My first grow! Hawaiian Snow 400W

Hi all,

as I said in my introduction thread I just migrated here, and happy to have done so, from another cannabis forum and I thought to migrate my first grow log here too. I have completed just this one and I'm now preparing for the second one with different strains and a complete new setup. Stay tuned!!!


So let's start with a few info on the strain:

Hawaiian Snow was created by Green House Seed Co and was the winner of HTCC 2003. It's a Sativa dominant strain with genetics from Hawaii and Laos.
THC: 23.7% CBD: 1.1% CBN: 0.8%
Haven't ever tried it myself to give you an idea of the high but hopefully that is about to change in the near future!!! According to reviews, it's supposed to be "very well known between heavy smokers that look for strong buds. A sativa-high that creeps on you, followed by a blasting stoned feeling."


Now let's see what I'll be using:
430W Sonlight HPS Agro producing 58k lumens

Parabolic reflector

Circulation oscillating fan
Exhaust fan
Biobizz light mix soil
14l square pots
Cellmax Bio-Organic nutrient series


I have a grow room built outdoors (sorry won't post pics of it you never know who's reading! ) that is roughly 5sqm (60sqf) but the area utilized for growing is around 2sqm (20sqf) and 3m (10ft) high. It basically utilizes one edge of the room with 3 walls surrounding the plants covered in Mylar.

Soaked 10 seeds overnight in a glass of distilled water. Next morning 9 had sunk and a couple had slightly cracked open already so I moved all 10 of em in a paper towel.

Put the paper towel in between two dishes and covered it with cling film or however it's called but left a small opening in it so they can breathe. Left the two plates directly under the heater and the temp was kept at 25-28C (77-82F).

After a day the 9 that had sunk in the glass of water had sprouted, the 10th one still refused to crack open.

Moved the 9 open seeds into 1" rockwool cubes in a propagator, wrapped in a blanket to keep em warm since I had no heating mat and put them in the closet.



36hrs later small tips were barely out of the rockwool.



Next morning they had fully sprouted and were moved under a fluo tube on a 18/6 schedule.



The 10th one still refusing to germinate. I fed it with an aspirin solution and it opened overnight but it never went beyond the initial 1mm root tip so I discarded it. 90% germ rate, not bad for first time I guess with questionable seeds. (got them from what appears to be a fraud seedbank... didn't know about attitude back then...)

Here's one of them 4 days old!



Troubled me a little with those blister like things on her cotyledons but not only she's fine now, she's the 2nd faster grower!

Biobizz light mix soil EC1.2 pH 6.1-6.3. Pots were labelled as 12l (26x26x28cm / 10x10x12") ones but measuring the inside of em and making the cubic cm calculation they turn to be closer to 13.5-14l if filled up to the rim. All filled up and watered thoroughly 2 days before planting.

8 days old and the roots are out of the rockwool at least 1-2" on all of them so time to move em to soil. Or at least that's what I was told lol!!!



All nine of them planted, temp at the top of the seedlings under the HPS is around 22-25C (72-77F), humidity at 65-70%. Oscillating fans are on, crappy exhaust fan is on too (150cubic m/hr ~90CFM), intake is pasive by small halls in the door and the timer set at 18/6. Age from seed 8days old.



The ceiling is 3m (10ft) tall and the adjustable light cords weren't long enough to reach close to the pots so I moved em on a table till they get bigger. The lamp is a 430W HPS Agro producing 58k lumen. I know it's not optimal but budget was low. Next grow I'm hoping to utilize a 1000W one!

I know I shouldn't have transplanted them directly to the big pots. But I know that now didn't when I did it I was a victim of the transplant progressively/don't cause you will sock em debate...

This is 8 the day it was moved to the soil.



And here she is 9 days after she was moved to the pot. Overall age from seed, 17days.

At 14 days since I moved the to the pots all is going well but they are growing a little slow... I'm guessing it's cause of the humidity, it's always around 65-70%. Haven't watered em for 4 days now and the soil is still a little moist on top. Been raining like crazy lately so... plus the fact that I'm using an Agro bulb for vegetation and not a MH...







