Round 2 - Its about time. A [Soil - CFL - Closet] Grow

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
Hey-- read the whole journal-- you certainly seem to be struggling. Hope things get better.
I was having the same problem with water just running off the top of my soil. I found that this time I soaked the soil and mixed it with a spoon like 2 days before I was ready to plant-- it was kinda soupy. BUT it dried out to a normal consistancy before I planted-- water flows much better now. Try the soap thing too-- just a tiny bit-- I've heard people swear by it. I was/will go that route if things don't keep draining well.
My rigg gets really hot with the CFLs too. I find I have to keep the cabinet door open and lose some light to keep the temp at 80%. (My humidity's 30)
Don't give up though...
GG
Hey thanks a lot :D :joint:. I will try that mixing thing if this round of seedlings messes up like the last one did, wow I went from being able to always get healthy sprouts and just have them die a month in, to not even be able to get a single sprout haha, oh well I have plenty of time to keep trying.

I think I will have to readjust my setup, and lose more light too... either that or remove a few CFLs, which does lower the temperature a few degrees each... hmm. So far my good plant isn't seriously drooping or dieing from heat stress, but its not too pretty either haha.

I wish I could leave my closet door open, but I am always smokn in my room haha.

anyways pictures... and jeeze my plants are so freakn small for there age.

Day 40 - on 1/28/8 - Beta
Day 28 - on 1/28/8 - All the other plants, even though theyre really small.

High: 98.6
Low: 80.3
Humidity: LOW%

I watered both plants in picture 3, Beta and the 3 in one pot.

I plan on flowering in 3 weeks and possibly setting up a veg box in my room, I have a spot and it will stay cooler in my room I just don't know about the smokn thing.
 

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Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
Aight I had to shut down the grow earlier for about 30 min to an hour, dont remember, what I mean is unplugging the lights and fans and putting away all the cords... its all set back up again though, but thats dark time just 2 hours after the lights went on after 6 hours of dark... is that bad?

Temperatures 83-85, I added a CFL that bumped the temp up to 85.

The T12 is not really doing much, how close should the plants be? I have them about an inch away, and everything is growing very slowwww and the old plants that were under CFLs are drooping.
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
Day 41 - on 1/29/8 - Beta
Day 29 - on 1/29/8 - All the other plants, even though they're really small.
Day 1 - on 1/29/8 - All the new sprouts.

Temperatures high: 94.9, low: 70.4, humidity: 20%.

Question:
Do T-12s even work? How close should I put the plants to them? currently I have them about an inch away.
 

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Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
2 40w 6500k bulbs, T-12... 48inch, 3050 lumens each... everything is growing extremely slow, a weeks growth equivalent to one day under CFLs is what it seems like... but I will see, I just put fresh sprouts under it yesterday and I will see how they grow.
 

Jakebakingcake

Chillaxn'
no offense broken hope but all the previous growth you had was badly stretched and spindly. the pics you have above are showing plants that are more healthy. remember what i said about the t-Ls they will produce shorter bushier plants that have close internodes witch will produce a higher yeild when it comes time for flowering. the growth may seem slow but its a higher quality growth!! also you need to find a way to keep the tempurature steady!!! when your lights are off its really bad for the plants to fluxuate in temp as much as your temp does. i can tell with the pictures that they are having a hard time dealing with the temperature variations. the temp should never increase over 90 degrees and idealy you dont want the temperature to drop more that 5 degrees when the lights are off...to combat this try taking a fan and directing it upward towards the plants so that way the heat is blown up and away from the plants. good luck happy growing!
 

Jakebakingcake

Chillaxn'
for an example one time i turned on the space heater in my grow room to keep my plants at 75 degrees on a cold winter night. the next morning i forgot to turn it off and my hps turned on. the combined heat shot my grow room temp to 85 degrees. alot of plant leaves died and i was forced to trim a ton of leaves for the plant to regain its normal growth.... so the key point is you need to keep the temperature level. anywhere from 70-85 degrees is fine as long as the temp stays at the same tempurature or within five degrees of that temperature at all times. if it fluxuates your plants begin to stress!!!

you have a good light sorce . you have the knowledge that is needed to grow cannabis. know if you get the temp and ventilation under control you will grow strong plants...
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
My 2 main plants are still under the CFLs, thats where the temperature gets up to 95, but lately its been topping at 85 phew... but yeah the temperature does fluctuate way too much, low today was 68 ouch.

