I'm very late to get started, more about that later.
I soaked all 10 beans in lukewarm water for 23 hours, then moved them to paper towels where I also applied some mycorrhizal fungi with the strategy being that as soon as those taproots become exposed, they'll immediately be inoculated. A mere 12 hours later, 4 of the seeds were already showing taproots so I've potted them with another sprinkling of Myco, them placed them on a warming mat and covered them to retain humidity.
Initially an open area in my basement, but will be moving into a Spider Farmer 5x5x7
Spider Farmer Se-7000 - 730Watt
Will be growing in commercial soil so will only need to apply worm castings at mid-late veg, then some kind of bloom booster during flower
Today's entry is more about environment than about the plants themselves.
Having only recently moved into our new home, I had not yet taken time to set up a proper grow space. To-date, my comp plants have been on a table with my grow light hanging from the ceiling. I need to put up my 5x5 tent up so I can better control the env, but with this new space being in the basement I worry about my grow medium temps since they'll essentially be atop the concrete floor. During the winter months in my region, basement floors are notoriously cold.
To me the solution was clear. Since I have 9ft ceilings in the basement, I have ample room to utilize an insulated platform under the tent. This week I set off to building one. Because our home was only recently built, I have LOTS of leftover building materials. My original thought was to use those materials to build a chicken coop and enclosure, but I decided to utilize some of it for the tent base.
Because I had the lumber, plywood and a vinyl flooring remnant already on hand, I only needed to spend about $18 for a roll of R13 insulation.
The tent is 5x5, so I built the insulated base out at 6x6. The tent will be aligned to the back edge of the base, giving me 12" of "off floor" storage, and from side-to-side it will be centered to give 6" of base sticking out on each side.
All in all, I think this project took me around 3 hours over the course of 2 evenings. I thought ahead of time to take pics so I could document it here in this diary, but I may also put together another post in the INDOOR GROWING GUIDES section, so others can take advantage of it.
I squeeze in quite a bit of detail about the build, so hopefully it all comes through OK for anyone who views it.
Once I get the the tent stretched over the frame, lighting, and ventilation installed, I'll post an update to show the final configuration.
Special shout-out of gratitude for @JohnCarlson for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to his Pheno Hunt of Blue Dream x Super Lemon Haze.
Equal appreciation to @Monkeydo for his generous contribution to the prize pool.
@stashnugsmor awesome man! Can’t wait for yours to get moving 😎 I will be following for sure 😬
and yes thanks to the @monkeydo for helping and hooking us up 🥰
A mere 48 hours after soaking the beans, all 6 of the remaining beans have cracked, thus exposing the taproots.
All 10 beans are now in 4" pots under the humidity dome and we await the appearance of those precious coyledons.
@Monkeydo please advise for clarity. What is your definition of "Germination"?
Is it when the taproot breaks the seed coat, or is it when the cotyledons appear?
I ask because all 10 seeds have cracked and have now been potted, but I don't know that they'll all have cotyledons above the soil line by the end of the day on Thursday's Deadline and I don't want to be disqualified from future grow-offs as cited in the rules for this pheno hunt grow off.
Thanks,
StashNugsMor
@stashnugsmor if the seeds are in moist soil by the deadline, you are fine. We like to follow the rules but not to the point of a courtroom. Good luck with the grow
Random acts of kindness make the world a better place
@monkeydo thanks for the confirmation.
Due to the late start, I know they won't be amongst the largest, but I absolutely will do my best to represent Percys and HOHG members and help @JohnCarlson make some sound decisions.
All 10 have sprouted and for the most part look really good.
They're on 18/6 light scheduled and are getting 300 PPFD.
Temp is stable at 74F and RH is right at 70%.
The humidity dome has been removed and the heat mat has been turned off.
Sadly, #2, #4, & #7 are really slow to get moving along.
@stashnugsmor this is great man! The germ rate on these are really impressing me 😎
and don’t judge the slow ones yet 😬 never know what will happen 😂😂
@johncarlson21 I agree completely.
A friend suggested that I pull em. My reply was why would I do that? If they end up dying off, so be it, but on the other hand, you never know what a slow starter may do later unless you give time to do so.
