My first post and my first grow!

[Farmall]

If you plan on defoliation, wait about 1 week into your flower switch. These plants are quite beautiful but also very bushy. Unless you can absolutely insure you're going to be able to spread the branches apart wide enough to allow good light to reach the center core, you’ll likely need to defoliate. As for waiting on water change, I’ve gone 10-11 days for a similar reason, but I called it laziness, had to carry 35 gallons upstairs...when you defoliate, be prepared to do it again after 3 more weeks... it won’t even look like you did it

‘’your plants will show any great immediacy in need for a water change.... you’ve gotten this far nicely so trying not to stress them now would be a gooder thing. I’d say just watch....it depends on the residual chemistry in your buckets

[Farmall]

Just re-read the GWE tutorail on defoliation a few times.... Then it sinks in...(for me 4 times)

[NickyChicks]

Lol yeah I'm sure I've read it a dozen times and I'll probably read it another dozen but nothing beats experience!

[DingusKhan]

I've personally let it go 2 weeks for smaller plants, up to about a foot high bush, in a 7.5 gallon tote bin. They started to look a little less robust, and had drunk down about a third of the tote, by then.

[SoOrbudgal]

Weed Bible sits near my comp. LOL

[NickyChicks]

This girl is getting a new home. It's one of the two northern lights I have going and unlike the other one, which is probably the bushiest of the bunch, it has been slow to grow. I think the space it's taking up is more valuable then what it will yield. Luckily, I have a friend who can take her. Slow to grow, but overall a healthy plant and I'm glad I don't have to kill it!

[NickyChicks]

Today will be the first day of 12/12. I moved the NL plant out of the tent that was supposed to get rehomed. Looks like that fell through so I'll have to chop it. At least I have more room now for the other girls to grow.

Last night I did a water change and I did my first defoliation session. I thought topping was nerve racking, ha, defoliating takes the cake. Hoping I didn't go overboard and that they all recover nicely.

[Obi-Wan]

Your plants look great. IMO you didn’t go overboard with the defoliation, a little heavier than most first timers but you left plenty of leaves up top to keep pushing growth. Now that you’ve flipped to 12/12 you’ll want to wait 3 weeks before you do that kind of defoliation again. A few leaves hear and there are fine to remove.

[NickyChicks]

Thanks Obi-Wan , your plants look great so I definitely appreciate your input. When I did it last night it was pretty late and the plants looked kinda sad and tired especially after I took all those leaves. It was nice to wake up to see them so happy and perky this morning. I hope in a week they look nice and full like your plants are looking today

[NickyChicks]

In 5 mins lights are about to shut off for their first 12 hours of darkness. I have my tent completely closed, all zippers zipped, all Velcro flaps are flipped shut, pull strings pulled tight. The vacuum on the inside of the tent pulled the sides in so much it made me nervous it would collapse my tent, seriously. I open two of the circular openings on the bottom and stuck a few feet of 6" vent hose in each. I cut some small circle shaped filters from some carbon filters I have for my air purifier. I stacked a couple in the end to block light from going in and it definitely seemed to help alleviate some of the strain on the tent. Anyone else have this issue? My fan is 440 cfm but I have it turned down all the way low.

[NickyChicks]

Its almost been a full week since I did my first defoliation and I think these girls filled out nice. The green crack that sits dead center of the tent, right under the light is definitely thriving the most. Kinda makes me wish I had a different light setup to deliver a more even spread of light, maybe 2 400w lights instead of a single 600w. It would be neat to have the light mounted on an arm light the dentist has to move the light to different areas of the tent. I realize I have an overfilled tent and that if I had half the amount of plants I could roll them around on dollys but just a thought I had. I've been considering getting LEDs but I really haven't done any research. Anyhow, that's for another day.
Later today I'll do a water change, first week of flowering nutes to be added. In addition to GH trio, I'm going to start Liquid KoolBloom, Floralicious Plus and Epsom salt. I've been using the Trio at 1/2 strength and I'll do the same with the supplements. Sometime before next weekend, I will change the MH out for the HPS. I'm guessing when I do that I'll really start to see the stretch, right now the plants have filled out since I switched to 12/12 but haven't gained much height the first week, maybe an inch, two max.
Should I do any light defoliating over the next few weeks? If so does it matter which leaves I take? Thanks everyone, Happy Sunday!

The second pic is the GC directly under the light, the third pic is another GC that's to the right of the one in the center. You can really see a difference in how they're filling in/out lol.

[dphipps1020]

Just a thought to help "move" your light, rotate the plants themselves. Since the buckets and lids are round, you can rotate 1/4 or half turn to get light to different parts of the plant. Just a thought but that's what I usually do to help get light to every side. I even switch places every once in a while so each one ends up in a different spot.