Under the T-12 is the last 2 pictures I posted yesterday, pretty small for day 30 :/. Especially the one on the left. But I am about to have 8 new sprouts under the T-12 and hopefully those work out, since all the others I have have already had problems before that could be why they're not really growing.

But I think all my plants will make it to flowering, if everything keeps going as it is now.
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
Oh and by the way, I am doing another side experiment, my last 4 sprouts in the sta-green, I put 3 under the floros, and 1 under a CFL in the gooseneck, very close to it, so far the ones under the floros have stretched up more, and the one under the CFL is small, but the leaf growth is about equal on all of them.
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
I missed the pictures yesterday, I was really thinking about taking them but ehh too lazy yesterday, definitely tonight though.

Lets see... I dont even know how many plants are growing in there anymore haha.

but...

Beta is on day 43 today, (17 days til flowering?) I would say it is close to a foot tall now, when I topped it, the 2 heads shot up like crazy, pretty stretched, the bottom half of the plant is pretty compact, tight nodes, the 2 heads have nodes every inch or so, and its currently growing its 4th node on both heads. The bottom of the plant has exploded with growth though, stems coming off way to the side some on there 3rd node.

Then theres 5 more plants, 3 in the one pot, and 2 others in red cups on day 31, the 3 in one pot are about 4-5 in. tall, and are on there 5th node or so, very small but no stretch at all. 1 of them in a red cup is on its 2nd node, and is still green, but hasn't grown a bit in I dont know how long, and then the last is about 4in tall, on its 4-5th node, I haven't seen noticeable growth on that one in so long either.

Then theres uhh like 4-5 sprouts, very small, and 3 more on the way that still haven't sprouted.

Seems like the Miracle Grow + Dollar General mix is working, thats what Beta is growing in. I have been watering all the plants but the new sprouts with nuted water, I used a 1L pop bottle and add 1 drop of Shultz Plant food to it.

I am really not sure if I am watering enough or too much though... I usually wait 3 days, but when I do water I don't know how much I should be watering... I usually get the entire top of the soil considerably wet, and then water over that again when I am watering Beta.
 

skunkman98536

Well-Known Member
thats how its usppose to be when u top t man .. kinda like a fat 2 heraded girrafe if u will haha ya 17 days sounds good .. but but but ... u cud always put into flowering right now if its already a ft tall if u wud like . :) thats when alot of ppl do it .. just for the fact how much bigger it gets when it flowers. :-D ull drool .. :-P
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
haha I am just praying its a female. I hope I didn't screw up too much.

I also need a new timer, my current one gets off by a few minutes every day so its no good... should I get a digital one? Does Lowes have timers?
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
Damn... Ive been on adderall rx for awhile now, and I popped a nuerontron or something, I worked on the grow room for about 2 hours straight, got a lot of work done, naming all the plants and keeping careful notes on the watering, I now will make a note of how moist the soil was before watering with a number rating and a description, and the same for after the watering, I covered stuff up, used lots of masking tape... and figured out what I am going to do with my one sprout under a CFL, I will do it tomorrow because it will be a pain, but it will allow the plant to slightly benefit from the t-12 very slightly, because the goosenecks reflector will block most of that light from above the plant, but it will get side lit slightly more... so it can't hurt, and it will condense that half of the setup.

I will have pictures soon... I took a lot.

This setup still needs more work though, I will definitely plan on condensing the junk in the back of the closet before flowering.

Now heres the thing... if I flower my main plant which is about 17 days away [from being day 60], which is when I want to flower it... its been growing very well lately, but I don't know if its current pot is big enough to last throughout flowering, I have no idea the size of plant to size of pot ratio, and even if I did, I don't have a way to measure how big my pots are... I use whatever container I can find, since I can't find pots at store for a cheap price, no flower nurserys or anything around here...

Anyways heres the current plant for flowering [plan a is the current plan]:
*
Buy a new light timer... any specific suggestions? Because I don't want to end up with another timer that messes up every day because the timer dial is too slow/ fast... not accurate at all, in a month the lights on/off times go off the normal time by about an hour. No way I can use a timer like that to flower, I used it on my first grow when flowering, went 12/12 for almost a month and a half until my plants finally died, they never flowered... my current timer doesn't work right, won't work, and will kill my plants if I use it to flower. Please more information on what kinda timer I should get... brand, digital/ spin dial, increments, etc... I only have access to Lowes or Walmart.

