less):

12 seeds were started in a wet napkin. All popped within 4 days and were moved to small rockwool plugs. 10 of the 12 managed to survive and pop up over the rockwool-- I'm counting this as their 1st day, as they're actually looking like little plants at this point. The day is Nov. 7th.

Nov 13th: built my seedling grow box, a 1/2 inch PVC frame with panda paper wrapped around it, measuring about 16x16x24 inches. My 48 watt LED lamp arrived (do a search on ebay for '48 watt led grow lamp' and you'll find the exact model). Hopefully this will be enough to light up the seedlings. All the seedlings have their 1st true leaves. A few of them are stretched pretty far out, due to the low lighting they were in prior to today-- these are the earliest growing ones, so they've been a day or 2 longer than the others without good light. The LED lamp is about 1 inch above the plants and is very cool temp-wise. I don't expect to have any problems with too much heat. I have a fish tank heater in the reservoir of the DWC tub to make sure it's not TOO cold for the plants. I usually keep the temp in the house about 60 degrees during the day, and raise it to 68 when I'm home.

Nov 14: Seedlings are coming along, one is definetly a runt. They have nice purple stems, which I remember being typical for this strain. Roots are sticking out from the bottom of the rockwool plugs, so I've potted them up to 3 inch pots in hydroton. I'm using lousy seedling pots rather than net pots, as the nearest hydro store is 100 miles away and I have no ride to speak of, and I forgot to order net pots when I ordered all my hydro shit online a while ago. Hopefully I can get the seedlings out of these pots without damaging the roots when the time comes.

No pics yet, as all they are are tiny stems with tiny leaves. Everyone's seen that before.

Week 2:

Nov 16: Not much obvious growth in the past couple days. I'm hoping they're putting their energy into roots, because they're not doing much in their leaves. I'm hand watering them 3 times a day, as they hydroton doesn't really hold much water.

Nov 17: A few plants are sporting tiny sets of 2nd true leaves. I guess they really are still growing!

Nov 19: Growth still seems slow. I'm probably (definately) being impatient. I added a 23 watt CFL bulb in the grow box to hopefully help things along. I don't really know much about LED lamps, but more light can never hurt, can it? I also added a heat mat under the setup and set the heat mat thermostat to 70 degrees. Checked the TDS of the tapwater around here: about 120ppm, so not TOO bad . . .

Nov 20: growth seems to have improved since adding the heat mat and the CFL bulb. Leaves are bigger and the plants are looking less like 'sprouts' now. I upped the heat mat's thermostat to 72 degrees.

Nov 21: Roots are now protruding from the 3 inch pots, and the 2nd sets of leaves are large enough to see the 3 points on each leaf. End of week 2, I took some pics!

Pic 1: the whole setup
Pic 2: closeup of a plant

Nov 23: Almost lost the seedlings today! I moved the grow lights up a bit to give the seedlings some growing room, and in doing so set the heating pad's heat sensor on the floor, then spaced out and left it there. I came back at the end of the day to find the grow box at about 100 degrees inside! I aired it out to cool things off and replaced the heat sensor, then kicked myself in the nuts for being such an idiot.

Nov 24: The seedlings are still alive, I guess the 'heat wave' from yesterday didn't kill them. I built my DWC seedling tub today, so no more hand watering 3 times a day. The tub is a little 3 gallon plastic tote which I cut 12 holes in the lid to accomodate 12 3 inch square pots. It's pretty crowded, but hopefully I can keep the plants in this set-up until I get my flowering room built. I'm shooting to veg the plants until they're 10 inches high, so we'll see if there's room for that or not . . . Put an aquarium heater in the nutrient reservoir and a 4 inch air stone hooked up to an aquarium pump. I put 2 empty pots in the empty 'slots' on top and filled them with hydroton to keep bubbling water from splashing the lights. The tub is filled with water to cover the bottom 1/2 inch of the pots. One seedling got too close to the CFL bulb and burned it's leaves. It looks like it will make it, though, just without it's 1st set of true leaves. All the seedlings have 3-5 inches of roots sticking out of the bottom of the 3 inch pots now.

I also started nutes today (prior to this has been straight [dechlorinated] tap water). I'm using the basic General Hydro stuff. I've never used this brand of nutes before, and don't want to shock or burn the plants, so I'm shooting for 1/4 the strength that the GenHydro nutrient calculator recommends. I'm adding 1/4 t (teaspoon) of FloraGro, FloraMicro, and FloraBloom, as well as 1/2 t of Diamond Nectar. This raised the ppm of the reservoir from 110 (tap water) to 250. Noticed a few brown spots on the leaves of some of the plants. They're not big, but I'm wondering what could have caused them!