And here's a mass pic too of all 9! Have moved the shorter ones in the middle and I'm also turning all of them 90° daily to spread light evenly!

At that point I had to leave my babies alone cause something had come up and I had to travel overseas for a few months. I left my brother to take care of them (big mistake ) and didn't come back till like mid flowering...

Oh, I also took the good camera with me lol!

lants are 26 days old from seed. 18 days since the tiny seedlings were moved in the pots. Latest feedback has it that they have grown 5-6cm since then all varying around 20-23cm!!!
Told my bro to try FIM on a couple just to try it out and see the end results and start getting the hang of it. Didn't seem to stop them much though height wise lol. On the contrary no9 that was FIMed is still the faster grower/stretcher height wise. She got 6cm since FIMing in 2 days...





Sorry for the poor pics, as I said I took the good camera AND the good photographer with me

no7 is one of the most dense and thick ones. Do the leaf tips look a little curled down here what do you think? Overall the plants have been wet for a while so the soil was left 6 days without watering before it dried out enough. (around 10cm inside) This pic is prior to watering. bro didn't stick around to see reaction post watering....



Here they are all of them 26days old from seed! Watering day...



And here they are 3 days later, not droopy anymore. guess they where thirsty!

At 30 days from seed all was looking well:

Then my bro messed up the feeding schedule and overferted... So things like that happened...







Never got a clear answer on the other forums, but I guess it was over feeding and high pH in the tap water. Didn't have a pH meter back then, later after I got one I realized that the pH of my tap water was hovering around 8,5!!!

Got some twisted mutated new growth too on the FIMed ones...

Anyway, told my brother to stop feeding and adjust the pH of the water to 6,5. Bought him a pH meter and an Atami pH down online and sent them to him. They never completely recovered it seems but we saved them!

Here's a photo at 39 days old from seed (30 days in the pots)



You can see how much no9 had stretched... and we did FIM on it too imagine...

At that point we switched to 12/12 a few days later, or at least we thought we did... I was working my ass out overseas so I left them to my brothers mercy till I got back. Didn't get many photos in the meantime either but here's a few:

At 62 days from seed they are now into flowering but still with minor problems...






Early bud formation, girls are 72 days old from seed.

9 weeks into flowering and all 9 of them survive.
Had some problems pre flowering with a heavy nut burn, and also timer went caput and they were left to veg one extra week before we noticed (lights have been on 24/7 it seems) and some of them were already 80cm tall by the time of the swotch to 12/12 so we went into rootbound problems mid flowering too... The crappy fan went bust as well so humidity was in between 70-80% throughout the flowering stage and lately temps have been over 25C as well. The 400W proved to be too small as well, going for +1000W next time and 9 pots with plants of that size (extra week of veg helped too) proved to be too crowded as well. All and all not many things went well, if hardly any, for a first time grow but nevertheless they are all still here and I'm very proud of it. The yield may be small after all but so what. I kept them all alive and from what I hear not many people do so in their first grow.

Here's another pic I really really like, some very nice hews there from the camera flash!!!

I stopped feeding and flushed at week 11 but continued giving molasses that I had started mid flowering. Had read bout em in a thread. At 12 weeks into flowering and the glands were all milky with 0 amber but we were running out of time so we decided to give em a few days to dry out and then chop em. I also gave em 36hours of darkness. Don't know if it made any difference but I had read about it somewhere so I thought, why not?

Here's the last team picture before harvest. Obvious nitrogen deficiencies and a lot of yellowing. Had been losing fan leaves for weeks too that I ended up turning into B grade bubble hash.



They got quite frosty after all, I couldn't wait to try em. I felt like eating em literally they looked like sugar coated candy!!!

So harvest time!!!

