My 1st Indoor Grow - 3 strains - 6 plants

This is my 1st indor grow. Previously, I have had 2 successful outdoor grows in a warmer Texas Climate. Two seed strains are from PeakSeedsBC--Skunkberry and Northern Skunk and the 3rd strain is Endless Sky from Dr. Greenthumbs.

My growroom is 3'w x 3'd x 5'h. I have a Hydrofarm vented switchable growlight with Hortilux 400W MH (currently using) and will switch to Hortilux 400W HPS when I start the flowering.

Nutes are Fox Farm tri-pack and I am carefully following the soil systems feeding schedule on the FF web site. My soilless mix is American Agritech Ready-Grow Moisture Fomula, consisting of: coir fiber, perlite, pumice stone, earthworm castings, agrimineral 76 silica clay, seaweed meal, seaweed concentrate, leanordite ore (natural huamtes), organic compost, trichoderma fungi, micorrhizae fungi, and organic root innoculants (benefical microorganisms.)

It is day 26 since my seeds have germinated. I have 6 plants (2 of each strain). My goal is to hopefully end up with one female of each strain and flower her to harvest. After harvesting most of the bud, I plan to leave some lower fan leaves and a bit of lower bud to reveg and keep these as mother plants for clones. I know a better strategy would be to sex the mother plants and keep them in veg and flower the clones from the mothers, but I cannot wait that long for my 1st harvest. I have plenty of seeds left if I cannot reveg my harvested plants. I am strictly after quality, not quanity. One succesfful grow will last me at least a year.

My plants grew very slowly the first couple of weeks and my avg temps during that time were around 91 deg F. I think that was the reason for the slow growth. I relocated my fan from the top of my grow area to blow right across the bottom of the growlight and that helped tremendously. Now my temp does not exceed 81 deg F. My dark time temps reach lower 60's. My plants now seem very healthy and starting to grow fast. I am surprized at the short compact size of the plants at this stage versus what I have grown outdoors in the past.

I have good air circulation from my inline fan pulling in through my growlight and exhausting out of my grow chamber. The only factor that I cannot easily control is humidity which averages about 20%. I dump a bucket of water into the dirt floor of my grow chamber each morning, which raises the average humidity up to around 40-50%.

Take a look at my day 26 plants and let me know what you think of my progress at this point. Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated.

This site is awsome and helped my plan my grow tremendously!

Day 30: My attached pics are showing quite a bit of growth in the last 4 days since my last post. The additonal sprouting at the internodes is quite noticable within the last week. Currently, everything seems to be going perfectly. I have decided that my short compact plants are this way becuase they are Indica dominate and my previous outdoor growing experience was with taller Sativa dominate strains.

I would say that my plants today range about 4"-6" tall and some are exceeding 10" in width from fan leaf tip to fan tip. Since I can adjust the top of my grow light to a max of 5 ft from the ground, then I can allow my plants to reach about 3 ft in height without bending them. I plan on starting the flowering cycle when they reach 12" - 18" in height.

How do you think I am doing so far?

Your plants look very nice, cant wait to see them to the end. I am at about the same time as you but I am trying hydro (DWC) for the 1st time.

My plants are filling in nicely and getting bushy looking as the new internode growth develops well out from the main stems. The plants range today from 6"-8" tall X 10"-14" wide.

Yesterday I topped each of my plants and I am attempting my first clone from one of the Endless Sky plants.

When I open my growroom now I receive a burst of fresh skunky smell. I am wondering if I will need an inline carbon filter when my ladies start to flower. I think for now i will hold off and I can make one in a pinch when and if I need one. I am venting into the crawl space under my house, but if the smell gets very stong, then perhaps my crawl space ducts around the outside perimiter of my house might start to give off that enticing aroma.

Photo 1 is a group shot
Photo 2 shows my newly topped Endless Sky with the two new top buds forming
Photo 3 is an overhead shot of Endless Sky
Photo 4 shows the internode growth filling out
Photo 5 shows the purple fan leaf stems on my SkunkBerry. When the SkunkBerry's germinated the cotyledons were purple.

RaulFarquhar said:

Since I can adjust the top of my grow light to a max of 5 ft from the ground, then I can allow my plants to reach about 3 ft in height without bending them. I plan on starting the flowering cycle when they reach 12" - 18" in height.

Click to expand...

I have a similar type of grow going at the moment. I even had similar heat problems that have been mostly resolved.

I know that this is your first indoor grow but, from your understanding, starting the flowering cycle when the plants are 12"-18" will make the plant about 3 feet tall in the end?

Plants look very healthy though. Keep up the good work.

Nice plants man, they've grown a lot in the last seven days.

Im looking forward to seeing that skunkberry

Plants are doing very well, growing fast, bushing out. Height 8"-10" after topping once. Avg width 14". Avg lights on temp 76F, dark time low 64F. Avg humidity 40%. Current light cycle 18 hours - 400 watt Hortilux MH.

I will start flowering cycle later this week when my avg height is 12". The 6 plants are starting to make a solid canopy in my 3'x3' grow room. I will flower only 3 assuming that I get at least 3 fems.

My first clone attempt is a little wilty after 7 days. It should perk up in few days.

