The First Grow

These are the seeds after only three days in water. The seeds cracked and roots (and early greens!) appeared. It was time to put them in their first home.

I chose red Dixie cups, like those you see at college drinking parties, cutting some drainage holes in the bottom of the cup. I had been to the local hydroponics store and purchased Happy Frog Potting Soil, and into the waiting red cups these four little growers were placed. It didn't take long for them to make an appearance.

It was during this first growing period that I made my first mistake. While the grow light sat in its box, I placed these four cups on the window sill in the main bathroom. The window was western facing, got lots of sun, and I thought that was the right thing to do. Wrong.

All four of these tiny seedlings grew leggy with very tiny leaves on the tops, always leaning, reaching, and trying to reach the window. I now know that they should have been under the grow light and it would have prevented much of the "leggy-ness" of these ladies.

I did come in from work a few days later to find that something, [shudder] a rodent, or maybe one of our curious dogs, climbing across the window-sill knocked the four cups over. One of the ladies was lost, dried up on the floor, and the other three had the soil put back, more water, and lots of hopes sent to the growing gods that they would be safe. They were, and survived! Thank those gods!

This light had been purchased in 2019 during other hopes of growing. It is described as: "Niello 1200W Cree COB LED Grow Light , Double Chips Plant Light With Exclusive Full Spectrum." I suspended it from the ceiling in the bathroom over the table with the very young plants in their red cups.

What happened within a day was incredible. The plants not only perked up but GREW, forcing themselves to go towards the light source above them. Even the very small and leggy plant, the one I thought was not long for this world, began to perk up a little. They still had nutrients from the original red cup full of Happy Frog, but instinctively I knew they were going to very quickly outgrow their red cup space.

This is the ventilation setup. From right to left:

1. The bathroom window covered with fabric and light sealed.

2. The carbon filter attached to 6" flex ducting to...

3. The inline ventilation fan which is ~350 CFM, attached to more flex ducting...

4. The adapter which covers the bathroom fan exhaust to the roof.

The fan is quiet and powerful. The filter and fan are suspended from O rings screwed into the ceiling and hung from thin steel cable circlets.

It's interesting that initially the fan was to bring fresh air into the bathroom space (from under the bathroom door), but as of early December, as the plants begin to smell, four weeks into flower, the carbon filter is stripping away the smell as the air is exhausted to the outside. I think it came out pretty well!

This is 3x3 and 3x4 feet PVC with reflective film from Vivosun.

Each of the four "walls" are taped together, and the wall closest is swung away to work on the plants. The light gives the "Blurple" (Blue/Purple) glow. I was amazed at how much reflected light there was with these four walls. It was an experiment to see if an inside grow was something we wanted to do before investing in a tent, etc. I was hooked within a short time.

The plants, beginning at the top and going counter-clockwise, are: Bertha, the largest (for now), Gertrude in second place, and then there's Emily, the "little plant that could." I have to say, Emily has certainly come a long way. Once all three plants were in their final 10 gallon cloth pots and saucers, there was plenty of room for roots and growth, and boy did they grow!

I had read that the two biggest mistakes made by first time growers is too much water and too much fertilizer. This inexpensive meter from Vivosun worked out very well to measure the amount of moisture in the soil. The pH was always in the green zone on the meter, so I wasn't too worried about that. There are two sensors that are pushed into the center of the pot (pot) to show these readings. This was the best $8 I've spent.

I've used this device primarily for moisture, but also found that the light meter, though I'm sure not terribly accurate (for $8), is indicative of light intensity. In measuring light in this first grow space, there was a huge difference from right under the light to the edges, as in 200 to 1000+.

For now a super accurate light meter is not really needed, or affordable. When the second grow in the tent comes up with the new light, I'm sure this tool will be a measure of help. When or if I want to get really OCD over this, then a meter will probably help.

Within a week, this is the amount of growth. They had been transplanted into one gallon plastic pots. The large one in the back quaintly named, "Bertha," the one in the left foreground, "Gertrude," and the little sad one on the right with the super-fine stem and a few new leaves, "Emily."