[NickyChicks]

dphipps1020 yeah I've been rotating the lids every now and then. I would totally swap the positions of the bucket but i don't want to make a birds best of the air hoses and it's so damn tight inside the tent, it's a recipe for disaster. Surely a plant or myself would get injured in the process. I was more so referring to benefit of being directing below the light. Really was just having a stoner thought lol. Obviously the strength of the light is much stronger directly underneath than to the sides, using a lumen meter you can see a clear difference. The footprint of my light is 4x4ft but realistically the most effective footprint is more like 2x2. I'm guessing a con of an HID setup or my setup in particular. That's why I want to look into other options, looking to effectively and efficiently light my tent. Really interested in LED, just having a hard time understanding what's what.

[dphipps1020]

LEDs are definitely different, with pros and cons as well of course. I like them but I feel like I should get better ones cause I don't feel like mine put out what I want. Guess there's pros and cons for everything though right.

[Farmall]

NickyChicks I’d suggest at the 3rd week of flower. You’ll know which budsites are doing the best and can lollipop the rest. I will say...you do have a well filled space and it’s going to get really tight in there... nice grow. Keep it as productive as you can

[NickyChicks]

Thanks Farmall , it's a tight squeeze for sure. Just trying to avoid any unnecessary growth and keep them all tame. My next grow I plan to only have 4 maybe 5 plants. When selecting leaves to cut, I will be sure to look for leaves only worthy of fanning royalty.

[Farmall]

NickyChicks What’s funny is I think we all do the same thing....it’s when they’re successful plants that it becomes unruly. On the other hand, I stuffed over 3.5 dried and cured pounds into bottles that crop

[NickyChicks]

3.5lbs sounds like quite a successful harvest! Hard work pays off

[NickyChicks]

Not related to my first grow.... But I'm excited. My seedsman order was delivered today with seeds for my second grow which will be autos! I think I picked some tasty strains. Also, super happy about fast shipping from seedsman. I ordered them in Friday Feb 7 and they came today, less than 2 weeks is good in my book.

[SoOrbudgal]

You sure got some good strains it looks like. Boy i'm going to do a all auto run after this photo tent gets done. And when I look at that photo from above the canopy holy bushes. Makes me want to help with the leaf stripping LOL. Your doing great.

[NickyChicks]

I may do all autos next grow but im considering running 2-3 autos and 2 photos, flip the photos once I harvest the autos. I still have some time to think about it. As for my plants, or my little forest as I call it... Thank you 😊 , the leaves are overwhelming sometimes. It's amazing how fast the plants grow. I'm doing my best to tuck them away and not pick too many unless they're really big . Looking forward to defoliating again lol!

[dphipps1020]

They're looking good, and nice selection. I know you probably won't be able to with the autos but maybe you can get some good size plants this time around. This could basically be almost considered a test run I think. Speaking of unruly plants, here's some pictures of mine. The 4 in the bigger setup may have to be separated soon so they don't get root bound. The one by itself has gotten pretty out of control. It can almost fill a 4x4' space already and is in desperate need of a trim. And she's drinking up all the water fast!

[NickyChicks]

That's quite the setup you got there inside that tote! Yeah this run is could be considered a test run, got my feet wet, learned a bunch of the basics. I'm hoping to have a decent yield from these girls, only time will tell. What strain is the larger plant in the pics?

[dphipps1020]

Thanks. It's a pretty simple setup really, some PVC a little glue and a water pump. Drilled the holes for my water to spray the net pots cause the misters clogged up too easily. By the way, no air stones in either setup. I know most of you hydro growers are like wtf, but yeah there's no air going in the water. I'm also out of CalMag right now so it's just the FF Flora trio and some Hydroguard in the water. The big blue ones are set up the same except they're connected so it recirculates. I didn't think that one all the way through cause with the fan that setup fills up my entire 4x4, not much room to move the girls around. Works a little better in the big one I think. The strain on 4 of the 5 (including the big one) hydro is Str8 Lemonade, the other is Blueberry Headband. The 4 were clones taken from a plant in flower right now. They would all be bigger except I had a mishap with my fan, it fell on them and topped a few of them. Salvaged what I could, resilient little buggers, and they've been fine since.

[NickyChicks]

Start of week 3 flowering. Lots of good things happening; pistils are popping, the smell is intensifying, and they are stretching! Last week only one of my solo cup girls was barely showing pistils, now all the girls in the tent are showing a bunch.
Yesterday I took quite a few leaves, I have been trying my best to tuck and bend as they would get in the way but it was too out of control. The leaves were sweating onto each other and rh was definitely on the rise in the tent. Looking forward to a nice defoliation session next week. It's cool to see the differences between strains and how their leaves grow. The chocolate Kush grows long lanky stemmed leaves while the northern lights, which sits right next to it, grows very bushy with stocky leaves. The green crack and the white widow look similar but different than the NL and CK.
I'm still amazed at how fast they grow, I've been using the zipper on the side of the tent as a visual measure of vertical growth. It's one thing to read it with the tape measure (they're about 15inches tall) but I like unzipping the side of the tent and seeing the difference.

