I will be interested to see what the quarterly electric bill will be like, as this is the first time I have not had the set up running 24/7 in about 4 years.
It's been lovely not having the fans on.... living rurally, I've really enjoyed the peace and quiet.
Alas, it's time to put a stop to all that, and finally get another grow on.... don't wanna run out of bud, and there's a house inspection in May.
Also it's getting into Summer here, and it's gonna be a hot one... temps are already up in the mid 30°C's, and it stays up in the mid to high 20°C's at night.
I'm used to growing Autos under 24/0 lights, and in the Summer, I have to run air-con 24/0 as well.... I was chewing up the 'leccy, so this time I thought I should run some photoperiod plants instead.... that would make a big dent in my lighting bill, but the fans will still have to be on 24/0 as well as the air-con.
There's a few reasons why I haven't been growing during the last 3 months...
- we had a house inspection in Nov, so I couldn't do anything from Sept to Nov.
- I had loads of bud from the last grow..... loads of it, man!
- I've been waiting for a package from Dinafem with my prize for winning the AFN Dinafem Best Picture competition in November.
Big thanks to Mark at Dinafem Seeds for having a word with Santa and getting the elves to pack this lot up for me....
A very fabulous Humboldt T shirt and a little bag stuffed with goodies...
...skins, roaches, grinder, sticker, and most importantly:
- Blue Amnesia XXL Auto x5,
- Gorilla Fem x5
- Purple Afghan Kush Fem x6
I have a nice big seed collection, about 180 seeds in all, mainly Autos, but a few Regs and a few Fems.....
I’ve only grown Autos, except for my ill-fated first ever home grow back in the UK, where I grew some Barney’s Farm feminised ‘Pineapple Chunk’ in a fancy wardrobe and RDWC set up, which I chopped early and destroyed the evidence before emigrating in a hurry, ahem.
So as I’m a relative newbie to photo's, and crossed to the ‘dark’ side, please join me on my latest quest!
I have a shiny pack of Dutch Passion's 'Des Frans' sitting there that my main man Dutch Passion Tony sent me last year, and I've been desperate to try some after reading Autoberry's numerous reports as to how strong she can be. This would be a nice addition to the new Dinafem Fems that Mark sent me.
We had a mental storm on Friday, ripped trees out of the ground, lines came down and we had a power cut for 24 hours..... not a good thing if I'm planning a photo grow......
Mind you, my tent is hardly what you call 'light-proof' - this is just the front door, lights on.....
There's a few other rips, dodgy zips and thinned out bits, so it's gonna be hard maintaining a dark period during the (bright) heat of the day, as I was planning on doing.
On top of that worry, I opened the little bar fridge that I have up here for my oil and seeds.... the fucking thing had defrosted during the power outage, and filled the lower compartment up with water.... the compartment where I keep the seeds!!!!!
The whole lot was under water, so I had to go into salvage mode, fuck Christmas, seeds came first.
The Dutch Passion metal cans all leaked, I poured out the water and found the paper packets inside were drenched... luckily they are lined with plastic, and after opening a few with shaky sweaty hands, I realised they were sealed water tight, and all good.
The Dinafem cans also had leaked, but the seeds inside were in plastic vials, and they were fine. The new 'prize' seeds didn't even make it to the fridge, cos I'm such a lazy stoner.
So Chrissy was back on!
I always grow 4 plants in 20L airpots, so that's not gonna change.... apart from that I now realise they are 25L.... I went through 2x 50L bags of Coco.
I've decided on:
- 1x Dutch Passion 'Des Frans' - 100% Sativa, super strong cross of 'Destroyer' x 'Destroyer'
- 1x Dinafem 'Gorilla' - 60% Indica 40% Sativa, cross of Chocolate Diesel x Chem Sister x Sour Dubb
- 2x Dinafem 'Purple Afghan Kush' - 100% Indica, cross of Purple Kush x Pre'98 Bubba Kush
These are some top drawer strains!