We opted for an 18 hours on, and 6 hours off with the light, kept about 24 inches about the plants. They loved the light and began to grow, and grow. Of most interest was Emily. That little one was bound and determined to live! Good on 'ya little one!

At the end of October 2020, it was evident by the size of the plants that it was time to change the growth from vegetative (growing the plant's infrastructure in size and strength) to have it begin to flower which produces the buds of these cannabis plants. Considering the mistakes I made in the beginning, this is nearly three months from time time I germinated the seeds. All three plants were approaching about 3/4 the way up the three foot grow space walls, and I read that during the flowering stage, stems would grow vertically to grow and support the flowers.

Honestly, this was actually pretty simple. I changed the timer of the lights from 18 hours on and 6 hours off, to 12 hours on and 12 off.

Within a few days, the beginning of flowers appeared, almost like magick was afoot! When the early trichomes appeared on the small leaves around the flowers, I was ecstatic -- this was really working!

Though in Week Five of flower, I ran into articles touting the use of mycorrhizae bacteria and fungi in the soil which helps the plants uptake nutrients. The documentation shows that, though, it should be added at the beginning of a grow to promote root growth, it can also be used at other stages, even flower. It wasn’t expensive so I purchased some from Amazon along with some food for them. That food came in the way of molasses. Again, more research showed that molasses could be used during flower to assist in nutrient uptake and a potentially larger bud yield. It was not expensive either, so an order went out at the same time. It is important to note that the molasses needs to be unsulfured otherwise the sulfur would kill the bacteria that was added. I remember old movies and military manuals touting the use of sulfur powder as an adjunct to antibiotics, whose job is to kill bacteria. Point taken! The order was done through Prime, and even with the USPS delivering the box to a neighbor whose address is one digit off from mine (found the box sitting on their doorstep after frantically scouring my yard since Amazon said it had been delivered). Whew. Everything is in the grow room and ready to go for the feeding and watering due that night.

I also found the feeding chart from DynaGro for the nutrients and supplements I use. The timing was good since I had been using the vegetative amounts of these rather than the flowering stage. It meant that I needed to up the nutrients. The water feed was going to be very potent that first night!

Each plant gets one gallon of water about twice a week or every three or so days. I added the DynaGro nutrients to each jug, and then two tablespoons of molasses. Wow, the normally clear water/feed was a medium brown. Each plant got its fill and I waited impatiently to check them in the morning; hoping I hadn’t done something wrong and finding dead plants. Oh my gods, quite to the contrary. The next morning everyone was perky, leaves up, and seemingly well off! Okay, this is the recipe I’m using for the next four weeks of flower. I’m learning!

What a difference a few days makes. While watering, feeding, and pruning the ladies (who now smell pretty bad now, a good thing!), I saw that the stamens on many of the flowers on plant Bertha, were beginning to turn orange around the top! She's progressing nicely! Look at those trichomes -- looks like snow!

I don't know if the new feeding amounts are helping, but honestly, the plants haven't looked better and appear to be thriving! There are still several more weeks to go in flower, but I'm guessing that Bertha may mature first ahead of Gertrude and Emily. If you're skipping around and don't know the players, Bertha is/was the largest of the three plants, then Gertrude, and the little one that looked so sad with just the long dangly stem is Emily. My friend, Daniel, helped to name them. Well, no, he didn't just help, he was the one who did the naming.

I have to say, now that the plants are about to outgrow their homemade enclosure and I need to sit on the floor and look up to them to water, feed, trim, etc., I almost feel bad about chopping them down when it comes time to harvest. I was toying with the idea of cutting off the main branches to dry, but leaving the main stem to see if they would grow back. If this strain is one we really like, then I might consider making one of these original plants the Mother from which cuttings may be taken and cloned into new plants. I do have extra seeds which will be used in the tent grow, but I don't want to adversely destroy a plant if I don't need to. I may look back and laugh at this, but, right now, they seem like my children! Getting excited to say the least (and the most!).