a)
Put the timer on 12/12 on the plug for the lights, so all the plants even the small ones will be induced into flowering. During this time nothing more will be vegging, which I really do want to veg during this time... and especially since I have the 4ft t-12 floro in the 6500k spectrum. I could buy 2300k bulbs for it and try to flower the small ones with it... but I would rather have some plants vegging just incase I get all males or something, or all hermies -_-. Haha I am gonna punch myself if I end up jinxing it and get all hermies out of nowhere haha.

b) But I was thinking... I currently have the CFL big hood thing with the 9-10 CFLs ontop of a night stand, that has 2 drawers, its about mmm 2 1/2 - 3 ft tall... maybe 3-1/2' tall, its about 3-4' wide, and 2' long, I can get exact measurements if you think this is plausible, I would not be able to put any holes or fuck it up or anything, but I could remove the drawers, make a fake floor, and somehow get CFLs attached all over the inside... I think there would be too many heat problems, but it will be very close to the ground which is always very noticeably colder than the air above the night stand, which is where all the warm air bubbles. So... a lot more light would be inside... all the sides but the front would be sealed 100%, for the front I could make a door out of cardboard or 1 ply, and attach mylar too it, and make vent holes in that... which could be a problem with light getting in there while they are on lights off... I dont want any messup, I want this to go well... I was thinking about doing a test run with the new timer on one of my plants about to die, 'Dieing Puffy'... just to see if it will even induce flowering on it correctly. I would have to get a fan and put it inside there though, it would be a tight squeeze, but I would only be flowering 2 plants in the bigger pots, and maybe 2 other 10 day old sprouts... there should be room, unless they grow WAY too much, which I could bend the direction the plants grow, Beta would be the only one getting too tall, the 3 one month old plants in one pot are seriously midgets... but anyways, I would have those holes in the front door to the inside of the nightstand to let heat escape, and I would find some way to block the light from entering there... it would be hard... idk... but a test run to see if I can block "enough" light out with one of my crappy plants couldn't hurt, and I am getting a new timer anyways.
c) Flower everything under CFLs, move almost all my plants under them under the big setup, where the floro is, I would make a cardboard fold down shield kinda thing, so heat can escape from the very top, but its giant walls on all sides, that will fold up and down... I could ghetto rig something like that with a lot of cardboard, or maybe even using 1 ply that I could just lean perfectly, and move it when I want to see inside... but I would fill 2 GIANT industrial size laundry detergent buckets with soil... I haven't seen anyone use a pot bigger than these buckets I have, so I should be good forever... and I have plenty of extra soil, I would place those 2 under the floro with a seed each to veg during flowering, so by the end of flowering I should have 2 more healthy plants.

Of course I will probably have to buy more CFLs before flowering, and maybe some more sockets... do computer fans work well for cooling your setup? I may look into getting some, maybe taking an extra out of my computer...

one more question, should I have my fans just purely blowing fresh air across the plants and keeping the air flow below the CFLs so the fans air doesn't directly blow against the CFLs... or should I be trying to get the fan to blow where the CFLs are too at the top to clear out extra heat... My setup doesn't really even have a spot where I can feel any wind or heat escaping....

pics soon.
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
oh - my - god... if I wasn't kinda fucked up I would be sooooo pissed, I went back to the grow room to finish my work, well it all went down hill when I knocked 2 sprouts from under the t-12 to the floor, completely destroyed roots laying on a fatty pile of soil all over the carpet, the one in miracle grow I just shoved all the soil and everything I could back in, there was a lot of hair in it, and I am sure the carpets dirty, I smelled dust when I was rubbing soil out of it... it hasn't been vacuumed in probably a decade... so I will definitely try to do that tomorrow.

Anyways so after I get done cleaning up the first mess of 2 entire plants and the soil on the ground... I get back to working on the floros new setup that I was gonna do tomorrow, but... haha wait technically it is tomorrow since its almost 2:30, haha I cant believe how awesome this adderall was, it was my first ever I took, I have 7 more, hah I bought 8 for $15 and my word I would buy him a pack of ciggaretts with his money, next time he needed a pack, and I would stop whatever I am doing and go get them for him... I saved a dollar by sayn that haha oh well... I could resell the pills $4 ea, I paid $2 ea, and make double... idk Adderall doesn't come by any of us very often, so if I keep it and then one random day I just tell my friends I have some adderall $4 a pop because thats what they are worth to me... I think I could get it from some of them... I could probably sell one for $5 to a certain someone... haha but damn the one pill I took gave me a feeling very similar to ecstasy, soooo similar, the euphoric feeling... haha makes me want to rant on and on and on...

