Hello all! I have seen so many forum members get great results with their 315 LEC grow journals so I decided it was time to try this light out 
We decided to grow using the Sea of Green style with many smaller plants to try to maximize yields in the shortest amount of time. I was happy with the results I got with auto-flowering plants back in 2014 and I know the genetics have improved greatly since then. It's also hard to beat a 3-month harvest! So we decided to use auto-flowering strains as opposed to switching photoperiod plants to the flowering stage when they are 3-4 weeks old (which is typically how you would do a Sea of Green).
Autoflowering Strains:
Grow Space: 2'x4'x5' grow tent with a standard 6"x16" carbon filter and Can Max 6-inch 334 CPM exhaust fan to control heat and smell. We initially tried using a smaller 6"x8" carbon filter because it fit in the small tent much easier, but by week 3 the plants were already smelling enough that the smaller filter wasn't cutting it. We switched to the standard 6"x16" filter we typically use in the 600W tent and that's been working great. I sort of knew the 6"x8" carbon filter was too good to be true because it weighed only a few pounds compared to the regular carbon filter which is heavy. It didn't seem like it had very much carbon in it. We are using a temperature/humidity monitor with a probe that hangs into the tent, sort of similar to this one.
Growing Medium: Coco coir mix (70% Coco/30% Perlite) I bought it premixed, and one 50L bag was able to fill 8 x 2-gallon smart pots with enough coco left over to fill one or two more pots
Started germinating seeds on June 28 via this germination method. In fact, if you click that link you can actually see the process of these particular seeds getting germinated, as I just updated the tutorial to use their pictures We saw roots on most seeds by June 30, 2018 (pictured below). We initially wanted to grow 8 different strains, so we germinated two seeds each of eight strains, thinking that we could choose one seedling from each set. However, the Mephisto, Barney's Farm and Royal Queen seeds didn't germinate nearly as fast as the rest! They all cracked open, but none of them had shown their taproot by day 2, while every single other seed had germinated and was going strong.
We put all the seeds in Rapid Rooters on June 30, even the slow germinating ones. Here is what we saw on July 1, 2018, only a day after the germinated seeds were placed in Rapid Rooters.
The "good" ones were growing fast already! In fact, some of the seedlings were already getting too tall from lack of light, while the "duds" still hadn't shown their leaves. We opened the Rapid Rooters, and you could see the slow-germinating ones had very small taproots, and probably needed a few more days to finish germinating. We made the executive decision to abandon all the seeds by Mephisto, Barney's Farm and Royal Queen Seeds, and chose the eight sprouted seedlings we thought looked the best. We wanted all the plants to be fast-growing and at the same stage of life (auto-flowering plants are on a tight internal life schedule and they start flowering within 3 weeks of germination). And that's how we ended up with two unique strains and three sets of doubles instead of eight different strains.
Before inserting the seedlings, I watered the pots of coco coir so they'd be nice and moist all the way through. The pots are on trays that are on a slight incline, so runoff water always pools to the front. This makes it easy to use a wet vacuum to suck up runoff water.
I inserted the Rapid Rooters with the seedlings that we'd chosen
Three done, five more to go!
Here they are two days later on July 3, about to get watered with seedling-strength nutrients at 5.8 pH
This is just the first installment. I'm out of time now, but I have many more updates coming soon for you!
We decided to grow using the Sea of Green style with many smaller plants to try to maximize yields in the shortest amount of time. I was happy with the results I got with auto-flowering plants back in 2014 and I know the genetics have improved greatly since then. It's also hard to beat a 3-month harvest! So we decided to use auto-flowering strains as opposed to switching photoperiod plants to the flowering stage when they are 3-4 weeks old (which is typically how you would do a Sea of Green).Autoflowering Strains:
- 2 x Dutch Passion Ultimate Auto (UA)
- 2 x Sweet Seeds Black Jack Auto (BJ)
- 2 x Dinafem Sour Diesel Auto (SD)
- 1 x Dinafem Blue Critical Auto (BC)
- 1 x Dinafem Critical+ CBD (CBD)
Grow Space: 2'x4'x5' grow tent with a standard 6"x16" carbon filter and Can Max 6-inch 334 CPM exhaust fan to control heat and smell. We initially tried using a smaller 6"x8" carbon filter because it fit in the small tent much easier, but by week 3 the plants were already smelling enough that the smaller filter wasn't cutting it. We switched to the standard 6"x16" filter we typically use in the 600W tent and that's been working great. I sort of knew the 6"x8" carbon filter was too good to be true because it weighed only a few pounds compared to the regular carbon filter which is heavy. It didn't seem like it had very much carbon in it. We are using a temperature/humidity monitor with a probe that hangs into the tent, sort of similar to this one.
Growing Medium: Coco coir mix (70% Coco/30% Perlite) I bought it premixed, and one 50L bag was able to fill 8 x 2-gallon smart pots with enough coco left over to fill one or two more pots
Started germinating seeds on June 28 via this germination method. In fact, if you click that link you can actually see the process of these particular seeds getting germinated, as I just updated the tutorial to use their pictures
We saw roots on most seeds by June 30, 2018 (pictured below). We initially wanted to grow 8 different strains, so we germinated two seeds each of eight strains, thinking that we could choose one seedling from each set. However, the Mephisto, Barney's Farm and Royal Queen seeds didn't germinate nearly as fast as the rest! They all cracked open, but none of them had shown their taproot by day 2, while every single other seed had germinated and was going strong.We put all the seeds in Rapid Rooters on June 30, even the slow germinating ones. Here is what we saw on July 1, 2018, only a day after the germinated seeds were placed in Rapid Rooters.
The "good" ones were growing fast already! In fact, some of the seedlings were already getting too tall from lack of light, while the "duds" still hadn't shown their leaves. We opened the Rapid Rooters, and you could see the slow-germinating ones had very small taproots, and probably needed a few more days to finish germinating. We made the executive decision to abandon all the seeds by Mephisto, Barney's Farm and Royal Queen Seeds, and chose the eight sprouted seedlings we thought looked the best. We wanted all the plants to be fast-growing and at the same stage of life (auto-flowering plants are on a tight internal life schedule and they start flowering within 3 weeks of germination). And that's how we ended up with two unique strains and three sets of doubles instead of eight different strains.
Before inserting the seedlings, I watered the pots of coco coir so they'd be nice and moist all the way through. The pots are on trays that are on a slight incline, so runoff water always pools to the front. This makes it easy to use a wet vacuum to suck up runoff water.
I inserted the Rapid Rooters with the seedlings that we'd chosen
Three done, five more to go!
Here they are two days later on July 3, about to get watered with seedling-strength nutrients at 5.8 pH
This is just the first installment. I'm out of time now, but I have many more updates coming soon for you!
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