They're looking really healthy. I've got my fingers crossed for your three fems. Is it easier for you to sex the plants by starting the flowering cycle as opposed to determining at the pre-flower stage?

Thanks GardensGrow.

I will actually start the flower cycle on all 6 plants. As soon as I can identify the males at the preflower stage, they will be destroyed. If I should end up with more than 3 females, then I will have to make a tough decision to either destory the extras or return the excess females to a vegetative state and keep them for mother plants. From what I recall from my outdoor growing experiences, the males are easy to identify and ususally show sex before the females. Also, the location on the plant of the male flowers and the female flowers are different, so that helps with the identification at the pre flower stage too. The male flowers form at the tops of the internodes where the fan leaf branches connect with the main stem while the female pistols form from the leaf buds.

The problem is that I do not have a separate area for a veg room once I turn my 3'x3' into a flowering chamber. I am considering making a small one and putting a 150 watt MH in there. If I decide to keep mother plants and make clones, then I will need one soon enough anyway.

Hmm I read in the Grow Bible that you can pre-flower in the veg stage... maybe that occurs a bit of time into the veg stage and not practical for a "closet" grow

Keeping a veg room would be awesome and would help keep the constant supply that you're looking for. I'd almost call it a necessity for you. Although if you think 3 plants would provide you with enough smoke for a year then maybe not...clones just sound so much easier than seeds when you're looking for females. I've read somewhere you can keep a female in veg for a very long time. Maybe you can keep that female vegging for like 6 months and just take clones when it's time for the next crop. This of course assuming you get the extra female lol.

GG, I may have misunderstood what you referred to as the preflower stage. I would not know how to sex the plants while in the vegetative stage unless flowers are starting to develop. I understand that there are some autoflower types that will show sex during the vegetative state and even produce bud through out the grow season (check out Sweet 105 at Dr. Greenthumb: Cannabis Sativa, Seeds, Indica, Marijuana Weed, Growing Culture).

I went ahead and bought a GrowBright 2 Foot 2 Lamp High Output T5 with 2 Grow (6400K) Spectrum Bulbsto hang in a small veg area to grow any mother plants, clones or seedlings in when my main 3'x3' chamber is in bloom cycle. Once the males have been elminated and I have 3 or less confirmed fems flowering in my current grow, I will start Northern Berry seedlings in this new grow chamber to get back up to the 6 total plants that I am allowed under the state MM permit. Since I currently have 4 strains to chose from, I plan on keeping a mother plant from my favorite 3 of these and then cloning from these mothers to keep a continuous grow going. With the MM permit, I can have 3 in veg, 3 in flowering, plus 2 oz. of finished product at any given time.

Last night I switched out my 400 watt MH bulb with the 400 watt HPS bulb and started a 36 hour dark period to kick-off the bloom cycle on my plants. Starting tomorrow morning, my plants will be on a 7AM-7PM light cycle. I am hoping that I will be able to sex my plants within a couple of weeks and have my first in about 7 weeks.

New Pics coming tomorrow.

Good luck with your grow! I sexed my grow at 5 weeks last time and went to 12/12 right away. My yield was a little stunted though so I should have vegged a week or two longer. I grew skunkberry a couple times and just finished up with 2 SB's and a White Widow. You can check out my pix of my first grow of SB at about 7-8 weeks flowering. I did have to wait longer for the trics to turn than 9 weeks so be prepared to let them go a bit into 10 weeks. I love the SB stain and want to try the Texas Timewarp whenever they have seeds again in that strain. Your grow looks great!

Thanks Moldy. Now I am really more excited and impatient with my grow. Your pics of the skunkberry - especially in the cure box are awsome!

This morning my babies awakened from thier 36 hr dark period to their new HPS Hortilux light. I missed them yesterday while they slept.

All 6 plants are now in the 10"-12" height range after being topped once. As soon as I can identify the males and cull them out, I should have room to start LSTing my fems.


6 Plant Group Shot



This is Endless Sky - She is a little over 12" tall and 14" wide (very hopefully a "she"
-if I keep calling her "she", won't she turn into one? OR, if its a male & I call her "she",
then will he turn out to be a "hermie"? ha!).


This is Northern Skunk


Top view of Skunkberry in a 10" pot


A zoom-in on Skunkberry after the morning misting - show'in its purple parts

Raul - wow they are looking great.

That Skunkberry has a beautiful glow about it

I think it does too, but after switching to the HPS light, everything has a nice late evening glow to it. All the photos will have that look from now on with the HPS.

Everything is good.

I have identified the sex in both of my Endless Sky plants. For some reason, this strain is showing sex earlier than the other 2 strains. The larger more robust ES plant is female and the smaller runt was male. The male was destroyed this morning, so now I have 4 unsexed plants and 1 confirmed female remaining.

I believe that one of the skunkberrys is male(almost microscopic male shaped bud showing), but its too soon to know for sure.

Here are pics from yesterday of my 2 Endless Sky plants - 1 female and 1 male(eliminated today):


female pistol - site 1


female pistol - site 2


male flower - site 1


male flowers - site 2

Great news that one was female so far.

Sweet! Glad the female is the more robust of the two. Those close ups are great. I'm going to be using them to help determine mine when the time comes. Looking forward to the outcome of the others.