But the setup I wanted to do with the floros and the CFL plant is like completely done... it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, I may raise the floro up a few notches on the chain so I can fully fit the gooseneck in the center over the CFL plant, so that it still gets some of the nice 6500k spectrum light from the floro on its sides from reflections off the wall and mylar... better than nothing which was what it was getting.

Haha making those adjustments to the floro and the single CFL plant setup took about 4 times longer than expected, just over 2 hours, and all because I had to spill 2 plants at once on the ground [one of those cups had 2 sprouts in it, I wasn't able to recover one of them, the label on one of the spilled cups was Doube, double without the L, because there were 2 plants in that cup... and I lost one of them :(. I am in so much disbelief, 2 plants fall at once... so much soil spilled... and then I knock the other one over a second time after repotting it with fresh soil and watering... AGAIN fall over, trying to finish the same exact thing on the floro setup... literally after picking up the first mess, and repotting and rewatering them as promptly as possible, I set them on the surface behind me, and I walk to the other side of the floro, and bump it over with my ass not even 2 sec after just getting done picking all of its mess up and doing EVERYTHING to it... a third freakn mess, second time the plant fell to the carpet in a 15 min period.

So I probably stressed those sprouts a bit... but no worries I germinated more seeds today... this time I am not sure what the seeds are... theyre bag seeds and some of my seeds got mixed up, my new plants could be any of the following... I am sure of all the seeds that it possibly could be... I was just a stupid stoner and didn't keep the seeds perfectly seperated and they could have mixed... so I just said fuck it, I will take some of each... pretty much its stupid to take out fire seeds and set them on your desk thinking youll remember what they are a week later, haha and then I set some other seeds on my desk that I wasnt sure of... and both those small piles like 3 seeds in ea pile got hit with my pencil on accident and scattered.

So I am germinating apprx 6-8 new seeds now, haha wow it seems like I always have a new batch of sprouts going out now, since around 1-1/2 weeks ago - this is my 4th germination batch of 6+ seeds, for about 6 new sprouts... if all goes well the floro should finally be filled with plants, I just felt bad having sooo much space under it not being used, adding some plants couldn't hurt... I just need to get one out of the batch that thrives in the shitty conditions I give it, like Beta does haha.

The seeds germinating are bagseeds of the following... I had multiple seeds of each, no way to know exactly what I am germinating at all, all I can hope is that I got the good one in italics haha... anyways: Strawberry K, Sour Apple, Juicy Fruit, Kind Bud. I had some seeds come out of an old sack I saved from like 2-3 months max ago, the sack was either sour apple or juicy fruit, I couldn't identify the taste... which leads me to think the bud could have been sprayed, me and my other genious friend were both very suspicious about these cheap fire buds... the bud smells great, even the stems smell, and gets you blazed as hell, its definitely not anything close to shwag, and we usually get buds, they are connected to someone who grows hella, but the buds good hardly any seeds haha I have already ruined all the seeds I was sure was juicy fruit, except for 5-6 juicy fruit thats still currently growing... thats why I really want a harvest, if the bud was sprayed I will end up with just whatever decently fire bud they sprayed... could have been kind bud that was sprayed... but the buds aren't quite the same. The sour apple and juicy fruit are ridiculously lime green and hella stank like there respective flavors... but theres been talk from a few people recently that the last few sacks they bought from them tasted like shit, the juicy fruit... said it tasted decent and then later on it like staled out bad and tasted like absolute crap, guy said he couldn't even smoke it... the same stuff he had just been smoking earlier... odd... but then again hes the kinda guy who would never hit anything home made, never hit resin, etc... so idk how bad it was... but whatever the plants bud wont lie...

since I am using bag seeds though, and supposedly the guy who grows it is actually growing the flavors were buying... which I am starting to kinda believe theres no doubt the stuff we were buying was real, because of how he would run out of a certain flavor, but still have others, and once a flavor was gone it was gone forever... if he was spraying it I am sure they could eaisly get more of the sour apple spray and spray whatever kind of bud simple as that to restock on whats been gone since I bought my first sack of it, $30 a quarter, but I think the guy I got it from gets it $25 a quarter... I hate how much the price of sacks increase everytime it gets handed to another person to sell... but its good being at the top of the ladder haha if you know what I mean, I know the person who gets it from a dealer that all he does is deal pot, and he gets that pot directly from the grower, not too many hands it passes through... we can get pounds of shwag directly from the dealers $700/lb and its really not that bad... but we usually have to buy a pound of that and sell most of it, always make like almost double our money, ontop of what we chief out of the brick... but anyways no more of that shwag haha...

so this was a huge rant... I will post pictures sometime soon... I took quiteeee aaa feww... including pics of the messes, partially cleaned up. :D look forward to laughing at my dumb ass haha its funny.