@johncarlson21 I'm also trying to keep in mind that my dairy should be complete and well documented in hope that the information therein will prove to newbies that EVERYONE experiences the full spectrum of potential outcomes. Not just the "good side" of things.
#7 is one of those that were slow to emerge. It's doing well, but is still working on shedding the seed hull. I misted it to help lubricate things so it can come off easier.
It turned out to be a pretty cool pic so I thought I'd share.
Day 16 post-germination and this will be the last post of the ladies out in the open and on the tabletop. With my tent set-up nearly completed, the next diary entry will show the 5 plants that make the first cut, in larger containers, and in the tent.
All 10 seeds did pop, but 3 of them struggled to break through the soil and shed their helmets which is why they're so much smaller than the others.
Looks like a real pheno hunt in there with strong and weak ones. Nice job
Random acts of kindness make the world a better place
Friday evening (Day 17), and these girls are ready to leave their starter homes (4" pots). Before up-potting them, I decided to go ahead and get their permanent space (tent) all set up. Till now, they've just been sitting atop a table in my basement.
Historically, I've grown in an upstairs bedroom, but our new home has a basement!!! Because the concrete floor will get quite cold during the winter months I took the time to build a nice elevated and insulated platform base to keep the row medium and root zone at more nominal temps. While designing the home, I knew I'd have a grow down there, so had the builder provide lots of headroom and went with 9Ft ceilings.
If anyone wants to see the details about how I constructed that platform base, I documented it in an earlier post in this same diary. Below is a quick link that will take you directly to that post.
https://percysgrowroom.com/forum/postid/170862/
@cookiegrow thank you. I'm hoping to get all the mechanicals set up today and tomorrow in between all the busy other things I have going on.
Day 18 from sprout
All 10 beans popped and sprouted, but due to legal restrictions in my locale, I can only have 5 plants which are in excess of 5 inches in height. Several of the 10 are already approaching that, but I have a way of dealing with it during up-potting that gives me just a little more time, which I outline below.
Also, because quality soil isn't cheap, I also don't want to pay for soil that I won't be taking to harvest. I decided agains up-potting ALL of them.
Additionally, I typically up-pot to 20-gallon fabric pots, but since this is a pretty fast run, I don't believe they'll need anywhere near that much root space so decided to go with 3-gal bags this run.
Lastly, because I'll only keep 5, I only moved 5 to the 3-Gallon pots (again.. to save costs on soil)
I have 7 strong starters, so am moving 2 of them to 6inch plastic pots and am hoping I can find a gro-buddy interested in a couple free F1 hybrid "Regs" (I dunno gender yet). The 3 remaining plants are the slow-starters, so I've left them in the 4-inch pots for now. At this time, I don't know if I will end up culling them, or if I will give them away.
So.. I mentioned my 5 plant (OVER 5") limit and how I deal with that during up-potting. If you look at the first two images below, you can see that I set only enough medium in the fabric pot such that the top of the seedling just barely reaches up beyond the top of the pot. When I fill in around it, I will bury the step all to the first true leaf node. This technique is dual-purpose. It takes the plant from being 5" tall back down to only 1-2" thus giving me more time to identify sexes but most importantly, it all but eliminates that long weak stem that sometimes occurs during sprouting.
When popping the seeds in paper-towels, I sprinkle with mycorhizal fungi so I'm sure that as soon as tap root pops out, it's immediately innoculated. That said, you can NEVER be sure without lab testing, so I apply more Myco to the roots when up-potting. It may not help, but it damn sure won't hurt 
This is also when I create the labels for them. I prefer white plastic stakes with everything written in permanent marker, the covered with clear shipping tape.
With the repotting done, I move everything into the tent. Those in the 3-gal fabric pots get the preferred locations, then next are the plastic pots I hope to rehome, then in the back are the three stragglers still in their original 4" pots. You may notice one plant in front center with a blue label. It's not part of the pheno-hunt. Its a clone I took from my outdoor when I noticed they were entering flower mode. I actually took 4 cuttings, but only one of them rooted. I was out of root stimulator AND the plants were already transitioning to flower.
Once all the containers are in the tent, I find ways to make sure that all the growing tops are at the same height to make sure the smaller ones get adequate light too.
