Hello Everyone,
Some of you may have seen my name in the planning section to start my grow, and now here I am dropping seeds! The goal of this grow as in any grow is to get a harvest, I am going to be working with 4 Feminized Super Skunk seeds from ILGM. The good news is that I will have a helper with me, she is my partner in crime and my wife, but @mrsduckyjonez will be along for the ride.
I dropped my seeds into tap water 24 hours ago and now going to be putting them into Solo Cups with 3 slits on the bottom of the cup to help with drainage. This should look really familiar if you followed the grow journal of Hellraiser.
Here is what my setup looks like currently, I maybe upgrading during the middle of my grow but that is down the road and going to be focusing on the now. If anyone has any feedback or ways that I can improve please let me know I am wanting to be the best that I can be and learn as much as I possibly can. This plant has had my back throughout my life more times than I would like to count and the least that I can do is learn more about it and respect it more!
Here is to growing and hoping that we are out of these chaotic times soon. I know it can be tough around holidays and another reason that I have added these girls to my family to help me deal with some of the separation anxiety that I have had lately.
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I was suppose to post this last night and here are so far the things that I have learned and honestly messed up on. Very open to advice here. Breaking this down into sections:
pH Pen Issues:
I bought a pH pen that would not calibrate, we had to result to the liquid dropper test that comes with the pH up/down kit. My wife and I both could not get this thing to read correctly on the third solution and could only get to solutions to read correctly.
Since last night issues and reading numerous post about having your water dialed in being extremely important I invested into the BlueLab pH pen. I have yet to try it but I have heard great things. Going to test it today to see what it looks like.
My biggest concern is the pH pen kept saying 5.5-5.8 pH but when we did the dropper test we certainly had a ~6.5 solution. I hope that this pen verifies that. Also I am an idiot and tried to save money by only get 1 solution of GH pH kit and got a massive bottle of 7.0, you needs to have both to test your levels to my understanding, need to now get another one in a couple weeks.
Dropping Seeds
First issue is that out of the 4 seeds only 3 sunk to the bottom, the 4th one didn’t I tapped her at the end and she did sink but I am concerned that this one did not get enough water. I still planted it but will see how that goes, one of the seeds actually had a tap root which was great to see!
Second we dropped seeds last night but I did not have any clean tweezers, I was disinfecting them and went ahead and just had my wife grab them and drop the seeds. I had been drinking and didn’t even think about how hard it can be to tell if the seed dropped in point down. Hoping that happened with these seeds and we see growth in the next couple of days.
Temperature and Humidity
I am a nervous wart and I always overthink things, last night was hard for me to sleep since I kept on thinking of my girls in the tent. I have to list these out since it was pretty bad on my part I think.
- I dropped the light per the manual to ~24 inches from the solo cups but I turned on both lights thinking for some reason that was the best thing to do. I realized an hour to three later that the light could be to hot for the plants and I did not do a hand test, I went into the tent and held my hand over the cups and it was very hot. I turned off 1 light and just have it running on low.
- I live in a hot place and I can not get my temperature right for the life of me, when I had the lights on with both side but low power it was hitting 86F! Then I dropped down one light and now it is sitting at 76F at night and during the day right around 79-80F, I noticed that I needed to bring in a fan to blow on the outside of the tent and into the room to help move some of the air around. I have no fans on in the tent. Is this okay? I hope I am not killing them from it being too hot.
- I got concerned about the humidity and put in a humidifier to bring up the rH, it was down at 23 and read that it should be higher, I set my humidifier to get to 50%, I turned it off this morning and my wife turned it back on but forgot to set the thermostat on it so it was sitting in the tent for about an hour or 2 just pumping out full blast humidity and the tent got to 80% humidity. Unfortunately this also made the tent floor very wet and we had to go in with towels and wipe everything down. I have since removed the humidifier and have yet to see if it is damaged from the tent being wet but we will see. Did I really harm or kill the seeds when doing this?
Tagging folks that I hope can give me some insight: @dbrn32 @Hellraiser @PharmerBob @Not2SureYet
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Last update on this thread before I lock myself out for the day. Here is my setup as of right now:
4x4 Grow Tent with a Mars Hydro TSW 2000 light, comes with a carbon filter/inline fan combo as well.
For nutrients I went with Fox Farm trio bundle. I have some cal mag as well as some Neem Oil to help with bug prevention.
Soil is Happy Frog and will add perlite later in the first transplant.
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I will go out on a limb and say don’t over stress the temps. Mine swing between 60 and 90 at times. Normal day time is around 84. 82 is where I would like to be if I had the choice. For the humidity. I try to stay in the 55 - 65% window. Once these are a few days old. Mine have seen 35% and did ok.
The biggest mistake I think made with seedlings is killing them with kindness. My self included. Now, once mine go into a nursery bag. I try and forget about them for 3 days.
You probably should have waited for the last seed to drop. But is can still do fine. it may just take an extra day or so to get going. I will tag you into our new grow. Both @nicky and my self just dropped seeds. So we are both in your shoes now 
@Missiles is pretty good with your soil.
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I don’t turn any tent fans on til my seeds have sprouted, don’t want to dry out the soil too fast, but if my tent temps were an issue, I’d run the exhaust fan at a speed that keeps the tent in the mid to upper 70’s ideally.
