3rd grow,first Grow Challenge! I‘ve been a long time lurker and can’t wait to get started on my first Grow Challenge, to learn and grow together. I broke into my seedbank and couldn’t figure out what I wanted to grow, or which category to enter and then I came across this little gem, African Orange Glue by Equilibrium Genetics. This box was a gift from a friend, so I thought it would be perfect to give it a shot. Anyway, as the name suggests, it could fit into a number of challenge categories, so I decided to sprout three seeds and grow them individually for three categories; Fruit Salad (Orange is a fruit), Color Diet (orange is also a color), and Global Cuisine (that better be self-explanatory). While each of these plants will be grown in the same tent, I plan on starting and growing each plant for their specific category, keeping track of, photographing and journaling each plant separately. I hope to see all of your great work as the challenge progresses. All the best, -The Advocate
SET-UP:
Veg Tent- Spider Farmer 4x2 with an AC Infinity S4 exhaust fan and Spider Farmer SF2000 LED
Flower Tent- Gorilla Grow Tent 4x4 with AC Infinity T6 intake and exhaust fan, and an HLG 600 R-spec LED
Media- Wondersoil Coco Coir with earthworm castings, coffee grounds & pearlite
Nutrients- GH Flora Trio & ReCharge
And so it begins! I let the seeds soak overnight and washed and buffered the coco with a little CalMag and ReCharge. Then just before midnight eastern, dropped in the little ones and gently tucked them in for a wee nap.
Fruit Salad was the first to pop and Color Diet wasn’t far behind. Global Cuisine still hasn’t shown any signs of life, but it’s only been a couple of days. I did a light watering yesterday around the humidity dome to encourage a little moisture. My furnace went out this weekend, which is always awesome. 😞 So I placed all my plants, including these new seedlings on a seed mat in another tent, hopefully the heat from my light and being in with the others will keep them warm enough. It did get really cold last night so I left the tent shut and didn’t check on them before work this morning, I figured I’d keep as much heat in as possible. I did put a big space heater in the room, so I’m not too concerned. More updates soon!
Things seem to be progressing. The first true leaves are starting to expand a bit. I gave them their first taste of the GH nutrients today at 1/4 strength and used distilled water with a little CalMag in it.
Time for another update. This little one is still struggling. I had to prop her up a bit, today. While her leaves are growing bigger than her sisters, she’s stretched out a bit and needed a little support. I’ll bury that a little deeper when I transplant into 1 gallon pots, but she’s also experiencing a little nutrient burn or something. Since she was the last to poke her head up, it might have been a little early to try feeding her, even though I was at 1/4 strength. A little TLC and I still have high hopes for her.
I set up a new tent this weekend. It’s a 5x5 with a 48” rolling shelf along one side with two KindLED X80 lights under two of the shelves for vegging and a spider Farmer SF4000 on the other side. Should be a good setup.
Transplant out of the Solo Cup! These girls are doing really well. I buried her a little deep in the coco (actually I buried all of them a little deep, except for my one extra plant) and she seems to be happy in her new 1 gallon pot. I usually wait longer to flip than most with photoperiod plants, it since we all flip at the same time, I think I’ll go from this 1 gallon pot to a 5 gallon fabric pot, a week or two before we flip. All in all things are going well. My extra plant seems to be the biggest and bushiest, but they’re all healthy and happy, especially this Color Diet one, as she seems to have the biggest node sets, and always seems perky. I’ve gone to a little more aggressive veg nutes with all of them, and we’re almost ready to bust out of the Kind LED X80 veg light into Spider Farmer SF4000. What do ya think?
Gotta say, I’m real proud of this girl. She’s doing really well in her new tent, under the new light. I started feeding her full strength aggressive veg nutrients and she’s starting to take off! Looking at the pic, I might need to clean her up a bit on the undercarriage.
