Photoperiod First Photo Attempt: Green Crack and Bubba Kush

[tronN00dles]

Hey everybody,

tronN00dles here, back with two firsts: (1) my first photoperiod grow, and (2) my first grow in coco-coir.

I've been preparing my tent and media the past couple of days, and I just started the germination process. I'm anticipating my seeds will be planted in fabric nursery pots on Sunday (today is Friday).

Here's a quick lo-down of my plan:

Seeds: I have two feminized seeds from Canuk Seeds, a popular seedbank in Canada. This is my first attempt at their in-house genetics. I have a Green Crack and Bubba Kush. The Green Crack is their own variation which tends to run a little shorter and more indica-like than typical Green Crack, and it seems to have a similar flowering time to Bubba Kush, so hopefully this works out. I'll be doing heavy training so if it gets a little taller I'll accommodate accordingly.

Medium and Fertigation: I'll be following a high-frequency fertigation strategy. My medium is a mix of 50% double-buffered coco coir and 50% perlite. The coco came from a dehydrated brick, which I rehydrated and buffered myself in a 150% solution of cal-mag. I'll be keeping this wet with cal-mag water and yucca powder until it's time to use. I'll be using GH Flora Series 10-part series. I'm going to start off with the 'medium' feedchart and adjust as necessary. I'll be transplanting; I'm starting in pint-sized fabric nursery pots, after which they'll go to 1-gallon pots and finally they'll finish in 7 gallon pots. I'm using CocoForCannabis as a guide, which recommends once-a-day watering for 7 gallon pots.

Training: My plan is to mainline these plants followed by regular LST throughout. I've always topped my autos, but this will be my first time topping plants multiple times. I'm very excited about this.

Tent, Lights and Environment: I have a 24x48x72" Mars Hydro tent in my closet, with a 6" inline fan and carbon filter exhausting into an adjacent bathroom. Two fans for ventilation, and an assortment of cool humidifiers, warm humidifiers, dehumidifiers, and space heaters for climate control. I'll be following VPD charts throughout the grow. As for lighting, I have two 135W HLG Quantum Board LEDs v2 (a 3000k and an R-Spec). This will be my first time also supplementing with RapidLED Blue and Red pucks. The blue I'll use for veg and it'll be positioned near the center of the tent but offset to the 3000k light side. The red I'll use for flowering and it will be positioned on the far side of the 3000k side. The position of these pucks is based on the light spectrum of my QBs: the 3000k has a little less blue, and a lot less red, relative to the R-Spec. I'll be following DLI charts, and using a lux meter in conjunction with the lux-to-PPFD calculators for HLG's lights on their website.

Time to clean and calibrate my BlueLab pens....
Stay tuned

-tronN00dles

 

[Modernviking]

Good luck

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Are you sure you need a 7 gallon pot? Max I flower with is a 5 gallon with a 1 month veg but usually a 3 gallon suffices. I'm guessing you're trying to pack the 2x4?

50/50 Coco to perlite will be interesting, most I've seen is a 70/30 even for precision drip irrigation.

I've mainlined before but the amount of stress and recovery time compared to FIMming and LST doesn't give the same results. Considered SCROG?

Good luck, I like your plan!

 

[Suki]

Love mainlining, I'm in!
Here's pics of the photos I've got mainlined currently.

 

[tronN00dles]

Are you sure you need a 7 gallon pot? Max I flower with is a 5 gallon with a 1 month veg but usually a 3 gallon suffices. I'm guessing you're trying to pack the 2x4?

50/50 Coco to perlite will be interesting, most I've seen is a 70/30 even for precision drip irrigation.

I've mainlined before but the amount of stress and recovery time compared to FIMming and LST doesn't give the same results. Considered SCROG?

Good luck, I like your plan!

I’m pretty much following CocoForCannabis’ high-frequency fertigation guide. He recommends 7 gallon pots at 50/50 if you can only water once per day. I think this will be a one-grow thing, as the plan is to eventually build an automatic watering system. He recommends twice daily watering with 5 gallon pots but I can’t commit to hand watering twice a day at the moment without an automatic drip system.

Having said all that, the mix is actually closer to 5.5 gallons with around 60% coco and 40% perlite.

As for training, I’m still on the fence. I was leaning toward a scrog but I’m worried it willbe a little restrictive. I like being able to take my plants out of my tent and move them around and whatnot. But I am interested in multi-topping, even just for the experience. We’ll see.

Cheers!

 

[Death The Cultivator]

I’m pretty much following CocoForCannabis’ high-frequency fertigation guide. He recommends 7 gallon pots at 50/50 if you can only water once per day. I think this will be a one-grow thing, as the plan is to eventually build an automatic watering system. He recommends twice daily watering with 5 gallon pots but I can’t commit to hand watering twice a day at the moment without an automatic drip system.

Having said all that, the mix is actually closer to 5.5 gallons with around 60% coco and 40% perlite.

As for training, I’m still on the fence. I was leaning toward a scrog but I’m worried it willbe a little restrictive. I like being able to take my plants out of my tent and move them around and whatnot. But I am interested in multi-topping, even just for the experience. We’ll see.

Cheers!

