Small Tent, Perpetual Monthly Harvest, Auto-Flower Grow Journal (canna, coco, LED)

[Royal Nugs]

Congrats on germination.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Update time Both seeds popped over the weekend which was a relief.

1-26-17 I removed the half plastic bottles I was using for humidity domes. I misted a little water over the surface.

1-27-17 Both seeds popped. Sprayed with water again.

1-28-17 I'm calling this Day 1, Saturday. Seedlings are out in full. The Mystic seems to be stretching a bit so I moved the P300 (veg switch on only) down to 26" above the canopy. I watered a little around the rim of the solo cups. I misted in addition to watering the rim of the solo cup.

1-29-17 Day 2. I set up a light and took some pics without the LED on. Misted lightly. Added water to run-off containers to increase humidity.

1-30-17 Day 3. With the light moved down and a warmer, dryer, weekend the solo cups were pretty dry. I watered the outer rim of the solo cups thoroughly. The idea behind watering around the rim is to encourage the roots to seek out the water a bit.

Across this period I've been dialing in my Titan fan controller. I've moved the sensitivity down to +/- 2 degrees and tweaked the target temperatures. Conditions are pretty easy right now here in socal, we had a dry warm sunny weekend. I walked on the beach in a tee-shirt So far the Titan has helped keep the temps in an 8-10 degree swing. Nighttime lows have been around 64, daytime up to 81, but overall 75 is the typical temperature. I did notice my humidity got pretty low, down to 39%. To address this I poured a cup or so of water into the containers beneath my plants (plants are raised up on shelf organizer frames from Amazon). This, plus the watering helped raise the humidity back up to 50% 'ish which is fine for me. These SoCal plants need to get used to dry conditions, it's a desert out here. The environmental challenge will come later in the grow as it warms up and I begin to struggle to keep temps down.

The Bubbleicious doesn't seem as vigorous as the Blue Mystic but it's very early days so we'll see. I'll probably mist for a few days then do a very light feeding the next time the media feels dry.

Below are the pics, Bubble first, then Mystic. Then a pic of my feeding schedule and the run-off tubs I add water to to raise humidity in my tent

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Bubblicious auto , first days:

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Blue Mystic auto, first days:

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Canna coco, light feeding schedule, pinned to the wall by my water filter and nutes station.

The 99c store tubs and pantry organizer frames I use to support my plants. I can raise humidity by just putting a cup or so of water in the tubs before lights on.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

FYI the feed schedule is from the Canna website: http://www.cannagardening.com/growguide
Set to standard water, 1 gallon container, light feeding.

[Weed Pharma]

Very nice start to an auto perpetual garden.
I began mine on Sunday with 1 plant and will dial in 1-2 plants every 25 days or so.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Thanks Weed Pharma Are you going to use both tents for autos now or keep doing some photo periods? What strain did you plant Sunday?

[Weed Pharma]

Yes, if all goes as planned (it never does). I will start 2 plants in the small tent and then rotate every 25 days-into the larger tent- which will hold 4 plants.
So every 3 weeks or so- I will have 2 plants ready for harvest.
I started with 1 purple ryder auto- as I need a small plant to begin with- logistics to dial out photo's and dial in auto's along with travel plans and timing!

[Tika]

Congratulations! Excellent thought with pantry shelves! Do the tubs of water raise your humidity significantly?
ive started my Canna coco with the medium feed chart...I copied yours and may use it instead of mine. Thank you for posting it.
enjoy! Nice work

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Hi Tika

My humidity was down to 39% and adding some water to the tubs at the start of lights on raised it to 50%. That's only 2 cups of water max per container. The effect may be less for a larger tent I guess.

This is the light feeding schedule from Canna and I tend to go light on it too.

[Tika]

Thanks BTB. I have found 3 Canna coco schedules. I am only 2 formal feeds into it (on the medium one) but may go lighter via yours. I am transplanting 8 girls today with just pH6 water. It's on my thread /journal ( tonight) if you are interested. (Ha! My tonight California time . )

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Well here we are at the end of week 1. I've been pretty happy so far, both seeds doing well although the Mystic seems more robust for now.

1-28-17 DAY 1 Seeds broke surface on 27th but leaves were out and the plants looking up today so that's why I'm calling it day 1. I watered around the edge of the solo cup with plain Ph'd water. I moved the light down to 26" from the canopy (still only running the veg switch on the P300). Temps ran from 64 low to 77 high.

1-29-17 DAY 2 Misted with plain Ph'd water. My humidity dropped to 39% so I added a few cups of water to the run-off containers beneath the plants. This helped raise the humidity up to 50% 'ish which should work. My temps were 64 low but 81 high so I tweaked the fan controller day temp down a little.

1-30-17 DAY 3 The media was dried out so I did another light watering around the rim of the solo cup. I try to molly coddle the girls in these first few days, check them regularly and anything I do I do in moderation. For example, I used maybe 1/2 a cup of water for "watering" both solo cup rims on this day. 72 low 77 high, so I tweaked my night temp down on the controller.

[insert patience here]

2-2-17 DAY 6 First feed today. I did about 1/2 what the Canna light schedule suggests, so 2.5ml A+B 5ml Rhizo 5ml of Cannazym. I Ph'd to 5.9. The Mystic seems to have stretched a little and both plants seem happy so I moved the light down to 22" from the canopy. 73 low 77 high, 49%/58% high and low humidity for day. I feel like the fan controller is dialed in for now but as I've said the challenges will come when it warms up here again.

