cardgenius’ 2 in 1 LED Grow Tent

[Lesso]

I think 1 gallon pots are fine for your space if you dont plan to veg for a super long time.

 

[cardgenius]

Right on. Was thinking another 3 weeks. Plan is to start LST/topping next week and then veg until they hit 12”. Then I’ll prune them up, get some clones, let them veg for another few days and put them in flower.

 

[Lesso]

Should be fine then. There are a few growers here that do 1 gallon pots and get great results.

 

[cardgenius]

Week 3.5 Update:

Got a little busy since the last update so this ones late!

I thought after the transplant that I’d have another week or two before needing to start feeding them but 2 deficiencies showed up a day or two after the transplant! Could it be that they exhausted the nutrients from the soil in the starter cups or that they’re just growing really fast and the added soil from the transplant wasnt enough? Not really sure but I tried to do some reading up on the issues.

One plant had yellowing start on the 2 lowest leaves, which Im familiar with it being a sign that the plant is hungry.

The other one not so much. I think I narrowed it down to being either heat stress or lack of Magnesium. It’s not at all hot in my tent with temps barely hitting 74°. The light is close though, at only 5” above the plant. But the heat it puts out is very minimal. So I’m leaning towards Magnesium. I had started the seedling off with RO water and then switched to tap after a few days. So I’m guessing my tap isn’t very high in Mag so I probably should have been adding some since the beginning. I am still confused as to why each has shown different problems instead of them both having the same, seeing that they are in the same tent getting the same light and water.

I have started feeding them the bottled nutes and cal/mag and for now, the yellowing has stopped. Haven’t noticed any more leafs doing the curling thing but I’ll be keeping a close watch.

Otherwise they are doing great and are now growing they’re 5th node!

After dealing with those 2 issues over the weekend, I let them grow for a few days and decided I’d LST and top them. Both plants are 6” tall so I figured it was a good time.

 

[Ganja_Greg]

I wouldnt worry about hermies from bagseed lol plants can pump out a seed without being hermies sometimes a grain of pollen can make a few seeds in one of the colas alittle stress can lens to this. Ive trimmed entire cannabis cup quality crops for work and you find a seed here and there in top shelf dispensary product. Ive actually found as little as one seed on a whole 5ft flowered plant. Keep up the good work! Lookin good

 

[cardgenius]

I wouldnt worry about hermies from bagseed lol plants can pump out a seed without being hermies sometimes a grain of pollen can make a few seeds in one of the colas alittle stress can lens to this. Ive trimmed entire cannabis cup quality crops for work and you find a seed here and there in top shelf dispensary product. Ive actually found as little as one seed on a whole 5ft flowered plant. Keep up the good work! Lookin good

Hey, thanks for the kind words! Yeah, I’m not too worried. I’ve saved up some quality bagseed so it’s worth it to get some experience with the freebies I’ve got. That said, I have been looking at some seed banks and plan to make an order soon. I’m intrigued by the auto flowers as they seem to be quick, easy and would fit in my tent quite well. So many strains to choose from though. I’d love to have 2 tents set up so I could mess with both photoperiod and autos at the same time.

 

[cardgenius]

Week 4 Update:

So I decided that I’m not going to clone these plants as I plan to buy some quality seeds from a seed bank. So with that, I took down the partition and shelf to make the tent as big as possible as I won’t need them until I do a reset. I then hung the big boy LED and fired it up. Damn is it bright compared to this little one I’ve been using! The old light was 30w and this one is around 230w from the wall so it’s a big improvement. The light is about 34” from the plants but I plan on lowering it a little each day or two until it’s about 24” above.

After turning it on, the temps shot up to 80° right away but after messing with fan placement and vent openings, I’ve got it to a steady 77°. My little humidifier is no longer cutting it though. Rh is 35ish and the reservoir needs to be refilled multiple times a day.

Plants are going strong after the LST and Topping. Lots of lower growth has formed with new top sites. I tied 1 branch down today and will have a few more to do in a couple days.

Now I just need to feed and do some more LST/Topping as the plant grows and at this rate I’ll be flipping them into flower in 2-3 weeks.

 

[Ganja_Greg]

Week 4 Update:

So I decided that I’m not going to clone these plants as I plan to buy some quality seeds from a seed bank. So with that, I took down the partition and shelf to make the tent as big as possible as I won’t need them until I do a reset. I then hung the big boy LED and fired it up. **** is it bright compared to this little one I’ve been using! The old light was 30w and this one is around 230w from the wall so it’s a big improvement. The light is about 34” from the plants but I plan on lowering it a little each day or two until it’s about 24” above.

