The Christmas Tent

[baldmountain]

Because it gives presents. Okay, that's silly, I'll stop now.

I'll share my first grow. Mainly to explain all the things I did wrong and how I fixed it. You'll notice I'm trying a lot of different things. Probably too many.

I started 3 seeds Dec 27th. (2 Fast Buds C4 auto flower and a Sweet Cheese fast version photo sensitive seed from Sweet seeds (A freebie with the pack of C4s.)) Dropped them in water for 12 hours, then between sheets of wet paper towel and into a plastic bag. Both of these were under a box on my dining room table. (The warmest room in the house and to stay dark all the time.) The seeds cracked open in 18 hours so I put them into clear solo cups filled with FFOF soil. (I should have left them in the paper towel longer.) I took a second clear solo cup and put it on top of the first with the seed (a mini humidity dome) and put them under a 13w florescent in a shop reflector.

One of the C4 seeds got stuck in the shell so I poked at it and it's stem broke so I started a new C4 seed. On this seed I added Great White Mycorrhizae to the seed when it went into the soil and when I transplanted. This is a bout a week behind the others.

The temperature in the tent is about 70 F. Humidity is 25-35%. (It's winter here and it's really dry in the house.) I've been running a little humidifier in the tent to keep it closer to 50%.

I topped the older C4 on Jan 21st, the Sweet Cheese on Jan 25th and younger C4 on ummm, I forget. Call it the 28th.

 

[baldmountain]

Here's a picture of the inside of my tent:


1) The plant in the back is the younger C4
2) The one on the right is the older C4
3) The one on the left is the Sweet Cheese

I was surprised at how much bigger the fan leaves on the younger C4 are than on the older C4. I guess the Great White mycorrhizae really works.

You can also see an example of the solo cup humidity dome down the bottom. (Starting some basil and oregano for my wife.)

I saw a couple little flies a couple weeks back so I put a yellow sticky trap in the tent and they seem to be gone. I also let the soil dry out a lot more than I had to start which I think helped too.

I flipped the lights today since I want the sweet cheese to finish around the same time as the C4s. But to be honest, everything is going to finish at different times. Hopefully not too far apart.

Oh, the little piece of electronics near the top is a BME280 connected to a raspberry pi 3 running a Nerves app with a web ui so I can monitor temperature and humidity from my phone. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

I also learned that I shouldn't be cheap. Fill the pots up with soil more than half way.

 

[Seed of Memory]

Loving the title man. Lol. Definitely a bit further than the last time i saw. Good luck on the grow!

 

[baldmountain]

Sigh, having my first issue. Well, current issue. I noticed that the tips of some newer leaves are yellow on the auto flowers. The photo sensitive plant seems fine for now. I think it's a magnesium deficiency. I used FFOF soil and no other nutrients except the last watering. I added half strength Fox Farm Big Bloom. Does a magnesium deficiency sound correct?

I fix it by adding a couple teaspoons of Epsom salts to the gallon of water I'm going to water them with?

 

[Seed of Memory]

That looks a bit like nute burn but I'm no expert. The mag deficiency would show on the tops and it seems like you could use some. I just did a foliar feed of Epsom when I had a mag issue until I bought a Cal-mag supplement. I add that to every water now.

 

[Seed of Memory]

Shouldn't need to give them any bloom ferts until after flip to flower. I've never used the ffof but everyone Ive seen using it says it's pretty good on its own for awhile.

Hey Jesse, the big bloom isn't a flower nute. I run the trio and big bloom is the organic booster. It is an 0-0.7-0.5 or something like that. Can't remember off of the top of my head. Just guano and liquid castings and what not. The soil is hot enough to run a while without supplemental feeds. I just added calmag to my WW that is in FFOF for the first 4 weeks and it had a runoff ppm of almost 700 pretty steady for a while there.

 

[Seed of Memory]

Haha, I assumed bloom was their bloom ferts. Lol.

