I love almost every aspect of growing cannabis, but my least favorite part is testing the pH of runoff water (to prevent deficiencies). Enter hydroponics. In a “DWC” (deep water culture) hydro tub like this one, pH is the easiest part of growing. You just dip a PH Pen in the water, and you’re done.

Growing cannabis in hydro is surprisingly easy when you start plants right.

Yet it’s the results of growing cannabis in hydroponics that makes you feel like a “mad scientist”. This outrageous Purple Ghost Candy plant approached a pound by itself.

My favorite part of growing weed in a big hydro tub is how little time and work it takes from day to day. In some ways, it takes even less work than “just add water” soil because you don’t need to water plants every few days, and testing the pH is faster and easier.

A quick peek “under the hood” of a DWC hydroponic reservoir. Look at those roots!

Learn how to grow cannabis in a hydro tub like this (step-by-step tutorial).

For those who are already growing hydro (or want to start), here are some insider secrets from an experienced hydroponic cannabis grower. These tips prevent common problems in hydro, while saving you significant time and effort.

7 Secrets to Healthy Cannabis Plants in a DWC Hydro Tub

If you’re thinking about growing cannabis in hydro, or perhaps you already have, this section will make all the difference for you. Simply follow these suggestions and you’ll avoid 99% of the issues cannabis hydroponic growers run into.

1. Leave the roots alone – Don’t touch the roots, especially when they’re babies and the roots still look “feathery” and fragile. If you touch them or pick up the lid and move them around, they can easily twist up, which kills the roots below the twist point. When the roots look thick and sturdy, they’re way less sensitive and won’t twist anymore.
2. Don’t change the water for first 30 days, or at least not until plants have solid looking roots. Pumping out and replacing all the water (or otherwise disturbing the roots) is one of the most common triggers of root rot (dying roots), especially with plants under 30 days old. At first, just top off with new water to maintain the proper water level.
3. Use a root supplement – I personally use Hydroguard. This adds “good” microorganisms to the water that not only protect roots from pathogens or root rot, but also just helps them be more healthy overall. Hydro growers without a root supplement are way more likely to run into issues with unhealthy roots.
4. Don’t let light beam onto the tub or get into the reservoir. Both the light and the heat cause things to grow. If you see anything green growing in the reservoir, chances are light is getting in. Cool, totally dark hydroponic reservoirs are the best performing reservoirs.
5. Don’t let roots live in heat. The plant itself can be as hot as any plant, but without the protection of soil, if you heat up the water the roots get hot, and plants don’t like hot roots. If you happen to be an outdoor grower in the sun, if you have potted cannabis plants, put them into an even bigger pot. The extra layer of air between the roots and the sun’s beams makes plants much much more resistant to heat and overall stress.
6. Keep an air gap (don’t fill the reservoir too high) – Make sure there is an air gap under the net pot. This greatly increases root health. The air bubbles will be bursting, so that the roots are constantly getting a mist of water. But if you fill the reservoir so that it’s actually touching the net pots, it causes roots to get unhealthy, and then the base of the stem starts rotting.
7. Pump in plenty of bubbles – Hydro growers use an air pump with airstone to pump tons of bubbles into the water reservoir. This is key to root health as roots need oxygen to survive. It also fights pathogens like algae. I use an Eco Air 2 with 3/16″ ID tubing to connect to a large airstone to provide tons of air for up to two reservoirs.
8. Manage the pH (5.5 – 6.5) to prevent deficiencies. Learn how to check and adjust the pH. Make sure to get a pH pen so you can stick it straight in the reservoir and immediately know the pH. I use an Apera A1209 pH pen (it’s very accurate, measures the pH in seconds, and only needs to be calibrated every few grows). But even the cheapest pH Pen works well as long as you calibrate it regularly. One of my favorite things about growing in hydro is that it’s so easy to test and adjust the pH compared to soil or coco. I don’t particularly enjoy testing the pH in soil and coco (you need to test the input, the runoff, etc.) But with hydro testing the pH takes 1 second, is more accurate, and makes me feel like I’m doing science.

Roots are fragile at first, especially when they still look like “feathers”. Don’t move them like this grower did, or roots might get sick.

But once roots ‘harden” they’re extremely tough. You can move them around and they won’t even notice.

If you see green roots, it usually means light is getting into the reservoir. In this case, the lid was so thin it was letting in light. The grower covered the top of the lid with aluminum foil, and light stopped getting to the roots.

Make sure your air pump is making tons of bubbles in the water!

How to Make Hydro Life Even Easier

Here are some bonus tips and tricks to make your life as a hydro grower easier.

Make it easy to move water (Save your back!)

I never pick up my water container. It sits in front of the tent. I use the hose from the bathroom sink to fill it up, add nutrients, then use a water transfer pump to pump it into the reservoir.

• Faucet hose adapter – Stop lugging water around! Get a hose faucet adapter to use a garden hose from the faucet to get water to your grow space.
• Water transfer pump – Use a battery-powered water transfer pump to get your water from in your container to your reservoir. These are also awesome for watering plants directly at the roots (way better than a watering can!).

Use a faucet hose adapter to get water from your sink to your grow space.

Then use a water transfer pump to get water into the reservoir. Never carry water again!

Never worry about spills

• Grow in a grow tent, because they have a waterproof tray at the bottom which can hold many gallons of water. That means if something happens and there’s a spill, none of it will get on your floor. Bonus: if you get a grow tent you can also control smells and you get bigger yields because reflective walls bounce more light onto your plants

10-Gallon Tub or Bigger

For your hydroponic reservoir, use a tub that’s at least 10 gallons or bigger. Considering that you have to leaves several inches of air under the lid, a 10-gallon container holds about 5 gallons of water, which gives the roots tons of room to expand, and you won’t need to add water very often.

A 10-gallon tub or bigger makes your life way easier

• Faster-growing plants and healthier roots
• PH and nutrient levels tend to stay more stable
• Fill up the reservoir less often

Curious to learn more? Let me go a bit deeper into why I recommend bigger tubs for your hydro cannabis plants.  Specifically, some of the most popular DWC hydro kits sell you 5-gallon buckets, which can only hold about 2.5 gallons of water, and that’s before your roots get big enough to start displacing the water.

Why a bigger hydro tub instead of pre-made DWC buckets?

When you have the black buckets, they don’t hold enough water, plus you can’t easily test the pH. So you have to take a sample of water from within the bucket, which often involves moving the roots, which you want to avoid if possible

Big hydro DWC tubs like this don’t take much time or maintenance.

In the hydro tub you can easily adjust the pH without moving the plant. You simply need a second port to access the reservoir. That lets you look at the roots, take samples, use your PH or PPM pen, add or remove water, make adjustments, etc. WITHOUT ever having to move the plant.

Extra ports make it easy to check on roots and access water without moving the plant.

Cannabis plants in 5-gallon DWC buckets tend to produce less weed overall. But the real issue is that they don’t hold much water, and by the time plants get bigger, growers often find themselves refilling the buckets daily (or even more often!) to keep the plant from drinking themselves dry.

Cannabis plants in buckets tend to stay smaller.

But the main headache for a cannabis grower is that a 5-gallon hydro bucket doesn’t hold much water and needs to be refilled constantly. There is also no way to easily access the reservoir without having to move the whole plant, and moving roots on a plant is one of the most common triggers for root rot, especially younger plants before their roots “harden”.

This grower moved these plants to bigger tubs because they were drinking the entire reservoir of water in hours.

But don’t these buckets hold 5 gallons? Isn’t that enough?

Even though these are “5 gallon buckets” they cannot be filled to the top. You need to keep the water levels several finger widths below the bottom of the net pot. Then the roots themselves displace the water so you can add even less.

As a results, you can often only add a few gallons of water to these buckets, especially as the roots get bigger.

Check this picture: Notice that the list with the “basket” (called a “net pot”) goes deep into the bucket, and then you have to leave an air gap below that. That doesn’t leave much space for water.

You can only fill up a 5-gallon with a few gallons of water if you want to leave an air gap under the net pot for the fastest, healthiest growth.

10-gallon tubs hold up to 5 gallons of water at a time.

All that root space lets you grow monster DWC cannabis plants!

This Purple Ghost Candy plant produced almost a pound in hydro under a HLG Diablo 350.

But can you grow cannabis plants in little hydro tubs?

Yes, just make sure you can access the reservoir, and keep plants to an appropriate size (not too big).

But just remember, the bigger the tub, the easier your life will be. The smaller the tub, the more time you spend tending to the plants, on average.

Sirius grew this plant in a tiny reservoir under a Spider Farmer 100W LED grow light.

But by harvest, the plant was drinking so much he had to add more water every morning and night.

The small root space, and an early switch to 12/12, ensured the plant stayed small.

A fun project!

Ready to start growing hydroponic weed the DWC way? Check out the full tutorial!

The post Why Hydro Feels Like Cheating (Plus 7 Tips) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Today learn the universal principles that let you grow better weed than you can buy. 

I love these strains for home growers: Blue Dream (pictured here), Candy Games #38, and Purple Ghost Candy.

1.) Start with Extraordinary Genetics

What to Do: Start with the best seeds you can find. Good seeds germinate consistently and produce the kind of weed you want (density, smell, size, effects, strength, color, smoothless, etc.).

Why: Good seeds grow good weed with your desired effects, even if you make mistakes. Plants works with you instead of against you.

Quick Win: Use one of the following 3 methods to find great genetics for your next cannabis grow.

1. Choose a proven breeder and read the strain description to find what suits you. A good breeder always maintains quality for all their seeds. Some breeders I like lately are Happy Valley Genetics, Seedsman, Seed Supreme, and Ethos (all represented in my current grow journal). 
2. Copy what works – Get the genetics that you see people growing great weed with. For example, if you have friends that grow weed, or interact with growers on social media, take their lead if you like what you see. Find out what they’re growing and get seeds from the same source to copy their results.
3. Enjoy the gamble – The old fashioned method. Grow the seeds you have, or choose a strain that sounds good and go for the adventure! Good seed banks curate their seed selection and have seed germination guarantees, so any of their seeds should produce good weed.

The seeds you pick make a huge difference to results. For example, the following plants were grown together with the same grow medium, nutrients, and care. But look how different they’re turning out! The difference is 100% genetics, not anything I did.

Blue Dream and Candy Games #38 have wildly different genetics! Choose a strain that makes weed you want to grow.

2.) Use a Strong LED Grow Light (Cannabis-Specific)

What to Do: Get a proven cannabis grow light that’s designed for the size of your grow space.

Why: Light = food for plants. More light is better, up to a point. Spectrum (light color) matters too, affecting not only yields, but also density, color, and potency. Older grow lights, most especially “blurple” LEDs, don’t get nearly as good cannabis yields or bud density as newer “quantum board” style LEDs with pinkish or white light.

Modern cannabis LEDs usually produce white or pinkish light.

Quick Win:

1. Choose an LED grow light that’s proven to get great results with weed. The best thing you can do is use a grow light that growers are already using to produce great cannabis harvests. 
2. Good LED companies include… We’ve consistently found these are the most popular grow lights for GrowWeedEasy.com readers: Spider Farmer, Mars Hydro, and HLG. I’ve used multiple models from each of these companies and always had great results with growing weed. Which one to get? Choose the grow light that best fits your grow space and budget requirements. Spider Farmer and Mars Hydro get about equal results. HLG lights tend to be overpowered and cost a lot, and often have to be turned down even in a dialed in setup, but gets some of the best bud density of any LED we’ve tried so far. Even their tiny 65W and 100W LED lights have produced multiple ounces for us.
3. Check out our list of 9 recommended cannabis lights with yield estimates, and see pictures of real cannabis plants we’ve grown with them.

A HLG 65W LED is surprisingly productive in a 2x2x3 grow tent. Not bad for an LED that uses less electricity than my bedroom fan.

Or upgrade to a bigger grow light, like a HLG 350 Diablo (or two).

Or go BIG, like Max did here, with multiple lights including a Spider Farmer G5000.

Often it’s easier to combine multiple smaller grow lights than have one enormous grow light. That way you can adjust them independently and have more control over where light falls.

3.) The Right Nutrients at the Right Time

Whether you grow in soil, coco, or hydro, provide proper nutrients. Either use cannabis-specific nutrients and dole out to plants on a schedule. Or start with a cannabis-specific soil that slowly delivers the right nutrients at the right time (called “just-add-water” super soil). 

What to Do: Make sure plants get the right amount of nutrients at the right time.

Why: Faster greener growth, but more importantly, proper nutrition in the flowering stage greatly increases bud quality, yields, and potency. On the other hand, a plant that is starved of nutrients while buds are forming makes small, airy, non-potent buds. Most crucially, make sure plants have plenty of nutrients for the first 6+ weeks of the flowering stage, until hairs start darkening and curling in. Plants still need nutrients after that, but for the best harvest, it’s especially important to avoid significant nutrient deficiencies during the early flowering stage and initial bud formation.

Quick Win: Use cannabis nutrients and follow an already-tested schedule

1. Easy cheap option – Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom. Give at 1 tsp/gallon. Give “Grow” for seedlings until first 3 weeks into flowering stage. Then once the flowering stretch is over, give “Bloom” until harvest. These nutrients were initially designed for orchids, but growers have discovered they give surprisingly great results with weed. I was impressed when I tried them in coco.
2. Advanced nutrient system – General Hydroponics Flora trio. My personal favorite nutrients, I find the GH trio provides some of the fastest growth and biggest yields. No need to follow a special schedule. Just follow the amounts listed on the side of the bottle at half-strength, and only raise the amounts if plant seem pale. I’ve had good results in soil, coco, and hydro.
3. Use super soil instead – Use a “just add water” organic soil that’s made for a plant like cannabis. This kind of soil slowly releases nutrients over the course of the grow, so you don’t need to add any extra nutrients. Nature’s Living Soil is a proven super soil concentrate that makes super soil when used with Coco Loco soil. Just remember, super soil can be stinky at first! But the smell settles after the plants make themselves at home in the soil.

General Hydroponics Flora trio are my personal favorite nutrients for growing weed.

Follow the directions on the bottle at half-strength to grow green, happy, and abundant cannabis plants.

4.) Water Plants So They Grow Faster

Water plants regularly with the right amount at a time. It’s important roots don’t dry out, or stay overly wet for too long. Luckily, if you’re following all the other steps here, you can make some watering mistakes and plants still turn out great. Cannabis plants are remarkably able to recover from watering issues as long as you course-correct.

What to Do: Water plants properly. The easiest method is to follow a cannabis-specific watering schedule like the one below. Or follow proven general principles.

Why: Plants grow faster and get fewer deficiencies, especially seedlings, when given the right amount of water. Good watering practices helps plants start growing fast out the gate. 

Seedlings grow super fast if you give the right amount of water!

I use a battery operated water transfer pump to easily water plants.

Quick Win: Basically, give seedlings just a little water at a time, at first, in a small circle around the base, every few days. If you don’t want guesswork, follow the following seedling watering schedule that I use. It’s suitable as long as you’re in a 3 or 5-gallon pot (and works pretty well in most sizes). Never wonder again if you’re over or under-watering your seedlings!

Day 1 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant (at this point, your cannabis seedlings should have their leaves completely open and be in a 3-gallon or 5-gallon pot under the grow light)
Day 3 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
Day 6 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
Day 8 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant (every 3 days after this)
Day 11 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant
Day 14 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
Day 17 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
Day 20 – Give 5 cups (1.25 liter) water per plant
Day 23 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
Day 26 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
Day 29 – Give 8 cups or 1/2 gallon (2 liter) water per plant

At first, cannabis seedlings only need a little water in a circle around their base.

After the first 30 days, start watering like this…

(1+ Months) Cannabis Watering Schedule

1. Wait until top inch of soil is dry (for coco, wait until top is mostly dry)
2. Water until you get 10-20% runoff out the bottom
3. Remove runoff (test the pH if needed) and start over

P.S. Learn about auto-watering pot bases so you can water plants less often. I’m loving them lately.

5.) Harvest at the Right Time

Wait to harvest until buds have reached peak potency, size, and bud quality. Harvest earlier (speedier more “up” weed) or later (stronger relaxation effect) to achieve your desired effects. Dry and cure using a proven home method.

What to Do: Harvest buds based on their maturity level. After harvest, dry buds to make them smokable (buds are mostly water on the plant), and then jar them so they “cure”.

Why: Choosing the right harvest time maximizes yields, potency, and effects. Drying and especially curing increases density, appearance, potency, and effects, while enhancing the natural bud smell.

Quick Win: 

1. Follow our free harvest & curing guide on GrowWeedEasy.com
2. Check out our new digital book HARVEST. It’s perfect if you want a step-by-step harvest guide that’s available anywhere without the internet Growers who sign up for our Home Grow Masterclass next week get a free copy of HARVEST. And those who have already purchased HARVEST get a steep discount on the class! Make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter and watch your email for more info coming soon.

