New Grower Gren's First Grow

[olegren]

Since I've made it through the first week, I think it's time to share my first grow.

Full disclosure: It's actually my second. I originally began with a couple Mephisto seeds (3 Bears OG & Forgotten Cookies x Forum Stomper) and gave up early. I'm convinced those seedlings weren't nearly as stunted as I thought, but my OCD kicked in and I was sure I'd just done them wrong. As it turns out, I think they just hit that lull that comes with root expansion, and when I didn't see enough happening day to day up top I assumed all was lost. I had watered them initially with softened (salt) water and convinced myself this had irreversibly damaged them.

Anyway, on to better things.

Lighting: HLG 260W QB V1 LED (24/0 schedule)

Tent Dimensions: 2' x 4' x 6' (Flipped - passive intake up top to funnel warmth off LED driver and deliver it through plant area to exhaust on bottom)

Ventilation: Passive Intake + ACIfinity Cloudline T6 for exhaust
Exhaust is on a timer cycle - 2 mins on/8 mins off
Humidifier (in tent) is set to 70% on humidstat.

Medium: For seed Solo cups & HF with ~25% perilite mixed in.
Final pots are 3gal smart pots with lower 1/3 a mix of OF + 25% perilite and upper 2/3 HF + 25% perilite. Threw in a single tsp of 5-5-5 between layers.

Seeds:

1. Mephisto Genetics - 1x 3 Bears OG
2. (Added in week 2) Southern Oregon Seeds Auto Northern Lights [Currently germinating]
3. 1x Northern Cheese Haze (RIP)

This time around, I opt to change a few things (Lessons Learned):

• I'll keep my heat mat going. I leave it on 78" the whole seedling stage. This tent is in a cooler basement, and I'm hoping this will help temperatures stay stable.
• I'll not neglect exhaust. During my first grow, I neglected to think about the need for fresh air exchange. I'll keep exhaust active; if not activated 24/7.
• Humidifier will stay on the whole time. I've updated humidstat to 70%. With a timed exhaust schedule, I'm able to maintain a higher humidity level during the seedling stage - and may extend this into veg.
• Oscillating fan engaged upon appearance of first true leaves.

Germination
Since it's worked best for me, I opted to germinate directly in my solo cups. I watered both cups to runoff & let sit for a couple hours before dropping in a fresh seed to each. Unfortunately, I wasn't acclimated to having my exhaust on 24/7, and the mediums both dried out a little quicker than anticipated. This is ultimately why I lost the Mephisto NCH early on. The sprout hit the surface. I misted her. But the next day she was dried out and gone. (Worse, I killed two more of these lovely seeds screwing up the Mephisto germination technique)

The Grow
Anyway, this lovely gal showed up the next day; quite unexpectedly. I didn't snap any photos until what I'm calling day 1, but it went roughly like this:

3/2: Sprout makes appearance. Still wearing the seed helmet, but I decided to give the soil a good spritz for the sake of giving her a chance. I honestly thought both were gone, so this was a nice surprise. Light is fully dimmed and 38" above.

3/3: Sprout continues to progress. Still wearing that helmet. After a bit of fretting, I opted to mist and carefully remove. Much to my surprise, the shell came off quite easily.

3/4: Cotyledons fully opened, true leaves have shown up, and color looks great. She's stretching but seems healthy and 2.5" tall.

3/5: I started messing with lights. At this point, I had done no diligence around my lights as far as taking actual readings. I heard they were badass, so I assumed they were. All the same, most people were indicating 25-30" was a good height for fully dimmed over seedlings. I think things are going slow, so I drop them to 26".

3/6: First watering. By now, things are slowing down a little more, and paranoia of a repeat from round 1 has set in. I've been weight testing (comparing weight of my cup to an empty and unwatered cup of soil) and am confident she needs it. Gave her 60ml 6.4 PH'ed well water with half a dose of great white myco. Also, as I'm still paranoid about the lack of progress, I convince myself there's a problem with my lights. I drop the unit to 16" and half dimness. I have no idea how I didn't burn her up doing this. I left her under the light this way for a whole night and half expected to wake up to a singed seedling.

3/7: More light adjustments. By now I've gotten two different iphones and two different lux apps on each. Both are giving me way inferior readings compared to numbers others are sharing. I also order a proper lux meter because -- you know -- maybe my iphones are crazy.

3/8: Lowered light to 12" and set back to minimum. She's drying out fast. Gave 60ML more water around perimeter. Top dressed with a little more HF to fill cup.

3/9: Lux meter finally arrives. To my relief, my light is not busted. I promptly move the light back up to 35" since I have reasonable data to suggest I'm closer to the HLG-recommended 100 ppfd there. Decided to repot in a new solo cup in order to bury some of that stretchy neck. Much to my surprise, her root had extended to the bottom of the cup already. Carefully repotted in more HF + perilite. Thoroughly misted to top saturation and left her the hell alone for rest of day.

3/10: Despite all the chaos from the day before, she feels light. Weight test shows she's basically identical weight (157g) to dry soil cup, so I water to runoff. It happened fast (around 120ml in), so I let sit for 1 hour -- then come back and mist again. Probably not a whole cup of water, but she is good for now.

3/11: I'm calling this week 2 since true leaves didn't show until 3/4. Finally seeing some progress. Second set of leaves have grown a lot today. Original set are up 1/2" (tip to tip) from yesterday. Cup feels light, but still about 40g heavier than comparison cup -- so leaving alone for today. Did decrease distance from lights to 24". This is giving 15k lux and approximately 200 ppfd which seems to be a better place.

Ok, that brings us up to speed.

Looking forward to sharing this one as it goes, and I welcome any and all feedback from you fine folks. Thanks for reading!