Removed all the fan leaves



and started cutting em down



After manicuring we ended up with a meh amount of hanging buds,



and a decent amount of trim

In order not to rush the drying and later the curing process we needed something to smoke cause the wait was torturing lol

so... BUBBLE TIME!!! Threw the fresh trim in the freezer for a few hours and then got to work!!! In the meantime we were already smoking the finger hash from manicuring! Damn that thing was good! Got a little over a gram from the scissors only.









Discarded everything from the 110m bag cause it was mostly leaf matter. We did 2 runs in 73m, 45m and 25m bags and we got the most out of the 25 bag. Clearly a sign of small trichoms. Potency was almost the same from the 25m and 45m bags but clearly better from the 73m. Glad I got that 45m bag since I had read somewhere it is needed for sativas...



We ended up with around 7-8 grams of bubble hash plus what we had gotten from the scissors. Not bad after all! And I can clearly say it was the best shit I've ever smoked. Mostly heady but there was a fast spreading feeling of numbness and hair rising throughout the body and mostly on the back. Hit fast and hard and lasted a good 3-4 hours too but less intense after the first hour or so but still kept you in a very nice place. If you smoked a second one in the meantime you'd get totally baked. We now had something OF OUR OWN to smoke till the bud dried out!

A few days later the buds were dry so we started cutting off the stems. This is all we got from the side branches, main colas were kept separately.



Got this bag of small buds and another half



And kept the tops in a separate jar for further curing

This was our first grow. With little knowledge and zero experience we went way deep for first time. We chose a difficult sativa strain from a to say the least dodgy seedbank, we tried to take care of 9 plants at the same time that was quite overwhelming for a first timer and many things went wrong.
The lights were wrong and small, we got mutations after FIMing, we got nutrient burn and deficiencies, we got high humidity and almost no exhaust throughout the grow, we had extremely high pH water, the timer went bust and we didn't realize so we run into root-bound problems from prolonged vegetation and overall nothing went totally right. We ended up with a little less than 200 grams of dry weed (7oz)...

That said I'm quite proud we managed to keep them all alive under the circumstances and get to harvest and we also learned a lot throughout the grow. It was one of the best experiences in my life and a great school. I'm positive we'll do better next time!

The smell was quite intense during flowering and got even stronger post curing. The moment you open the jar you can smell the bloody thing 1 floor down. It has a complex smell with hints of citrus and eucalyptus and rather piney. It smokes very smooth and leaves a feint spicy hint on the tip of the tongue on exhale. Very soft on the throat overall no coughing at all.

The high is definitely sativa. Hits you right in the head. It's quite creepy but not for long. It hits rather fast and makes your face look like you are fresh out of botox. It is highly energetic and very social. It hits you hard for about an hour and then lowers you in a happy energetic state for another 2-3 hours. Slight body numbness in the body too but nothing indica couchlock like. It will either keep you on your feet or sitting down socializing and laughing like crazy with all the philosophical pot talk!

I have to say I was surprised by the end result. Wasn't expecting it to come out that good after all the things that had gone wrong. And it's not just me, every friend that tried it said the same. Definitely light year ahead of all the bag pot we've been buying all these years.

Epilogue:​

I'm now planning to start my next grow come September and I'm looking into a totaly different setup this time. Will be growing 2 different strains, G13 Pineapple Express and Nirvana AK 48 in 25l pots, 2 of each for a total of 4 pots. Will be using a 400W MH for vegetation and then add two more 600W HPS I bought on digital ballasts. For soil I went for Biobizz Allmix this time and changed the nuts to Biobizz as well. Will try FIM or LST on all of them too this time and I'll try to avoid the mistakes I did the first time. I also got a good exhaust and a carbon filter too. So hopefully we'll get it right this time and get better results. Stay tuned for the next log and thanks for dropping by on this one. I hope you enjoyed it!

Peace,
Malus420

Here are a few more pics. Awaiting all your comments. I know this log is done but it's always nice to know someone did pay attention to your work! After all it took me like 3 hours to re-write the thing Enjoy: