And another new guy.

[richkel]

Hi Folks, I'm just getting started but I'm pretty excited. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I built a 4' X 6' growing room, 600W HID, ceiling exhaust fan, oscillating fan, de-humidifier, etc. Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed my two Critical-Kush seeds sprout. Been 1-week, germinating in soilless mix...I hope! Rich

[Schmokin]

Hi Rich
Welcome aboard. Good luck with your grow. If you need any advice or have any questions you have come to the right place. I've heard that Critical Kush is a great strain. Will be very interested to see how it turns out for you.

[Blaze4daze]

Welcome Rich!

We wish you all the luck in the world with your grow. Feel free to ask if you need any info to help your plants, along the way.

[WPX_tacoman477]

Good luck with your grow! Hey, but don't just come here for help or knowledge! Keep us updated, put up some pics and let us know how everything goes, I'm curious to see how everything turns out(: good luck!!

[richkel]

Thanks for the encouragement folks. This will be a challenging "hobby" for me, I have the patience of a gnat...on caffeine. I'm a working fool on projects, but waiting for the plants to do their thing without tinkering will be tough. So far things haven't gone overly well. I planted the two Critical-Kush seeds directly in soilless mix without soaking, etc. (as some people recommend). After more than a week with no visible activity, I did a little careful excavating to see what was going on. (I thought I might have planted them too deep). One seed had a short root starting to show so I covered it up with a thin layer of mix. The other seed had no visible action and I re-covered it lightly. The next day seed #1 started to emerge and over a couple days had a nice spurt of growth. The third day a set of "true" leaves grew about 1/8" and promptly curled under. I read about a hundred messages about seedling leaves curling, and based on those posts I've narrowed it down to a few possibilities; too much water or too little water, too much light or too little light, too many nutes or too little nutes. Shrug. I'm going to go with too much water and nutes. Seed #2 was still dormant. I removed it and tried wet paper towels. It did split, but no real root showing. I planted it again but I don't have high hopes for that one. I dropped my last seed (White Widow) in water with a little peroxide. We'll see what it does. Next time I buy seeds I'll look for more idiot proof strains. ;-)

[WPX_tacoman477]

Well, from what it seems like to me.. You may have just got bad luck on your seeds.. If you feel like your watering them too much, let them dry out.. But for nutrients, don't add any nutrients for seedlings (unless you just feel adding some nutes such as root boosters [vitamine b] dont worry too much about npk nutrients) and if you do decide to use nutrients for seedlings/germination, use them sparingly.. All seeds, cannabis and every other kind.. Are built by mother nature to be able to provide the plant inside the seed with all the nutrients and hormones it will need for them to get their life's going.. The time that they usually run out of self made nutrients and start to rely on roots is when real leaves start showing, not the round cotyledons that appear first (that usually look like the shape of the inside of the seed) so you can't really under do nutrients in germination.. Under and over watering can kill the babies in no time, light can be harmful too, but you can't nessisarily under do the light at such a young age early, I wouldn't recomend not using lights, because they use the light as a guide to know which way they need to grow, but hid lights can easily over do it and burn their little weak immune systems up and dry out the very shallow roots in no time at all, try this.. Put the seeds in a dark thing (cup or whatever) of water.. I usually do 24 hours.. Usually try not to do anything more than 48.. Your goal is to get the seeds to crack open and show a little tail.. About 1/16-1/8" long (pretty small) just don't leave them in their too long.. Once you get a little bit of tail goin (main root) I think it's called the tap root? Correct me if I'm wrong.. But once you notice that small tip poking out, go ahead and put that in your dirt or soilless mix or Rockwool or whatever your doing and try using just a little small cfl bulb for this young age to get them goin.. I use a t5 HIgh output 2' single bulb for this stage and this gives them good enough light for the first 3 weeks or so before I introduce more.. Best part about fluorescent and cfl bulbs is that they don't get hot and this helps keep them from drying up in no time.. Best advice is to go on YouTube and watch some cannabis germination tutorials.. To be honest with you, this stage is the easiest one of them all ( for me at least) lol probably just because I've done it more than I've grown complete crops to the end.. Just keep trying mate, don't give up, let them babies do their thing! Lol gotta be patient! If you want to do what I used to do, I get a sack of the nasty shit that I can't stand to smoke, and I pick the seeds out and get about 50 seeds for the price of almost nothing (especially compared to some seed prices online of like $200 for 10 seeds) and this way you can practice germinating those instead of using your valuable seeds until you feel confident you got it down (: it'll all click soon, it just takes a little research and then a little practice.. And a little more research, and practice and you'll be growin gnarly sticky thc thick fat trichrome covered bud in no time! Post some pictures! Also, if your under watering them, than the best way to water them is to just keep the medium somewhat moist, not soaked.. And leave that alone for it to do it's thing and you shouldn't necessarily need to add more water unless you notice it starts drying out too much.. Invest in a couple dollar mistin bottle, if you don't have one laying around, and spray those babies a little bit (once they have their first leaves and wha not) and if those leaves are curled down from dryness or drooping around like a depressed emo kid hanging head low, than spritzing them, you'll notice them perk up in no time like school girls nipples seeing Channing tatum rip his shirt off. Haha

[richkel]

Thanks for the long reply WPX. I gave the baby a spritz of water and put the humidity dome (plastic sandwich bag) back on and the leaves un-curled a bit. I think I had it too close to the CFL for that tender age. You're right about persistence and practice. There is lots of diversity in how other growers do things and I guess you have to use that, along with experience and common sense to get good results. I'm enjoying the process.