Nov 24: my PH meter showed up today. Checking the ph of the nutrient solution (after calibrating the meter) resulted in a ph of 8.2. Time for some ph down! After some careful adjusting (adding 1/8 t at a time), I got the ph to 5.5. TDS is 250ppm.

Nov 28: end of the week, took more pics!

pic 1: shot of the whole grow
pic 2: closeup of a plant

Nov 30: starting to see some branching on a few of the plants. leaves are definitly getting nice and broad. The runt is still easy to pick out, but growing right along with the rest of them. Ph jumps up to 6.0 or just above that every day, 1/8 to 1/4 t of ph down knocks it back down to 5.0 or so each time. Nutrient level steady right around 250 ppm, probably time (or past time) to think about increasing this.

Dec 2: brought TDS up to 280ppm.

Dec 3: brought TDS up to 360ppm.

Dec 5: moved my grow to a cabinet, hung 2 power strips inside the cabinet and put in 2 more 23 watt CFL bulbs for a total of 3 CFL's plus the 48 watt LED lamp. The cabinet is more insulated and airtight than the previous location, so it's pretty warm in there-- 87 degrees and holding. I'm hoping to be able to put up to 6 more CFL bulbs in there, but will need to find some way to ventilate and cool things down before I add any more bulbs. 9 CFL's and the LED lamp would really do these plants some justice.

Took some pics:

pic 1: the setup in it's new location
pic 2: shot of the roots in the nutrient solution
pic 3: closeup of one of the plants



Alright that takes us up to date! I'll post pics weekly (on Sundays) and respond to any advice or questions any of you all may have. I plan to change the nutrient solution mid-week and up the strength to about 1000ppm, which should really get these things going. I'm hoping they'll be 8 inches or so by next weekend, and in the meantime will be building my flowering room this week and getting ready to move them into it. I may let them veg another week or so under the HPS lamp, which should really get them going, and they'll be much less crowded in the flowering room, which should be about 4x4 feet with 6.5 feet vertically. Wish me luck!
Wish me luck!

Hi all, back again with another post and pics. Sorry I'm a day late, I've been trying to add updates on Sundays . . .

Again, comments are welcome on this grow journal. I know I'm fucking up things, let me know what I'm doing wrong!

12/6
overlapping leaves are 'sweating' on the leaves below them. I think this is from the leaves respiration and there being little to no air flow in the grow box, so there isn't much evaporation going on. Plants are definitely fighting for space, and some of the smaller ones are getting really stunted as other plants around the outgrow them.

12/7
starting to build the flowering room. Hanging panda paper and figuring out the logistics

12/8
changed nutrient solution in the DWC tub, upped strength to 1180ppm, using the 'growth' column on the nutrient calculator on the General Hydro website. Continued working on the flower room.

12/9
finished the flower room, installed an electrical outlet and did a 1 hour test of the HPS lamp. Temps in the room stayed low, so I don't think there will be any problems with the plants overheating.

12/10
set up the buckets and filled them with water. A couple of the valves leak, so I switched them out and fooled around with them a bit. Eliminated all the leaks except for the last bucket, which has a valve that's not hooked up to anything. I put a washcloth under this valve to catch the slight leakage and prevent any excess water from escaping. Ran the HPS lamp and the oscillating fan/heater for 1 hour to test things out, no problems detected.

12/11
ran the oscillating heater all day to dial in the proper temp settings (shooting for about 80 degrees). This brought the temps of the nutrient solution in the buckets up to about 70 degrees, which is a little high. I set the fan up on an upside-down bucket to raise it off the floor so it's not pointing straight at the buckets, but is instead blowing across the top of them. This should help to keep the nutrient solution cooler.

12/12
moving the plants into the flower room! I had to delicately cut off the 3 inch pots that the plants were in from the roots, trying to damage the roots that had grown out of the bottom (some as much as 1 foot long!) as little as possible. I put 2 plants in each of the net pot lids, filled them up with hydroton and moved them into the buckets in the flower room. They look REALLY short now, probably due to the fact that they're spaced out much more now and I also planted them deeper into the net pots than they were in their 3 inch pots. The tallest plant was 8 inches high before repotting, the shortest ones were 5-6 inches. I'm putting 2 plants in each pot as these are from non-feminized seeds, and I'm assuming about half will be males. I'll cut down the males and if I'm lucky I wind up with 1 plant in each pot. If there are 2 females, they'll be a bit crowded in the same bucket. If I have 2 males, I'll pull that bucket out of the grow entirely. I plan to use some active bacteria and myco cultures in the nutrient solution to handle the dead roots of any males I cut out, hopefully that will work and the roots won't poison any remaining female plants.