[NickyChicks]

Just added a temperature controlled fan controller. Honestly don't know why I didn't invest in this earlier in the grow. RH was creeping up pretty high (almost 70%), I had the exhaust fan venting into my basement rather than out the window. I started venting it out the window which was great because RH dropped significantly now it sits between 33-41%. Problem with that is temperature dropped and was only getting to be 67°F and that with my fan on the lowest setting. I don't think I'll be having issues anymore with the controller. I'll be updating again tomorrow, big haircut day.

[NickyChicks]

Ha, maybe I spoke too soon. I think this controller is going to take some fine tuning. I didn't think humidity would rise so much so quickly, if I open the tent it's fine but once it's closed up, no good. For now I'm just going plug the exhaust fan back into the wall and mess with the controller tomorrow

[NickyChicks]

Alright it's been 3 weeks since the switch and today I gave the girls a good defolation. Again, I hope I didn't take too much. Pictures look like shit because of the light and really don't ever do the plants justice IMO, but it looks like I will be getting much more light to the budsites. Now hopefully the buds will really start to fill in and fatten.

Normally lights out at 7 but I ended up taking until almost 8, I ended up hitting the switch on the timer to keep the light on. I set the timer to turn lights on at 8am tomorrow so the girls get a full 12 of darkness. I'll switch it back to 7-7 tomorrow. Now will that extra hour of light today or the loss of 1 hour of light tomorrow be an issue?

[Farmall]

NickyChicks no doubt, but wet is easier 😄 (for Me). BUT, I am now interested in what you think...so when you get there, please remember FARMALL, FARMALL,FARMALL,FARMALL,FARMALL....👍

[NickyChicks]

Farmall you'll be first to know!

[Farmall]

We have that same sofa cover in blue...! And for trimming...if you really find dry is better, maybe I missed something. But that real ‘boutique” style trim after the Fiskars, I use a fine point sheers to go deeper into a good bud and dry doesn’t seem to do as well....thanks!!

[NickyChicks]

Geez, well I've been in denial for a few weeks because I thought it might have been pH fluctuations but I'm pretty sure I have pests. The leaf that looks eaten is what I had been seeing but it was a much more uniformed pattern right in the middle of the ribs. I'm not really seeing that anymore. However the leaf with the small little marks and glossy mark looks like thrip damage to me. Also when defoliating I found 2 of these things on the leaf stems this is the third. What is going on here? Probably going to make a separate post too

[SoOrbudgal]

Dang well you caught it that's good. Are they just in that one plant and branch so far?

[NickyChicks]

The eaten looking leaves are on a multiple plants but not all over just a couple leaves and I only found 2 leaves on one plant that had the small brown spots and the glossy looking mark. The little things on the leaf stems were on 2 separate plants one on each side of the tent. 😥

What could I do to resolve this problem? I don't want to damage or ruin my little baby buds that are forming so nicely.

[NickyChicks]

Roughly 36hrs since I defoliated. The white widow is the shining star right now.

[NickyChicks]

Here we are 4 weeks full weeks into 12/12, all the girls are pushing out flowers. I can definitely see a noticable development of trichomes and it's a beautiful thing. The green crack in the center of my tent had been the most vigorous growing during veg but it always seemed a little lighter in color. Now that it's been a few weeks into flower, the light green color is much more noticeable, whereas all of the other plants are a nice color of green. Also, that plant drank a considerably larger amount of water this past week than all of the others. The plant looks healthy just light green. I just finished doing the water change and I added 3/4 dose rather than 1/2 dose of Floralicious plus and liquid Kool bloom. Not sure if that's the right move but I really couldn't find any definitive answer on the interwebs. My thinking was that based off of how explosive it grew during veg, and now seeing how much water its drinking that it could possibly be asking for more nutrients. Other than that, my little flowers look nice. It's so weird how the chocolate kush looks nothing like an indica, it looks more like a sativa more so than the green crack and white widow. I'll know when I smoke it in a couple months lol.

[LurkingInTheGrass]

I would agree with your analysis (she looks hungry)


GREAT LOOKING TENT!!

[NickyChicks]

LurkingInTheGrass thanks!! Hoping for a bountiful harvest when the time comes.

I'll give her a few days and see if she responds to the upped nutes. If I don't see a change I should be able to add a full gallon in 3-4 days and I'll go full strength, she what she says then.