First Outdoor grow!

[Astro84]

Hey all, First time grower here I rarely smoke i'm just not into it, I might smoke my own but honestly i'm just growing because I can and i'm curious about the nature of these plants, Just thought I'd share my experiences with you guys of my first real effort at a grow.

 

Firstly before I started growing I had basically very little knowledge about growing (Nutes, mediums, lighting conditions etc...) and the last time i tried to grow (about 7 years ago) i got 4 seeds from a mate and had no success with them, i followed a crappy method and i ended up killing them so i thought ah forget it...the process seemed complicated and I had literally no idea about what to do.

 

This time around I've been a whole lot luckier, I aquired about 200 seeds from a friend at Uni from his own grow. He was happy to donate them to me for nothing , I had no idea what seeds i had (I still have no idea )

 

I made a bad choice about planting the first few seeds in early August, and they grew so slow, one died, one was eaten when it was a few cm tall, They were all grown in pots with soil from the garden, and watered with tap water only.

 

These plants all grew differently:

 

Two of them are still in their pots and they're scrawny, they're basically only worth the learning experience and are not really any good, one has some half decent THC on the buds (not at all enough for anything worthwhile...maybe a joint or something)

 

One of the potted plants was a different strain to all of the rest, it had some fat leaves and was actually quite green and healthy to my surprise given that they were in the same soil type, the only difference was I had it in a different location in the garden under some filtered light from a little bush.

 

Two of the pot plants were transplanted into the ground basically hidden from plain sight but have a solid 5-6 hours of direct sunlight or more since summer is coming!

 

Here are some early pics of the first grow.

 

this was extremely slow considering some googling showed me some growers got their plants reletively large in the time i had my seedlings growing

3 weeks after first sprout:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week313080901.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week313080903.jpg

 

5 weeks in and after the two plants perished:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week5270809022days.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week5270809032days.jpg

 

6 weeks:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week630080901.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week630080902.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week630080903.jpg

 

Very slow but at the time I was excited seeing my green thumb at work.

 

By 8 weeks the plants decided grow up and stop acting like children!:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week807090901.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week807090902.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week807090903.jpg

[Astro84]

9 weeks:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week913090901.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week913090902.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_week913090903.jpg

 

 

This is that different strain I mentioned earlier about 11 & 1/2 weeks:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PA280022.jpg

 

and the same one today (week 17): I should mention that a few weeks ago I changed the soil to a recipe of garden soil, perlite, vermiculite, Yates Dynamic lifter - organic slow release fertiliser and a sprinkle of lime and the plant absolutely loves it!I will give show you my results comparison at the end of this post. I also trimmed off some bad leaves so it looks a little thinner down the bottom.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130020_1.jpg

 

The rest of the plants as of today(week 17 or 3 months!! ):

This is the scrawny one I mentioned before however it still seems to be growing a bit but very slowly, some little bud leaves are growing too. this is also the one that started flowering too early and has been for about a month now , The camera is only average, I can't get super close with it or it blurrs.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130022.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130023.jpg

 

Now the best ones I have are the two I transplanted into the ground after they had started to fill the pot, this was on the second grow...but i forget the dates.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130020.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130021.jpg

 

and this is today (2 weeks later)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PA280020.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PA280021.jpg

the second is a bit hard to see, i should have taken a better pic...they were both topped and they have grown nicely, the first one got attacked and lots of the leaves were chewed up but it's fine now, both plants have 6-8 stems that are about 50-60cm high

 

 

The good news...They're ALL girls! I have never had such beginners luck before

 

 

Now I started a second grow about a month ago, this time was watering with seasol to stimulate the roots...another experiment to compare with the previous plants. I didn't take and early pics but i started them out in Jiffy pellets, transplanted into pots and again with regular garden soil and like the pics in week 6 i made little greenhouse cages with mesh wire I had in the shed and glad wrap . This worked awesome for these plants, they had grown better and faster, but it also could be the fact that the days are getting longer and hotter which helped these little ones grow better.