I kept the 2 smallest plants in the veg DWC tub for now, as I don't have a 5th net pot for the 5th bucket, and the smallest plants really aren't big enough to fool with at this time. With luck they'll grow a bit more now that they're not so crowded, and I'll have a 5th net pot bucket lid in a week or so and I can move them over then. I plan to let the plants continue to veg under the HPS lamp for another week, then evaluate whether I should let them veg longer or flip them over to flower mode. I was hoping to have some bud ready by mid-February, but am not sure that I'll hit that target at the current rate. Haven't had a smoke since the week before Thanksgiving, bud in my area is shit and impossible to find. I may not have anything to smoke until these plants are done. It's fucking torture, I tell you!

Overall I'm pretty disappointed by the results of my attempts at vegging under the LED's and CFL bulbs. My previous grows I vegged and flowered under 400 watts of HPS and had MUCH larger plants by now. Shooting for an average height of 10-12 inches for the plants before starting to flower, as I think I have enough headspace to manage 3.5 foot high plants when they finish without being too close to the HPS lamp, and I don't think Lemon skunk will stretch to more that 3 times it's original size while it flowers.

I got a little ahead of myself and put flower nutrients into the buckets, lying to myself that they'll be in flower mode next week anyway, and I don't plan on changing the nutrient solution too often (every 3-4 weeks if I can get away with it). Hopefully there'll be enough Nitrogen in the flower nutes to let the plants continue to veg well. PPM is about 1350ppm.

took some pics: the whole grow room, and then closeups of each of the 4 buckets. Also a pic of the 'runts', still in the DWC tub under the CFL's and LED's.

Alright, 2 days late for this post, sorry!

Plants are coming along nicely. 3 of the 4 buckets sport 1 or 2 plants that are over a foot tall now, which was my goal to flip to 12 hours of dark to start flowering. I'm holding off just a bit longer, as I'm waiting for one more net pot bucket lid to show up so I can throw the two runts in with the rest under the HPS lamp. One of the runts is not so runt-y now, has big fat sun leaves and almost 9 inches tall. The other is the runt through and through, 6 inches high and no big sun leaves yet, just small all around. Probably not worth the effort but what the hell, I'll throw it into the flower because I have room. I'm now like 2 weeks late on my original schedule to harvest 1st week of February, but at least now I have decently sized plants that should put out some good bud when it's all done. Can't wait, it's been 6 weeks since I've had a smoke, but I should be hooking up for x-mas, praise the lord!

Here's this weeks pics, each bucket has 2 plants in it. My theory is that half will be male so there's a decent chance that each bucket will wind up with just one plant in it within the next couple weeks when flowers show. If I'm unlucky, no plants will be left in the bucket and I'll pull it out of the flower room.

bucket 1 sports the shortest plants, one is 10 inches the other is 8 or so. This bucket is the least 'directly' under the lamp, so I think the plants are getting less light than the other buckets.

bucket 2 has the only 'problem' plant so far, the leaves are curling down pretty badly. The other plant in the same bucket looks fine, so I think it's just that this one plant is weak or something. I've read other posts about leaf curl and I guess that this is a sign of stress, but since the rest of the plants look fine, I'm not going to adjust things just for this one plant.

bucket 3 looks real good, plants are 10 and 12 inches tall, respectively.

bucket 4 is the best looking one, plants are 12 and 14 inches or so.

sorry, no pics of the runts this week. They should go into a bucket tomorrow or the next day and will join the other plants in flower. I plan to switch to a 12/12 light regime as soon as that happens.

Any thoughts on the leaf curl? Again, I'm not going to stress too much about it, but if that plant can be helped without too much work, I'm game to try it.



