"The Runt"

[cyberquest]

this is runt, she started life with four little sisters, runt was a ugly duckling that got ignored cause she was a slow starter. her four sisters got watered often, too often, with a fatal mixture of some fine dime store MG's finest did that make me pay more attention to runt, nope, i was mad i burnt the good ones, so she felt the pain too. two months old and a wopping two inches in height, starving for light in my bedroom window with mid 50's temps.
its first introdution to light was a donor light from a freinds recently de-ceased eguna (spelling?) and 2' flouro tube and a 250w incandesent HEAT lamp placed in the living room closet and the flouro about 1ft away, and the heat lamp 7ft away from her top branch. two days in and she reached for the sky! two full vertical inches in two days, WOW, shes got life in her. the research began and i found this wonderful place, a little reading on CFL's and up to the upstairs closet she went.

here are the first recorded pics of runt taken from my dads gift, a new digital

 

[cyberquest]

1 day under CFL's

 

[cyberquest]

day 3 under CFL, GO RUNT!

 

[cyberquest]

under great guidence from members of this site we decided that runt had earned our respects, so it was time to show her some. LETS ROCK!

first she needs a new home, second she needs some real LIGHT!

 

[cyberquest]

now this is a light worthy of sheding light on my little buddie "runt".

light is awsome, plugs right into the power strip, no electrician needed, just common sense

 

[cyberquest]

here she is after ONLY 1 DAY in the new 400w HPS closet, THIS LIGHT ROCKS!!

 

[cyberquest]

a new addition is a rescued plant from my sisters house, she was in need of some TLC, so lets let runt give her some inspiration. and we got two seedlings going that will grow strong in "runts" house.

 

[cyberquest]

calling "runt" a she is a little premature since her sex has yet to be determened, but its all about positive carma.

we havent got a name for the new one yet, one good joint and it will come to me....lol.

what do you guys think? these are all bagseed plants, we got a crap load of them so we will test our wings with the ones we have before destroying some purple sticky punch

 

[kbkiller9]

It looks to me mayn that you might be over watering your plant. It seems really droopy in every picture. Im not 100% sure on that but it looks like that to me. Nice setup though. Good luck with the grow!

 

[cyberquest]

GO RUNT. look what runt looked like this morning, looks like her soil is finally drying out a little and shes starting to stand back up, she such a fighter!

i finally got some good distilled water for her and going to start with a small dose of nutes cause once she gets back to full health we will flower her cause i am dying to know if shes a girl.

i think i will give her just a day or so more to finish drying her soil then give her a nice fresh drink of some good water.

 

[cyberquest]

also a quick check to the seeds that were placed in tupperware soaked in papertowels, and placed on the computer monitor (nice and warm up there) we have 4 new sprouts, these were soiled and placed in the grow room asap. welcome to the club ladies!
also you can see our FINE selection of bagseed "WTF" mix we have collected over the past year or so, we will find the femes hiding in this bunch before ordering some good ones.

 

[longtimeuser]

what up cybernut,had to sign up

 

[longtimeuser]

getin any more sprouts

 

[cyberquest]

we have a total of 8 new sprouts, all badseeds, all just a wet paper towel in a tupperware bowl placed on a monitor to germinate. i added about 20 seeds in the germination bowl today, since we have a much stronger flowering light we might try to veg them till first alt. nodes and send them straight to flower.

we tried some differen methods after the germination of the seeds. we had four go into SOIL, three went into (american seed) peet pellets, and one went into a JIFFY-7 peet pellet. i heard they are slow at starting seedlings but they were $2 at wally world so i got them to put them up against the soil and off brand ones i found.

so far the soil took first (at breaking thru the soil) followed by the american seed peet pellets, the JIFFY-7 one has still to show it head. the soil one had poked thru this morning when i got up, the peet pellet was noticed when "runt" was moved to the cfl room for some modifications to the HPS room.

and we transplanted "runt" to a little larger pot today, its only a 3 1/2 gallon pot but i liked it better then the 5 gallon ones we have, soon as she adjusts to her new home and perks back up we are gonna flower her.