 

Today I took some pics of these 3 plants, i really should have but I would like to point out something I mentioned just before, The two plants on the right were in regular soil +seasol, the plant on the left was transplanted into my new soil mix about 2 weeks ago, as you can see clearly, the left plant is doubled in the size!! Today i changed the soil mix for the other two plants. It really does make a huge difference, I am a person who likes to trial and error, I feel more confident in my growing if i improve my method rather than just go straight into the best medium or mix recommended by someone else (despite it providing excellent results

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v338/timbo3185/grow/th_PB130020_2.jpg

 

Now this is all I have for today, I hope you enjoyed my experience as much as I have, any comments, suggestions...whatever you can throw at me, I will like to learn more

 

I have been researching up about high power LED lighting which i am considering for winter and combining it with a stealth grow but that's all just brainstorming.

 

Thanks everyone

 

Astro.

Edited November 13, 2009 by Astro84

[nitram]

Hi Astro,

 

welcome to OS ..........

 

Astro .....the first one got attacked and lots of the leaves were chewed up but it's fine now, both plants have 6-8 stems that are about 50-60cm high

 

The 'Green Pillas' chop but ya can easy spot where they have been - "follow Pilla Poop"

 

 

The good news...They're ALL girls! I have never had such beginners luck before

 

I'd just watch one struggling female gives up the struggle and says "bugger this i want to be a boy"

 

Watch ya back door............ don't back door ya

Keep us updated Astro

Nitty.

[Astro84]

I could easily get onto those big ones in the ground and get some clones, they're pretty big at the moment, i will have to eventually to stop them getting too high, they're almost 1meter tall, the one on the left was already much taller than the other one but the other is now a bit taller

[Astro84]

Should I be looking at any nutrients for growing in the ground? also what should i do for the pots?

 

ATM a bit of water every day seems to be doing the trick, I'll consider using some nutes when floweing starts but What do i get and can i use stuff from bunnings or nursery stores or should it be a special nutrient mix? anything to make them grow better, dont forget that I'm using the yates Dynamic lifter - organic slow release fertiliser, these are basically manure pellets

http://www.yates.com.au/products/organic-g...nic-plant-food/

 

Ingredients:

Composted chicken manure, Blood and Bone, fish meal and seaweed

(NPK analysis: 3.2 : 2.6 : 1.3).

 

anthing you can tell me to make them happy

[Astro84]

Hey everyone, I have a bit of an update on my first grow, Everything seems to be going along nicely, all my plants are healthy and growing well although I would like the small ones to pick up a bit, they have a long way to go yet!

 

Here are some photos of my plants i took today!

 

First up we have my fat fan leafed friend (this is roughly week 15). This plant has grown very densely as you can see but perhaps I should move it into another spot with better lighting cos the lower stems aren't growing very long, I did try to bend them all down to encourage sideways growth but it's not enough, the upper stems aren't that thick but they're still very solid and risk snapping if bend too much

 

Here is where i topped her a couple of weeks ago and i also fimmed the tops of the two shoots aswell so now there's 8 from 2 stems!

 

The base stem is 1cm thick and is fairly thick all the way up, I really would like this to grow outward faster because it's so dense but it's so damn slow! perhaps it's better this way so the stretching is minimised, and during the peak of summer it decides to go wild, i will consider planting her if i can find a place for her because there's not many descrete places left

 

here is where she is kept in the garden at present, which would probably account for some slow growth??

 

 

 

Next we have my first of the two tallest plants, She's about 130cm tall, 2cm thick base with 4 huge stems

 

 

This one is developing slower than the other, the nodes are not well developed as you can see in this pic the middle stem only has a few developed growth whereas the rest are just minimal growth despite the plant growing rather tall.

 

 

Here is a pic of one of the larger leaves, what strain would you say has more dominance here? it's definately a hybrid but what 75% sativa?

 

 

The second plant of the two is about the same 130cm tall, base is a bit smaller at 1.5cm thick with 4 main stems, two lower stems but not much happening down there, could be useful for some clones later, however the nodes have developed ALL over the plant! 80% of the leaf nodes have developed up to 30cm in length, the top of the plant's nodes are about 10-15cm long, here's a hard to see pic of the stems, this plant is difficult to photograph cos it's so well camoflauged

 

 

A pic of the leaves from this plant, once again a mix of sativa and indica... only god knows what it is.