Wait until buds have reached maturing before harvesting for best effects…

Harvest time may be my favorite part of growing!

The post Grow Better Weed: The 5 Core Principles appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

The post LED Selector appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Jump to the weigh-in! (Final Yields!) 

Five photoperiod strains in soil, the hope of sweet dreams to come, and an overarching goal: Grow 1 pound of top-shelf weed!

“Sweet Dreams” Genetics: Blue Dream, Purple Ghost Candy, Candy Games #38, Mandarin Cookies, GG4 x Zkittlez

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7 – Initiate flowering stage (started 12/12 so buds start growing)

Week 8 timelapse (flowering day 5 to 11)

Week 9, we’ve got buds! (flowering day 18)

Week 10 (flowering day 24) – So stretchy! Smells amazing in there now.

Week 11 (flowering day 31) – Purple starting to come out in some plants.

Week 12 (flowering day 39) – Some of the bigger buds now held up with plant yo-yos!

Week 13 (flowering day 44) – In natural light!

Week 14 (flowering day 51) – Need gloves to touch buds now (otherwise sticky fingers that reek of delicious weed smell).

Week 15 (flowering day 59) – Sweet dreams have come

Week 16 (flowering day 67) – First plant looking ready to harvest! (Candy Games #38)

Flowering day 73 – Harvest Day!

Weigh-in – Well over a pound of top-shelf weed!

Jump to the latest grow journal update! (Weigh-in!)

Table of Contents

About This Grow Diary

Germination – Seeds sprouted!

Week 1 – First leaves

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 4
• Day 7

Week 2 – Seedling life

• Day 8
• Day 9
• Day 10
• Day 11
• Day 12
• Day 13
• Day 14

Week 3 – Early vegetative stage

• Day 15
• Day 16
• Day 17
• Day 18 – Assemble AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases
• Day 19
• Day 20 – Transplant to 5-gallon fabric pots
• Day 21

Week 4 – Vegetative stage & topping

• Day 22
• Day 23
• Day 24
• Day 25
• Day 26
• Day 27 – Plants get topped!
• Day 28

Week 5 – Filling up the tent!

• Day 29
• Day 30
• Day 31
• Day 32
• Day 33
• Day 34
• Day 35

Week 6 – Trained to grow wide and flat, about to start flowering

• Day 36
• Day 37
• Day 38
• Day 39
• Day 40
• Day 41
• Day 42

Week 7 – Initiated flowering stage with 12/12 light schedule!

• Day 43
• Day 44
• Day 45 – started 12/12 (to initiate flowering stage)
• Day 46 (Flowering Day 1)
• Day 47 (Flowering Day 2)
• Day 48 (Flowering Day 3)
• Day 49 (Flowering Day 4)

Week 8 – First stigmas (hairs) and transition to flowering

• Day 50 (Flowering Day 5)
• Day 51 (Flowering Day 6)
• Day 52 (Flowering Day 7)
• Day 53 (Flowering Day 8) – Noticed first white hairs (buds starting to form)
• Day 54 (Flowering Day 9)
• Day 55 (Flowering Day 10)
• Day 56 (Flowering Day 11)

Week 9 – Auto-watering pot bases to the rescue!

• Day 57 (Flowering Day 12)
• Day 58 (Flowering Day 13)
• Day 59 (Flowering Day 14)
• Day 60 (Flowering Day 15)
• Day 61 (Flowering Day 16)
• Day 62 (Flowering Day 17)
• Day 63 (Flowering Day 18)

Week 10 – Bud city!

• Day 64 (Flowering Day 19)
• Day 65 (Flowering Day 20)
• Day 66 (Flowering Day 21)
• Day 67 (Flowering Day 22)
• Day 68 (Flowering Day 23)
• Day 69 (Flowering Day 24)
• Day 70 (Flowering Day 25)

Week 11

• Day 71 (Flowering Day 26)
• Day 72 (Flowering Day 27)
• Day 73 (Flowering Day 28)
• Day 74 (Flowering Day 29)
• Day 75 (Flowering Day 30)
• Day 76 (Flowering Day 31)
• Day 77 (Flowering Day 32)

Week 12

• Day 78 (Flowering Day 33)
• Day 79 (Flowering Day 34)
• Day 80 (Flowering Day 35)
• Day 81 (Flowering Day 36)
• Day 82 (Flowering Day 37)
• Day 83 (Flowering Day 38)
• Day 84 (Flowering Day 39)

Week 13

• Day 85 (Flowering Day 40)
• Day 86 (Flowering Day 41)
• Day 87 (Flowering Day 42)
• Day 88 (Flowering Day 43)
• Day 89 (Flowering Day 44)
• Day 90 (Flowering Day 45)
• Day 91 (Flowering Day 46)

Week 14

• Day 92 (Flowering Day 47)
• Day 93 (Flowering Day 48)
• Day 94 (Flowering Day 49)
• Day 95 (Flowering Day 50)
• Day 96 (Flowering Day 51)
• Day 97 (Flowering Day 52)
• Day 98 (Flowering Day 53)

Week 15

• Day 99 (Flowering Day 54)
• Day 100 (Flowering Day 55)
• Day 101 (Flowering Day 56)
• Day 102 (Flowering Day 57)
• Day 103 (Flowering Day 58)
• Day 104 (Flowering Day 59)
• Day 105 (Flowering Day 60)

Week 16

• Day 106 (Flowering Day 61)
• Day 107 (Flowering Day 62)
• Day 108 (Flowering Day 63)
• Day 109 (Flowering Day 64)
• Day 110 (Flowering Day 65)
• Day 111 (Flowering Day 66)
• Day 112 (Flowering Day 67)

Harvest Week!

• Day 113 (Flowering Day 68)
• Day 114 (Flowering Day 69)
• Day 115 (Flowering Day 70)
• Day 116 (Flowering Day 71)
• Day 117 (Flowering Day 72)
• Day 118 (Flowering Day 73) – Harvest!

Introduction 

As we wrap up our autoflowering grow journal, it’s time to look ahead. This time we’re going to grow with photoperiod strains, go bigger with a 4’x4′ grow tent, and turn up the PPFD with a HLG 350W Diablo LED grow light. We’re going to be trying out AC Infinity Auto-watering pot bases, using Coco Loco soil and FoxFarm nutrients.

Want to join us? Sign up for our newsletter to follow along live, week by week, as we turn a handful of cannabis seeds into a bountiful harvest. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see every part of the grow journey.

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About the “Sweet Dreams” Photoperiod Grow Diary

Grow Space: 4’x4′ grow tent

LED Grow Light: 1 x HLG 350W Diablo LED

Soil with Auto-Watering Pots

• 5-gallon Fabric Pots
• FoxFarm Bushdoctor Coco Loco soil
• AC Infinity Auto-watering pot bases

Nutrients: FoxFarm Nutrient Trio (Big Bloom, Grow Big, Tiger Bloom)

• Using this nutrient schedule (I make notes in the journal for any deviations)

Strains (“Sweet Dreams” themed!)

• Candy Games #38
• Purple Ghost Candy
• Mandarin Cookies V2
• Blue Dream
• GG4 x Zkittlez

Quick Summary: 4’x4′ grow tent with HLG Diablo 350 LED, 5-gallon fabric pots full of Bush Doctor Coco Loco soil, FoxFarm nutrients.

We are trying AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases for the first time (aka “auto-pots”)

FoxFarm Nutrient Trio for soil following this schedule in Coco Loco soil

Nebula Haze’s Sweet Dreams Photoperiod Grow Journal

Here is the first entry, which we sent to the GrowWeedEasy.com growing community via our Sunday email newsletter.

August 3, 2025 – New Photoperiod Grow Journal: T-minus 1 week!

I am about sprout seeds for our next grow (photoperiod strains this time), and then we’re off to the races on a new grow journal!

Yield Goal: 1 lb (16 oz) of top-shelf weed!

We’d love for you to join us with your own photoperiod grow! Think of it as a grow challenge we can all go through together. If you’re a little ahead (already sprouted) or behind (can’t germinate yet this week), that’s okay! We can still be together in spirit 🙂

HIT REPLY if you’re joining us, and let us know your setup and strains. We’d love to hear what you’re up to, and we may feature you in a future newsletter!

~Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Germination Time – Seeds have sprouted!

I chose to use the Paper Towel method to germinate my cannabis seeds this time. When combined with a little heat, I’ve had the best germination rates and fastest germination with this method. And it makes it easier to track the progress of each seed. However, other simpler methods like planting the seeds directly in soil work too!

First I pick the seeds I want to grow, and cut a paper towel to the size of the plate.

Note: Use the CHEAPEST paper towels you can find. The nice “cloth-like” ones are no good because roots can grow into them. But super cheap paper towels work perfect.

I decided to germinate 3 seeds per strain, just to ensure I get to grow all 5 of the strains, and pick one extra for a total of 6 plants.

All the “extra” seedlings are going to get grown in the mini tent! We’ll do a little “Sea of Green” grow with the 100W Spider Farmer LED. It will be fun to see how the buds from the mini tent compare to the buds in this more powerful HLG Diablo LED grow tent.

Purple Ghost Candy seeds – I am super excited about this strain. In past grows, it has produced some of the favorite weed we’ve ever grown.

Candy Games #38 – I like how safe the seeds seem like inside the box. I have heard so much good stuff about this strain and I can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about for myself!

Mandarin Cookies V2 – These are actually old seeds, from all the way back in 2020. There are only a few seeds left out of a pack of 10. Every single plant I’ve grown from this pack has been a bit different from each other, but every single one has produced fire weed.

The breeder recently released an R3 version of this strain which claims to take the best traits of Mandarin Cookies and make a super stabilized version aimed at home growers who seek consistency. I decided it was time to grow the last of the original cross, and then next time I can compare these three plants to the new R3 version.

Blue Dream and GG4 x Zkittlez (both by Seed Supreme) – The Blue Dream strain is legendary, no explanation needed for why I picked it for a Sweet Dreams grow! “GG4 x Zkittlez” just sounded like a fun sweet strain to round off the grow. Every GG4 (Gorilla Glue #4) and every Zkittlez I’ve grown have turned out well. So why not see how they play together as a mix?

Make sure to add labels before closing up your seeds. I used a marker. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget which seed is which!

I add just one single paper towel on top, so that it’s easy to see whether the seeds underneath have sprouted yet. Then I add just enough water that everything is thoroughly wet, but there isn’t liquid water sloshing around.

Close her up! Just add another plate on top to lock in the moisture and make sure seeds get darkness while germinating. Make sure the paper towels are all fully enclosed inside the plates.

Tutorial: Wet paper towel cannabis seed germination method

I find germination happens faster, and I get higher overall germination rates, if I add a little heat. However, a regular seedling heating mat can get too hot. So I put a little something between the plate and the seedling heating mat. In this case, the tray of Rapid Rooters I’m going to use for the seedlings.

This makes it so that the plate is getting some warmth, but the seeds never sit on hot spots.

Learn more about heating mats for seed germination.

I left the seeds on the kitchen counter for 3 days…

When I checked on them, it appeared that every seed had cracked! I could see under the single wet sheet of paper towel.

Click for closeup! You can see the seeds have sprouted underneath.

I ALMOST had the perfect unveiling video, but one Candy Games #38 seeds ruined it right at the end haha

Several of them have totally escaped their seed shells, and are just naked seedlings on the paper towel.

Which cannabis seeds sprouted best?

• 1st Place: Blue Dream and Candy Games #38 – All seeds sprouted, big long roots, already escaped their shells by the time I unveiled them from under the paper towel. In my experience, these types of seeds, where the entire seedling comes all the way out of the shell in the paper towel, often grow the most vigorously.
• 2nd Place: Mandarin Cookies and Purple Ghost Candy – Not as uniformly vigorous as the others. Purple Ghost Candy had one seed with a strangely thin root. And although all 3 Mandarin Cookies seeds sprouted, they had overall smaller roots than the other seeds. But hey, they’re 5 years old, which is ancient in seed years. I won’t hold it against them for taking it a little slower 🙂
• 3rd Place: GG4 x Zkittlez – Although all 3 seeds sprouted, one just cracked open and the root hasn’t come out yet. Not a good sign when every single other seed has an actual root. Maybe it will pull through, but in my experience seeds like that rarely thrive. I will put it in a Rapid Rooter and hope for the best. But luckily, the other two seedlings look great!

Rapid Rooters are seedling-friendly “plugs”.

I cut the Rapid Rooters so that it’s easy to add sprouted seeds.

And here’s what it’s like to put a seed inside!

When they’re cut open, the seedlings fit perfectly inside even if they’ve got a curly tail, like the one in the above example.

Here they are after being put into Rapid Rooters. I positioned the ones with leaves right at the top so they could immediately start getting light. The ones still inside the shells got placed just below the surface, so they hopefully push the shell off as they emerge.

Hopefully everyone pokes their head out soon 🤞 Here’s to hoping that I wake up tomorrow to a ton of happy little green leaves!

Stay tuned for the next update!

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 1 – Seedlings put into cups!

Here is everything that happened in our cannabis seedlings’ first week of life.

Day 1 – Seedlings emerge…

The next morning, I’m greeted by many seedlings saying hi!

Day 1 seedlings

Not every seed has made it above the Rapid Rooters, but 13 of the 15 sprouted have little leaves opened up.

Two seedlings haven’t appeared yet.

Day 2 – Seedlings are loving life!

By day 2, all the seedlings have appeared but one. Looking at that empty Rapid Rooter, I don’t any signs of life.

I decided to open it up and can see the root never emerged further than it did in the paper towels.  After two days of no growth, it’s safe to say it didn’t make it. So I tossed that one.

All seedlings have their heads above ground now!

The Story of the Doomed One-Leaf Seedling 

While I’m here, I want to share this story of what happened with one of the seedlings. I doomed this seedling by accident. It wasn’t because I didn’t care. In fact, this was a Purple Ghost Candy seed, the strain I wanted to grow the MOST. That made it feel extra tragic.

So here are the seedlings right after they germinated. And here is as close a picture of the Purple Ghost Candy sprouted seed I got at the time.

This pic is from germination day. Just before I committed the horrible crime against the Purple Ghost Candy seedling.

Sorry for the picture quality, I didn’t know I was filming its last moments.

I noticed the shell was stuck to one of the little round leaves, which is normally fine. It’s okay if one leaf has a little shell stuck to it. It will fall off on its own.

But then it happened…

One leaf was ripped off! I was trying to take pictures with one hand and put seedlings into Rapid Rooters with the other hand. I wasn’t being careful at all. And when I moved it, I was not gentle, and accidently ripped off the leaf attached to the shell!

I knew something was wrong when it happened, but I was hoping, just hoping, that the middle growing tips had survived, and it was just the little round leaf that got pulled off.

But by the time it made it’s head above soil, I could tell it was almost certainly doomed.

The leaf that got ripped off was stuck to the shell!

By 4 days later, the writing was on the wall. Nothing was growing from this seedling.

I actually still have that one-leaf Purple Ghost Candy seedling. You will see it in future pictures. I’m going to let it live. How cool would it be if it miraculously started growing?

Analysis: This one-leaf seedling was my fault. I ripped off the leaf. The Purple Ghost Candy seedling was perfectly fine when it germinated. If I had been more careful when transferring the seedling to a Rapid Rooter, this wouldn’t have happened.

That being said, a shell shouldn’t get stuck on a leaf like that. But cannabis plants are living things and they don’t always grow perfectly.

Luckily, I only need one Purple Ghost Candy seedling and I still have two to choose from even without this one.

Day 4 – Time to put in cups!

I could put them in their final pots. But I haven’t decided which 5 lucky seedlings to keep yet. So I’m going to put them all in cups so they get a few more days and I can try to pick the 5 best, most matching seedlings.

In retrospect, I probably should have given them another day or two in the Rapid Rooters, so their roots had fully colonized the plugs before moving them. But luckily, it ends up being just fine 🙂 Cannabis plants really do grow like a weed!

Transplant time! They’ll get very light nutrients today (seedling strength).

I cut drainage holes in the bottom of the cups for the marijuana seedlings.

Filled the cups with soil and made labels.

I poked Rapid Rooter sized holes in the soil, and just plopped the seedlings in. Gave about 40 ml of clean water, and left them alone.

I used tweezers to easily grab the plugs to move them.

Plopped in the Rapid Rooter

Slowly gave 40 mL of water (it would have been easier if I’d used a syringe, which I have tons of, but I didn’t think of that until after haha)

Story of The Mutant Seedling

That was the first GG4 x Zkittlez seedling. But while we’re here, I wanted to share the other GG4 x Zkittlez seedling, which is a MUTANT!

Here’s a baby picture of our little “clover” 🍀 mutant, not long after it sprouted.

I thought to myself, “That looks a bit odd.” But I thought it was a “tri-fold” seedling, which is when a seedling grows 3 leaves per node. That’s pretty common. But that’s not what this was.