 

[Kyote]

Since I've made it through the first week, I think it's time to share my first grow.

Full disclosure: It's actually my second. I originally began with a couple Mephisto seeds (3 Bears OG & Forgotten Cookies x Forum Stomper) and gave up early. I'm convinced those seedlings weren't nearly as stunted as I thought, but my OCD kicked in and I was sure I'd just done them wrong. As it turns out, I think they just hit that lull that comes with root expansion, and when I didn't see enough happening day to day up top I assumed all was lost. I had watered them initially with softened (salt) water and convinced myself this had irreversibly damaged them.

Anyway, on to better things.

Lighting: HLG 260W QB V1 LED
Tent Dimensions: 2x4x6
Passive Intake + ACIfinity Cloudline T6 for exhaust
Medium: For seed Solo cups & HF with ~25% perilite mixed in.
Final pots are 3gal smart pots with lower 1/3 a mix of OF + 25% perilite and upper 2/3 HF + 25% perilite. Threw in a single tsp of 5-5-5 between layers.
Seeds: Mephisto Genetics - 1x 3 Bears OG & 1x Northern Cheese Haze

This time around, I opt to change a few things:

• I'll keep my heat mat going. I leave it on 78" the whole seedling stage. This tent is in a cooler basement, and I'm hoping this will help temperatures stay stable.
• I'll leave exhaust on 24/7. My fan is somewhat oversized, so I'll leave it on its lowest setting. I just want to keep fresh air moving. Exhaust is vented out through another room.
• Humidifier will stay on the whole time. I've set humidstat to 50%. With exhaust on, it has a hard time maintaining this level anyway.
• I'll engage oscillating fan as soon as I have true leaves.

and hello little ones! FYI, for them babies, RH around 70 will be appreciated by them. Good luck with your grow

 

[olegren]

Thanks, @Kyote! I'd love to get RH higher, but exhaust keeps my humidifier from getting there. Trying to think of a way to configure exhaust to only kick on for maybe 5m or so every hour. That would let me cycle the air in there on a decent interval without constantly tanking my humidity.

 

[420Forever]

ppp

 

[Kyote]

Thanks, @Kyote! I'd love to get RH higher, but exhaust keeps my humidifier from getting there. Trying to think of a way to configure exhaust to only kick on for maybe 5m or so every hour. That would let me cycle the air in there on a decent interval without constantly tanking my humidity.

Yep its a dance for me too, the auto flower boogie. I picked up a variable speed fan and variable mist humidifier. I can dial it in fairly well so far.
And hey, my first grow was horrible. I screwed about everything up and limped them across the finish line. I switched my medium to promix hp cut 40% perlite, and Greenleaf nutrients as I saw others having good results with that combination. I'm 4 weeks in on my second grow and all is well so far

 

[olegren]

@Kyote - Thanks. I decided to make some adjustments based on your feedback. My exhaust is variable speed. I've had it set at 1 and on 24/7, but today I opted to adjust. I have it run through a timer, so now I'm on 5 mins/off 55 mins every hour. I've raised my humidstat to 70%, so it's maintaining that for most of any given hour -- just not the five minutes when exhaust is running. Be curious to see how fast my humidifier empties doing this!

 

[OttoCBD]

<~~~~Tagging along

 

[olegren]

Days 9, 10, and 11 have seen some progress. I still worry maybe she's a little stunted, but I'm mostly just relieved to have gotten past the stall from my first attempt.

I've adjusted my fan cycles a little more: 8 mins off and 2 mins on @ 40CFM (Lowest setting - My tent is only 48f^3). Shifting from exhausting 24/7 to this schedule is letting my humidifier build decent levels in the tent. It drops ~15% each time I run exhaust, but this is letting me balance a more comfortable environment with the need to keep fresh air in there. The tent's in a closet, so 'suffocating' them has been a concern. My humidifier is lasting a bit longer on a gallon of distilled water in this configuration than it was running 24/7 along with exhaust. Bonus!

Averages over the last 24 hours are at 79.4F and 64% RH - which is a big improvement over her first week. I will have to find a different way to handle this when I shift to flower (Need exahust 24/7 for odor control) - but I should have no trouble maintaining 40% RH or so by then despite the exhaust.

No other major changes besides ventilation. I did lower lights from 24" to 19" today. Still on dimmest setting. Getting 18K lux at this height - which is around 260ppfd. Trying to make sure she's not wanting for more light.

She's still pretty heavy since last watering (4 days ago) and soil deeper down feels moist. Exhaust/humidity changes are no doubt helping. It's just about time to move her to her final home (3gal smart pot), so I will probably water her shortly before that transplant - and plan to make it tomorrow if growth continues. I was waiting for her leaves to get as wide as the cup, and she's nearly there.

Oh, and I chucked a new bean yesterday! 1x Southern Oregon Northern Lights Auto. Of all the strains I want to try, NL is on top of my list. I did Mephisto's germination trick but took a lot more care not to overheat. 24 hours later, the seed was cracked - but no taproot visible. I went ahead and saturated a cup of HF, let it drain a bit, and then sprinkled some great white in the hole (a pinch) before dropping her in. She's been in for about 28 hours now. Cup's covered with plastic wrap to maintain humidity. Hope to see another sprout soon.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom and taking this ride with a newbie!

 

[420Forever]

Of all the strains I want to try, NL is on top of my list.

jus make sure u got a comfy chair & plenty o' popcorn, cuz ur in for one loooong ride ppp

 

[olegren]

jus make sure u got a comfy chair & plenty o' popcorn, cuz ur in for one loooong ride ppp

As the great Tom Petty said: Waiting is the hardest part.