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"The Traditional Health Practitioners Act does not create a mechanism to sell cannabis and cannabis related products” - SAHPRA & SAPS joint statement https://thehighco.co.za/canapax-is-illegal-say-cops/

Hey man. In my opinion, germinate the seeds, there is allot of option for germination but I usually soak the seeds in water and leave them overnight (they will float for the first few hours, just press them down and they should sink to the bottom), from here you could plant them directly in the seed starter mix or first put them in a damp paper towel until their tap roots are about a cm (ai usually put the damp towel in a humidity dome), then plant them in the seed starter mix (tap root down about 1cm below the surface). With the seed starter mix only water with ph'd water, no nutes. In a day or two you should start seeing some activity, helps if the room is nice a warm. Keep watering just with water. When they start showing the first little leaves move them nice and close to the lights, I use quantum boards so cannot comment on HPS as I know they are allot warmer, but at this stage you might see allot of stretching and could potentially be problematic if they overstretch and fall over, thus the comment to move them close to the light... In a few weeks depending on your starter pot, when 3 or 4 notes are visible I would transplant them in bigger pots, min 10liter, now this a topic on its own to transplant a auto or not, I do it and I even top my autos, your plant, you can do what you want with it Do not feed any nutes for the first few weeks as it might stun the little seedling, also if you do start feeding nutes do it half of what the bottle says or even less. I personally use the BioBizz range, Grow and Bloom... Also some Kelpak (root stimulator) in the early stages should do wonders. Just keep posting your progress (with pictures) on the forum, there is allot of knowledgable growers who would gladly help you. Good luck and happy growing. (Disclaimer, the info above is my opinion, please also do your own research and do what works for you.)

Took them long enough to issue this statement.... with more than 50 stores all over the country you'd think they would've caught light of it a a tad sooner... What makes me wonder is why have they've taken so long to issue this statement and take action... if they do indeed take action now

Coco/Perlite + Haifa nutrients, plants just under two weeks.

What I've been saying all along.

The cocoforcannabis site has tons of great info for growing in general! If you go for soil, the main appeal is to have microbes which break down the organic matter to provide nutrients to the plants, but I was still giving nutes when growing in soil along with doing teas and microbe inoculations - it's actually a bit of a mission after doing it for a while. I am now trying synethetic nutes in soil, however feel I can get better results with synethetic nutes in coco & perlite so looking at making the change. Synthetic nutes are dirt cheap, coco and perlite are dirt cheap. You will save money by using synethetic nutes and coco & perlite. A coco brick can be purchased for R55 which expands to 60L give or take, Perlite is like around R220 for 100L - compare this to R160 - R180 per bag of soil (30L). Synethetic nutes can be purchased was stupid prices, Hortimix and Haifa are what I am currently using - well I have the Haifa but have yet to try it. Compared to the BioBizz nutes I was using before it's stupid the price difference. With Coco & Perlite and fertigation, you can have your grow setup so that you literally just check the plants and refill the res - super simple and effortless, at least that is what I am hoping for. I don't see what possible issue could creep up really. I see people stating that the growth which can be achieved in coco & perlite in 4 weeks would generally take around 6 - 8 weeks in soil. How true this is, I am not sure as I am still in the process of moving over to coco but if that is true it will be phenomenal! Especially when growing autoflowers, since they start to flower automatically based on time and their veg period is very important and you want them to grow as quickly as possible before flowering so you can get a bigger plant and therefore a larger yield. Shoter veg times = electrical cost savings. Since you are running HID lights the cost savings will be quite a bit more than someone like me running LED's... You combine it with the medium cost savings and the nute cost savings, over a year it makes a massive difference. Especially if you are growing a larger amount of plants and leads to faster harvests. It's a decision you really need to make yourself. Both are great ways to grow and they both have their own pros and cons.

FastBuds Blackberry Auto. She's 28 days today. Just been given Cal-Mag, I use a teaspoon per 10L. Will give her BioBizz Bloom once she starts flowering.

I really like FastBuds and they have a great reputation with the autoflower guys. FastBuds: Gelato - 26% GG - 24% Cream Cookies - 23% Six Shooter - 23% Cali Snow - 23% Blackberry - 23% GSC - 22% Stardawg - 22% One day when I get a tester, I will test this myself.

The medium you decide to use would also determine which direction you should look in with regards to nutrients. If you plan on using coco and perlite as opposed to soil, I would not advise using BioBizz. I feel you would be better off using something like Hortimix which is really cheap from Hydroponic.co.za If you decide to go the soil route, you can use BioBizz but are not limited to using BioBizz - once again Hortimix seems to work well. With time, start to play around and see what happens and go from there. I like to start feeding nutes a bit earlier than others, but at the same time you do not want to burn the plants - even with soil I started giving nutes fairly early on. Biobizz nutes seem to be on the weaker side in the sense that when using it according to their recommendation, you generally won't burn your plants or stunt them... It takes time for the organic stuff to be broken down and be made fully available to the plant, where the synethetic nutes are available immediately to the plant. If you want to automate watering, I would not use BioBizz. Leaving that sitting in a res, I feel it will become nasty pretty quickly.