Here it is on day 4. Same strain as the normal seedling below, but now it’s clear that this seedling has an odd mutation 🍀

Let me show you the difference.

Here is a normal cannabis seedling

Normal seedling

• Two leaves per “node” – If you look closely at the normal seedling. You can see that each new “layer” (also known as a “node”) is a set of two leaves. A pair of leaves per node.
• Normal sequence for seedlings
  • 2 round leaves – The first two round leaves are called “cotyledons” and were already fully formed inside the shells.
  • 2 serrated leaves – The second set of leaves (with serrated edges) was grown completely by the plant.
  • Another 2 serrated leaves – Next you see another set of two leaves growing in.
  • And so on for many sets of nodes…

On a normal seedling, this “pair of leaves per node” continues on for at least the first 6-7 sets of leaves, and often for several weeks longer. Older plants, don’t grow this way (which is why “clones” don’t grow like normal seedlings, but that’s neither here nor there).

Typically when you see unusual growth patterns on growing seedlings, it’s a sign there was a mutation. Often called “mutant” seedlings.

Our adorable little mutant “clover” is growing to the beat of its own drum.

I’m not sure exactly what it’s doing yet. It appears mostly healthy and green, but all leaves are growing directly from the middle, like an actual clover. Let me know if you want to see more pics of it as it grows!

What happens next with a mutant seedling?

In my experience, with mutant seedlings, they go one of two ways. They either always grow weird, or they sort of “grow out of it” and start growing normally. We’ll let this one grow to see what happens!

Now back to the main show….

Voila! Everyone is finally in the grow tent!

Environment Notes

• LED to top of tent, dimmed to 1/2 power – I put the LED grow light all the way to the top of the tent, and turned down to half power. The HLG 350W Diablo is extremely powerful LED grow light. It’s amazing for flowering plants, but you have to be very careful with seedlings and young plants, as it will overwhelm them.
• Temperature about 77°F / 25°C with lights on – I’d like it just a bit warmer for the seedlings. Seedlings love it closer to 80-85°F / 27-29°C under LEDs. LEDs don’t warm up the inside of leaves like the sun (or a bulb light like T5, MH, HPS, CMH, or LEC). What does that mean? Under LEDs, the leaves are about the same temperature as the air. In other words, it always “feels” a little colder for seedlings under an LED compared to the same air temperature under the sun. I’ll close up this room to help keep more heat in, and once I turn the LED up to full power, it will add plenty of heat and this won’t be a consideration anymore!
• Nutrients – Following the FoxFarm trio nutrient schedule at “seedling strength”. No supplements. Just water and a light dose of nutrients.

Seedlings will go into their pots once the leaves reach the edges of the cups and all look healthy and happy. I’ve noticed f you keep seedlings in cups, it helps them all stay the same size. With photoperiods, that helps keep everyone “together” in a cohort.

Side note: In side-by-side tests with some seedlings in cups, and some in big pots, I’ve found they grow at the same rate for the first 2 weeks or so. But after that, cups tend to slow down seedling growth. That  means leaving them all in cups can help any seedlings that are behind the others get some time to catch up. You wouldn’t want to do that with an autoflowering strain grow, where it’s a race to the finish line and you don’t want to slow down growth for a second at the beginning, but with photoperiod plants you can take your time since plants don’t start making buds until you tell them to.

Once they’ve all got a few sets of leaves, I will pick the 5 “Sweet Dreams” Champions, one plant of each strain, and move them to their final homes.

Day 7 seedlings – Looking happy!

One-leaf mutant – Here’s a closeup of the one-leaf-seedling at 7 days old, for those interested in its journey. Is that middle bit getting longer? To me, it looks like the little “flap” got slightly longer but is not making any  significant progress. What do you think?

Day 7 top view

Seedlings on left – Click for closeups!

Seedlings on right – Click for closeups!

Check back next Sunday for the next update! Or sign up below to get our home grow newsletter with get live grow journal updates delivered to you every Sunday morning at 4:20am.

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 2 – Seedlings get bigger!

Day 8

Left seedlings alone today. Just letting them grow and do their thing.

The cute little mutant

Day 9

Watered that night. I’m still giving week 1 nutrients of the Fox Farm schedule, just because they’re in cups and I don’t want to overwhelm them with too many nutrients. The soil already has enough nutrients to last the seedlings for a little while, and the official schedule jumps up in strength a lot between week 1 and 2.

So far the fastest seedlings seems to be the Blue Dreams.

Day 10

Added a small fan to space, to add extra airflow around the plants. I didn’t want to point it at them since they’re so fragile. So I just put it in the tent pointing up. I can see that gets their tiny leaves twittering just a little.

In a few days I’ll attach the clip-on fan to the bars of the tent so it can blow air over the top.

Day 11

As I’m looking at the seedlings, I feel like they’re growing well, but not as fast as I’d like. It might have helped to give them an extra day or two in the Rapid Rooters before transplanting them into the cups. I noticed when I transplanted them that they just had a few roots each. It’s best if you can see lots of roots coming out of the Rapid Rooters when you move them. That means they have a buffer that will help them thrive immediately after transplant.

Why did I transplant to cups instead of the final container?

• I put them in cups because I wasn’t sure which 5 plants to keep yet. But if I had wanted the fastest growth, I should have put them straight into their final pots
• I have found in past side-by-side experiments, that seedlings in cups grow at the same as plants in bigger pots, until about week 2. After that, the plants with more room for the roots start overtaking the cup-based seedlings, and you can visually see them growing faster.
• The biggest issue with putting plants in their final container is it’s easy to overwater them
• But when you follow a proven watering schedule, that’s not an issue, and you can put seedlings right in the final containers and get the fastest growth possible, with the least chance of plants growing slower than they would have.

How important is it to get plants to grow as FAST as possible?

•  If I were still in “autoflowering mode” like I was for my last grow journal, it becomes absolutely crucial to make sure seedlings get a strong, fast start. That’s because autoflowering plants only have a few weeks before they start flowering. It’s like a race.
• Something that’s really kind of nice about growing with photoperiod plants is it’s a lot more relaxed at the beginning.
• If plants grow a little slower, it’s okay, because you have as much time as you need to get them to the exact perfect size, BEFORE you initiate flowering

Autoflowering vs Photoperiod: Which is best for beginners?

• Autoflowering – I feel like autoflowering strains are great for beginners because they give you a QUICK harvest, and full education on growing from seed to weed in just 3 months.
  • Another cool thing about autoflowering strains is you can plant a seed and let it grow alongside your photoperiod plants.
• Photoperiod – yet photoperiod strains can be a great choice for beginners, or growers who want extra time to experiment and make mistakes.
  • With photoperiod plants – As long as plants stay in the vegetative stage, you have time to help them recover from any issues, get to the perfect size.
  • You can even cut off huge amounts of plant if it got too big, and a vegetative plant will keep growing like nothing happened.

Just some thoughts, from someone who just completed an autoflowering grow and is now doing a photoperiod grow.

Day 12

Watered the seedlings today. I gave Week 2 nutrients of the Fox Farm trio schedule. However, I gave them at 2/3 strength. (I made 3 gallons of water, but only added nutrients for two gallons, arriving at 2/3 strength compared to the schedule).

GG4 x Zkittlez – Normal seedling on left, “mutant” clover seedling on right. Notice the different shape overall.

After adding nutrients, I adjusted the water to 6.7 ph. This helps prevent nutrient deficiencies, because plants more easily absorb nutrients through the roots at the proper pH. With soil, it’s good to keep the pH just a little acidic, between 6-7 pH.

They look just a touch droopy for my taste. I turned the LED grow light down to 75%, even though it’s already 3.5 feet away. It’s hard to say, but I wonder if it might still be a bit too powerful for these seedlings.

By later that day, they already looked a bit perkier.

Thoughts on the HLG LED grow light

• I love this light. It produces some of the best weed I’ve grown. Potent, dense, aromatic, beautiful buds.
• Yet one thing I’ve noticed about it is it is “harsher” on seedlings compared to more “general purpose” LED grow lights like Spider Farmer or Mars Hydro
• I am keeping this HLG light almost at the top of the tent, and dimmed down to about 75%, giving plants a PAR of about 200 µmol/m²/s according to my Apogee light meter.
• But that’s just the beginning. A little extra care to keep the LED the right distance away solves the problem.
• Once these plants start flowering and making buds, the real power and beauty of this grow light comes out. The bud production historically has been insane.

Just curious, would you rather use an LED grow light that is the absolute easiest and most gentle on plants?

Or would you rather use an LED grow light that is overly powerful for seedlings, even turned down, but will provide the best results in the flowering stage?

Day 13

Seedlings looking happy today. Finally starting to grow significantly from day to day!

Thoughts on the strains so far

• Blue Dream – The 3 Blue Dream seedlings are furthest along, and growing the fastest. At this stage, I always feel fond of the fastest-growing plants, and these ones have been growing like a dream 🙂
• Mandarin Cookies – The Mandarin Cookies plants are the slowest growing so far, especially one of them. I won’t hold it against them since they’re 5-year old seeds. I’m super excited about this strain, so I’m happy to baby them.
• GG4 x Zkittlez – The normal seedling is big and happy. The mutant seedling is healthy but a bit slower growing. That’s pretty typical for mutants. I’m so curious to see the underlying structure once it starts growing out.
• Candy Games #38 – These are almost as big and fast-growing as the Blue Dreams! Very hearty, adorable plants with beautiful leaves.
• Purple Ghost Candy – The Purple Ghost Candy seedlings were a little behind at first, but have clearly found their stride. At this stage, they’ve caught up to the others and are starting to overtake them.

Day 14

Some clear “winners’ Of the group by now. I will pick the final 5 very soon. Don’t worry we’ll do something cool with all the other seedlings too. I’m not sure yet though exactly what. Maybe grow the extra seedlings out in a mini tent, like a Sea of Green grow? What do you think? Let us know!

Watered the seedlings until I felt a bit of coolness at the bottom, but no runoff. Same nutrients as before (2/3 strength, week two, 6.7 ph).

I can’t wait to transplant them into bigger pots. At that point, watering becomes a lot easier, because I can follow a proven day-by-day watering schedule. When they’re in cups, I feel like they’re a bit more finicky. The soil in the cups can only hold a bit of water at a time. As a result, you have to give less water, but more often.

I like how with our proven watering schedule in 5-gallon pots, you can water them with an exact amount and they’re always happy 🙂

Next week I will choose our final 5 plants, and transplant them into 5-gallon fabric pots with auto-watering pot bases.

Then the REAL fun begins!

Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 3 – Transplant to 5-gallon pots, with auto-watering bases

This week, the 5 final “winners” are picked and our five seedlings get transplanted to their final homes!

Day 15

Today I mixed up a gallon of nutrient water.

Fox Farm nutrient trio

• Week 2 full strength 
• Adjusted to 6.5 ph (in soil, 6-7 pH is ideal to prevent nutrient deficiencies)

They look a little dry and thirsty, so I gave them a watering.

Day 16 – Me just fretting about the seedlings, nothing to see here

They look okay, but some are a bit droopy. I think they’re a bit Overwatered. I guess I’m as guilty as anyone else of overwatering. I should have waited a full two days between watering. Ah well, it’s okay. They’ll be just fine with some extra care.

Random Thoughts: Big Pots vs Cups for Seedlings

• I think it’s simpler to water cannabis seedlings in a big pot than in cups.
• There’s more “buffer” in big pots, because roots can seek out dry spots if they’re too wet, and wet areas if they’re too dry. But with little cups it’s easy for them to have too much or two little water.
• The advantage of growing seedlings in cups is if you do overwater, seedlings are quick to recover.
• A cup can only ever hold so much moisture, as long as there are holes at the bottom.
• So overwatered seedlings quickly drink up all the water in the cup.
• If seedlings are Overwatered in a big pot, it can take a long time for all the soil to dry out.
• But there is a solution to that. With a big pot, you can follow a watering schedule pretty closely, especially for the first few weeks.
• On the other hand, cups aren’t conducive to a rigid watering schedule.
• They need to be watered often with small amounts. In a 2-cup (500mL) container, you can’t give a seedling 1 cup (250mL) of water.
• It’s easy to know that seedlings need to be given just a bit of water at a time, but it’s difficult to tell how much water is too much or too little.

I will leave them alone until at least tomorrow. Even if they seem droopy or dry tonight, I think they need at least a whole day. I noticed the Rapid Rooters seem wet. There’s no way the seedlings can go through all that water by tomorrow. I will leave them alone.

Side note: After all that fretting, they looked totally fine later when I check on them haha (pictured here)

Day 17

I gave each plant 20-60 mL of water, based on how heavy the little cups felt.

I think they’re ready to be transplanted to their final homes tomorrow!

Random thought about the HLG LED grow light

• I feel like this HLG 350 Diablo grow light is a bit harsh on seedlings.
• I have it at half strength and several feet away. The Apogee light meter shows a PAR value of about 200 µmol/m²/s.
• For light levels, 200 µmol/m²/s is a moderate-to-high amount for seedlings, but healthy 3 week old seedlings should be able to handle it
• I feel like they don’t seem as happy as seedlings under similar size Mars Hydro or Spider Farmer LED grow lights at this age, under the same PAR values.
  • Note: PAR is a measure of light quantity not necessarily quality. Plant response is also affected by spectrum, diode placement, lens configuration, plant stage of life, and other factors.
• This is just a personal feeling. But I feel like the HLG LED grow lights (including all the ones I’ve used so far – 65w 100W, 300W, 350W) are harsher on young plants
• The reward is how well HLG LED grow lights perform in the flowering stage, especially bud density, sparkle, and yields per watt. My favorite harvests/buds often come from HLG lights.
• Of course, strain is king. In our side-by-side tests with different LED grow lights with clones, the differences between different LED models are small (a bit of yield, maybe 0.5-1.5% difference in THC). The effect of your particular LED grow light model is small compared to the huge differences you see between strains. A 27% THC strain feels just as strong if buds only reach 26% THC.
• And if an LED grow light is easier to use, like Spider Farmer and Mars Hydro, that often matters more to home growers than the tiny gains from using a more “advanced” LED grow light…

Day 18 – Assembling the auto-watering pots

Today, I plan to move the 5 “winners” to their 5-gallon pots.

I gave the seedlings a good watering to help get them prepped for their “move”.

Then, I assembled the auto-watering pots (“autopots”).

The autowatering pots arrived in a 4-pack in the mail from Amazon. (I got two packs, for 8 pots in total)

All the pieces inside the first pot. I didn’t realize I had to assemble these.

Looking at the directions, assembly seems pretty straightforward.

Now it’s assembled according to those instructions.

This glass piece is going to be used to easily see the water level.

I’m not exactly sure how it will work, but it seems nifty.

Okay, now for the “Self-watering” part of the instructions.

Now, I need to cut some rope to size, as this will be what wicks the water to roots.

For 5-gallon pots, the AC Infinity instructions say to cut the rope to 18″ (45 cm) long.

Next, I string the rope through the holes (directions told me to use the outermost holes for 5-gallon pots)

You put two pieces of rope per AC Infinity pot base

Bottom view – The ropes dangle down, theoretically into water in the reservoir, therefore wicking water to the bottom of plant pots.

The final product! Whew, I expected the pot bases to come pre-assembled, but it actually wasn’t too hard to put them together.

Since the ropes are loose, it’s easy to move them out of place. So I used a permanent marker to make dots so I could see how the rope should be positioned in relation to the holes.

I added dots to easily position the ropes if they get moved.

Final product, with the dots on the rope for reference.

About the auto-watering pots

• I’ve never grown with these before, so you get to experience the adventure with me.
• These “auto pots” are meant to feed/give water from the bottom. But at first I’m going to water from the top first.
• The directions say not to water them from the bottom until their roots have reached through the bottom of the fabric pots.
• So once I see roots on bottom, I’ll start giving plants nutrient water from underneath by just adding it directly into their reservoirs.

We’ll see how that goes! I worry a bit about these auto-watering pots.

Will the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases make growing weed easier or harder?

New discoveries about auto-watering pots from the directons

• Clean every 2 weeks – I was surprised to learn in the directions that the reservoices should be cleaned every 2 weeks. You’re supposed to dump all the water, rinse out the reservoir, and then reset it up with the plants on top, and refill. They say if you don’t do that, the roots will grow into the reservoir and prevent the plant from drinking properly.
• Wicking ropes – You cut pieces of rope to wick the water from the reservoir to the bottoms of the pots. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t like how the ropes aren’t tied down anywhere, so you have to be careful of disturbing them when you move the plants. I marked the ropes with black permanent marker to know how to fix them when they get disturbed.

I used to grow cannabis mainly in hydro, and the directions for these auto-watering pots seem to want me to treat them like a bit like a hydro reservoir. Except it seems like more work compared to maintaining the reservoir in the hydro tub.

Hmmm, maybe I’ll only change the reservoir if I see signs of pH/nutrient problems.

Or maybe I’ll be a good grower and follow the direction and change all their reservoirs every 2 weeks.