 

[cyberquest]

this was the improvement made to the closet tonight, we added a shelf. you can see in the previous pics its been sitting on top of a clothes basket so i got two 4 foot shelf strips ($1.59) and some hooks to go in them to hold the shelf ($1.25) and one peice of 4x2 pre cut 1/4 plywood ($5.99)
i hade to remove just a hair off it to account for the door frame and it fit like a glove, fresh coat of white and we now have a fully adjustable shelf. it can be lowered all the way down to the floor to allow for plant growth.

next is a $12 bathroom fan, a quick inspection discovered that in a craw space just about the closet is a fresh air vent that lets air into the craw space it couldnt be any better, the bathroom fan we are looking at will install in the ceiling and vent right out side with an existing vent unknoticed! and we might use this same area to pump in some nice fresh air too.

heat temps with the door shut in the closet are about 91 degrees, a little warm, with the door just cracked open to let in a small amount of air it stays about 80 degrees. so a small exhaust fan up top to let out heat, and maybe just a fresh air vent in the door will make it perfect temps.

here are a couple shots of the shelf, and the little plant from my sisters thats doing very well so far. i think we are gonna call her "april" after my sister.

 

[THE BROTHER'S GRUNT]

Everything is looking great but ya gotta get those temps down for sure. 91 degrees is way to hot for your babies. Need to get those temps down under 85 degrees.

 

[cyberquest]

thanks TBG, good too see a more experienced grower chime in and tell me i am not screwing things up too bad yes ventilation is my last step in completing the project, a 4" inline fan was ordered at the same time as my light, i didnt knotice it but the seller had 9 bad ratings for taking for ever to ship bought items great for me, got this hot *** light, and no fan to cool it off.

i have been just keeping the door cracked to let in air and it stays usually around 80 in there, and with the vicks vapor machine humidity is about 40% normally.

this morning when i got up at 7:30 temps were a blistering 100 degrees cause at night time i shut the door completly so its night time isnt disturbed. but at 7am the lights kick back on so it got a half hour of light time with the door shut and no ventilation.

since we rent, we cant just cut a whole in the door, we are gonna have to make a small hole in the ceiling for the exhaust fan to exit but i would rather it be a hole on the inside of a closet then the door itself, would be less noticable. so a trip to LOWES is in order to get the fan so that we dont have temp spike up like that on me again.

on a GOOD note, "runt" looks to have taken to the transplant well cause even with temps at 100 degrees this morning she was perked up and soaking up her daily rays.

 

[Mutt]

I would remove the vicks vaporizer. It produces heat abd steam..until you get the fan. That should help too. Also I get "cautious" about intoducing water vapor into a grow room. I'm paranoid of mold. In the winter the R/H goes down, but I've grown very successfully at even rates of 15-20%

 

[cyberquest]

UPDATE: on the newbie seed sprouting tests. as you can see in the pic below we have 5 new spouts that have popped up for some rays. we used three different methods to see which would work best. so far here is the count.

Regular MG seed starting soil = 3 sprouts ( out of 4)
American Seed peet pellets = 2 sprouts ( out of 3 )
JIFFY-7 peet pellets = 0 (out of 1)

so 5 of 8 have come thru the soil and 3 have yet to come up, this is only after two days underground, and they all germinated in two days as well so this is 4 days from seed to soil, to sprout. not bad!, for some bagseeds.

QUESTION: how long should i let them stay in the tupperware container once they break thru the soil??? should they be put under just the CFL's out of the box or leave them in there for a while until they root real good and get a couple inches of growth on them???

 

[cyberquest]

I would remove the vicks vaporizer. It produces heat abd steam..until you get the fan. That should help too. Also I get "cautious" about intoducing water vapor into a grow room. I'm paranoid of mold. In the winter the R/H goes down, but I've grown very successfully at even rates of 15-20%

thanks for the advice mutt, i just thought it was a little dry in there so i added that, humidy was in the 20% range and i thought i read that its borerline dry. it was a little cheaper then a room humidifier and because it only produces a very small amount of vapor i didnt think it would be a probelm. with it in there its never gone higher then 41%, it has a nice feature on the thermo that gives me the HIGHEST and LOWEST recorded temps and humidity of the day. as long as it doesnt get above 50% i wouldnt think i would need to worry about mold, BUT if any signs show of it the vicks vapor is outta there.

the fan will more then likely get installed today cause we dont want to see ANY more heat spikes like that. once the exhaust fan is installed we will see where we are sitting with the temp, its a fairly small closet and its a 70cfm squirrel fan so it should bring the heat out relativly fast given the small space. if its not enought they are only $12 so we could add a second one if needed.