I run humidifiers in the room the tents are in, not in the tents, that will avoid large spikes in humidity. Also don’t want to run misting humidifiers in the tent, all that direct moisture will wreck your lights and other electronics. My RH is normally in the 40’s and I perfectly happy with it in that range.
You’ll know in a short while if you’ve killed the seeds, when I plant seeds, they usually sprout in 4 days, give them time and see if they sprout.
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I will do the exhaust fan I have one of those. I was trying to run a fan on the outside of the tent to just keep the room overall cooler than what it was at. Didn’t have anything in the tent running.
Got it, I guess where I am getting confused on is how the humidity is going to enter the tent in my room should I leave one of my tent vent open so it goes right in? Will move it outside of the tent, good to know. Right now it is at 45% so I will just leave it, and do you leave that humidity throughout your grow or change it up?
Looks like the waiting game begins 
thanks for the help.
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Thank you! That is good to know as well. I have the heat around there right now and will keep an eye on it.
In regards to humidity is that the same you keep it for throughout the grow or just in seedlings?
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Yes you should leave a way for fresh air to get into the tent, tents usually have some intakes you can open up for that. I run in the 40’s RH for whole grow except last few weeks of flowering when I turn off the humidifiers and let the RH go as low as it can - reduces chances of bud rot and other mold in late flowering and can help with increased resin production.
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Thank you! I had the two vent flaps partially open and 1 of the outtake vents open. I just opened the third and last open and another vent on top.
Got it, thank you!
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Yep, He has you covered. It is easier to deal with low humidity as to high humidity.
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Got it! I will not touch them for 3 days and will let you know how it goes! It is a learning experience and hope I didn’t mess any of my stuff up with the humidifier. So far all is working fine so I think I am in the clear
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It shouldn’t be an issue. I have had mine up to 99% and down to 35% for my new ones. Trying to find the balance from day to night. It is harder for me to do when it is cold at night
Good luck, you got good advice from a few of the good ones here!
My RH stays around 40% too with no issues… a few people here are growing Super Skunk so you can see what to expect… gonna be a fun watch!
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I have been watching a couple and I am stoked to get my girls out of the ground!
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Been a busy week at work and meant to post earlier yesterday! So good news all four seeds sprouted!
So far been keeping the heat between 24-26c during the day and 21-23c at night. Humidity has been jumping between 23% and 40%. Lights have been on 24 hours at this point and have given them one watering yesterday.
Let me know your thoughts! Going to be doing some research on when to flip to 18 hours, I believe it is week 3 right around when I transplant?
I was reading back through my notes and forgot to add in my desk fan, so did that today and got a slight breeze on them with a 6 inch fan. Also I did not lower my lights since they said to continue to keep them at 24 inches per the manual.
I have not turned on my inline just yet and by what I was looking at I should keep my lights on 24 hrs right now until day 11.That is when I am going to move to an 18-6 light schedule and turn on my inline which will exhaust outside of my house. I got some blackout curtains and an okay plastic wall vent that will help keep it tight in the window and not look all janky.
Been hard not to keep looking into the tent but just been waiting. Let me know if you have any advice and enjoy your weekends!
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Busy busy work weeks has kept me away from posting but wanted to share my progress and what I have learned with everyone.
- Yesterday on day 11 of the plants being above ground I flipped the lights 18/6 as well as turned my inline on the lowest setting. Also cranked my lights up to 20% instead of on MIN power (running Mars TSW2000)
- Even though I live in a hot state, it is cold right now and my tent has fluctuated between 71-76 F, when I work up the next morning after I turned my inline on it was very cold at 71F, only thing that changed was me connecting the inline. I figured out that my inline fan that was running outside had a leak and I had to get some cheap window shrink. It works really well and it has been keeping the tent now at that 74-76F area.
- Humidity is something that I have not been stressing as much since I am staying right at the 36-40%, we did have rain one day and it went up to 45% but other than that it seems like all is good.
- Today (day 12) they are still receiving 4oz (6.5 pH) water every 3 days. Here in 2 days I am going to check but I think I can start going to this cadence, but going to see what the plants say.
- I did notice that two of my plants are taking off, one especially (we named her Big Bertha) and the other two are slightly behind. Anything I should be worried about?
Next Steps:
- See if I need to reduce water from 3 days to 2 days.
- Going to do a Neem Oil spray treatment in 2 days (day 14) to help with the bugs.
- As I approach 3 weeks of the plants being above ground I am getting ready from my transplant to 3 Gallon plastic pots. I am probably going to get the mycorrhizae here soon as I near the date.
- I am going to fit the girls there first set of nutes after my transplant on week 3. To my understanding it would only be my FoxFarm Trio nutes right now and calmag comes on later in the show.
I do have a couple of questions if anyone has time to help out, no rush though I know we are all busy
- How many times would you apply neem oil?
- When do you typically start to notice your plants reducing the number of days it takes to water them? I don’t want to overwater them.
- When do you start using calmag typically?
- Anything out of order here?
Also starting to read the Grow Bible by Jorge Cervantes and I am looking into starting my home garden in February. I want to start to learn to grow all kinds of plants and be more self sufficient.
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