I did too when i first ordered. The bloom line is Tiger Bloom. Gotta be real light with that one. Hits em hard if you overdo it. I have never gone above 50% with it. You can easily hit 1500 with a half dose per gallon. Crazy.

 

[H.A.F.]

View attachment 47327
Sigh, having my first issue. Well, current issue. I noticed that the tips of some newer leaves are yellow on the auto flowers. The photo sensitive plant seems fine for now. I think it's a magnesium deficiency. I used FFOF soil and no other nutrients except the last watering. I added half strength Fox Farm Big Bloom. Does a magnesium deficiency sound correct?

I fix it by adding a couple teaspoons of Epsom salts to the gallon of water I'm going to water them with?

Not great at diagnosing deficiencies, and you don't really have enough to go on with just the tip yellow. They look a little light green (might be pic) so the food was probably a good call. I wouldn't go over 50% with the Big Bloom, and if you are using the trio (Grow Big, Tiger Bloom), keep the others under 25% for starters. BB is organic and relatively hard to burn plants with, The other two are NOT, and LOVE to burn leaves

What is your water source? And I second what @Jesselikes2Grow asked about the pH. These questions are about your Epsom salt question.

 

[H.A.F.]

I also learned that I shouldn't be cheap...

Also - be careful saying that! LOL Frugal is good to a point. Some things have cheap options that are great, some it's best to bite the bullet and go big the first time.

Like the testing stuff. Ph measuring is important, so a good one is not a bad investment. Measuring the ppm of your feed, run-off, etc. is also important, but a $9.99 model is just fine for this stuff in soil. Don't hesitate to ask for opinions before dropping $$$.

And if you want to buy some low-grade noob-gear I can hook you up

 

[baldmountain]

Sigh, I thought that Big Bloom was for flowering. Serves me right for not reading the bottle properly.

I flipped the lights to 12/12 3 days ago to get the photo plant into flower since the auto flowers are flowering now. I think. I'd like to get all three plants to finish about the same time. When I flipped the lights I watered them with the Big Bloom added half strength.

I've been using tap water and Poland Spring. Let me explain. The tap water here is hard. 290ppm and pH around 7. I run it through a Britta filter which yields 260ppm and pH about 6.2. IIRC. I try not to use that water.

If you have seen the pets thread you know we have parrots. We feed them Poland spring since our tap water is crap. We change their water every day and I run that through a coffee filter to remove any food the birds may have dropped in it. I feed that to my plants. It's about 60ppm. Don't know the pH.

The plants are a bit small but I think that is mainly due to the small light I have. The plants have been in veg 4 or 5 weeks.

Other than a quick check at night I've been mostly ignoring the plants since I travel into the city for work and the lights are off when I'm home except for an hour in the evening. This is good because I keeps me from fussing with the plants all day.

 

[H.A.F.]

OK, WOW!
Click 'expand" for more comments

Sigh, I thought that Big Bloom was for flowering. Serves me right for not reading the bottle properly.
It is used throughout the grow. Look on their "feeding schedule" to know what to use 25% or 50% of. It changes throughout the grow. Their website has them.

I flipped the lights to 12/12 3 days ago to get the photo plant into flower since the auto flowers are flowering now. I think. I'd like to get all three plants to finish about the same time. When I flipped the lights I watered them with the Big Bloom added half strength.
Nothing wrong there

I've been using tap water and Poland Spring. Let me explain. The tap water here is hard. 290ppm and pH around 7. I run it through a Britta filter which yields 260ppm and pH about 6.2. IIRC. I try not to use that water.

If you have seen the pets thread you know we have parrots. We feed them Poland spring since our tap water is crap. We change their water every day and I run that through a coffee filter to remove any food the birds may have dropped in it. I feed that to my plants. It's about 60ppm. Don't know the pH.
This will be an issue - count on it.
The plants are a bit small but I think that is mainly due to the small light I have. The plants have been in veg 4 or 5 weeks.
They look fine size-wise, but small is no problem as long as they stay healthy.
Other than a quick check at night I've been mostly ignoring the plants since I travel into the city for work and the lights are off when I'm home except for an hour in the evening. This is good because I keeps me from fussing with the plants all day.