2-4-17 DAY 8 All looks good. 72/77 temps 51%/66% humidity.

Here are today's pics, as you can see the Mystic is really going well and the Bubble, though smaller, still looks good. New growth peeking through, already a second set of leaves

The stain on the front leaf of the Bubble is just from some stray drops of the nute solution.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

One of the things I'm going to try and dial in with this grow is how the Canna nutrient guide stages map onto an auto grow.

Canna feed schedules have 7 stages and their timings seems designed for photo period grows with 1-2 month veg and 2+ month flower. Stages are:

Start/Rooting (3-5 days)
Vegetative I (0-3 weeks) -- plant develops
Vegetative II (2-4 weeks) -- veg stagnation to early flower
Generative I (2-3 weeks) -- flowering stretch and fruit growth
Generative II (1 week) -- flower breadth
Generative III (2-3 weeks) -- flower weight
Generative IV (1-2 weeks) -- flower ripening

The trick of the whole system seems to be timing the one week that you add the potent canna P/K booster in the generative II stage.

My guesstimate benchmark for the 6-9 weeks of the auto grow is:

Start/Rooting (week 1)
Vegetative I (week 2) -- plant develops
Vegetative II (week 3 & 4) -- veg stagnation to early flower
Generative I (week 5 & 6) -- flowering stretch and fruit growth
Generative II (week 7 ) -- flower breadth
Generative III (week 8) -- flower weight
Generative IV (week 9) -- flower ripening

How does that sound to those of you more familiar with auto grows and/or canna coco nute schedules?

[Beach_Town_Brit]

I hope one of the identifying features of this grow is that it is space constrained. I don't have a spare room to dedicate to my grow, or a garage or shed. My girlfriend, our small dog, and I live in a rented 2 bed 1000 sq' townhouse so space is a bit limited (not complaining at all we love our space and being able to walk to the beach). The grow happens in our 2x4x9 gorilla tent in the corner of the spare bedroom but it also takes over a small corner of the landing at the top of the stairs. As you can see below I'm nowhere near as neat as Tika

I guess I can say the entire footprint of my grow is <10 square feet

A couple more details below too.
Here are the nutes from the first feed. I use two 10ml glass pipettes for my A+B, and some small syringes for the other elements of the nute regime. I also use a measuring shot glass and a set of kitchen measuring spoons.
Here is my Hanna Ph meter. The sensor went off slope and wouldn't calibrate after about 5-6 months use but Hanna sent me a new electrode and it works fine again now.

[Tika]

Very nice BTB. Your babies are so SWEET! Every thing in it's place LOL! Love it!

[Thumbless Bastard]

Nice start on those plants! I have grown Nirvana's Bubblelicious photo and it was very fruity smelling with a great stoney high, as I recall. We all make do with what we got and it looks like you are managing well.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

I look forward to it.
We did a bubbleicious outside, but late in the year so the yield was atrocious. That should be cured now, maybe I'll try some this weekend if I go to my mate's house where we do some outdoor growing.

[Beach_Town_Brit]

And the weeks of patience begin : )

Got some new additions for my tent this past week thanks to the taxman.

I got a Holmes HTF3110A-WM 31-Inch Oscillating Tower Fan. The idea behind the tower fan is that it has a small footprint and it provides oscillating air movement vertically which also suits the small tent.

On an impulse I also got the new 2nd gen full spectrum Roleandro 300w. This sits beside my P300 and will basically serve 1 plant where my P300 serves two. I'll also mount my DormGrow 90W red flowering LED alongside the P300 to boost the flowering plants beneath that. As you can see in the pic below the Roleandro unit is about half the size of the P300.

This is all in theory right now as I don't have my month-apart-autos schedule going fully yet. I'll start a third plant under the Roleandro in a couple of weeks.

[Tika]

Very freah! Are you enjoying your leds?

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Love my p300 ... haven't had a chance to try out the new light. Interesting though ... full spectrum, 5w LEDs with double lenses. I'll a start a new auto under the new light in a couple of weeks

[bobsakamoto]

BTB, i have one of the Roleadro COBs and i liked it so much (and by i i mean my seedlings ) that i bought another one cuz they're only $100 on the big bookseller right now... i'm really looking forward to seeing what the adding both can do together with my viparspectra 300....

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Good growth on both plants this week, the Mystic is just a bit taller than the bubble.

2-5-17 DAY 9 Watered with some of the same weak nute solution. Stored in a light-tight container the Ph had slipped up to 6.2 but I left it as is. 50% / 64% 68/77

2-7-17 DAY 11 Watered with the last of the weak nute solution. 52% / 68% 70/81

2-9-17 DAY 13 Plants leaves have grown past the edges of the embedded solo cups and I have 3 nodes worth of growth so I went ahead and cut out the solo cups. Later that evening I watered to runoff with plain 5.7 Ph water. The run-off was pretty consistent, with the Bubble's run-off slipping to 5.6.

2-11-17 DAY 15 Topped the Mystic after the 3rd node. Not sure I did a great job of it, looks like this is the year I finally get reading glasses! Pots still heavy from watering. 58%/79% 70/77. Atypically, it's been humid here so I opened my tent to try and reduce the humidity a bit but the ambient humidity was up there so it didn't do much.


Don't think I'm going to top the Bubble this time. I'll do LST on them both in the coming weeks but as this is my first time growing autos I'm interested to see how a non-topped auto goes. I imagine I'll get into the proper nute schedule this coming week.