 

 

the two leaf pics i showed you are pretty close in size and shape, but i noticed that the second plant has longer leaflettes in general and up to 7 leaflettes whereas the first plant has somewhat shorter leaflette length but up to 9 leaflettes, subtle differences in these plants stand out, also remember that the second plant has more vigorous growth even though it has less light than the other one

 

upload limit, continued on second page .....

[Astro84]

Here is where the plants are residing in the back yard, they live on each side of this window, you can see the left one but you can't see the right one due to this dense shrub infront of it, I also just tied down the second one for height and so the smaller nodes could grow up

 

 

here are my 2 baby make plants i'm keeping sperate from the rest, gender only revealed last week.

 

 

And this is my new pride and joy, I chopped it because it had 2 stems per node but i'm embarrased to say that when i was trying to push the stems down for sideways growth i snapped one stem off and now it has three

 

 

BUT theres lots of good news, despite snapping a stem, it's growing heatlhy! there are three stems up top and two stems underneath, I topped all the stems a few weeks ago and counted 39 nodes all up!

 

Aaaaand the clone i got from the top survived and is now here

 

 

Thanks everyone for watching, just to recap, pics of the big plants i took today are just under a month after the last photo session so things are going nicely.

 

Astro.

[brick]

You are doing well Astro.

[shroomyshroom]

Here is where the plants are residing in the back yard, they live on each side of this window, you can see the left one but you can't see the right one due to this dense shrub infront of it, I also just tied down the second one for height and so the smaller nodes could grow up

 

 

here are my 2 baby make plants i'm keeping sperate from the rest, gender only revealed last week.

 

 

And this is my new pride and joy, I chopped it because it had 2 stems per node but i'm embarrased to say that when i was trying to push the stems down for sideways growth i snapped one stem off and now it has three

 

 

BUT theres lots of good news, despite snapping a stem, it's growing heatlhy! there are three stems up top and two stems underneath, I topped all the stems a few weeks ago and counted 39 nodes all up!

 

Aaaaand the clone i got from the top survived and is now here

 

 

Thanks everyone for watching, just to recap, pics of the big plants i took today are just under a month after the last photo session so things are going nicely.

 

Astro.

 

 

what cloning method did you use ?

[Astro84]

well first of all I didn't take a cutting from a secondary or later growth, I cut the central stem of the plant once it reached about 15 cm tall, so I don't know how much difference that made in terms of nutriants etc, i would assume the thicker main stem had more in it to metabilise than thin new growth, i clipped the bottom sets of leaves and topped the tip so there was basically 4 leaves and a tiny bit of new growth under (see pic below: this is when i first put it in the greenhouse dome with my chilli seeds )

 

I didn't have any steralising equipment so i just ran the scisors under the stove flame to kill anything on them

-First i soaked my jiffy pellet in a bowl of tap water and after it had fully absorbed i gave it a gentle squeeze to release any extra water, as not to rot the stem, then i used a stick, (a pen, screwdriver or skewer, anything to make a hole about 3/4 deep).

-made the cut, scraped about3-4cm down one side of the stem (not half of the stem, just what the blade was touching) so i could see the inner white layer

-dipped in clonex and swirled around a bit, let it drip off once (takes a few seconds to drip since it's pretty thick stuff)

-carefully placed the clone in the hole making sure the clonex was still on the wound and then gently squeeze around the jiffy to close up the hole around the stem and pinched the top into the stem too to keep it up right, you would loose a little bit of water when squeezing too but that didn't matter.

- mist the leaves and the clear plastic dome at least 2 times a day or when the dome was dry.

 

 

the leaves never wilted on their own, but after a week or so the bottom leaves started to look a bit patchy, i could have left them there but perhaps it was better in the long run so i chopped them off leaving the new shoots to grow from them, i checked a few times but roots never showed until the other day when 8 thick roots came out nice and hairy and white