I should definitely at least change all the water before I initiate flowering (rinse out the reservoirs and give fully fresh flowering nutrient water).

I have the feeling the plants are eventually going to get big enough that I can’t pick them up. At that point I will have to feed them through the reservoirs only.

Oops, I’ve spent too much time playing with the auto-watering pots. I’ll have to transplant the seedlings tomorrow.

Day 19 

I got really busy today. I watered the seedlings and filled the 5-gallon fabric pots full of Coco Loco soil. I will definitely transplant tomorrow!

Got everything totally ready for seedlings!

Day 20 – Transplant to 5-gallon pots

Today is transplant day. (for real this time)

All of the seedlings look great today. I put them in the window overnight under an LED since the grow tent is now full of 5-gallon pots!

This is the exact spot they germinated and grew as seedlings. I wonder if they “remember”.

I picked the 5 “winners”, one plant from each strain. I tried to pick plants that were the most matched in size/growth patterns.

Carefully cut away the white paper cups to expose the roots below. Try not to disturb the roots!

I dug a little cup-sized hole and just plop the seedling in.

They’re 20 days old today, so when deciding how much water to give, I think I will follow my trusty seedling watering schedule, which says to give them 5 cups of water per plant at this age. Though that’s meant for seedlings actually living in a big pot, not for transplanting.

Why not, let’s do it. I need to water them after transplanting anyway. Let’s follow the wisdom. They do seem about the right size for day 20 seedlings.

Add some extra soil if needed, and water the plants immediately afterwards.

All 5 plants… transplanted! A few hours later they look great.

I still have the grow light at half power a few feet away, with a PAR reading of 200 µmol/m²/s. I’ll be raising the light levels soon, but not right after the transplant. I want to let them get some quiet time to themselves to adjust to their new homes.

Yay! So happy the plants seem to have taken the transplant well!

Day 21

Plants look great. Turned the LED power up a little. I’m thinking I’ll turn it up a bit every day until it’s 100%. Then maybe I’ll lower it, or just let them grow up towards it.

All of the plants have grown at least 6 nodes (sets of leaves) by now, even the Mandarin Cookies, which is currently the “runt” of the grow.

The Mandarin Cookies is the “runt”, but still doing great! Six sets of leaves by day 21 isn’t too bad.

I probably could have topped them today, as all have at least 6 nodes.

I typically top plants (cut off the top) right above the 5th set of leaves. Topping young cannabis plants helps them grow with multiple big bud sites, instead of just one big bud.

But I’ll give them another day or two. What’s the hurry?

I love how relaxed it feels to grow photoperiod plants. You have all the time in the world to do things, especially compared to that feeling of “being in a race” that I get when growing autoflowering plants.

Training today:

• I did a gentle leaf tucking.
  • In other words, I tried to gently tuck any big leaves down
• The goal is to expose the growth tips underneath, so they start developing into longer branches.
• Once I top the plants, it will really cause them to start “bushing out” and making lots of branches.
• A wide cannabis plant (ideally, wide and flat like a table) with lots of stems is key to getting lots of fat top buds, so therefore the best yields and density.

Next week, I’ll show you exactly how to prune plants so you get bigger yields later!

Week 4 – Topped the plants!

Now onto the exciting week 4!

Day 22

Looking good this morning. Turned up the LED light another touch.

Starting to finally stack those nodes!

Should I top them soon?

The Mandarin Cookies is currently the “runt” of the grow. It’s a little bit behind the others. It hasn’t quite made 6 good nodes (sets of leaves) yet. I think the other plants are all ready to be topped, but the Mandarin Cookies needs a few more days.

Mandarin Cookies (red label) is the “runt”, though seemingly healthy.

What do you think?

Day 23

Nutrients

• Fox Farm trio soil feeding schedule
  • Gave week 2 nutrients since they were just put in fresh soil (gave 6 tablespoons Big Bloom in 3 gallons of water).
  • Will start giving week 3 nutrients next watering.
• Adjusted to 6.7 ph

Watering

• 6 cups water to each plant

If you look closely at the back wall, you can see certain colors (blue, green, yellow, red) from the LEDs reflecting oddly. I don’t see it with my eyes, but it shows up in pictures.

Click for closeup!

Day 24

Looking perky this morning!

LED grow light

• I decided to turn the HLG 350 LED to 100%.
• Still at the top of the tent.

Day 25

The Mandarin Cookies looked a little droopy, but otherwise green and healthy.

A few others also don’t look as “erect” as I’d like.

All green leaves I can see.

The only thing different is I turned up the power of the light to 100% yesterday.

I suspect it may be a bit too much at full strength, at this age. This HLG LED is no joke!

LED

• Turned the LED grow light back down to where it was yesterday

Added a webcam (back left) so I can check on the plants any time!

Clip-on Fan

• Moved the mini fan up a bit higher as I felt it might be disturbing the leaves a bit too much as they got taller
• Still light leaf movement when I close the tent and peer through the viewing window.

Day 26

The HLG 350 LED is so far away and still delivers so much light.

Here’s the view from the top!

Mandarin Cookies still looks a bit droopy, but I think it’s fine. Today I will water them all but give the Mandarin Cookies a bit less water than the others. Just in case it was slightly overwatered. But I still think it got a little stressed from the light levels being too high. I think it will be back to 100% by tomorrow.

Nutrients

• Gave Week 2 nutrients at ⅔ strength.
  • Made 3 gallons of nutrient water
  • Added 2 gallon worth of nutrients, giving 2/3 strength
• PH 6.5 as of right after mixing
  • Added ½ tsp PH Down

I’m curious how the pH will change in the nutrient water after sitting. I noticed last time it climbed after sitting in the reservoirs overnight.

Watering

• Gave 6 cups water per plant
• Except Mandarin Cookies got 5 cups

Grow light

• Still at the top, still turned down a bit

The Candy Games #38 has a full 8 nodes, working on the 9th!

The Blue Dream seems about the same

Zkittlez x GG4 seedling is spreading out naturally

Even our little Mandarin Cookies has over 6 nodes now

Definitely time to top them tomorrow!

Day 27 – Topping day!

Today is the day. Time to cut of the tops of all the plants. This will make them naturally grow more bushy with many buds, instead of only one main bud.

Off with their heads! Ok, now I kind of feel bad.

TOPPING DAY!

• “Topped” all plants right above the 5th node
• In other words, I cut off the top of each plant above the 5th set of leaves.
• Now they all have the same number of leaves, and are about the same height as each other.

Take a seedling that has grown at least 6 sets of leaves (this plant has extras!)

Then cut off the top above the 5th set of leaves. Use scissors or fingers to cut through the main stem.

Always leave some extra stem. This gives structure and prevents damage to the tender leaves below.

Light

• Still dimmed slightly down. Will probably increase to full power tomorrow after I’m sure they responded well to being topped.
• PAR is currently around 300 µmol/m²/sat plant tops

Auto-watering pot bases

• I noticed the Candy Games #38 had water in its auto pot, as did the Mandarin Cookies (just a bit)
• I removed the water and rinsed them out

I noticed the wicking rope was both moist and brown on the Candy Games plant. So it’s clearly working. I don’t like seeing brown but I think it’s just staining from the nutrients.

Are any of you interested to hear about my experience with the auto-watering pots so far? They’re not like how I expected, and I have lots of thoughts on them haha

Plants after being topped

I tried to tuck leaves as best I could to expose all the growing tips to direct light.

Now the stage has been set for a bountiful, productive cannabis grow. The plants are ready to fill up the grow tent!

Day 28

Nothing to report today!

Week 5 – Tucked leaves, light training, plants growing fast!

Day 29 

Here are the beauties this morning at the start of their 5th week.

Today they got watered.

Nutrient water

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
  • Fox Farm week 2 – ⅔ strength
  • 0.5 tsp pH down
  • 6.6 pH
• Give 8 cups or 1/2 gallon (2 liter) water per plant

After watering

• I think all got at least some water coming out the bottom.
• I see some roots coming out the bottoms of the pots.
• Probably I could start bottom-feeding now, according to the directions from AC Infinity

Training

• Tucked leaves

I tucked all the leaves to expose the growing tips (look kind of like stars from above). The arrows point to growing tips.

When the growing tips get direct light, they grow, causing the plants to grow more wide and bushy as lower branches develop and reach the top of the plant.

I want plants to continue growing wide, with many branches. This increases the number of buds that grow later.

LED

• Full power at the top of the tent, delivering just under 400 µmol/m²/s at the top tip of each plant
• Let’s see how they respond.

Day 30

Nothing to do or report today. Just took a quick peek and will check on them tomorrow.

Day 31

Plants look good, water tomorrow?

Maybe start watering from the auto watering pots starting tomorrow?

From above, it’s clear that some marijuana plants are ahead of others.

Specifically the Mandarin Cookies (bottom right) is not just smaller, but also growing with huge leaves that block the lower growing tips and have been difficult to tuck until now. I could have removed those top two big leaves to expose the lower tipes, but I knew I’d be able to tuck them soon, and that way I won’t be stealing valuable leaf area and nutrients from the plant. Today they get tucked!

The Mandarin Cookies (bottom right) is less bushy than the others, despite getting the same treatment. Every marijuana plant is a little different.

However, I can see the tent is not well balanced considering there are two plants in back and 3 in front.

• Rearranged the plants so that the two biggest ones get the back to themselves, and the 3 smaller ones are in the front.

New arrangement seems more balanced. Mandarin Cookies is now in bottom middle.

Now, let’s tuck the leaves on that Mandarin Cookies! (and all the plants to a lesser extent)

The leaves of the Mandarin Cookies marijuana plant have been tucked under other stems. Side view.

If you click this next picture for a closeup, you can see the Mandarin Cookies now has several growing tips exposed, since I tucked away those big leaves.

After this, the plant is going to start growing more wide and bushy like the others. Leaf tucking does a lot of work for you when it comes to getting plants to grow wide and bushy, basically can not be messed up regardless of skill, and it literally takes seconds. An underrated cannabis grow technique, in my opinion.

Day 32

Gave water to the reservoirs in the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases.

Nutrient water details

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength
• 0.5 tsp pH down
• 6.5 pH

For each plant, I added ½ gallon to the-auto watering pot base reservoir. This is my first time using the auto-watering pots, but the roots have hit the bottom and according to the AC Infinity auto-watering directions, that means they’re big enough to start wicking and being bottom-fed.

Roots have reached the bottom of the pots, so I should be able to start using the auto-watering pot bases.

Watered using my handy battery-operated water transfer pump

I removed the water level indicators and pumped water directly to the reservoirs

That little orange piece in the middle is the watering indicator. If you can see it, there’s water in the reservoir.

If you don’t see the orange piece in the middle (just see glass) it means there is no water in the reservoir. Nifty.

We’ll see how it goes!

Day 33

Here they are on day 33.

Plant Training

• Bent over taller branches and gently tucked the under leaves where I could, especially the top two branches.
• Coaxed out many colas, even the Mandarin Cookies, now mainly waiting for them to gain some height and width to fill up the tent.

Before tucking – top view

After tucking – top view (very subtle)

I love how they’re growing so wide and bushy with literally just seconds of “training” every day. Just taking the time to tuck leaves every day makes a huge difference over time as far as getting plants to grow more wide and bushy with lots of branches.

Auto-watering pots and wicking…

Hmmm, plants look great but I feel like they’re not wicking water at max capacity. Note: On the wicking ropes, I added black spots with permanent marker to mark where the ropes should be, in case they get moved by accident.

The top of the auto-watering pot bases looks too dry to be wicking properly.

The one exception is the Candy Games plant, for some reason. The entire bottom of that pot is wet.

I suspect the coco was too dry when I filled the bottom reservoirs. I believe if I give the plants a good watering from the top (so that it’s totally wet throughout the growing medium to the bottom of the pots), they’ll start wicking properly.

So I mixed up the same batch of water again, and watered according to the plan for yesterday, giving each plant ½ gallon nutrient water.

Watered plants from the top

• ½ gallon each, same nutrients as yesterday, 6.5 pH

Fox Farm nutrients: My impression of them so far…

• Plants love it – Plants are thriving on it, so far.
• Doesn’t stay fully mixed – I don’t like how the organic ingredients quickly sink to the bottom (particularly the worm castings), because it means I need to shake the water right before using it, and again if it sits for even a few minutes. One thing I like about mineral-based (synthetic) nutrients is they completely mix with the water, so you feel confident plants are always getting the same amount as each other.
• Ultimately, it’s a 2-part mineral-based (synthetic) nutrient system plus the ultra-weak organic tea “Big Bloom”.
  • You could follow the schedule without “Big Bloom” (a diluted, gentle worm poop and bat guano tea) and get good results, because that bottle is not adding significant nutrition (according to the label). So it possibly has other benefits, but giving the plants nutrients and minerals isn’t what it offers.
  • Grow and Tiger Bloom are almost completely comprised of mineral nutrients, with a tiny bit of worm poop and kelp mixed in.
  • Which makes me realize it is essentially a mineral/synthetic nutrient system, for your core nutrient sources, but with a huge helping of natural goodness (worm poop and kelp) incorporated at every stage, plus tiny amounts of bat and seabird guano in Big Bloom (the tea)

Fox Farm trio nutrients

I mixed up a batch of Fox Farm nutrient water.

After sitting for 12 hours, look how much the Fox Farm nutrient water separates. Must be thoroughly mixed immediately before watering.

Day 34

Plants look overall green and healthy.

I noticed some light yellow tips on one of the plants. Also the color just seemed slightly off to me on some of the leaves. Like a little blueish. Yellow tips (just yellow, no brown nutrient burn) is sometimes a symptom of too much light. But it can also be pH. Yellow tips plus slightly blue-tinted leaves is a set of symptoms I associate with incorrect pH, from past experience. I checked the pH of that reservoir and it was 7.4-7.5 pH. Actually, upon testing with a pH pen, all the reservoirs of all were at least 7.2 or higher. With soil, it should be between 6-7 pH to prevent nutrient deficiencies. Light levels might be a factor, but it seem pH definitely is.

I tested the remaining nutrient water from yesterday, and it was at 6.8 pH. So just sitting in the water containers, the pH rose 0.3 pH, but in the auto-watering reservoirs the pH rose 0.5-1 pH. So it seems like the pH might rise naturally on its own, but something about being in those reservoirs is making it rise more. I washed them thoroughly before using them. Hmmm.

I emptied out all the reservoirs since the pH was off in them. Next watering, I will water them to runoff in the tanks and check the pH (instead of trying to water from the bottom again just yet).

Auto-Pots Still Not Wicking Well

• They didn’t seem to be wicking the water well, except for the Candy Games. When I pick up that plant, I can see the whole base seems wet, and the bottom of the pot feels wet.
• Even though I just watered them yesterday, and got some runoff, I suspect that maybe the other pots weren’t fully soaked all the way to the bottom
• Without total soil saturation, the wicking isn’t getting started properly.
• I noticed the Candy Games plant drinks less, and therefore the soil is wetter, on average. Maybe that’s why the wicking seems to be working well for the Candy Games?

Day 35

A bunch of little celebrities.

Giving nutrient water with pH on the lower side of the 6-7 pH optimum, because the pH was high yesterday, and want to help counteract.

Nutrient water

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength (gave 2 gallons worth of nutrients to the 3 gallons of water, giving ⅔ strength)
• 1.25 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH (optimum is 6-7 for soil, but it was high yesterday so I’m giving the pH on the lower side of that range)
• ½ gallon to each plant

Got about 10% runoff. All pretty much came out the pH they went in.

• Runoff 6.1-6.2ph

Overall the plants look gorgeous, and I’m excited for this next week. It doesn’t seem like they’ll need much more time before they’re big enough to initiate the flowering stage with a 12/12 light schedule.

On average, cannabis plants about double in size after the switch to 12/12. That means once plants have complete coverage of the grow space and then reach half the final desired height, it’s time to switch!

In our tent, I want plants about 3 feet tall, leaving enough space between the light and the plants when the light is at the top of the tent. I also want to make sure there are buds from wall-to-wall in the tent, so I will be spreading the tallest branches out as plants grow, in order to make a wide, flat, table-top shape.

Once I have full canopy coverage and plants are about 1.5 feet tall, I’ll initiate 12/12. Right now they’re about 1 feet tall. Maybe T minus 7-10 days until then? Either next week or the week after, at the latest.

Plants should completely fill the tent, like a wide flat “table” of leaves, before initiating 12/12.

It’s so beautiful to watch them at this age. Everything is so lush and green. It’s so… peaceful in the tent. Like being in a field or getting a little touch of nature in the home. I like to just look at them.

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Week 6 – Filled the tent!

Day 36 

Looking great!

Training

• Gave them a light training session. No tying down, just gentle bending and spreading out.

Before – above view

After I gently spread out the plants, you can see a lot more of the growing tips from above. Now that they’re not hidden by leaves any more, the lower branches will start growing and rising up towards the top of the plant. The parts of the plant that get direct light from above are the parts that tend to develop the most.