After turning it on, the temps shot up to 80° right away but after messing with fan placement and vent openings, I’ve got it to a steady 77°. My little humidifier is no longer cutting it though. Rh is 35ish and the reservoir needs to be refilled multiple times a day.

Plants are going strong after the LST and Topping. Lots of lower growth has formed with new top sites. I tied 1 branch down today and will have a few more to do in a couple days.

Now I just need to feed and do some more LST/Topping as the plant grows and at this rate I’ll be flipping them into flower in 2-3 weeks.
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Lookin good! Cant go wrong with dutchpassion.com for seeds but theres a bunch of good ones!

 

[oldfogey8]

you should look into getting that inline fan(and some drier vent hoses). if there is any light that gets into your grow area, it will find its way into the tent thru the vent openings and delay flowering or worse yet, hermie your plants.

 

[cardgenius]

you should look into getting that inline fan(and some drier vent hoses). if there is any light that gets into your grow area, it will find its way into the tent thru the vent openings and delay flowering or worse yet, hermie your plants.

For sure! I’ve just been lazy and haven’t got around to ordering it. Should probably get on that since it’ll take a week or more to get here as I’m cheap and always go with the free shipping option on Amazon!

 

[cardgenius]

Week 5.5 Update:

Well, that escalated quickly.

Last week I decided to show my hand at how inexperienced I am at this growing cannabis thing! A few days after topping and LSTing both plants everything seemed to be going good until I decided to feed them some nutrients. Even though the plants didn’t show any real signs of needing food, I thought I’d be timing it right if I did, since they used up the food in the soil from the starter pots so quickly but I was wrong. About a day after feeding them I noticed right away that the tips were turning yellow and burning on both of the plants. One was very noticeable while the other not so much.

I did a plain watering a couple days later and then noticed quite a few of the bottom leaves turning yellow. I took this as a sign that they were still hungry and I just needed to dial back the nutes, so I used the same solution I had made days prior and just watered it down, about half, thinking that would be ok. The very next day things looked bad. The leaves that had turned yellow were crispy brown about half way down. Most of the plant had curled heavily and the larger leaves had a very dark green color. The new growth was very thin and twisted so I new something was going wrong and quickly.

After spending many hours reading and watching videos I think I know what I did wrong. I over fed the plants so much that it caused nutrient burn and eventually lockout. Rookie mistake I know but it still hurts the ego a bit. Was hoping for a clean grow with no issues but for a first timer that wishful thinking.

To fix the problem, everything said to do a flush. It said to run ph’d RO water at 3x your pot size. Collect the fist bit of runoff to test with a TDS meter to see if the PPMs are high for that particular size plant. If so do the flush until you get a PPM reading that’s inline with your plant size. So, I filtered 6 gallons of RO water, pH’d it to 6.5 and ran 3 gallons through each pot. I forgot to collect the initial run off to test but did get some after the first gallon. The TDS meter read 810ppm which I figured was high from the info I’d dug up and was most likely even higher at the beginning of the flush. The run off at the end of the flush was around 550ppm which I think is about right for plants that are 5 weeks old.

I did the flush yesterday and things are looking ok for now.

After flush

 

[cardgenius]

From here, I plan to just us ph’d tap water for a week and then do a super low ppm solution of nutrients to start feeding next week. Does that sound ok or should I start the low feeding sooner?

On a good note, each plant has sprouted a few more side branches from the LST and two new tops. One plant sprouted 3 tops from the topping and has got very bushy down low. Will do a light pruning once things are back on track and growing properly and maybe show some pre flowers!

 

[Lesso]

At least you had this problem in veg and not during flower. Youve done the right thing i think. Do the low ppm feeding sooner since youve flushed the soil. Watch for any deficiency. They look good other than the lock out. Twisty leaves can be a sign of too high concentrations of nutes or ph problems.

 

[cardgenius]

At least you had this problem in veg and not during flower. Youve done the right thing i think. Do the low ppm feeding sooner since youve flushed the soil. Watch for any deficiency. They look good other than the lock out. Twisty leaves can be a sign of too high concentrations of nutes or ph problems.

For sure. Watched a few YouTube videos of them doing exactly that and they ended up with some small yields from what they usually pull. I’ll mix up a low solution around 300ppm for the next watering and keep a close eye on them. Thanks for the input!