Idk why I assumed you had an irrigation system, watering twice a day is something I won't do either lol.

SCROG will definitely lock your plants in but will also improve yield compared to mainlining. Have you read up on FIMming?

 

[tronN00dles]

Idk why I assumed you had an irrigation system, watering twice a day is something I won't do either lol.

SCROG will definitely lock your plants in but will also improve yield compared to mainlining. Have you read up on FIMming?

Yep, I've looked into fimming. I meant to try this with my autos but always ending up doing plain old topping instead for whatever reason.

Right now, I'm still totally torn between scrogging and mainlining. Yesterday I was leaning toward mainlining, but now I'm back on the scrogging train lol. How many times do you top in your scrogs?

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Yep, I've looked into fimming. I meant to try this with my autos but always ending up doing plain old topping instead for whatever reason.

Right now, I'm still totally torn between scrogging and mainlining. Yesterday I was leaning toward mainlining, but now I'm back on the scrogging train lol. How many times do you top in your scrogs?

Really depends on how the plants structure is. If it has a lot of closely spaced internodes then I focus on lst to spread the canopy while allowing secondary and tertiary nodes to grow upwards. Should it have really spaced out nodes then I will FIM the apical/largest branches once or twice and determine what I will prune as the plant goes through flower.

If I do any topping usually it's for clones otherwise I prune for the final shape and leave them alone

 

[tronN00dles]

Hey folks,

DAY 1

And I have two babies!

Both seeds were germinated using the paper-towel method (I know, I know, but it works for me). The Green Crack's taproot emerged in 24 hours. The Bubba Kush was closer to 48 hours, which did stress me out a little bit - but all is well. Both were planted in pint-size fabric nursery pots at the same time, although the Green Crack had a much longer tap-root when they were plopped into the coco.

Anyway, it's clear the Bubba Kush is a day behind the Green Crack, but no big deal. The Green Crack's cotyledons opened yesterday morning, and the Bubba Kush's opened this morning. There's still a tiny piece of membrane stuck to the end of the BK cotyledon, but I'm thinking that will probably shed by tomorrow.

I've been keeping the coco in my 7 gallon fabric pots wet with the GH 10-part scaled to around 200ppm with a pH of 6.1, with my run-off being around 300ppm. I halved this for the pint-size nursery pots until the run-off was closer to 200ppm before planting the germinated seeds. CFC recommends plain pH water with no nutes until the cotyledons have been opened for 24 hours. As such, the Green Crack received 30mL of 200ppm nute solution this morning as per GH week 1. The BK will stay on plain water until tomorrow morning as well.

I'm mixing 3 days worth of nutes at a time and keeping the mix aerated with an air stone.

Temp around 23 deg C, humidity around 70%.

Lights are currently on 24/0, but I'll switch to 18/6 probably tomorrow. Originally, I had these on around 120 PPFD, but the Green Crack stretched a little much for my liking and outgrew it's dome a little quick, so I bumped it closer to 200 PPFD. Once the dome comes off the BK and I switch to 18/6, I'll probably keep the lights around 250 PPFD for the remainder of the seedling stage, then probably 500 PPFD in veg, then 1000 PPFD in flower. This is my general thinking at the moment, but this could very well change as the grow goes on.

In terms of lessons learned, CFC recommends starting germinated seeds in jiffy pellets. Since I've only ever grown autoflowers where I plant germinated seeds directly into my final container, I didn't bother with this. However, I think I'll try that going forward. I used my final mix (50/50 coco/perlite) in the fabric nursery pots, but I don't like this ratio for such small seedlings. I think it will be fine for bigger/more mature plants, but it's almost too airy for young seedlings. Sometimes I'll pick up the fabric nursery pots and the mix will "split" and I was afraid the root/seed would fall straight through - hence me putting rubber bands around the fabric as below. Anyway, I think I made it safely through this hurdle, but I'll keep this in mind for next time.

Here's some pics:

-tronN00dles

 

[tronN00dles]

WEEK 1

Hey folks,

Today is day 7 since sprout. Time is flying. I'll keep this short and sweet with a recap of Week 1. Growth is looking good. Here's some data:

• Fertigating twice daily @ 230ppm (GH Week 1 Medium), around 60mL or so
• PPFD @ 250
• Lights on 18/6
• VPD within 0.4-0.8, temps usually between 19-25 deg C, RH between 64-73%

I'm thinking they'll stay in these nursery bags for another week or so until they move into 1 gallon pots. I've also been keeping the coco in my final 7 gallon pots wet with the same nute mixes I've been giving to the seedlings.

Here's some pics:

The one on the left is Green Crack; the one on the right is Bubba Kush. The GC is definitely growing faster, as I mentioned, even it's taproot growth was substantially quicker. The BK was 24 hours behind opening her cotyledons. I also had a little mishap with the BK, as some membrane remained after she shed her helmet. I tried to pull this off, but ended up tearing a little bit of cotyledon off. Anyway, she seems to have recovered nicely, just a little behind her sister.

Anyway, I'm pleased with how things are looking so far. Tomorrow I'll be starting them on Week 2 nutes and will be bumping up my feeds.

Cheers,

-tronN00dles
PS. @Death The Cultivator , I settled on a scrog after