Top view – after spreading out branches (click for closeup!)

Auto-watering pot bases

• PH in reservoirs had climbed overnight, to 6.6 or so (still within the optimal 6-7 pH range for growing cannabis in soil)
• It seems like sitting in the reservoir is raising the pH of the water.
• I tested the nutrient water that was in a container overnight, and its pH stayed the same. So it doesn’t seem to be the nutrients or water changing the pH by themself.
• It is convenient the pH was on the lower side when I put the water in, and naturally seemed to go up.
• We’ll see if that continues after the reservoirs have been used a while, or if it’s some side effect of being brand new (thought I did thoroughly clean the reservoirs before using them for the plants)

Wicking

• The Candy Games plant was wicking as expected. The bottom is totally wet.
• That plant also had the most runoff water in the reservoir.
• Since the wettest plant is wicking the best, it makes me think the pots/grow medium need to be wetter overall, for the wicking action to be effective.
• Maybe the other plants are not wicking well, because the grow medium is just not soaked through enough.

The Candy Games plant seems to be wicking. Under the pot is wet.

Note: The black dots on the rope are permanent marker to help line up the ropes.

But none of the other pots seem to be wicking. They look bone dry when I pick up the plants.

Plant health

• Plant overall color looked better to me today, and the yellow tips look less stark.

Watering

• Made 3 gallons of nutrient water and split between the 5 plants
• I watered all the plants from the top, except the Candy Games, which was pretty wet top to bottom, until they got some runoff
• Hopefully, if they’re giving runoff, they’re wet all the way through
• I dumped all the reservoirs to start fresh
• Then I added fresh nutrient water straight to all the reservoirs.

My hope is I’ll see wicking action tomorrow on all give plants. If not, I may try watering from the top again tomorrow. I’m sure that should kick start it if today wasn’t enough.

Almost filled up the tent!

Day 37 

Just checked on them and spread out their branches a bit. 

I was too busy to mess with the reservoirs today, but I’m not sure the water levels have moved. I will take a closer look to see if they’re wicking, and make sure to test pH tomorrow.

Plants look great today though!

Day 38

PH in the reservoirs

• PH in reservoirs is high, around 7.1.
• These reservoirs really seem to change the pH over time.
• I think I’ll try putting the nutrient water in at 6.1 pH today. To counteract the lowering that happens in the reservoirs.

What’s going on with the wicking?

• Ghost candy – not wicking
• Blue Dream – not wicking
• GG4 x Zkittlez – not wicking
• Mandarin Cookies – wicking
• Candy Games – wicking

The smallest plant, Candy Games #38, seems to be wicking the best.

I know the plant is drinking from underneath because the top of the grow medium looks dry while the water level in the reservoir is going down. The bottom of the pot is totally wet.

The smallest plants are wicking, but not the larger ones. The smallest plants don’t drink as much, and get more runoff water. Hmmm. I feel pretty certain now that the wicking isn’t happening on plants whose grow medium isn’t fully soaking wet.

I think the solution is a very thorough watering. So I watered today. Here’s the mix I used…

Nutrient water

• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength
• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Adjusted to 6.1 pH – This is on the lower side of the 6-7 pH range, but the pH was high so I’m putting water in at the opposite of that range.
• Not-wicking plants got water from the top, until I could see visible runoff into the reservoirs.

Once I confirmed they all had significant runoff (hopefully they’re now all super soaked), I decided to empty the reservoirs and refill with fresh nutrient water. So I made one more batch of the above.

• Split the 3 gallons of fresh nutrient water into the reservoirs below
• My hope is with all the pots wet all the way through, and reservoirs full of water they’ll start wicking properly
• Reservoir pH after this treatment was 6.1-6.3 pH for all plants

Some Thoughts on Fox Farm Nutrients

• Finished off the whole pint of Big Bloom from FoxFarm already! It’s only Day 38 of a grow with 5 plants, and I haven’t even been using the nutrients at full strength. What a rip!
• Luckily I saw it coming and ordered a bigger bottle a few days ago.
• I noticed the FoxFarm schedule starts recommending less of Big Bloom on week 4, even in the vegetative stage. They start upping the amounts of their other supplement. I wonder if this is where people start running out of Big Bloom lol

I already finished the brand new pint of “Big Bloom” that comes with the FoxFarm nutrient trio! So soon.

Something I noticed about the auto-watering pot bases…

• The directions from AC Infinity recommend you dump out the reservoirs and rinse them out every few weeks.
• Or like me, maybe you get a bunch of runoff water and want to remove it so you can refill with fresh nutrient water.
• But moving cannabis plants in 5-gallon containers is sooooo heavy if they’ve been watered recently.
• I’m in pretty decent shape, and they were very heavy for me to move.
• Having to move the 5-gallon pots on a regular basis is really not an effective solution for those with mobility problems.
• Overall, I feel like the auto-watering pot bases can make it a bit more difficult if your goal is to maintain perfect pH to prevent deficiencies.
• But people love these bases, and I get that I’m resistant to new things haha
• Overall, the plants are really happy, and growers have told me that the auto-watering bases really shine in the flowering stage, so I’m going to continue with them until the end of the grow. A lot of time when something feels challenging, it just means I need more experience/information.

Although I’ve had some challenges getting used to the new auto-watering pot bases, the plants are thriving.

Training

• Ooops, accidently broke a stem on the Candy Games, but not badly.
• Luckily it was small, just the skin. It didn’t need tape, but I taped it lightly mostly just to remind me it’s there so I don’t try to bend that branch again until it’s full healed.
• Been spreading plants out with just bending and tucking of tall branches
• Back two plants (Purple Ghost Candy and especially the Blue Dream) are getting taller than the rest. Luckily they get the back to themselves so I can just spread them out. Use that height to create extra width!
• But I’m thinking tomorrow I should bend/LST the two back plants so they’re flat with the front plants, and spread out as wide as possible.

Ooops put a slight crack in the stem while bending. The stem is still standing, but I broke the skin.

I got a piece of tape. The stem doesn’t need support, but I want it mainly to remind me where the crack is.

I wrapped the tape loosely so it won’t “cut off circulation” as the stem gets bigger.

Now I can easily keep an eye out, to avoid bending this particular stem until after it’s well healed.

The Blue Dream plant is the biggest and is growing in a tall and stretchy way. Luckily, it has willowy branches that are easy to bend down and way from the center of the plant.

Day 39

Quick peek and plants look good! Getting a little wild though. I think they should get some training tomorrow.

Day 40

Today also look good.

But…

Auto-watering pot bases

• PH in reservoirs at 7.1 pH again
• Wicking – Still not wicking to my satisfaction
• I spoke to a grower who recommended I try wetting the lines first
• Makes sense to me. They claimed that wicking seemed to be working after wetting the lines.

Leaf Color (a bit dark)

• Plants look great with the LED on, but when I see them in normal light, I feel like the leaves look a touch dark
• I don’t see nutrient burn yet, but darker leaves is a sign the plants are getting somewhat too high levels of nutrients.
• I’ve been giving the nutrients at ⅔ strength, but will switch to ⅓ recommended level until the leaves lighten up a bit
• Will defoliate a bit, because removing leaves can help pull some stored nitrogen out of the plant that has gotten a bit too much.
• They’re also too leafy, so there’s never been a better time to defoliate.
• Let the underlying structure be in view, so everything grows well

The leaves look a tiny bit bit dark to me. That’s a sign of slightly too-high nutrient levels.

I noticed on some of the darker leaves, some of the very ends of the “fingers” are slightly curled down. That’s another sign of slightly too high levels of nutrients.

Leaves are healthy, but a bit dark. I think plants need slightly lower levels of nutrients for optimum color (and fastest growth).

Watering

• Dumped out all reservoirs, though I probably could have left them. I don’t know.
• Giving at ⅓ strength now, until leaves look a bit lighter
  • 3 gallons water tsp Big Bloom
  • 3 tsp Grow Big
  • 1.5 tsp PH Down
  • 6.1 pH
  • 560 PPM
• 3 gallons to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy. Second batch of 3 gallons I gave to the remaining 3 plants.
  • Runoff pH around 6.1 for all
  • So the pH of the water going in, and the water going out are the same. Awesome
• Next, I will start watering it at 6.5 pH, which is right in the middle of the 6-7 pH idea in soil to prevent nutrient deficiencies

Dumped the reservoirs and rinsed them out. These plants are HEAVY now. I can barely move them and I’m in decent shape. Definitely need to make sure to always lift from the knees or I might throw out my back!

The plants are HEAVY to move now.

Upon opening up the auto-watering pot bases, I was surprised how much nutrient solids had already built up on the bottom of the reservoirs. I think it’s mainly the worm poop from the “Big Bloom” bottle. Times like these, I miss the super clear mineral nutrients from the General Hydroponics Flora trio. Organic ingredients just seems so messy and easy to fall out of the water.

This was the Fox Farm nutrient water in the reservoir before I dumped it out. I was worried by the appearance at first, like maybe something was growing in it, but I’m happy to report it smelled very clean. Phew! I think it is just the ingredients sinking to the bottom and swirling around.

Fox Farm nutrient had lots of solids that fell to the bottom of the reservoir.

Defoliation & plant training

• Trained plants to be shorter and wider.
  • I gently bent the tallest stems down and away from the center of each plant
  • Blue Dream and Ghost Candy got the most treatment, since they were the ones growing taller than the other plants.
• Defoliation to all.
  • When plants are slightly dark from high levels of nutrients, like these ones, it’s an awesome time to defoliate
  • Removing leaves actually removes some of the extra nutrients being stored in the plant.
  • A dark, healthy plant that’s growing lots of new leaves each day, almost always responds great to defoliation.

I bent tallest stems down and away from center of plant (to help plant grow flat and wide)

Defoliation – Removed all leaves that were hand-sized or bigger.

Removed a lot of leaves from the biggest plants, Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream!

New top view of those plants – much more wide! (filling up the space under the light)

New side view – both plants are totally flat!

The rest of the plants got some bending and defoliation too.

Here is the top view of the grow tent immediately after training.

3 hours later – all the leaves have already turned back up to face the light. Our canopy is shaping up well!

HLG 350 LED Grow Light

• Using my PPFD app on the phone, I saw the tops of plants were getting about 600 µmol/m²/s
• I think the top leaves look a tiny bit stressed from the brightness
• Turned down until they were all at 400-450 µmol/m²/s for the PPFD, according to the phone app

Looking up, as if I were a plant. It’s insane this tiny LED panel makes such intense light from so far away.

Do you all want me to take any measurements for this grow light?

• We have a few different lux meters, a professional Apogee light meter, and the PPFD app on my phone.
• Hit REPLY and let me know what/if you want me to run light tests on this this HLG 350 light
• Also let me know if you want me to compare the lux meter with the pro light meter with the phone app.
• Or let me know if you want me to test other lights. We have Spider Farmer, Mars Hydro, HLG, and a few other brands laying around the grow room from past grows!

Tell me what you want to see as far as light measurements, and I will make it happen for you!

Day 41

Noticed yellow tips and a slight blueish tint on the Candy Games leaves (front right plant). The beginning of a nutrient deficiency!

Candy Games #38 has a few yellow leaf tips, which I believe is from too-low pH

Since I’m using good nutrients, a deficiency is almost certainly due to the pH. Another possibility is light stress, but I turned the light yesterday so I don’t think that’s is. The water went in a 6.1 and came out at 6.1. Ideal is 6-7. I suspect maybe the issue is the pH is too low.

Emptied reservoirs.

I’m feeling a little frustrated with these auto-watering pot bases, but I still feel pretty sure I just need to get the hang of using them. Will “reset” tomorrow by watering plants with fresh nutrient water, at 6.5 pH. See how they do, then go back to trying to figure out how to get them to wick right haha

I know, I know. I’m fussing on the plants. I get they overall look good. I just want the plants to get perfect conditions 🙂

Day 42

Watered plants. I added a touch of Cal-Mag.

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 Tsp Fox Farm CalMag
• 6.5 pH

Gave all 3 gallons, between plants.

Plants are almost half the final desired size, which means it’s time to initiate flowering soon.

Almost half the final desired size.

They’ve mostly filled up the tent from side to side, too!

Mostly filled the tent from side to side!

I think I’ll give them just another few days, and then it’s time to initiate the flowering/budding stage by giving plants a 12/12 light schedule (change the grow light timer to turn off lights for 12 hours a day).

Week 7 – Initiated 12/12 – Buds incoming!

Day 43

I love seeing these little beauties every morning 🙂

So far I just have the one HLG 350 LED grow light in there. Maybe I will add our other HLG 350 after they start flowering and need higher levels of light for max production, but so far, one seems to be more than enough! Such a powerful 350W light.

Day 44 

Look good overall. I still see a few yellow tips, but only on the old leaves. They’re starting to regain their color, and it’s not spreading to new leaves. So I think our pH correction was a success!

PPFD at the canopy is 450-580 µmol/m²/s, according to the app on my phone.

The tops of the soil aren’t quite dry, water tomorrow!

Day 45 – started 12/12 (to initiate flowering stage)

Time to initiate the flowering stage. I set the grow light timer to have lights on 12 hours on, 12 hours off. I decided for my schedule to have lights on from 6am-6pm, and total darkness for the other 12 hours.

One of the tricky things about flowering photoperiod plants, is plants can’t get any light during their 12 hour dark period (or they revert back to the vegetative stage). So it’s important to make sure the “on” hours are convenient for you to check on your plants, because you can’t easily check on them during their “night”.

Also watered the plants. Gave 3 gallons between plants.  Here’s what I added, and the measurements.

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 Tsp Fox Farm CalMag
• ½ tsp pH down
• 6.7 pH
• 580 ppm

Day 46 – Day 1 since 12/12

Looking good! Here’s the view from a webcam in the tent.

Day 47 – Day 2 since 12/12

Still looking good. Don’t seem quite ready to water yet. Pots still feel a bit heavy, and topsoil not totally dry yet.

We have almost completely filled the tent. This increases yields later!

Will water them tomorrow.

Day 48 – Day 3 since 12/12

Turned up the light power a bit.

• Measures 550-650 µmol/m²/s at canopy (using phone app)
• Let’s see how they respond.
• It’s not just light power, I feel like when the HLG is turned down it looks more blue and less red
• I suspect they made it that way, so when it’s turned down it’s more suitable for veg, and turn up you get all the red you need.
• So I might try raising the light and turning it up, to get the full spectrum?
• I’m curious how the plants will respond. Will they show any visible signs of stress?

Still no new yellow tips, so I think that deficiency is fully beat.

Watered them today, with Fox Farm nutrients.

• 3 gallons water
• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 tsp Tiger Bloom
• No pH Down (the extra Tiger Bloom lowered the pH enough to get it in the right pH range)
• 6.7 pH
• 666 PPM

Made 2 batches, for total of 6 gallons.

• Even with 6 gallons, didn’t get much runoff
• Runoff pH was low, about 6.3 (after going in at 6.7)
• Runoff PPM around 2200
• Made sure the bottoms of the pots and ropes were wet

Made 1 more batch, but added ½ tsp PH Down, bringing the pH down to 6.4 pH

• I made it lower because I know the pH rises in the reservoirs.
• Filled the bottoms with this nutrient water

The little orange line in the glass orb is the water level indicator on the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases. It floats on the water. That means if you see orange, it means there is water in the reservoir.

I guess, if this works, I won’t have to water them for a while…

Hmmm, I kind of like watering them.

I’m not sure I like how “hands off” it is to use the auto-watering pot bases.

I like looking at the plants every day, and giving water every 2-3 days.

Now that they’ve got 3 waterings worth of water, it seems like it should be at least a week before I need to give any more.

What will happen with the pH in that time? Will they be wicking properly? Will they show any signs of nutrient deficiencies?

No worries. I’ll be here to save the day if they need anything!

Day 49 – Day 4 since 12/12

Removed big fan leaves from all the stems growing taller than the others. Helps slow “stretchy” stems down when you take away their biggest fan leaves.

You can see that lower parts of all the plants are already in shadow.

Probably should give them a final defoliation and lollipop soon.

Total coverage

Week 8 – Transition to Flowering and First Pistils

Day 50 (Flowering Day 5)

Overall plants look awesome.

A picture from the webcam.

Some still have full reservoirs, some almost empty. Hmmm, are they really drinking so differently? Or are some not wicking?

Day 51 (Flowering Day 6)

All reservoirs are empty now except the Blue Dream.

How strange.

The pot doesn’t feel light, like its not getting water. The plant looks great.

Maybe it’s just not drinking as much as the others?

Super busy today, but I think they’ll be good until tomorrow.

It is kind of nice they water themselves.

A quick gif. Look how much they grew since yesterday! They love the auto-watering pots.

Day 52 (Flowering Day 7)

I’ve been really busy the last couple of days and feel like I haven’t been tending the plants as much as I normally do… (hence why I don’t have actual pictures of them)

And they look awesome!