 

[cardgenius]

Watered the plants last night with the low solution and made sure to dump the run off. Looking nice and perky this morning. Also checked for pre flowers and have one confirmed female!

The other plant has some nubs sticking out but no pistols. Will check it each day until I can confirm what it is.

 

[Lesso]

Congrats on the female. Looks like its pulling through

 

[cardgenius]

Week 7.5 Update:

Plants have been coming along, both are confirmed females. They still haven’t returned to that nice lush green they once were but they are growing. One plant has shot out a lot of tops in the last couple weeks but just doesn’t look very nice. The other plant is starting took better and get back to the nice green color.

Sorry for the blurple pics

I’ve got my feeding to just once a week then tap water the rest. Water is always pH’d to 6.5. Ive been scared to over feed so I’ve been gradually ramping up the ppm’s in the solution. Started with 300ppm after the flush, then bumped it up to 450ppm and will go to 600ppm for the next feeding. I’m not sure if this is under feeding them and that’s why they haven’t got back to the green color or if they’re still recovering from the lockout.

I did finally get my inline fan and filter! Got it all hooked up over the weekend and love it. Temp is set to 77°. Installation was quick and easy!

The plants have been growing in a kind of lopsided way. You can see in the first pic how there’s a lot of open space in the front of the pot so I did another round of LST to get that spot filled in and to even out the canopy as that one side was getting a bit tall. Added the 24” LED to a corner to try and help out some of those lower branches. I’m hoping they start looking better soon as I don’t have much room left before I have to flip them to flower.

 

[cardgenius]

Been a while since the last update! This grow has been a challenge so far. Plants went through another battle with lockout shortly after the last update. I was only feeding once every 7 days and with a very low ppm solution yet they still would look like crap each week, dropping tons of leaves. I wasn’t sure if I had fried the roots, if the pH was off or what so I upgraded them to 3g pots with new soil and bought some calibration solution for the pH pen. I now double check the pen with the drop test that came with the pH up and down.

I haven’t fed them since before the transplant and am only giving them pH’d tap water until they show real signs of needing food. I’ve done a lot of reading on the Fox Farm Ocean Forrest soil and realize the big mistake I made early on. Ocean Forrest comes with enough nutrients to last most of if not all the way through the vegetive growth(4-6w). It’s my first time using this soil and I made the mistake of feeding them way too early on(second week) in the grow and then thinking nutrient lockout was nutrient deficiency and fed them some more. It’s been 2 weeks since the transplant and 10 days since I flipped them to flower. They’re just starting to show pistols and flower growth.

I’ve also realized that this tent is just too small to run a perpetual grow with decent sized plants and a filter inside the tent so I’m going to buy another light and a tent that’s around 3x3x6 to use just for flowering. I’ll then use this smaller tent to germinate seeds and veg the plants before they go into the flower tent. This way I can grow good sized plants with hopes good yields. So, for the time being I cleared a spot on a shelf in my closet that I’ll use to germinate and grow new seeds while these other plants flower. Will get that going in a few weeks after I buy some seeds online.

 

[cardgenius]

Day 30 of Flower

Plants seem to be doing good for all they’ve been through. Buds are growing and trichome production has really come on in the last few days. Not much funk coming from them yet but each has a unique smell if you rub your fingers on the stems. The plant on the left has a light and sweet smell while the other has a heavier, kinda piney smell. The plant on the left is definitely the bigger of the two with almost twice as many top sites.

With the other 2 plants being 30 days into flower I figured it was time to get the perpetual side of this thing going. I bought another 24” 30 watt full spectrum LED by Feit and some of the small usb powered fans by AC Infinity and set up it up in a small cubby in my closet. I’ll be using this to veg until I get a properly sized tent, around 3x3x7, and a new light. Once I do that I’ll use my current tent as a multi chamber vegging tent. I scored a couple Blue Dream seeds from a friend so I planted those along with 2 more seeds from the random bag o’ seeds.

I’m switching it up with these new ones and doing an organic grow with dry amendments from Dr. Earth and earthworm castings from VermisTerra. My medium is Tupur from Royal Gold. It’s a soil less mix of Coco Coir, perlite and “aged forrest materials” as they put it. I started the seedlings with just some earthworm casting mixed in. Once they are big enough to transplant I’ll amend the medium with the Dr. Earth and earthworm castings. I’ll re-amend the medium every 3-4 weeks and just water with pH’d tap water.

 

[Lesso]

Looks well thought out. Good looking plants.