Day 3
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Have u seen any good guides on how much time to expect between nodes? I know there are a lot of factors at play but curious if I should expect a new node each week or something.
Not really. There’s so many variables it’s too hard to say. You can kind of expect growth in phases. They won’t grow a lot for a little bit while roots are expanding, and then you’ll see rather quick growth. Then it will slow down a bit.
As long as you’re within good windows of light, water, and air circulation just kind of let them do their thing.
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Great grow 
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Day 6 update.
Thought I might try and formalize my updates so that I can look back on this journal for future grows.
Water/Nutes:
Still just using RO water at a pH of 6. Assuming that the ladies are still just pulling nutrients from the Ocean Forest soil. Planned to start adding nutrients to the water maybe next week, but if anyone (@dbrn32, @MAXHeadRoom …) has suggestions otherwise i’d appreciate it.
Light:
Light is now sitting at about 50%. Don’t have a killawatt yet so estimating how much is being put out based on dial position. Plants are sitting at about 20" from the light.
Temp/humidity:
Averaging 72F and 40% humidity at night; 78F and 35% humidity in the day. Added a DIY humidifier to the room to try an increase humidity a bit.
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You’re probably a little ways from needing any nutes. Looks like she tried to stretch out a bit on you? Or is that just the camera angle?
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Wait until the third or fourth node forms before even thinking about nutrients. I grow in FF and don’t even USE nutrients until they’re over a foot tall. Then only 1/4 strength.
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@middlecoast I don’t grow in dirt, but I do know you don’t give them any nutes till the round leaves fall off.
If you have your LUX meter working here is a guide you can use for your lights.
With my cheap handheld LUX meter direct sunlight with no clouds is 100,000. On a cloudy day it was 25,000. So that kinda gave me a base reading on where I wanted to position my lights. In the seedling stage you probably don’t want to go over 25,000 unless you see stretching. I always had my lights close enough so they didn’t stretch at all and the node spacing was very tight, but that was my personal preference. Some people want a little stretch to make there plants taller but I like mine short and bushy. once the plants start getting bigger you can play around with your light distance and dimming. Keep your LUX at a min of 25,000 and max around 50,000. The reason being is that we have our plants under the lights more than the outside light. During veg I had my lights on 18/6 and then moved to 10/14 at the end because that simulated the outside light schedule at the time. During flower with a SCROG I had mine between 25,000 on the edge and 50,000 in the middle or directly under the light. I hope this gives you a start. The best way to do it is see what your plants like and experiment with distances and intensity. Each plant and strain is different and growing in dirt and hydro is different too. 
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Hi @middlecoast. What Android lux app are you using? I think I may benefit from using it as well.
hey, the app i grabbed is just called light meter. it was the highest rated one so just grabbed it. didn’t test it against others.
Honestly couldn’t tell ya if its stretch or just normal growth. From the dirt to leaves its only about 2 inches or so. I pulled the girls out of the tent and topped off the cups I had them in with soil so now they are only exposed about an inch above the soil. I noticed they weren’t very strong and had to actually turn off the fan cause it was actually causing a lean in Bandit (blue). Hopefully this helps. What’s a normal expectation for growth? I know every grow is different but iI wasn’t sure what I should expect for the first few nodes.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll consider lowering my lights or raising intensity a bit tomorrow since the readings I took for where my power is set is at about 14,000 lx. If I go full power I can get it up to 23,000 lx and might get better angles from all of the COBs since I don’t have a center COB in my rig.
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Ya that’s fine. Camera angle playing tricks on me with the small leaves is all.
Gotcha. Edited my last response but i’ll ask it again, what do you normally expect for growth in your new plants?
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It’s hard to say. Pot size can change it quite a bit, as can the strain, or any of your grow variables. But I would usually expect a few sets of nodes by around 2 weeks. Once the roots get time to establish you’ll see it start growing pretty quickly if everything is in order.
You’re looking good in my opinion. See what the next week or so holds.
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Thanks. I think finally understand a little how a new parent feels like. Constantly questioning everything and no matter how much you read you still feel like there’s more you should do.
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@middlecoast keep in mind sometimes the best thing to do is nothing
Glad the peeps have been giving you the help you asked for
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Here is an article that should answer a lot of your questions with pictures of plants at different growth stages.
Life Cycle Of Marijuana Plants : Cannabis stages week by week
I hope this helps
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Day 14 Update
Been a minute since I’ve been able to do any updates so here we go…
So the ladies have definitely gotten bigger but I think I’m under watering a bit due to the droop i’m seeing. At first I thought it was due to over watering since the leaf tips seemed to be turned down. Because of this I left them alone for a day but after digging my finger into the soil about an inch or so I’m pretty sure they just need some more water. Doused them this evening so hoping they’ll perk up. I’m guessing the 50/50 mix that i’m using isn’t retaining water as much as I thought it was. My guess… this is due to the combination of the perlite and the coco… but I could be wrong. Any thoughts @dbrn32 @MAXHeadRoom @Countryboyjvd1971?
Beyond that I went out of town for the first time and after watching the time lapse I put together its interesting to see how they responded to a few days of not getting tended to. I left for a trip on 9/7 and gave them a good watering that day, over the next few days its clear that the plants were getting thirsty. I got back on 9/10 and gave them some water but was worried that I was over watering so didn’t water on 9/12 and the results were obvious. I made a time lapse if you’d like to see the growth over a few days.
Since I planted these into just some cups I’m considering moving them to smart pots this weekend. My only hesitation is that I’m not sure how the roots are doing. Anyone have any bad experiences in terms of transplanting?
Purchased a humidifier to increase the humidity in the tent and hop eit will improve growth. The DIY humidifier hasn’t been increasing the overall humidity so this was the next logical step. Also, I also purchased a killawat and now I can finally fine tune how much wattage i’m putting out. Found out that I can crank my LED to 480W which is is roughly 40W more than what I expected. So that’s cool.
The basics
- Water/Nutes: pH about 6.3 and added 1/2 dose of FF Big Bloom 2x/week. Plain water the rest of the time.
- Light: 350W at about 20" away from the plant.
- Temp/humidity: 72° F and 40% humidity at night; 78° F and 35% humidity in the day.
You are growing in a mixture of coco and perlite, and watering with pH of 6.3?
It’s a 50/50 mix of coco and Ocean Forest with water pH at 6.3. I was under the impression that Ocean Forest by itself wasn’t good for seedlings.
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You’re good. I was thinking maybe you were in a soil free mixture in which case your pH would be a little high.
A good portion of the additional wattage you are seeing is driver efficiency loss, probably 20-30 watts worth anyway. Most of the hlg’s will be between 93-95% efficient. The original calculation of cob fv multiplied by supplied current will be a much closer representation of what you have for actual lighting. With the exception of opening the dimming circuit, which will usually put you around 105% of rated output current.