The plan is to grow these out, take a few cuttings before flipping over to 12/12 and re-veg the cuttings for a second grow to end just before the May inspection.
They take 8-9 weeks in flowering, so with 4 weeks veg, this grow shouldn't take much longer than any of my big Auto grows... they've tended to take 12-15 weeks in total, so these Fems will be much the same.
After years of growing Autos, I feel I know the cycle of the plant reasonably well, and I'm ready to join the big(ger) boys. I know they are Fems, but it's a step closer.... I have some old Regs sitting around, but I can't be arsed dealing with males. My grow time is precious and I need to get good results each time.
I got my trusty 25L airpots and filled them with coco, soaked them with EC 0.7 feed made up of 0.3ml/L House and Garden Cocos A&B, 0.1ml/L drip clean, 0.3ml/L Roots Excellurator and 0.3ml/L Nitrogen boost mixed into EC 0 rainwater. We've had loads, so the tank is full to the brim.
I planted the seeds about 2cm under the surface, covered each pot with clingfilm and stuck them under a Skyline 400 LED at max height for a bit of warmth.
This is them before plonking some card on top to keep the light out....
They usually take 48-72 hours to show their heads using this technique, and there's no soaking of seeds, using wet tissue paper, or any handling of the root whatsoever!
I usually use a Bluelab Guardian, trusty, reliable and quick pH and EC readings. Unfortunately, my pH probe has been giving me grief for the best part of a year... I replaced the probe and I'm still getting weird readings... a good pH2 or 3 over what it should be. and I can't recalibrate it, because the unit brings up an error message whenever the pH is more than pH1 out.
I've been faffing around making 'recalibration' solutions of varying pH's to nudge the set pH down, but it never quite gets there, so I am gonna have to send it off to get looked at..... luckily I have an old Bluelab pH pen that recalibrated correctly and works, so although it's a bit slow compared to the instant readings that you get with the Guardian, it will do until I get my Guardian sorted.
I also have a Bluelab truncheon, but that seems to be about EC1 lower than it should be.... WTF.... these can't be recalibrated, so I'm stuck on that one. Luckily I keep a spreadsheet of all my grows, and I've listed the amounts of each additive I've given with each feed, and the resulting EC's, so I can always refer to that if needed.
I've recently been advised that I should have started in small pots and potted up a few times before using the 25L airpots..... Rookie Mistake number 1 then, eh?
I would have a go at potting down (?) into smaller pots - I have some 5L airpots somewhere. but no more Coco..... I dont think I'll do a very good job using the Coco that I already have in to 20L pots as it's wet and won't be easy to handle.
Plus there's no grow shops out here, and delivery will take 10-14 days, by which they'll hopefully be a bit more rooted, and I don't wanna run the risk of damaging the roots while messing around repotting them.
I dunno why, but I feel a bit nervous about this one..... the light leaky tent bothers me, and I don't want a bunch of hermies. That's why I waited on the Dinafems, or else I would have done some old Seedsman Fems that I bought 4 years ago... I need Dutch Passion and Dinafem stability to make up for any cock ups!
And with cock ups in mind, I find myself careering towards Rookie Mistake number 2..... the lights are on 24/0 while the seedlings hatched.... and yesterday, they all popped up. The PAKs were both 48 hours from sowing and the Gorilla came next at around 60 hours closely followed by the Des Frans.
100% succesful germination technique maintained!
But...... I should really switch the lights down to 18/6. Old habits die hard.
Or.... can I keep the lights on 24/0 for another 2-3 weeks to get them going?
My Autos never had a problem filling out the 25L airpots, but the lights were on 24/0.... I could treat these Fems like Autos in veg and do the same. I've vaguely heard of people starting 24/0 and dropping an hour or 2 of light every week, so week 2 is 22/2, week 3 is 20/4 etc....
Anothe old habit of mine is not to do too much with them during veg, but I suppose I can tinker around with these Fems and do some topping and training while in veg without stressing them out like Autos?
Hers's my tiny new Babies, in their fucking enormous cots.... hope they fill out quick!
Have a great weekend!
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