It has been a long time, friends. 2021 was a year that saw my workload basically triple, so I took a break from growing. I recently found the motivation to get started again, and I’m excited to see what we can do with some new equipment.
Tent:
5x5 grow tent (upgraded from 4x4 mostly in hopes of having some room to maneuver and operate within the tent.
Lights:
I have three HLG lights now, 2x 260s + a 550. If things go great and I’m able to fill out a SCROG, I may utilize all 3 lights, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Water:
The biggest change is that I will be employing an Autopot XL system to (hopefully) assist with watering. I’ve never used one before, let’s hope it’s more growing monsters and less flooding my house!
Tropicanna Poison: My cousin had purchased like 80 seeds, the 5x5 tent, and HLG 550 but life got in the way, so I bought it all from him. Tropicanna Poison has an interesting description and these seeds supposedly have a very fast 60 day flower period, so let’s go.
Soaked seeds for 24 hours in tap water (he quit doing this, which I read after I did it)
Cut 3 holes in bottom of solo cups and fill with Coco/Perlite
Gallon of water with Jacks 321, watered solo cups until runoff.
4 seeds planted 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch down in solo cups. Just lightly push coco over the holes after seeds dropped. Sprayed the top of the soil just to make it moist.
Placed seeds in tent 28” under light dimmed all the way down.
All 4 plants sprouted in the afternoon. I checked them at like 2:30PM, nothing. Came back a couple of hours later and they were all up. 2 of them had seed shells preventing their leaves from opening, I assisted by gently slipping the shells off.
If you’ve followed either of my previous grows, you’ll remember Veg. has been a comedy of errors and misfortune for me. I basically limp into flower and then things have gone well for me.
So, true to form, I noticed on Friday May 6th that the seedlings were stretching, something I had never experienced before. So, I lowered the light. Saturday they had stretched even more so throughout the day I gradually turned the power up, but every time I checked they were still stretching… so, I turned the light to full power probably closer than it should be at this stage.
I watered today to runoff, which may have been too much water for seedlings (I’m a serial overwaterer), so the slight leaf droop is either from that or these dumbass plants being blasted with light to prevent stretching.
I’ll closely monitor and adjust in the coming days. I’m expecting to need to use bamboo or something to hold them up until I can bury them up to their necks at transplant.
Welcome back. I use autopot XLs and there are several threads dedicated to there use. After a valve mishap that was my fault because I did not reset it properly after cleaning it, I place the XL tray in a large tray to prevent flooding. They have saved me from a couple clean up headaches.
I also use quick connect fittings to connect the valve to the reservoir. It makes the way I use the autopot easier to disconnect, clean and move around.
Love it. Whenever I see someone overwatering, I want to tag you…… but I feel it’s lost it’s humor.
Glad to see you back into growing. A 5x5 will be interesting with those lights. I’m trying to arrange them in my head and I keep wishing you had the XL heat sinks.
2 260 XL and a 550 would rock a 5x5.
Just this year I bought a 4x4 and a 600r. So far so good. I can’t imagine trying to reach into a 5x5.
Opened the tent and 1 plant was basically laying down against the solo cup with another well on its way. Not unexpected with the stretching. The worse of the 2 I propped up with a popsicle stick and filled the cup with as much coco as I could. The 3 other plants I filled with more coco to bury them and build a better foundation.
The one that was laying down also has twisting leaves, which is either from 1) Strong nutes, 2) Too much wind from fans (I suspect this is more likely).
My PPM has been reading like 1050 with Jack’s and RO Water, which seems high to me. Either the water jug I found in my garage wasn’t really RO water, my scale is not working correctly, or I forgot how to mix Jack’s. In any case, the plants look great except for the one with twisting leaves + the one you’ll notice is all funky because it was leaning and reaching for the light in an awkward position.
More than anything, my plants have fallen victim to my hubris. I was so cocky I only planted 4 and didn’t leave myself a spare, I would have culled 2 of these plants by now, but if we make it through this week we will find our top gear.
Oh yeah, I’m definitely living life dangerously right now with them. 3 of the plants seem to be responding well. The one is struggling. Next watering may just be RO for that one even though I don’t want to baby any of them.
Plants are looking great, they were even praying toward a little bit, which is always one of my favorite things to see. The popsicle stick plant is looking great a few days after it said I would like to have culled it… sometimes, a little TLC is all they need. I removed one of its popsicle supports and moved it to another plant, which was leaning a bit and moved soil around to provide a better foundation and support/straighten them out.
Color is great and we aren’t stretching like before, these plants are apparently just starved for light.
The twisting on popsicle plant has improved as well after I made sure less wind was beating on them.
I watered everyone today with 8oz. (Weight not fluid Oz), Jacks 321 1020 PPM and 6.0pH. I’ll be interested to see how they look a little later, but everything was great today. I’ll be out of town until Sunday, so I’m hoping the water lasts until Sunday, I’m not too worried about it.
Jack’s 321 is just the best. Plants seem to be doing very well in the coco/perlite combo as well. Nutes might be a little strong given the slight leaf twisting I see, but the growth + fact that they are praying toward light means we are going to keep juicing at 100%.
Oh, yeah we’re basically running the same everything. Be sure to do everything the opposite of what I do and youll be perfect!!
Only thing I would incorporate into your ap’s is a shutoff valve at the rez and in front of each pot. Once you pot up and get the system working it’ll be like setting the cruise control!
Set to watch!!