Rows and rows of happy leaves

Those auto-watering pots are finally doing their thing and making my life easier!

Today I will water them all from the top again, to make sure everything is still fully wicking.

Then empty/clean all the reservoirs, and refill with fresh nutrient water.

Water from top

• 3 gallons
  • Big Bloom 3 tsp
  • Grow Big 3 tsp
  • Tiger Bloom 3 tsp
• No pH Down
• 6.7 pH
• 671 PPM

Fill reservoirs (took two more batches, so the following x 2)

• 3 gallons
  • Big Bloom 3 tsp
  • Grow Big 3 tsp
  • Tiger Bloom 3 tsp
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.5 pH
• 676 PPM

Though I can see they’re ALL wicking finally. Yay! It really was the case the ropes and pots needed to be fully soaked first.

Some of the ropes even have roots growing into them already.

It’s getting really dark and bushy under the top canopy. These plants need to be lollipopped.

Training

• Lollipopped the plants
• Did some major defoliation, especially from the bottom and middle, though you wouldn’t be able to tell just from looking at them!
• Made sure all the main buds were exposed
• Used twist tie to adjust any branches or stems to make them more evenly spaced and of the same height

Got my trusty Fiskars to cut off stems

Removed any stems that will never make it to the top of the plant (we’ve got plenty that have!)

I pulled the front plants out so you could clearly see what it looked like to lollipop the two most wild plants (Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream in the back)

Before and after lollipopping

Removed lots of stems and leaves. Filled up half a 5-gallon bucket!

Here’s what they all looked like after the training session. Nice and airy and bright under there again!

Ahhh I hurt my back.

Stupid moving of the pots.

Though I comfort myself that the plants are looking PERFECT.

Day 53 (Flowering Day 8)

Plants look awesome!

Nothing to do. I can see they’ve slightly wicked up some water, so the wicking continues to work.

The first buds are JUST starting to form, about a week after getting 12/12.

These little white hairs are the first signs of buds.

I can see the stems are growing in that long, lanky “Flowering Stretch” kind of way you always see at the beginning of the flowering stage.

Plants are looking “stretchy”

The stage is perfectly set.

The entire canopy has well-spaced long buds from each plant.

A lot of the “work” for this grow is done. At this point, it’s more a matter of just keeping plants watered (which seems like it’s going to be easy with these auto-watering pot bases) and keep the light the right distance away.

We’ll still need to prune the plants as needed, but from here on out, Mother Nature does most of the work for us!

My thoughts on the auto-watering pot bases:

• I think I should have watered purely from the top for the vegetative stage. It would have simplified my life greatly just to treat them like trays to catch runoff water.
• Next time I plan to wait until the plants start flowering to start trying to water from the bottom.
• Like maybe around 12/12, give them an extreme watering until it partly fills up the reservoirs below. Remove the runoff, and then refill the reservoirs with fresh water. Then start watering purely from the bottom. Something like that.

Day 54 (Flowering Day 9)

I see all have been drinking water, the Mandarin Cookies drinks the least, which makes sense since it’s the smallest.

Peeking in through the grow tent window…

Flawless!

Day 55 (Flowering Day 10)

All the water in the reservoirs is gone!

I’m going to refill the reservoirs with plain ph’d water to help them use up nutrients, as the leaves look a bit dark to me when I take one out of the tent to look in regular light. I think it’s that they’ve been drinking SO much, and just taking in tons of nutrients.

• Gave 3 gallons plain water, ph’d to 6.5 with 1 tsp PH Down

The leaves look a bit dark to me, when I take them into natural light.

You can see drops of water where leaves lay on top of each other.

Refilled the reservoirs

Water Level Indicators Aren’t Always Accurate

I noticed today that you can’t always trust the water level indicator on the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases.

In case you forgot, this is the water level indicator on the pots. If you can see the little orange rod, it means there is still water in the reservoir.

You can see when I pick it up and put it down, that the indicator “floats” on the water and pops back up, showing the current water level.

But… sometimes the indicator gets stuck and doesn’t move even if the water gets used up. It’s only when you bump it that the water level indicator gets unstuck and shows that there’s actually no water in the reservoir.

I had been wondering why certain plants weren’t drinking as much, like the Blue Dream. It’s one of the biggest plants, so it seemed weird that it hadn’t finished drinking up its reservoir like the others. But I bumped it in the water indicator fell, showing that it actually had no water. It seems it’s just that particular indicator tends to get stuck the most, which is why the Blue Dream didn’t seem like it was drinking.

Signs of Flowering

Plants look good. All appear to be flowering a bit.

• The Mandarin Cookies and Ghost Candy are currently the slowest/furthest behind.
• The GG4 x Zkittlez is furthest along which makes sense since it seemed to have stretched the least. When a plant stops stretching right away, it’s usually because they start flowering right away.

10 days after initiating 12/12, the GG4 x Zkittlez has the most white hairs at each bud site.

They look a little stretchy. But that’s to be expected in the midst of the flowering stretch.

I turned up the light to 100% to try to discourage stretching. The light is insanely powerful.

Measuring light: PPFD Phone app vs Apogee MQ-500 PAR Meter

Phone app – PPFD in the top canopy is now 750-900 µmol/m²/s. This is according to the light app “PPFD Meter” on my Android Galaxy phone.

PAR meter – According to my Apogee MQ-500 PAR meter, the PPFD is less, more like 500-650 µmol/m²/s.

My thoughts:

• Very different values – I’ve noticed the Apogee PAR meter consistently measures significantly lower then the PPFD Meter on my phone.
• Still somewhat helpful – I think both can help you understand how light levels are affected by adjusting your grow lights.
• Difficult to know anything for sure – The Phone app says we’re hitting 900, which is getting close to the max recommended amount of about 1000. Yet the PAR meter says we’re only hitting 650, which is a relatively low amount for the flowering stage. According to my eyes, it does seem REALLY bright to me now that I turned it up to full power. Ao at least in this instance, I’m more inclined to believe the app on my phone. But I’ll watch the plants for any signs of stress on the plants. In the end, they’re the real light meter.

My conclusion: Don’t trust “universal” PPFD values – Every way I’ve used to measure light, whether my phone, a lux meter (which I didn’t use here, but have tried before), or an expensive PAR meter, all give different values for the same light levels. That means you should take any kind of “PPFD chart” or recommendation with a grain of salt. Unless you’re using the exact same grow light and measurement device, I think you might be comparing apples and oranges when comparing PPFD values.

Remember, the real light meter is your plants!

Day 56 (Flowering Day 11)

Noticed some yellow tips, especially on the Blue Dream.

Checked the water reservoirs, and the pH was between 7-8. And no surprise, the reading was highest for the Blue Dream plant.

Plants had already drank nearly all the water from yesterday. They’re heavy drinkers right now.

I used a syringe to syphon out the remaining amount from the reservoirs. Only got about ⅓ of a gallon in total, which means they drink over 2.5 gallons of water overnight.

Gave 3 gallons water

• Since plant leaves are slightly dark overall, I mostly just gave just water.
• Since pH was climbing, I decided to add a small amount of Cal-Mag, which can help stabilize pH
  Though Cal-Mag also raises pH, and therefore needs extra PH Down to counteract
• 1 tsp Cal-Mag
• 1.5 tsp pH Down
• 6.0 pH
• 442 PPM

Gave some water from the top

• I gave each plant a couple of cups of water from the top. My reasoning is to make sure there’s great suction power through the plant root system. I feel like if there’s water all the way to the top, it will be able to wick more water up into the pot.
• My other thought was adding some proper pH water from the top could possibly help lower the pH of the root zone faster than just letting them drink from the bottom.

The rest of the water was pumped into the reservoirs.

Reservoir water measurements afterwards

• 6.2 pH
• 430 PPM

According to the water level indicators they’re each between 3/4 and 7/8 of the maximum level for the reservoirs.

I’m hoping since each plant got some proper pH water from the top, and have a reservoir of proper pH water from the bottom, they’ll be able to quickly get whatever nutrients they needed that they couldn’t because the pH was too high.

Just a note to myself, this thing where the leaves kind of look dark/blue and the tips look yellow seems to be highly correlated to high pH, at least as far as I can tell, at least with Fox farm nutrients and these plants in this system.

Overall they look great!

Bonus: A timelapse summary of the week!

Week 9 – Auto-watering pot bases to the rescue!

Day 57 (Flowering Day 12)

Checked on the plants, they look great.

Here are closeups of the buds from each of the plants so far (12 days from initiating 12/12)

GG4 x Zkittlez seems the furthest along

Mandarin Cookies is not far behind

Here is the Candy Games #38, which has tons of white hairs but no “budlets” yet

Blue Dream is about tied.

Purple Ghost Candy was starting to worry me, but today I saw a bunch of hairs, and it’s definitely growing in that stretchy “just started flowering” kind of way.

I thought it was cool to see how much a difference the strain makes when it comes to how quickly after 12/12 for flowers to appear.

They seem to have drank about half of the reservoir water, perhaps a bit more.

I don’t like the smell of the reservoir water. I took some out to test the pH with a syringe, and I noticed a slightly stinky smell. The smell is like how the Fox Farm nutrients smell after a half-full batch of nutrient water sits for a few days.

It makes me miss synthetic nutrients, which I find tend to need a lot more time before they start to smell bad. I wonder if hydroponic nutrients might be a better choice for this setup, since they’re specifically designed to help roots thrive in reservoir water.

About the Reservoirs Today

• pH of reservoirs tested at 6.8 pH
• The top of FoxFarm recommended pH range
• Almost to max 7 pH range for soil
• Tomorrow, I’ll remove any water that’s left, and replace with more water at 6.0 pH.
• The goal is for the reservoir water to always be between 6 to 7 pH every day. This is the best way to prevent nutrient deficiencies with cannabis plants.

Tomorrow, I will start adding the Hydroguard supplement when mixing up water for the plants. This supplement is something I always use when growing in hydroponic systems with roots in water. It adds good bacteria that help protect your roots against root rot or other root diseases. It has no downside (doesn’t affect PPM, doesn’t affect pH) but can make a huge difference in reservoir health. I already have an unopened bottle from a recent hydro grow, so I figured, why not?

Day 58 (Flowering Day 13)

Nebula from the near future: Just a little foreshadowing, this beautiful, flat, neat canopy will not look so neat very soon…

I should have taken more time to admire the view haha

You can see the beginnings of the problem child in the back left. Starting to get taller than the rest, but this is nothing yet compared to what’s to come. Oh Purple Ghost Candy, you’re lucky your buds and yields always come out so good!

A hint of the crazy stretch that’s incoming…

Reservoir measurements

• 7.3 pH
• 1700 PPM
• Pumped out all water, to be replaced with…

3 gallons water – Week 2 of 12/12 nutrients (⅔ strength) – Here were my steps

• Big Bloom 6 tsp
• Tiger Bloom 4 tsp
• Was 6.7 pH after this
• 3 tsp Hydroguard
• 1.5 tsp pH Down
• Was 5.7 after this 😭
• Added 3 tsp Cal-Mag (to help bring up the pH)
• Was 5.9 pH after this.
• 720 PPM
• Soooooo close to 6, but PPM is a bit high (highest previously has been around 680 PPM, if I remember correctly)
  I think it’s okay since the pH has been high previously
• They’re growing fast, stretching. Let’s do it!

Watered a few cups from the top, My reasoning was to help with wicking, even though they look nice and wet at the top. I also wanted to provide the plants with good pH throughout the root zone really quickly. I put the rest of the water in the reservoirs.

I then added about a gallon of extra plain water because I was worried about the PPM, when I remembered that some of the plants looked like they were thinking about nutrient burn (burnt tips from too much nutrients).

After getting a couple of cups of water from the top, and being filled from the bottom, and given an additional 1 gallon of plain water on top of everything else, their reservoir is now measure as thus…

• 6.3 pH
• 1500 PPM

Environment:

Humidity is too high in San Diego right now, hitting 70%! Everything feels kind of sticky. The grow tent reading is also around 70% RH today.

Fan

• Turned up the exhaust fan and opened up vents a bit more, in hope a little extra fresh air helps remove extra humidity from the plants, though that doesn’t help lower the humidity of the air being brought in.

Dehumidifier

• It was humid but cool in the tent, under 80°F/27°C and close to 70% RH
• So I turned on my big dehumidifier in room, which increases temperature and lowers humidity. Side note:. If it had been hot and humid, I would have turned on the AC, which lowers temperature and humidity.
• I would like to get temp closer to 85°F/30°C and RH closer to 55-60%.
• I feel they grow better at this stage when it’s a bit warmer, especially with LEDs.

Day 59 (Flowering Day 14)

No time today! So glad for the auto-watering pot bases keeping the plants watered. 

A quick check on the plants through the grow tent window is all the time I had today.

Day 60 (Flowering Day 15)

Another day with nothing to do but enjoy the plants. Which is great because I was strapped for time.

Starting to see real buds forming!

Day 61 (Flowering Day 16)

Plants look good. They drink up all their water. Some of the pots of soil are starting to look a little dry at the top. But all the plants are heavy and seem well-watered. Leaves look good. Buds are growing. Here’s the hoping it goes well.

Starting to get some major shadow (no light hitting the floor). Will need to defoliate soon.

A little part of me worries that the buds won’t get big enough.

The plants seem to be stretching less, and well into flowering now. The slowest one to make buds is the Purple Ghost Candy, which is also the tallest. The second slowest was the Blue Dream but now it seems to have caught up to everyone else. Very impressed with this Blue Dream so far. A little worried how much this Purple Ghost Candy might stretch. But luckily it’s in the back corner. That’s always a perfect place for a too-tall plant.

Another message from future Nebula: I was right. This Purple Ghost Candy is going to cause a ruckus haha

Week 3 of 12/12 nutrients (⅔ strength)

3 gallons

• 6 tsp Big Bloom
• 4 tsp Grow Big
• 4 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Was 6.6 pH after this
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.4 pH
• 740 PPM

Just before I water them, I feel like some of them are thinking about nutrient burn. I don’t see definite nutrient burn, but on the Blue Dream and the Candy Games I feel like there’s a tinge of the idea of nute burn.

So I added a gallon of extra water.

• Ph’ed down to 6.1, since I know rising pH is an issue in this system.
• Watered from the top

Then I added the nutrient water I made to the reservoirs. From the top.

So 4 gallons in already, still no runoff.

I want to check the pH of the root zone, so I made another batch, at ⅓ strength

Week 3 of 12/12 nutrients (⅓ strength)

3 gallons

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 2 tsp Grow Big
• 2 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Was 6.8 pH after this
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.5 pH
• 600 PPM
• Watered from the top until I finally got runoff into the reservoirs

Reservoirs after runoff

• 6-6.2 pH
• 1800-2400 PPM

PPM seems very high to me, even though I’ve been giving nutrients at such reduced strength…

Nutrient burn? I’ve been giving the nutrients at very low levels compared to the recommendation, yet the leaves are thinking about nutrient burn. The tip of this leaf is a tiny bit brown. Not yellow, which I associate with nutrient deficiencies or light stress. It actually looks brown, without any other symptoms. To me, this looks like the very beginning of nutrient burn (too much nutrients). It’s hard to see in pictures. Hopefully it doesn’t spread! Luckily, a little nutrient burn never hurt anything.

Light

• I feel like the buds aren’t big enough…
• So Sirius helped me put up the other HLG 350
• Woo hoo! Two lights!
• Sirius turned them down to level 6 of 10
• Apogee meter shows that it’s 1000 PPFD, though the mobile phone PPFD app shows closer to 1500 PPFD. Hmmm.

All the leaves started sticking straight up, which I associate with high light levels.

A few hours later…

• I wonder if the leaves look a bit stressed?
• I turned the lights both down one more click to level 5
• It’s plenty warm in there now with both lights, so I turned off the dehumidifier, which heats up the room
• Turned on the AC, set to 77 for now.

16 days since 12/12, and the Purple Ghost Candy is finally starting to put out lots of hairs!

It’s behind the other plants. Especially the GG4 x Zkittlez plant, which has full “budlets” already.

Let’s see how they look tomorrow!

Day 62 (Flowering Day 17)

Still look kind of light stressed? Or just my imagination?

Environment

• 80°F/27°C
• 68% RH

Light

• Turned both lights down to 4
• Want to feel like the plants want more light, before turning it up

Reservoirs

• 6.4 pH
• Smells a bit off to me
• Decided to empty the water out of the reservoirs
• Should give them a good cleaning tomorrow

Later that day, they still looked stressed. The color and shape of the top leaves seems slightly off. Here’s a view from the web camera.

I turned both lights down to just Level 2 (of 10).

That brought the PPFD to under 700 for each plant, according to the PPFD app on my phone. I know that’s a non-stressful amount of light, since that’s what they were getting before I added the second light.

I also was a little worried about possibly getting nutrient burn on the Candy Games #38 plant.