[WPX_tacoman477]

Growing doesn't have to be complex and hard.. It's really easy actually, it's just that people believe that one way is better than another and sometimes just because that's the way they know how to grow and sometimes there's actual scientific proof to back some people up.. There is a ton of info out there, and I mean A TON!! When people see it and don't understand it because they haven't been growing for many years with lots of experience, it's confusing as hell! The new people to growing and everyone who first starts usually succeeds or gets frustrated and quits, I think because, well that info out there is all fine and dandy, it's just that it never tells you the objective of what the things they are doing is trying to achieve, like a lot of info I've seen tells you what to do step by step and expect people to just kinda know.. When they are new, they usually don't and that's why they turn to other growers for help! One example that actually took me a long ass time to catch onto was about nutrients with hydroponics.. I understood about how the ppms change and how the nutrients were mixed and what the numbers meant after researching and what not, but I never had anyone sit down and say that certian nutes were used at certain times.. I always thought that you add veg based nutes during veg, and bloom during flower and that simple.. But it took me a while to figure out that you use bud igniters during early flowering because they were designed to induce or convince the plants to go into budding.. And I kinda get the gist of it, but I don't understand all of the nutrients yet lol.. Just gotta do more research, but what I originally was gonna say, is that, well I knew that you wanted your ppm or EC readings to be the same as te day before as the resivour levels go down and what I didn't understand was the "why" part about it.. That the goal was to get the plants to consume a even level of water and nutrients.. It never clicked until someone said that to me and it was so obvious, but I just didnt think about it.. And I think a lot of people lack that "click".. The connection of what to do and why.. I'm still learning, but at the same time I really wanna help as many people as I can and teach what I do know so I can kinda help that because a lot of the info out there is damn good Info, it's just everyone isn't going to be able to start at an advanced level, people need to be taught the basics.. Learn how to crawl before you can walk, ya know? But I'm sure your gonna do fine with your grow.. You think you could upload some pics on here so everyone can see how they're doing?

[richkel]

Thanks again WPX for writing. Good insights on the difference between knowledge and understanding. I've increased my knowledge of growing weed allot since I decided to grow a few weeks ago, but like you said there's a ton of info out there to sort through, (and not get overwhelmed by) while waiting for the understanding to slowly seep in. Obviously I need more step-by-step help initially, but even that can only go so far. For instance, at least for seedlings it's seems important not to over water or under water. I've never used soilless mix before, and wet or dry water seems to run right through it, so I was having trouble gauging how wet it was. Then I read someone's suggestion to simply pick up the cup to see if it is light or heavy. Duh! Now I keep a cup of un-watered mix handy for reference. I don't have any contacts to get even crappy weed just for the seeds, so I'm hoping my expensive seeds do well. If not, there are cheaper seeds to buy and gain experience with. I'm already outfitting a separate veg room so I can experiment more. Anyway, good thing there are experienced growers like you willing to help. Any books you'd recommend?

[WPX_tacoman477]

I personally recomend looking for "the cannabis grow bible" by greg green. and there's more than one edition, so I recomend getting an older one and then a newer one (only if you can, don't over do your bank on too many lol) also you can find online copies of books like the " growing eliete marijuana" sponsored by this website and that would be a pretty good start.. And a word of advice before you pick it up, prepare your whole day ahead because you won't want to put it down lol.. They may be pretty big books when you look at them, but pages will fly by because of how Interesting it is, and I'm not an experienced grower lol I've only started one grow in soil and it was the bad kind (don't use miracle grow soil or any time released nutrient based soils alike) and they were nothin but dirt weed and by the time I successfully got them into the middle of the veg stage, with poor lighting, shitty environment, hard water, with a shit ton of bugs from outside since it was in the country in the kitchen of my friends house without a sealed room.. I ended up giving them to my friends lol.. When we started, I started doing research, lots and lots of research online, and then I ended up getting a book and meeting some other professional growers that are family friends and I got into it pretty intensely and I have all research and very little experience lol! I wanted to set up a hydro grow room at my friends, but they just live waay to far away and then not only that, they told too many people about it (don't tell anyone.. Even if you trust them, because you don't know if you can trust them 4 months from now when your plants are about to bloom) and also they live too far away for me to maintain the system because I just can't afford $50 extra gas a week on top of the gas I need to get to college.. And they got into it, but then they got lazy and quit researching and lost their interest, so now I'm all excited and done my research, I lack a place to grow and I can't grow at my house cause my mom just moved back in and my grandparents wouldn't like to find pot in my tiny closet lol.. So I'm just waiting and researching and helping anyone I can on here..

[Schmokin]

Seeds do not need any extra nutes. The paper towel or tissue paper method works with plain water. Then just plain soil, or if you're hydro, plain water until she gets going. I totally get the overwhelming urge to fiddle about, it's from a lack of patience. It's not a good idea with weed though. Mostly they like to be pretty much left alone.

[richkel]

pics as requested

Here's a couple pics of baby Maria, one week after breaking ground. Small? Sadly her twin sister Juanita failed to germinate

[Blaze4daze]

Looking good richkel

She looks well and will need to be transplanted in 10-14 days into a bigger container. Not alot you can do at this stage except make sure her soil stays moist and her container allows for drainage and make ready your plans for transplanting. Does this container have Drain holes?

[richkel]

Thanks B4D. I'm sure you know, the not much to do stages are the hard parts. ;-) Yes, holes in cup, grow medium and larger containers ready to go.

[WPX_tacoman477]

How's the grow comin along? They look alright? Update us some pics!