So I blew up a bunch of seeds, unfortunately. The second try was going well but then I had to go out of town for almost a week, which meant coming home to dead plants and having to start over.
I finally got the entire operation moved into an unused closet. Metal shelving units serve as a frame and I have cardboard from Amazon boxes lined with aluminum foil as a shroud, to make a tent.
This batch was planted on New Years Day. Probably hard to tell from the pictures, but there are really nice, dark green leaves. I am using water from my goldfish aquarium mixed with lemon juice and seedling fertilizer. The watering is automatic. After I mix the fertilizer and goldfish water, I add enough lemon juice to get the pH to ~7.2. My tap water here is 8.0 to 8.8, and spending time in the goldfish tank with a 10" goldfish doesn’t seem to change the pH at all.
I feel pretty confident about this one. You can almost watch them grow.
In the future avoid taking pictures with your burple lights on. Use the flash or just turn lights on for a bit it’s really hard to get the full picture here.
I like the fish food idea! I would caution against it until the plants are a big bigger the first 2-3 weeks in veg your soil should be rich enough and you may run the risk of over feeding.
How many plants are you growing? 1? 2?
Your PH of your water should be 6 so your a little high try and bring that down.
I assume you raised the light for pictures? As your light should be closer.
As they grow out of the plastic cups that are turned upside down get some 2L pop bottles and cut them in half that will give you a bigger dome if your trying to keep the moisture up.
Thanks! I’m growing three. They’re in the big tub in a triangle formation. I did add some more lemon juice to get the pH down to about 6.4. I also moved one of my lights closer to one of the plants and within three hours it completely killed one leaf and turned two others partially orange. So I backed it off. I’m kinda upset about that, because that one plant was perfect, dark green, with no blemishes. Oh well. I am certainly learning!
Tonight I added a mister to the setup. I took an old hose from my husband’s CPAP machine and used some electrical tape to make the rubber end fit into the opening of the mister, from which I removed the direction control. I have the hose going straight up the side of the tent and into the top so it doesn’t get plugged with water. Drips are caught in a Chinese soup container on the bottom. Seems to work well. I’ll be installing my temperature/humidity and lighting controls/monitors soon. I’ve been busy moving my workshop from one room to another, so I don’t have the ability to work on anything electronic again for a couple more days.
Good call @dbrn32, I wouldn’t have thought of that till it was to late.
Yeah don’t put your lights to close as you have learned the hard way, CFL’s don’t penetrate much so they do need to be close but they also will overheat and hurt your little monsters that’s why it’s so key to check on them while under CFL’s at least once a day, when you switch to an led you will be able to give yourself a larger buffer distance.
Just keep chugging away your doing great and things are growing, monitoring the PH, TDS during run off controlling temp and Rh to the best of your ability. Rh takes time don’t worry if it’s only 30 or so they will be fine if your Rh is to high your going to run into other fun issues.
As for the water bucket, any stagnet water will cause issues so hopefully the exchange is decent?
Patients and some micro management, but a fine balance between the two.
OK, I know I haven’t posted in a while. I’m now a month into this grow. Only one plant survived (I’m great at killing plants!) but it’s doing quite well.
This has been a great learning experience so far. I’ve made a multitude of mistakes. But I’m happy with what I’ve managed to achieve so far and will utilize what I’ve learned in the next grow.
Incidentally… I’ve pruned a few fan leaves that weren’t doing so well, as per the grow bible. We dried them and made tea with them. The tea gives a nice, soft, relaxing body buzz. Not strong, but you can feel it. Perfect for getting through the workday in the home office
I pruned off about six sets of fan leaves of various sizes and we made two large cups of tea in our French press with them after they dried and I crushed them up with my fingers. The crushed leaves made about a normal tea bag’s worth. So it’s not like you’re going to be able to make tea every day with a single plant, but it does work. I was kinda surprised.
I’m honestly not sure what people do with their plants after they flower and you harvest, so I’m thinking maybe keep a plant around after harvest for a while to make tea with. It’s a very gentle buzz. Just enough to make the workday less stressful.