Gave plain water

• 3 gallons
• Gave 3 gallons plain water, from the top
• 1 tsp cal mag (just to help stabilize the pH vs adding nothing)
• pH to 6.4
• The goal is to reduce the nutrient levels in the root zone to prevent the chance of nutrient burn.

I don’t like the way the reservoirs smell, but today is an extremely busy day for me. So I just want the plants to hold on until tomorrow, and I should probably take all the reservoirs out, clean them, and put them back in, as the AC Infinity directions tell you to do.

I also plan to do another defoliation of big fan leaves and possibly lollipop on the plants. They’re looking extra leafy, and I think lots of dinky little stems still need to be mercilessly removed, if I’m honest, though I hate cutting off anything with a bud on it.

I pulled a few leaves and small stems, but this tent is wild and needs much, much more.

But if I see the plants tomorrow, and a bud is on a dinky stem, and it’s significantly smaller than other buds on that same plant, it’s got to go!

The water I got from the reservoir was about 6.4 pH and 2,200 PPM.

Day 63 (Flowering Day 18)

Looking happy.

Nebula from the future: I thought the flowering stretch was pretty much over. How wrong I was!

LEDs

• I turned the front light up to level four, since it was on top of the shorter plants.
• I turned the backlight up to level three because the plants were taller and closer.
• According to my phone app this gives them somewhere between 800 and just over 1000 PPFD
• According to the Apogee PAR meter, it’s closer to 500 to 750 PPFD.
• However, in the Wyze camera, they seemed less perky after a few hours.
• So I turned both LEDs down back to where they were before, so now level 3 in the front and level 2 behind.

Reservoirs

• Still exactly 6.4 pH
• Seems like the pH has stopped rising.
• I added some plain 6.8 pH water to each one, bringing the pH in the reservoirs to 6.6
• I want them to get the full pH range
• I really should clean the auto-watering bases out like the AC Infinity directions say, but if I don’t get time today at least they have plenty of water and the proper pH!

Let’s take a quick tour of the tent to compare to the beginning of the week!

GG4 x Zkittlez (front left) is the shortest plant in the tent. It naturally grew in an orderly manner.

GG4 x Zkittlez buds are the furthest along.

Candy Games #38 (front right) is next. It’s stretched a ton since I initiated 12/12.

Candy Games #38 bud closeup.

Notice in the above picture that the edges of the fan leaves are turned up from light stress. That’s part of why I dialed the LEDs down. Once the light levels are back to a good level for the plant, the edges of the leaves should settle back down.

However, if you ignore this symptom for too long and don’t lower light levels, the edges can get permanently crispy. I know that from past experience haha.

Something that’s been hard for me to accept as a grower is that, even though “light = food”, you get the best yields and bud quality if you listen to your plants when they tell you, “Too much!”

Mandarin Cookies (middle plant). The plant is difficult to see clearly in the middle, but the buds are coming along beautifully! So sparkly already.

The Purple Ghost Candy bud development (below) is far behind the others. Foreshadowing: I don’t realize yet how much bigger this plant will get; it’s still stretching a ton. No wonder it was slow to make buds.

The Purple Ghost Candy is finally flowering to my satisfaction. I was starting to wonder if there was a light leak.

I thought this next picture might help give an idea of the Purple Ghost Candy  in action. In the front of this picture is the GG4 x Zkittlez plant with white fluffy buds. You can see those long branches looming in the background, with barely any buds on them yet. That’s the Purple Ghost Candy.

GG4 x Zkittlez in front, Purple Ghost Candy in back. The shortest plant and tallest plant, right next to each other.

In comparison to the Purple Ghost Candy, the Blue Dream buds are stacking! (back right plant)

Recap of the week: Here were the plants at the beginning of the week (flowering day 12) to the end of the week (flowering day 18).

I made the red line at the top of the back pocket, so you can see how much the plants grew this week!

I love seeing the plants every day. Something is so special about growing a beautiful garden that literally makes weed for you.

Week 10 – Flowering stage is in full gear

Day 64 (Flowering Day 19)

Didn’t get a chance to check on the plants today.

Day 65 (Flowering Day 20)

Poor babies have been completely ignored for almost 2 days.

The back plants completely overgrew the webcams again, in just two days!

The Purple Ghost Candy grew an incredible five or six inches in those days. It’s crazy. It seems to have responded really happily to the extra light.

The Purple Ghost Candy (back left) is MUCH taller than its neighbor the GG4 x Zkittlez plant (front left)

The Blue Dream (back right) is also tall but not quite to the same extent. It’s much more closely matched to its neighbors.

In case you want to see the whole flowering stretch from 12/12 to today, I made a moving gif. Wow!

Sirius and I supercropped the tallest stems. The goal wasn’t necessarily to make them shorter as much as to prevent them from growing any longer. 

I’m not sure if you’re interested in this type of content, but here was Sirius and I talking about the plants before we supercropped them. Let us know what videos you want to see more of!

If you supercrop a strong stem, it stunts the growth of that stem even if the stem rises back up. 

So here’s to hoping that the webcams catch the plants not getting any taller.

Here’s me taking a picture of the plants, from the perspective of the webcam.

The soil still looks wet enough on the top that I feel totally comfortable watering them from the bottom.

However, since they looked on the verge of being nutrient burnt last time, even though I watered them at ⅓ strength, I will lower nutrients even more. This time I’m going to water them at ⅙ strength (cut in half compared to last time). I’ll adjust the next watering depending on how they react.

3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅙ strength)

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.75 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.7 pH 
• 500 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

Leaves currently look great and have an overall good color.

Day 66 (Flowering Day 21)

Didn’t have time to check on the plants today. Thank you auto-watering pot bases!

Day 67 (Flowering Day 22)

Some of the Purple Ghost Candy stems haven’t turned back up yet. So I super cropped the remaining tall branches so it’s all one height (about the same height as the GG4 x Zkittles next to it).

I flipped the light orientation so that that’s now the “short” side of the tent, and the other side is the tall side. Then I readjusted the lights, so that they could be moved independently for each side of the tent. 

It would be impossible to grow in a 4×4 grow tent if you didn’t have those side access panels to reach plants in the back.

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅓ strength)
• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 2 tsp Grow Big 
• 2 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.6 pH 
• 560 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

Tops of soil were just starting to dry out, which I believe is normal, as watering from the bottom tends to cause the plants to drink mostly from the bottom of their pots. I watered a tiny bit of the water on top, just to hopefully cause there to be overall more wicking action at the roots, but ensuring there’s moisture from the top to bottom. Don’t know if it works that way lol

Training

• Removed lower small stems 
• Needs a good defoliation tomorrow, I think

Day 68 (Flowering Day 23)

A beautiful vision awaits me when I open the tent today!

Training 

Today I defoliated and lollipopped the two plants on the right. The first one is Blue Dream, the second one is Candy Games #38.

I was going to do the same for the plants on the left, but the Purple Ghost Candy stems still seem fragile. So I don’t want to be messing around with that one too much. And since it’s kind of laying on the Mandarin Cookies and the GG4 x Zkittles, I’m going to give that side another day or two before I give it the full strip. Luckily with defoliation, there isn’t an exact schedule as much as accomplishing a series of steps. 

If you look at the plants on the right now, they were at the perfect place to be defoliated. They look a little sparse right now, but this tells the plant to put all of its effort on fattening those buds. 

Defoliated and lollipopped right side of the tent. The left side looks wild in comparison.

It’s sad doing a defoliation, and having to make heartbreaking choices. Sometimes you have to remove buds that seem like they might actually turn out well. but I try to look at the top of the plant make sure there’s an even amount of bud spaced, and then remove the rest. The only exceptions I make, are if I find a bud that’s already extremely well developed, even if it hasn’t made it to the top, and those sometimes get to stay. 

I took a picture of one of the buds I cut, it made me a little sad, but I’m sure it was the right thing to do. 

I’m hoping that the Purple Ghost Candy recovers quickly. Once it gains some strength, I can give it a nice defoliation and lollipop.

The Purple Ghost Candy most certainly is not going to keep getting taller, here on out it’s recovering. You can even see that the leaves on it are stressed at the top, the poor thing. But I think it’s all going to be for the best. And one thing to note, is recoverable stress is associated with higher THC levels after harvest. So once this plant pulls through and is happily flowering again, I think we’re really going to see the benefits later.

I’m kind of happy with how the super cropping went, because I feel like it’s nice to have a flat side, so I can get the most out of the GG4 x Zkittles and the Mandarin Cookies. Otherwise they would be below the canopy line and never develop to the level that I would hope. So now it’s perfect the whole left side is flat the whole right sign is about the same size. The right side seems to be able to handle the light well and buds are developing well. 

Bud development 

I’m pretty excited to see the bud development on the Blue Dream, but perhaps most especially on the Candy Games #38. The buds seem disproportionately big for how recently it just started flowering, and I’m feeling pretty good it’s going to be a good yielder. I like the way that it’s growing. The Blue Dream also seems like it’s going to get excellent yields.

Candy Games #38

Mandarin Cookies

Purple Ghost Candy

GG4 x Zkittlez

Blue Dream

None of the flowers have started turning color yet. They’re still completely white and growing bigger, which is always a great sign. You know once you start seeing brown hairs, that’s when you start to get a good idea of how big the buds are going to be in the end. 

LEDs 

Both lights are set to level three. I’m going to watch to see if plants show any signs of stress. 

For some reason, it seems like the lights don’t measure as bright since I rearranged them in the opposite direction. Which doesn’t make much sense to me. But it is what it is. I’ll do more testing on the lights in the future. Just under 1000 PPFD everywhere in the tent according to the app on my phone. I’ve noticed the dial settings on the lights, which are the same model and should be identical, aren’t even with each other. On one light, if I go to the first click it doesn’t even turn the lights on, where the other one it does. I’d like to do some testing between the two. Yesterday, I turned both lights up to 100%, and saw that brings it to 2000 PPFD throughout the tent according to the app. Absolutely crazy.

It makes me wonder who could actually use these two lights at full power? It also makes me wonder if I should have stuck with just the one light, but I figure it’s better to have two and be able to adjust them separately. That just gives me more overall control over light levels in the tent especially when there’s such a big height difference between each side.

Day 69 (Flowering Day 24)

LEDs – Took some comparison light measurements, for anyone interested in this kind of thing.

• Turned both lights to level 3
• Even though the plants on the right are much closer. Light levels are surprisingly similar
• With this configuration 
  • Left light level 3
    • 22 inches from tops of plants
    • 600-700 umols on phone 
    • 450-500 umols on Apogee meter
  • Right light level 3
• 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
• 700-1000 umols on phone
• 500-700 umols on Apogee meter 

Just for future reference, what if I turn them both to level 4.

• Left light level 4
  • 22 inches from tops of plants
  • 850-950 umols on phone 
  • 550-650 umols on Apogee meter
• Right light level 4
  • 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
  • 1340-1580 umols on phone
  • 750-1000 umols on Apogee meter

Too high! The left plants are weak. Giving them Level 4 is like giving the right plants level 3, but since I’m hoping for the Purple Ghost Candy to recover well, I’m going to put them on the lower end. 

I wish these lights were easier to adjust up and down and small amounts. I can also see how it could be confusing for new growers, if they use their light at the same setting as someone else, but are actually giving their plants a significantly different amount of light.

So both lights are set to Level 3 for now.

Watering – Since I already fed them a few days ago, I’m giving it at extremely low strength today. Leaves look healthy without deficiencies, but if I take leaves out of the tent into regular light, they look a bit too dark. So I want to avoid overloading them with more nutrients than they can use.

3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅙  strength)

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.7 pH 
• 490 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

I checked the PPM and pH of the reservoirs. They seem to be exactly what I put in. I might test them again later today, I’m curious to see if they have any residue in the bottom, that might affect the PPM or the pH after it’s sat for a while.

Environment 

82F in the tent with these lights at this level. 62% RH. Luckily it’s been way less humid lately, and so the humidity is naturally at a better level. That being said, once the bud start fattening more, I will definitely have the dehumidifier running 24/7 to keep it closer to 50% as the buds finish up. But that’s weeks away. At this point, they’re fine at 62% RH.

Note from later that day

The leaves seem to be turning up and on on the tall side, praying too hard. I turned that light down to level 2.

Here are its new measurements 

• 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
• PPFD app 500-600. so low!
• Apogee 390-450. So low! 

The difference between level 2 and 3 is enormous. Level 3 seems too much, but this seems so little. Especially considering that it drops even lower as you go down into the canopy.

But the plants look stressed, and they’re the boss. So down it goes for today.

Day 70 (Flowering Day 25)

Plants look amazing today!

The Purple Ghost Candy looks 10x happier today. All the super cropped stems are finally turning up.

I love enjoying the plants while enjoying a joint.

It got me thinking about plant personalities.

I think a lot of people notice different strains and plants act in their own “way”. I wanted to share my thoughts on these strains so far. I germinated 3 seeds from each strain for the purposes of this grow, so I included my thoughts on germination. I’m also growing some of the leftover extra plants in another tent, so that informs these opinions a bit.

Purple Ghost Candy

• Not the best to germinate 
• All 3 were weirdos as seedlings
• Hollow brittle stems 
• Gangly with lots of branches everywhere
• Slow to start flowering 
• Stretched a lot
• Covered in bud sites
• Looks like it will be a big yielder

This particular Purple Ghost Candy seed was a slow-growing seedling, at first

Yet a month later, the runty seedling was now the biggest plant! (40 days from seed)

From today. Just getting started flowering!

From a past grow in this setup (same seed pack). Purple Ghost Candy is a beast!

Mandarin Cookies

• All germinated, but a bit slow to germinate and get started (admittedly they were 5 year old seeds, but they all germinated fine)
• Pretty leaves not shaped quite like most plants.
• Overall smallish plants.
• Stretched a normal amount.
• Crazy sparkly. It looks like someone dropped a bag of sugar over the plant.
• Leaves near buds are getting plump and sparkly, like they’re turning into buds too

An adorable seedling

Grew healthy but relatively slow compared to the others. Here it was at day 22.

From today. So sparkly already!

Mandarin Cookies from a previous grow under HLG LED (same seed pack).

That plant produced some of my favorite buds ever!

GG4 x Zkittlez

• One of 3 seeds was a mutant that grew with alternating nodes from a seedling
• Both mutant and non mutant plants grew fast
• All grew in a beautiful, classic, easy to grow kind of way.
• Didn’t stretch much
• Lots of bud sites
• Naturally bushy
• Uniform growth
• Seems super beginner friendly, great for small spaces
• Buds look beautiful so far, but not the biggest

One of the seeds (right seedling) grew with alternating nodes from the beginning, which is a bit unusual, giving it a kind of clover shape from above.

Yet both plants grew into a beautiful, orderly plants.

Here’s the one from our tent after it just got started flowering. The plant grew into a natural bushy structure. Perfect for home growing.

Buds were the quickest to develop of all the plants, and I would guess the GG4 x Zkittlez will be the first ready to harvest, too.

Blue Dream

• Huge, fast growing plants
• Super easy to germinate 
• Tons of long, stacked bud sites
• Would be great to grow by itself so it could spread out 
• Tends to be tall, extremely amenable to being trained 
• Appears like it will be the biggest yielder in the tent, though we’ll see 

Seeds sprouted the fastest of all, and grew like they were running a race. By transplant day, it had already FILLED its cup with roots.

At just 26 days old, our Blue Dream was already the size of a much older plant.

(From today) It’s filled the entire back right of the tent with long stacking buds. Can’t wait to see how big they get!

Candy Games #38

• All seeds germinated fast, and seedlings grew at a typical pace
• Compared to the others this plant drinks less water, and needs less nutrients. 
• Stretched a lot for flowering. It went from being one of the shorter plants to one of the taller plants.
• Seems to be using the stretch to make a lot of bud sites.
• Super fat, gorgeous, sparkly buds, grow in golfball-like nuggets forming.
• Looks to be another surprisingly big producer, but we’ll see 

A lovely low-maintenance plant (26 days old here)

Right around when I initiated 12/12

Here it is 18 days after initiating 12/12. It stretched a lot (more than doubled in size).

Lots of buds are starting to form on those leggy stems (pic from today).

Buds look lovely so far (from today).

Here’s an example of what Candy Games #38 buds look like after being grown out.

Today’s Watering Routine

• Reservoirs are essentially empty 
• So I’m going to give them more water at the same strength 
• But first, what’s in the reservoirs?

Reservoirs 

• Purple ghost candy has 800 PPM and 7.7 pH . I noticed it has yellow tips today.
• Blue Dream has 7.8 pH and 643 PPM 
• Candy games 33 has 7.7 pH and 860 PPM. 
• Mandarin cookies has 7.7 pH and 510 PPM 
• GG4 x Skittles has 7.8 pH and 930 PPM. I noticed it had the least water of all, so it makes sense that what’s left would be highly concentrated. 