Here's my spin.

Your plants get light, water, and food. All three of equal importance. Some people get lucky and have tap water that is fine, or soil amendments that account for their water. The "I water mine with a garden hose" people scare me.

pH is very important to everything else. If you try Hydro or coco it is different. In soil you want 6.5 pH or as close to it as you can get. Some "nutrient" problems stem from the fact that some nutrients cannot ne absorbed by the plant if the pH is out of a certain range. A lot of the elements are different, but 6.5 is the sweet spot that catches all.

 

[Old ST1R]

Haha, I assumed bloom was their bloom ferts. Lol.

Technically, without any nitrogen, it is a bloom fert.

 

[Seed of Memory]

Your autoflower may finish before the photoperiod anyway. Hard to control that. Ph your water after you add nutes to it. Regardless of spring or not, if it is in the incorrect range the plants aren't receiving the nutrients. Use tiger bloom once you have been in flower about 2 weeks.

 

[Seed of Memory]

Technically, without any nitrogen, it is a bloom fert.

An incredibly weak one. Though you are right. I love big bloom though. It is a great supplement and it works wonderfully for my younger veg plants.

 

[H.A.F.]

Technically, without any nitrogen, it is a bloom fert.

Give it a read. It's not really a food. It's more of a supplement. 0-0.5-0.7

 

[H.A.F.]

On the FF Nutes. I believe their feeding schedules are based on a test crops under 1000w of light. (easy math) Light makes plants eat, more food in the soil than the plants can eat leads to abundances, lockouts and generally bad stuff. I think it's why they recommend flushing all the time.

Whether or not that is true, instead of going with the "use 50%" theory, I started using 25% based on my ~250w of light. It has worked well and my plants haven't starved.

I was always scared to use as much Big Bloom as they recommend at the start of the feeding schedule, until I started understanding it, and realized there is really no NPK. Just natural food junk. But they start dropping that amount down as you start adding the NPK stuff.


I am no chemist, so clarifications and corrections are welcome.

 

[Big Perm]

 

[baldmountain]

I used the instructions on the back of the bottle where it says 4 tablespoons per gallon of water. Thank god I did half strength because according to the chart @H.A.F. posted above I only did a double strength feed instead of a half strength feed I thought I was doing. Oops.

I'll just stick to plain water for a while. I just need to keep an eye on the photo sensitive plant to make sure it isn't a male.

Thanks for all the help and information. I'm learning a lot.

Here's a picture of the auto I think is flowering.

 

[H.A.F.]

I used the instructions on the back of the bottle where it says 4 tablespoons per gallon of water. Thank god I did half strength because according to the chart @H.A.F. posted above I only did a double strength feed instead of a half strength feed I thought I was doing. Oops.

I'll just stick to plain water for a while. I just need to keep an eye on the photo sensitive plant to make sure it isn't a male.

Thanks for all the help and information. I'm learning a lot.

Here's a picture of the auto I think is flowering.
View attachment 47520

I have only been growing for a few years - I am only qualified to help noobs that use soil not to make the same mistakes I have

I hesitate to tell people "do this!" because none of us have all the info you have. I don't mind typing a bit now to get the brain juices going so you can get this instead of me growing vicariously through you, telling you what to do. Then doing it again next grow... The plant is unique and finicky but there's a groove you can find

Don't hesitate to ask.

 

[Old ST1R]

I used the instructions on the back of the bottle where it says 4 tablespoons per gallon of water. Thank god I did half strength because according to the chart @H.A.F. posted above I only did a double strength feed instead of a half strength feed I thought I was doing. Oops.

I'll just stick to plain water for a while. I just need to keep an eye on the photo sensitive plant to make sure it isn't a male.

Thanks for all the help and information. I'm learning a lot.

Here's a picture of the auto I think is flowering.
View attachment 47520

It is definitely flowering!