Well, Emily (the straggler) finally had to be buoyed up. She has seven large vertical branches that are getting heavier with buds and was falling over. I tied several branches together so that they all get light, and don't break as they get bigger. This is definitely a nice problem to have!

Just a quick view of the colas forming on all three plants. The room smells of a spicy stink, and it's great to see the buds and sugar leaves (leaves with trichomes) growing well.

The other two aside from Bertha, are starting to show orange stamens, Emily ahead of Gertrude. The next piece is when to pull back on feeding ahead of the harvest. Need to get a loupe to be able to see the trichomes go from clear to cloudy, and then the amount of amber color increasing.

Excited about getting close!

All three plants looked like this after the harvest. You can see some of the cut branches in the background.

If the room didn't smell like cannabis before, WOW, it was super stinky at this point. I was very careful to not touch the flowers, but even with the best of intentions, there was some touching and my fingers were very sticky. Now I understand what is meant when reading about different strains and how they are full of "sticky goodness."

Here are the branches after an hour or so of cutting. Note that there is a mirror in the background -- I WISH there was that much, but for a first grow, not too bad.

I did decide to do a "wet trim" -- meaning, cutting the fan leaves, and the majority of the larger leaves before drying. I left many of the frosted leaves in place, but would find later that they dried, shrunk, and curled making it more difficult to trim. Hey, it's something to learn.

I did learn a very hard lesson, almost losing the crop...

According to the Relative Humidity (RH) monitor, the RH in the room was 23%, sometimes reaching 30%. Not a good thing, I would find out, since the ideal RH for drying is about 60%. Within a few days, the buds were very, very dry, almost crackling. This was bad.

I dug out the humidifier that is going to be used in the tent for subsequent grows, as well as the monitor controller for the humidifier. I was going to make the entire environment ~60% RH, hopefully what had over dried would reabsorb some of the moisture. The fan was still going, to keep the air moving inside the room. Within two to three days, buds were spongy and sticky again. Whew. I let them sit in that environment until January 2 (trimming day) drying at a better rate, not having lost all the work put in over the last several months.

Time to trim...

I pulled out a TV tray table, and on a cookie sheet, began the trimming process. I had two half gallon Mason Jars, one for small nugs and the other for the larger ones. I kept the trimmed pieces in a small pile on the sheet. When I do future grows, I will look for something with a mesh bottom to catch the kief (the powdery dried trichomes) that came off of them. There wasn't much to collect with this grow, but waste not, want not!

It took about three hours to trim all the branches. My fingers and hand were super sticky by the end. I have to say, this stuff doesn't come off easily. Even with 99% isopropyl alcohol, it took some major scrubbing to get that stuff off!

When everything was done and settled, I placed a small hydrometer in each jar, and put them back in the room with the humidifier going at 60%. My thinking was that putting them in that room without lids for a few days, the humidity in the jars would be about 60%. It seemed to work!

Though not huge, this harvest resulted in (a legal amount) of harvested cannabis. It would have been more had I not made the mistakes I mentioned. After several days, I did try some of the smaller nugs in a vape. OMG, let me repeat that OH MY GOD this stuff is STRONG. I look at what I used to get at dispensaries, dried, not sticky, no trichome sparkle -- absolutely no comparison! Maybe with time and curing, this batch will match the strain description (i.e., caramel-y and sweet) where now it's kinda diesel-y. Still not a bad taste, but we'll see over time.

The goal of creating a cannabis grow to be able to present to our friends who had provided plants, seeds, and bud, some of THIS grow. I didn't want to say anything to them before this in case the grow went south. It did not disappoint!

I had read a lot about what kind of scissor I would need for manicuring the plants, cutting the branches, then trimming. There was a lot of hype for Fiskar, which I'm sure are good, but one that stood out was from a Japanese company, Chikamasa. There was no spring to pull them back open, which was actually going to reduce the fatigue according to one grower. I found he was right.

These are professional bonsai trimming scissors, and this particular version has a coating on the blades to repel a lot of the sticky mess in trimming. These are precision scissors, and I couldn't be happier with them. They are about $25, but SO worth it in the end.

Leave it to the Japanese to come up with such an amazing tool!