Other than the plant tippings, everything looks good, I may try to break off some of the yellow stiff leaves on the plants, I never take off leaves that dont completely crumble when I push down on it... if the leaves completely dead the stem just snaps right off with a slight tap, I don't remove yellow/ dead leaves unless they fall off with a mere tap haha I learned its bad to do because the plant still has energy stored in the leaf that it can use, and removing those leaves really is just doing more harm than good.

I have a cup now I will fill with dead leafs and dead plants just throw it all in the cup, pretty much all the plant parts except the roots, any suggestions on what to do with those when I have quite a bit of em? All the leafs and the dead plant in the cup is bone dry and stiff and leaves just crumble when you touch em... I was thinking of trying to extract THC with isopropyl alcohol, I was thinking poke some small holes in the bottom of the cup with the plant parts in it, not big enough for any thing to fall through but liquid, then pour the alcohol over it and drain it in another cup, pour that over all the plant parts again while it drains in another cup, and keep on repeating until I think I have washed all the THC off...... I don't know if that would work, but I tried soaking old plant leaves and stems in isoproply alcohol and let it evaporate and there was a collection at the bottom of crystals and green looking goop.

Wow long post... pics soon.

BTW random joke I made up:

Worst part about the second 2 hour trip in the closet was that the air in the room was 91 degrees, I was sweating more than a fat guy staring at a Twinkie that he can't have cuz hes on a died... haha hilarious joke huh? But seriously for 2 hours cramped in my narrow small closet constantly knocking shit over and dripping sweat, I about puked too, the Adderall and all the staying in one position for like half an hour did not mix well... legs and shit numb as fuck, hurt like fuck to get up, sweat soaking my shirt, and my saliva glands were going crazy, I was constantly just swallowing spit cuz my mouth kept constantly making more haha, annndd the entire 4 hours I spent working on the grow room I didn't have 1 cigarrette haha wow I am so suprised.
 

skunkman98536

Well-Known Member
haha wow that was a fucking long post ...

about ur plant to ratio size... LOTS of ppl say a gallon equals a foot... soo

one galon pot equals foot plant ... so on so on ..

I use to knock over shit all the fucking time it was horrible .. now i just move the shit before i change or add something lol

and sweet joke by the way... lol
 

Brokenhope420

Well-Known Member
haha I am still freakn wide awake, I just wish I had more bud... I have been chiefn resin and the keif in the bottom of my fatty stem bag...

but yeah, I will check on the plants soon to see if they recovered, wow the last 6 hours passed the fuck by like nothn, I still have the pictures I took 7 hours ago to post...

I have a crap load of isoproply alchohal, I think I am going to try to rinse all the THC off all my old stems by pouring the alcohol over them while theyre in a plastic cup, small holes at the bottom, and drain the alcohol into a cup to evaporate and see whats left behind... good idea or not?

Haha and yeah after I knocked the first too over, because I was an idiot and left all the plants on the small long narrow box that I was taping, and the box slipped and rumbled like crazy, I am soooo fucking lucky only 2 fell, every one of them was fucking nanometers from tippn and falln 2 feet to the carpet XD... wow I was sooo fucking chill all night, sooo out of it, I didn't even get the slightest bit angry when the 2 tipped and I have huge anger problems haha, I was just like awwh man I cant believe that happened. After those 2 cups fell, which led to 1 sprouts death :( [but luckily it was in the cup with 2 sprouts :D and I could have accidently scooped it up in the soil when I was shovling it back in so it may start growing out of the ground sometime haha.]

So after those 2 cups fell down, I moved everything to the side, like a dozen cups of sprouts and plants way to the side, everyone of them except the 2 that just fell, which I set on the table that the big CFL rigs on, thinking oh its fine there, and I needed to constantly slowly water one of them, the one in Sta-Green because that soil doesn't absorb water at all... I may try mixing it with miracle grow and dollar general soil haha a neopolitan for the plant to grow in, just throwing all the soils I have equally mixed into the peat pots XD... I am probably going to try that.

but I had the cups there on the CFLs grow table thing, and I was walking through the narrow path to get to the side of the floros setup, and I was sooo out of it I didn't even realize where I was actually at when I bent over, and my ass perfectly tapped one of the cups with a sprout in it that had just fallen over hahaha, I was like wow I am dumb.

hmmm...
 
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