Thank all so very much for the input, keep it coming, please I am so excited, i cannot wait for the seeds to arrive. So i'm going with the seed starter mix and no nutes.

Mind blowing, no urgency with regards to this matter. This could easily be seen as a larger "dealer", probably one of the easiest to take down as well. They have multiple stores across the country. It's basically being handed to them on a silver platter. Walk in and you will find weed, you can even make a controller purchase yourself without any difficulty. Yet they have "busted" people growing in their homes, old ladies, people making oil and these guys are still free to do their own thing...

Nice. I just finished my first indoor grow with coco/perlite and it has been great. There are different trade offs between soil and coco/perlite. I think to be a good soil grower you need to care about the soil, microbes etc. Take a look on the forum for the discussions the soil guys have about teas and composts etc. That was not really what I was after at this point so coco was an easy choice for me. The trade off is that its a bit more hands on and there is a bit to read about up front. But again in my opinion I think it is quite a bit simpler overall than soil. Its easy to correct mistakes and impossible to over water (yay!). You'll need a pH meter and an EC meter. EC meters are better than TDS ones, but TDS can work if you have to use one. There are many nutrient lines you can try, I used hortimix + silicone from hydroponics.co.za and have had good results. The one big change I want to make with my next grow is to test the run off EC more often. Thats good to see overall plant health and to check if I'm watering too little or too much (i.e. too much = wasting water). There is a lot of info around but I've found https://www.cocoforcannabis.com to be the best place to find very high quality information all in one place. Some good articles there, podcasts too if you are into that. Good luck, looking forward to seeing how it goes

So people seem to think coco & perlite have a steeper learning curve, although right now you're going to be learning a lot anyways. So you can out the time and effort into soil or coco. I'm busy trying out coco and am coming from organic living soils, I prefer Organic Matters soil over Freedom Farms soil personally. You can use synthetic nutes in soil as well, probably better / easier if you want an automatic watering system. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

Freedom Farms or Organic Matters seems to be the two favourites around here.

You'd suggest no nutrients either, for the CBD auto? The pack of Sugar Breath comes with more than one seed, I may germinate a few just incase one dies. So it may be a plant or two more. Freedom farms>Atami?

Welcome. I would suggest not doing anything to the auto if you only running 2 plants and will have no space issues. What I would recommend however, is to only grow branches from the main stem, no branches from branches. Just germinate and plant to a nice soil. This will also mean you don't have to worry about nutrients much. I run autos in Freedom Farms, one of them is 1 month old and I have given zero nutrients so far, except a little Cal-Mag powder which also contains a slight amount of Nitrogen.

Well, if you go for coco and perlite, it's more comparable to a hydro setup and it's rather pointless using organic nutes as there isn't any organic matter for microbes to break down. Growth could be much quicker in coco / perlite though. You can use soil and organic nutes if you'd like, although the organic nutes I wouldn't want sitting in a res for very long and it could cause build up and blockages. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

I still have a good amount of Nitrosol and will switch to it after the 5th node or when they need some... For now the soil still good. Sent from my LG-H870 using Tapatalk

Lovely idea! I am very new to growing, so All of this advice is amazingly helpful, Thank you!

I might just want to add some red in the 660nm spectrum if I do flower since the driverless COB's aren't as efficient. Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