REALLY excited about the next grow. I've had these lemon skunk seeds for 4+ years now and it's all I've ever grown other than bagseed for my very first (and ill fated) grow. After reading many posts about the Attitude seed bank, I placed an order and got 4 new strains plus their freebie seeds as well. I got Nirvana White Widow, Seedsman Ata Tundra, Seedsman G13 Haze, and Mandala Seeds #1. I also ordered G13 Labs Poison Dwarf, but Attitude forgot to send it. I harassed them a little and they said they'd send it with the next order. I'm REALLY happy I got any seeds at all, and will give Attitude a big thumbs up if I do get my Poison Dwarf seeds. I plan to start some White Widow and Mandala #1 along with the freebie Kannabia Smile seed in a couple weeks and have them vegged for about 7 weeks just in time for me to harvest this lemon skunk. I'm also going to try to take some clones from the lemon skunk to establish a mother plant to take clones from down the road to avoid the whole hassle of growing from seeds. The grow after that will be the Poison Dwarf (assuming I get the seeds), the plan there is to let the plants breed and produce lots of seeds so I can do outdoor grows next summer. I'm really interested to try these autoflowering plants, they sound quick and stealthy, ideal for what I'm hoping to do. The G13 Haze will grow outdoors next summer also. Don't even know when I'll get to the Ata Tundra, but I had to get it as I'm from Alaska and have visited Kazakhstan, which is where the 2 lines of genetics for the strain is from.

Alright, that's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and again any feedback is welcome.

Hi all,

yes I'm a fucking slacker, haven't posted in like a month. Probably no one even missed me but what the hell . . .

Talk about bad odds, of the 10 seedlings I started with only 3 are female! I was hoping for at least 5, but oh well I'll take what I can get.

Since the remaining 3 plants have lots of room now they've really grown in every direction-- out and up. I THOUGHT I had plenty of room vertically in my grow room, but have had to tie down the tallest of my plants as it was about 8-10 inches from my HPS bulb and I can't raise it any higher. Damn, I've read that Lemon Skunk is a 'short' plant, hopefully my other strains won't be too tall for my setup.

Lots of branching, lots of bud sites. The plants are on week 4 of flowering now, so they've got a while to go yet; I'm expecting a Feb 19th harvest or so. Maybe longer if they look like they need it. I'll probably cut at least one down then, since I'm jonesing for something other than shitty brown ditchweed. Buds are still very small and fluffy, all white pistils and no noticable trichomes to the naked eye yet. Haven't gotten out a measuring tape in a while, but I'm guessing all the plants are over 3 1/2 feet tall now. No major weed stink yet, just a good strong green vegetable smell in the grow room.

I've added Botanicare Zho and Aquashield to promote beneficial fungi and bacteria in the buckets, as all 3 buckets have dead roots from cut down male plants in them (each bucket started with 2 plants per bucket). So far I don't see any damage to the plants from this rotting root mass in each bucket, so maybe those products are working or it's just a false alarm. I haven't done a full water change yet and don't plan to until the last week or 2 to flush out all the hydro nutes from the plants. Still using the General Hydro basic nutes and feeding schedule from their website, TDS is around 1500 ppm and PH is around 5.5. I trimmed the bottom foot or so of each plant of leaves and branches to promote good airflow down there and to eliminate some of the bushy clutter in the grow room.

I put in a 2nd order to the Attitude Seed bank since they didn't send me my G13 Labs Poison Dwarf seeds in the 1st order. Ordered Nirvana Seeds Blue Mystic, it arrived MUCH faster than my 1st order, maybe 10 days or so and they DID include my Poison Dwarf seeds, so I give the a 95% score, which would be a 100% if they'd included my Poison Dwarf seeds in the 1st order. All in all very happy with them and my shitload of awesome new genetics.

I've started some new plants for the next grow-- 4 White widows and 4 Mandala #1, plus the freebie Kannabia Smile seed that the Attitude gave me. I also have 4 cuttings that I'm trying to clone from the Lemon Skunk. They're all about 2 weeks old now. The cuttings aren't doing shit, which is really disappointing. One is slowly dying off and the other 3 are starting to show brown tips on the leaves; I don't know what I'm doing wrong but it looks like a big fat failure. I was really hoping that at least one of those clones would take so I could keep a Lemon Skunk mother plant and not have to deal with cutting down 7 out of 10 plants in future grows. Guess I need some practice at cloning! I'll post another thread soon asking for pointers and tips for cloning, even though I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing!

Finally, some pictures, sorry for the poor quality and messiness, it's hard to get decent pics in the jumbled 'forest' I call a grow room:

01 - plant 1 (most of it, anyway, I can't even get a full shot of the plants now that they're so big)
02 - plant 3 w/ plant 2 in the background behind it-- you can see where I tied the top down a bit to keep it from growing straight into the HPS lamp
03 - closeup of plant 1's cola -- this is the slowest developing plant so far
04 - closeup of plant 3's cola -- this is the tied down one, so the 2nd highest branches are actually sticking up above the main cola
05 - closeup of plant 2's cola -- this is the most developed plant, it started flowering almost a week before the other 2

Again, any comments or tips are welcome in this thread!