Lastly, I finished up the working session by giving everyone a drink. Water only at PH'd 6.3. The fabric pots each got 2 quarts. the 6" plastic pots got 1 Quart each and the 4" pots just get a sip because that's about all they can hold.
For now, the main door of the tent stays open with an oscillating pedestal fan just outside. Between today and tomorrow, I'll finish installing all the ventilation, circulation, and climate sensors.
All the young veggers that I moved to 3-Gal fabric pots look great and have more than doubled in size over the last 3-4 days.
They are all very similar thus far, so that's one point for phenotypic consistency.
The only difference I'm seeing is internodal spacing and even that isn't super variable.
2 of them have tight spacing like this.
And the others have a bit more space between nodes like this one.
I'm still on the fence with respect whether I want to do ANY training on these. I may choose one and top one of them, and maybe LST another 1 or 2.
Stay tuned and find out next episode 
@stashnugsmor Looking great man.. I'm not sure how much room ya have in your tent, but I would say all of mine are over 4' tall in 1 gal pots and the one has to be 5'
so topping may be a good idea 😛
I would love to run them out fully, but if I'm gonna harvest and dry by deadline on Dec 15th, I'm gonna have to flip within the next week at most. As such, I can't envision these plants gaining much in height considering they are just barely out of seedling stage . At this time they are only about 5-6 inches tall.
Today is training day. The 6 plants that have made the cut so far we're divided into 3 groups.
The 2 shortest most stout plants have been left to grow in their natural form.
The 2 which are tallest and stretches have been
mainline (manifolded)
The 2 in the middle range were LST'd by pinning the apical metistem down to inspire branch development.
It'll be interesting to see the variation in structure and size as we move forward.
Mainlines
LST
@stashnugsmor well it's been a month! how is the training going man? can't wait to see what ya did with them
Hi @johncarlson21. I've been slacking on providing updated. I've not been making the time to capture pics and update you all.
Right now, I've got a bit of a mixed bag going on.
Things are definitely moving along and I'm seeing very different growth across the 3 different training styles as of Day 51.
- The LST'd pair seems to have the foundation for what will likely end up as the highest yielders
- The minimally trained pair are following close behind.
- The two which I manifold trained are definitely behind the others.
As I'm growing in Fox Farms Ocean Forest, so I was a bit surprised to see what appeared to be a nitrogen deficiency (Yellowing of lower leaves) already at about day 45. I went ahead and fed them all some worm castings, but here now 6 days later and I now see some necrosis showing up. I'm not suspecting a potential Potassium deficiency. I have consistently watered with unsoftened tap water at PH 6.2 - 6.4, and I always let the water breathe for about 24 hours before use to allow the Chlorine to dissipate. I'm now also noticing that the leaves on LST'd and the Manifolded plants are really limp. I have no clue what's causing it. If anyone has some recommendations or guidance, I would love to hear it.
I am admittedly struggling to stabilize the environment. This is my first grow at the new house and I'm growing in the basement whereas previously I grew in an upstairs bedroom. I'm keeping the temps fairly stable, but as we transition from Summer to Fall, and the house climate control has been switched from A/C to Heat, I'm fighting to keep the RH stabilized.
@stashnugsmor No worries brother! I totally understand switching up the environment and shit going a bit sideways.
First I'm gonna attempt to hit the environment. 🤔 Definitely the switch to winter heat changes things.
- I would go grab a small humidifier from walmart for like $24, I got one from there that is like a half gallon mist one, not the filter one.
- bump the temp up a bit if you can, not sure if your fan is exhausting too much for ya maybe? Try to get it up to that 75f at lights on if possible. I know mine runs at anywhere from 65f lights off to 75f lights on.
Now for the issues with the plants themselves.
- Pluck those leaves so you can see if it continues on any other leaves, could just have been a swing fluke. (nutes or environment)
- Hard to tell, but mine look like this when they are under watered and also have seen this when the plant runs out of room for roots, but I don't think that is your problem.
- I don't see really any deficiency or toxicity. Tips look just painted, which is where I run mine and then back off the nutes.
- try to water and get a runoff check of PH and PPM/EC and see what ya got, might be running a bit hot or locked out.
Growing in soil is always tough to judge and fix, in my opinion, which is why I don't grow in soil. But once you have it figured out, it's good.
Keep up the great work man! You got this and we will get these plants turned around!
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