The into: The light isn't the best but with the actual draw of 270W and the use of SMD LED's cleverly grouped paired with varistors I can guarantee and equivalent output to a 250W HPS*. Also the heatsink makes up R600 of the cost and has an infinite lifespan and the fans should also last upwards of 5 years. Therefore upgrading to better LED's later would be cheaper. I really don't think there is a better budget equivalent. Feel free to share if you do. * Only because 60W of the panels are driverless COB's and they need to be regulated with an electrolytic capacitor and I don't want to do that. But i will be replacing them with 40W cool white and then these should perform better than most HIDs of equivalent Wattage and run cooler. *Also the varistors aren't mounted yet they are on their way but they significantly reduce flicker on all the SMD panels. The parts: 1x Heatsink - 400mm x 200mm x 40mm (BidorBuy) R600 11x LED panels (Aliexpress) R400 20x Varistors (Aliexpress) R100 2x Fans - 120mm 220V (BidorBuy) R250 6x Off brand Wago 5 slot connectors (Aliexpress) * 2m Wire (Hardware store)* 1m Thermal Tape (BidorBuy)* *Percentage used should be ~R100 The build: (WW - Warm white CW - Cool) Wipe all surfaces that are to be mounted together. Lay the LED's carefully on their faces and apply thermal tape to the back where the LED's are located as this is where most of your watts will be lost to heat. Position the LED's on the LED panel in a configuration that suites you. I went with 4x 10W WW on the corners, 2x 20W CW om the width outer middle and 2x 60W RB on the lenght outer middle. Also 1x 30 CW in the centre and 2x 50W WW beside it for a total of 270W. Peel the outer plastic of the tape and fit LED's to heatsink. Get your varistors, 7D471K for 10-30W and 10D471K for 50W-100W, and solder them on the points located over the 4pin chip marked DB1 on each panel. Also solder power wires to each panel. Next drill holes through the bottom for cable management and from the sides into the fins to cable tie the fans to the heatsink. (There is probably a better way but this will work and the fans will hold nicely. I have tried superglue). Finally wire everything to a power plug and remember to earth the heatsink. Test and see if all panels light up and everything works. My build isn't finished as I'm waiting for a drill but that is how I'm going to finish it. To hang it would probably be easiest to use the same holes you drilled for the fans. Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Hahaha yeah, Frakenbuild is right but once I get my hands on a drill I'll make the wires look pretty. As for the diodes, they seem to be generic China 3528 LED's driven at about 0.5W with a lumen output of 110-120lm/w at those power levels. Not bad and I think totally reasonable to flower under. Maybe not in it's current state but as soon as the varistors arrive with the added efficiency. I don't have PPFD or PAR values but I have previously flowered under 22B LED bulbs with moderate success of 0.7g/w with 4 weeks veg in a 10l pot. As far as I can tell these are very similar diodes driven at very similar currents. For the Aliexpress shipping I did go through SAPO and it wasn't bad. It took 6 weeks for everything but I expected it so it wasn't that bad. I was also just happy that everything arrived. Thanks for the welcome, I'm looking forward to sharing my future buils. Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Quite the franken build, I like the idea of driverless - makes life far easier. Although as I have mentioned before, with LED lighting it is all about the diodes, not all diodes are equal. While I am sure it will output some decent light and I am sure you could grow some cannabis under it, you can even use a flood light LED to grow cannabis - although I wouldn't recommend using it for flowering - I wonder how efficient it is compared to diodes commonly used for the horticulture industry. How much of the output the plants can actually make use of - the PPFD basically. For clones and seedling I think it would be great, for flowering - I guess you will try it out and let us know? Keen to see a grow diary. Regarding the shipping from AliExpress, what did you use in terms of shipping? The couriers are often super expensive and the other options are terribly slow and unreliable as they go through SAPO. Eager to see some more DIY stuff coming from you and welcome to the forum! Enjoy your stay

They've taken well to the transplant a few days ago... 3 Indica strains looks perky while the Sativa looks more relaxed but all are fine. With the wind being nasty as it is this time of year in Cape Town, the one positive I noticed from this is their leading main stems are waaaay bulkier than the previous plants I started with a few months ago! So the wind doing its thing "training" them to bulk up and be more resilient of mother nature. Cut the 1st node away on all of them as the leaves turned brown like nute burn although they've only been fed Kelpak seaweed extract every 2 weeks...

Went to the Transkei for a few days and left the ladies alone for a bit. Got back to find great growth on both ladies. Doing LST on the bigger of the two and once they are both on an equal level in height I am going to put up a DIY scrog net and grow out as much of the 80cm³ space as possible using the 4 mainlines I have created between the 2 plants.

Nominees to be announced on Monday

So this is my current Charlotte's Angel. My Medicine plant. She gave me a serious amount of cuttings unfortunately they are all gone now. This one should at least give me 80-100gms. I hope for 12ml of CBD oil. That is enough for 3 months of meds(I need to up the dose though). I was hoping to only grow once, for a years worth of meds, but it seems like it is going to be an ongoing process once again. Bad luck and paranoia once again sinks a good grow. They should bring out regulations so that we know where we stand with the law. Grey areas suck. Sent from my VTR-L09 using Tapatalk

I harvested her on the 27th of October. At the moment busy with Spumoni 2.0. She is quite a nice plant as well.

I don't need a tolerance break if I smell weed I get high

Sorted the humidity, without having to buy a humidifier. Lifted the light about half a ruler length and replaced the one large bowl of water in the corner of the tent to two smaller containers at the same level as the plants. Also keeping one vent open for now. Humidity is stable at 35%. Humidity is showing more in the pics because I just used foliar spray Cripple plant is doing well. Daily foliar spray with very light nutes and Kelpak. New leaf growth continues and roots are now much more visible at the bottom of the net pot. Hoping to have the roots hit the water by the end of this week Healthy plant doing the most. Fast leaf growth and roots continue developing at a fast pace since hitting the water