Tales of a Wannabe Grower

[WannabeGrower]

Hi all!

It is currently 30 seconds after having ordered My Humboldt Seeds Sugar Breath (Fem Photoperiods), and a 30:1 CBD Auto.

My setup is held in a 240x120x200 Tent, inside are Two HPS Fixtures With Two Nextgen 400/600w electronic Ballasts.

I am hoping to start germinating during the week. 

I hope this is the start of a very successful grow!

 

[CreX]

Well done!! 

Now just hit us with some pics of the setup and the advice can start rolling in

Do you have circulation fans? An exhaust fan? Keeping the ladies fresh air supply fresh is paramount to success

[Ill_Evan]

Daaaamn go big or go home neh?

[WannabeGrower]

12 hours ago, CreX said:

Well done!! 

Now just hit us with some pics of the setup and the advice can start rolling in

Do you have circulation fans? An exhaust fan? Keeping the ladies fresh air supply fresh is paramount to success

They do indeed.

I need to work out automatic watering. The kits are quite pricey though.

[Ill_Evan]

How many plants you expecting to flower?

[WannabeGrower]

10 minutes ago, Ill_Evan said:

How many plants you expecting to flower?

Sugar Breath and a 30:1 Pink kush.

[PsyCLown]

Congrats man!

 

So two strains, how many of each plant in total?

What medium do you plan on growing in? I assume coco or soil since you want to look into automatic watering systems.

 

I was looking at setting up a dripper system, but was having issues with leaks or lack of pressure for the Pressure Compensated valves so trashed the idea and am going to be giving the Blumat Tropf system a go.

 

I still have my arrow drippers which I could sell to you, along with some piping. It will probably be the cheaper automatic watering system, compared to a Blumat setup.

[Ill_Evan]

Lots of space and light power if it is just for two plants. 

You can mainline your plants in that case, even an auto. I saw a forumite do it recently, believe it was @AcidAlice. Could help your final yield on the CBD auto strain you got there. 

Check it here 

[https://www.420sa.co.za/topic/2856-can-you-mainline-an-auto/?tab=comments#comment-33813]

 

[WannabeGrower]

5 hours ago, PsyCLown said:

Congrats man!

 

So two strains, how many of each plant in total?

What medium do you plan on growing in? I assume coco or soil since you want to look into automatic watering systems.

 

I was looking at setting up a dripper system, but was having issues with leaks or lack of pressure for the Pressure Compensated valves so trashed the idea and am going to be giving the Blumat Tropf system a go.

 

I still have my arrow drippers which I could sell to you, along with some piping. It will probably be the cheaper automatic watering system, compared to a Blumat setup.

To answer your question, I am not sure what medium I am using. I need some guidance from the very beginning. I'll post a Diary once the seeds arrive. 

That is awfully kind of you sir. How would I Go about setting that up?

[WannabeGrower]

5 hours ago, Ill_Evan said:

Lots of space and light power if it is just for two plants. 

You can mainline your plants in that case, even an auto. I saw a forumite do it recently, believe it was @AcidAlice. Could help your final yield on the CBD auto strain you got there. 

Check it here 

[https://www.420sa.co.za/topic/2856-can-you-mainline-an-auto/?tab=comments#comment-33813]

 

Lovely idea!

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

[PsyCLown]

To answer your question, I am not sure what medium I am using. I need some guidance from the very beginning. I'll post a Diary once the seeds arrive. 
That is awfully kind of you sir. How would I Go about setting that up?

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

[WannabeGrower]

A

1 minute ago, PsyCLown said:

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 am honestly not sure.

I like the idea of the coco and perlite though. 

What of "Feeding'' nutes from the top of the soil with powdered nutes (https://hydroponic.co.za/hydroponics/green-house-powder-feeding-grow/)?

[AcidAlice]

4 hours ago, WannabeGrower said:

Lovely idea!

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

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.

[WannabeGrower]

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?

 

 

[Ill_Evan]

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

[AcidAlice]

37 minutes ago, WannabeGrower said:

You'd suggest no nutrients either, for the CBD auto?

Yea, at least nothing but Cal-Mag for the first 30-40 days, then you can add BioBizz Grow. I would say to use 20L pots.

[AcidAlice]

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.

[PsyCLown]

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.

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[WannabeGrower]

I think the coco perlite route is it.

As you rightly said, currently I am learning rather a lot.

she looks lovely mate! 
I hope for plants as healthy.

[highchome]

25 minutes ago, WannabeGrower said:

I think the coco perlite route is it.

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

[PsyCLown]

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.

[greenkush]

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

[WannabeGrower]

I have gotten some Seedstarter ( Freedom Farms), Pots and trays and some Mycoroot.

From here I want to go to 50/50 with Nutes, which nutes I do not know.

[Stoukie]

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.)

[WannabeGrower]

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.