So it’s clear the pH is WAY too high. The PPM seems fine. The plants seem particularly happy today. The leaves still look a little bit dark when I pull them out into the regular light. So today when I make their nutrients I’ll give the same ⅙ level nutrients I made yesterday. I’m going to make them around 6.3 pH (The lowest pH level recommended by Fox farm on their nutrient sheet)

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 8 / flowering week 4, ⅙  strength)
• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.2 pH 
• 500 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.
• Tested reservoir pH and PPM, was about the same as water I put in. Let’s see how they test tomorrow 

LEDs 

I, like many growers, want to give as much light as possible. Yet it’s clear between yesterday and today, how much the plants seem to like the new, reduced light levels. The plants on the right look less stressed, and their leaves are laying more flat. It kills me to have the light only on level 2, but if the plants are happy, as far as I’m concerned, they’re the boss.

What about all of you? Do you tend to push your plants to the limit, or try to give them “just right” conditions when it comes to light levels? Hit reply to this email and let us know what you think!

Week 11

Day 71 (Flowering Day 26)

Here are the plants at 26 days from 12/12

The Purple Ghost Candy is rising with a vengeance. I had to tie it down a bunch of branches today. Apparently nothing can hold it back.

Purple Ghost Candy (back left) rising above the canopy!

I noticed the Candy Games #38 had nutrient burn, which I was a little sad to see. I’ve been giving very weak nutrients lately. I’m not quite sure exactly what made it appear.

I tested the reservoirs and they were all high above 7 pH. The Candy Games #38 had 1000ish PPM in the reservoir.

• Maybe when I watered it yesterday from the top, I somehow activated old nutrients that were in the soil?
• Is that how a plant could get nutrient burn getting ⅙  strength nutrients?

In any case, the solution is the same. I pumped out the water from all of the reservoirs, and refilled with new fresh water

Refilled with

• 3 gallons water
• 3 tsp Cal-Mag
• Hydroguard
• 1.25 tsp pH Down
• 6.1 pH
• 480 PPM
• I added the Cal-Mag to try to help stabilize the pH.

Day 72 (Flowering Day 27)

I took one of the extra auto-watering pots and used it to raise the GG4 x Zkittlez (the shorted plants) several inches. It’s nice and stable already but I used some blue tape just to make sure it can’t slide around.

Stacked an extra bottom to make the shortest plant taller.

The front left (short) plant is now a bit taller, but still furthest from the light!

pH was really high, approaching 7.7 pH

• Drained the reservoirs, and made new water, this time with a sixth strength nutrients, plus cow mag. I feel like it seems like the pH is more stable when there’s at least some amount of nutrients in it. I know the Tiger Bloom in particular seems to bring down pH.

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 8 / flowering week 4, ⅙  strength)
• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.0 pH
• 500 PPM

Added a pinch of citric crystals, to help keep the pH low. I know from working with super soil, that the citric crystals seem to lower pH not just immediately but also over time. I’m hoping a little extra organic buffer of an acid can help keep the pH from rising overnight

• Added nutrient water to reservoirs.
• Tested reservoir pH and PPM, was about the same as water I put in. Let’s see how they test tomorrow

Training – Removed small buds

Went and removed all the lower buds that weren’t a substantial size yet. So I went under the plants, and if anything just looked like hairs, without actual weight to it, I just pick those off. I know from experience that the lower buds don’t ever fatten up, so I want to let the plant use all of its energy on the top buds that are actually going to get fat. Normally I take off the leaves too, when I lollipop, but this time I just picked off the buds. I’m curious of having those extra leaves might help the plant withstand potential nutrient deficiencies or light stress, since it’s a store of extra nutrients in the plant. It seems possible they might create extra energy too, and since they don’t have any buds nearby, any energy they have either stays in the plant or goes to the buds at the top.

LEDs

• The plants on the right still seemed just a tiny bit like they’re getting too much light. All of their leaves are pointing up.
• I turned the light down on that side just a little bit, not even a full click. I thought I’d give those plants a slightly overcast day until his leaves were flat again. Then I might turn the light back up tomorrow

Day 73 (Flowering Day 28)

Plants look super happy.

The Candy Games #38 (front right plant) is growing big golf ball nugs. The structure reminds me a lot of Zweet Inzanity, only sparklier.

LEDs

• Still on level 3 on left over shorter plants, and level 1.5 on right over the tall plants (you can turn the dial between clicks)

Struggling with pH in the reservoirs

pH was high in reservoirs, at 7.3. PPM was around 1000.

So there’s obviously something in the reservoir raising the pH.

However, yesterday I left some nutrient water out to see how the pH changes without being in the reservoir.

The nutrient water went to 6.6 overnight, from 6.0 yesterday.

So at least part of the problem is these nutrients tend to rise over time, at least with my water.

• I added the remaining nutrient water mixed with with 1.5 tsp pH down and split between all the reservoirs, to being their pH down without changing the water
• pH of reservoirs tested about 5.8-6.0 immediately after adding the water.
• PPM around 1000

Two hours later…

• An hour later it was at 6.7 pH. Such a fast rise!
• 1500 PPM. Why ppm rising so much? I think there must be sediment or something in the reservoirs that’s dissolving into the water?

I’m going to give just plain water for a while. The leaves seem dark and I don’t want to give more nutrient burn.

Adjust pH lower

• Mixed 1 gallon plain water with Hydroguard, adjusted to 5.5 pH
• 400 PPM after mixing
• Added to reservoirs

Reservoirs immediately after adding that water

• 6.5 pH
• 550 PPM
• About ¾ full according to the water indicators

I’d like to maintain it here.

Day 74 (Flowering Day 29)

Oct 9 – day 74 flowering day 29

Reservoirs were high again, around 7.1 pH. Plants appear dark in natural light, which signals to me they need overall lower levels of nutrients. Plants get dark when they’re getting too high levels of nutrients for their current stage of life.

Under the LED, leaves looked the right color. But in natural light, it’s clear they’re too dark (need less nutrients).

Solution: Give just plain water for a while!

So I added 3 gallons of plain water pH’ed to 6.0 with a mix of citric crystals and regular pH Down, in hopes that one of them helps to get the pH to stay lower.

After adding the water, reservoirs measured at around 6.1 pH

Day 75 (Flowering Day 30)

FORGOT TO TAKE ANY PICS TODAY! 

Struggling to keep them watered haha

This morning pH is at 7.2 again. PPM around 1200.

Added more plain water mixed to 5.9 pH.

They are drinking a ton of water. I added 3 gallons yesterday, and they need more today.

Gave about 2 gallons today. I don’t want to fill them above the “max” amount listed on the water indicators.

I know from past experience in hydro that when the roots of plants are too close to a water reservoir, it can cause stem rot over time. It’s always best to have at least an inch or two of extra air gap between plant roots and the water. I would guess that’s a good idea here. So I don’t want to overfill the reservoirs.

I’m happy they’re drinking so much water. Hopefully they’ll use up some of the extra nutrients in the leaves. Clearly there’s still nutrients available at their root zone, because the PPM of the water always climbs overnight, like there’s nutrient residue built up on the bottom or something?

Would have, should have, could have…

I honestly should take the plants out to clean and examine their auto-watering pot bases. I’m curious what’s going on in them. Are the roots overtaking everything? Is there stuff built up or growing on the bottoms of them?

But I hurt my back moving the plants last time so they’re not going anywhere again haha. They stay where they are until I start cutting off branches for harvest.

If I notice nutrient problems I’ll just start watering them from the top like regular soil, and use the trays to catch runoff and remove afterwards.

But for now I’m just going to give them plain water for a while. Maybe start giving nutrients again at very low levels once the leaves look closer to a normal green.

Day 76 (Flowering Day 31)

One LED panel was off this morning…

One of my LEDs was off this morning. But I turned it off and on and it turned back on. Hmmm. I think it’s because at that level 1 click, it’s too close to being all the way off. When it turned on it just wasn’t enough. I’m not sure exactly why it happened.

• One thing I noticed, is the plants on the right side of the tent, which have had semi-stressed looking leaves for a while, were looking really happy this morning. Their leaves were more straight and also the edges of their leaves were lying flat. So I figure it was probably a good 4-hour break for those plants. It was still getting light from the other side.
• My goal is always to keep the plants green and healthy first, and then maximize light after that. It’s painful because we’re constantly told that more light equals more buds. And that’s true. But it’s also important to think about the overall quality of the buds. And if you keep the plant healthy, the quality of the buds are better, even if the yields might not be exactly as huge. I know I’d rather have 15 oz of high quality weed than 20 oz of subpar weed. Though I doubt the difference in yields isn’t even that much.

Being really on top of nutrients also seems to allow your plants to handle a lot more light.

Water reservoirs

The water reservoirs pH were extremely high, 7.5 and up. Except the Purple Ghost Candy which had already drank all the water. The rest were about a quarter full.

I mixed up some water with just citric crystals and pH down, then gave it to them.

3 gallons

• ¼ tsp citric crystals
• 1 tsp pH down

I gave to the reservoirs. Afterwards, they were all between 6.1 and 6.6 pH. The Candy Games #38 seems to consistently have the highest pH. The Purple Ghost Candy ended up having 5.8 pH, I think because it didn’t have any water from before. So for that plant, I gave a little extra water into that one with a tiny amount of Cal-Mag in it to bring the pH up to 6.1. The water level seemed high, right at Max. So I removed about 2 cups of water with a syringe, so it’s below the max line. However that plant is drinking the most, so I’m not as worried about hurting its roots by giving it too much water.

LEDs – Zip-tied lights to the top of the tent, then turned up the light power

I wanted to rain down more photons without giving the plants light stress from too much light intensity. So I used zip ties to raise the lights in the tent. Then I turn them up a bit. The one on the left is set to level four, and the one on the right is set to level three. I’m going to observe them in the wyze cam for the day, and see how they react. If they look stressed, I’ll turn them back down. If they look good, then it stays at this light level. I could also raise the lights a little bit, but the carbon filter is in the way,. I might have to think a little bit about the best way to do it. For example I could rearrange how the lights are so their face the opposite way.

Used big thick Zip-ties to raise lights further than the native hardware allowed.

I didn’t take down any of the old hanging apparatus, for simplicity. I just added zip ties and tightened them to raise the panels. If I cut the zip ties, the lights would be hanging the way they were before.

According to my phone PPFD app, with the new height and light levels, it’s about 800 PPFD at the top of the canopy on both sides. That seems like a good amount and with the lights turned up they’ll be more light in the tent, potentially getting lower to the lower buds. Let’s see what happens!

Day 77 (Flowering Day 32)

A peak from the back right window of the tent, while I was checking on the Blue Dream up close. It’s getting stacked!

A peak from the back left window of the tent. Here’s the Purple Ghost Candy up close!

And lastly, from the front!

Reservoirs growing things…

I noticed some foam or something growing in the reservoirs, but I don’t have time to check it out. The pH was really high above seven again. I wonder if whatever is growing is what’s causing the pH to increase.

It’s hard to see, but all the little white specks are something that is growing on top of the water in the reservoir.

I can’t wait to try the Vivosun auto-watering bases, where you can actually get into the reservoir instead of only have this tiny hole.

So today I added some low pH water, but this time I added some hydrogen peroxide 3%. My hope is this kills anything in the reservoir. And although it was really low, I only filled them to about halfway, just so the water isn’t too close to the roots.

I noticed that the PPM is actually lower than it was yesterday. It measured around 370 PPM. To me that sounds like the plants, or whatever growing in the tank, is using nutrients at a higher rate than they’re using water.

The plant still look pristine, without any sign of using up nutrients. I don’t see any deficiencies on the lower leaves, which is where I would expect to start seeing some leaves dying from not giving nutrients for several days.

Giving water

So I’m going to continue giving plain water pH’ed very low, though tomorrow maybe I’ll pump out everything and try to start over with the reservoirs as best I can, without actually moving the plants.

• After giving low pH water, the pH in all the reservoirs was between 6.4 and 6.8.

Buds are developing well.

LEDs – Raised panels a bit more

Today I raised the lights a little bit more. The plants seem to have responded really well to raising the lights and increasing the light levels. I could see their leaves perk up.

Right now I have the light on the left set to level four, and the light on the right set to level three.

According to the phone app that is still about 1000 PPFD for the tallest bud it’s closest to the light..

I’ll watch them through the Wyze cam today to see how they react.

Perhaps if they react really well, and their leaves lie flat, I’ll increase the light levels even more. But we’ll see. I want to make sure the reservoirs are great before I put any additional stress on the plants. Also since they’re early in the flowering stage, and stacking well, I don’t want to accidentally stress the leaves out too much, since these leaves need to hang out for another month plus.

Week 12

Day 78 (Flowering Day 33)

Buds are all looking good!

The Mandarin Cookies buds are all kind of silvery. I remember the last Mandarin Cookies I grew (from the same seed pack) grew the same way!

GG4 x Zkittlez hairs are starting to darken and curl in.

The Candy Games #38 buds look like they’re going to get BIG.

Blue Dream seems like it’s still just getting started!

The Purple Ghost Candy is also just getting started. I have a feeling it’s going to absolutely explode in buds. It started late, but doesn’t seem to have any signs of slowing down.

I’m still struggling with PH going VERY high overnight

PH in the reservoirs was high again. Above 7.5 pH. I removed all the water out of them, and refilled the reservoirs with fresh water.

3 gallons

• Feeding schedule week 9, 1/6 strength
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Skipped Big Bloom in case the organic ingredients were feeding what was in the reservoir, or otherwise contributing to the rising pH.
• ¼ tsp citric crystals
• 6.2 pH
• 400 PPM

Reservoirs immediately after

• 6.4 pH
• 450 ppm
• Let’s see how they change before tomorrow

LEDs

• Plants seem Happy
• Put right light on level 4, so now both are on level 4
• Leaves still look a little bit dark
• I’m curious to see how the plant reacts to higher light levels, now that the light is much further away.
• According to my PPFD app on my phone, the highest PPFD is approaching 1300 on the tallest colas.
• It’s probably too much light, so I will watch my plants closely in the Wyze web camera for signs of stress. If the leaves look stressed I’ll move it back.
• It’s hard because I want to give as much light as possible, but not too much

Day 79 (Flowering Day 34)

3 gallons

• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big (hydro version)
  • I just felt like the soil version doesn’t have enough potassium
  • I have some of the hydro version for my other plants in Fox Farm coco, and I noticed their schedule gives Grow Big (hydro)nutrients all the way until harvest at an even higher rate than tiger bloom.
  • Use 1:1 and you get a 5-10-10 NPK that seems appropriate at this phase of flowering. The hydro version also contains calcium.
  • 1 tsp Hydroguard
  • ¼ tsp citric crystals
  • 6.0 pH
  • 460 PPM

After adding 2 gallons, reservoirs were about 6.6 pH. So I mixed another ¼ tsp citric acid into the remaining nutrient water, and gave a cup of that super low pH solution. After that, reservoirs measured 6.0-6.3 pH. Good!

Overall plants look great.

Day 80 (Flowering Day 35)

Seeing that today is day 80 since I germinated these seedlings, I just wanted to reference my autoflower grow journal. The first plants were harvested on day 80, and all harvested by day 90. I thought it was interesting to compare that to this journal, to help get an idea of much faster autoflowers are compared to photoperiod plants. Even the fastest of these photoperiod plants, the GG4 x Zkittles, has a while to go.

These photoperiod plants today, at 80 days from germination. I’d estimate we’re still 4-6 weeks away from harvest day.

What our autoflowers looked like at 80 days from germination, not long before harvest. No faster cannabis harvest than an autoflower harvest! Check out the full journal!

The autoflower harvest produced about 10 oz of weed. This grow seems like it’s going to produce quite a bit more than that. And if I’m honest, I’m a lot more excited about smoking the photoperiod strains!  Especially Purple Ghost Candy, Mandarin Cookies, and Candy Games #38. With the autoflowers, the weed came out great, but I feel like the strains were less exciting.

Reservoirs

• pH was around 7
• Added some low pH water from yesterday.
• Immediately after was 6.0 pH

Turned right light onto level 4 again, but left on level 3 above the GG4 x Zkittlez that seemed a bit light stressed yesterday.

Day 81 (Flowering Day 36)

Plants look good but leaves are still too dark.

Under the LEDs, the leaves look an okay color. Maybe a little dark.

But I turned off the LEDs and took a picture in regular light, so it’s a lot easier to see that the leaves are still too dark. The leaves should all be Kelly Green, especially this late in the flowering stage, when leaves tend to lighten up. But these leaves are darker, closer to Hunter Green, which is a sign they’re getting overall too much nitrogen/nutrients. You can see the leaves at the bottom most clearly.

In normal light, you can see the leaves are very dark.

Easy fix. Continue giving just plain water until the leaves start to lighten up.

I use a 3-gallon container to water the plants

3 gallons is usually enough to water them all.

I use this water transfer pump to dispense. I wish it had a longer hose though. It is difficult to reach the plants in the back.

Reservoirs pushing 7.6 ph.Removed all the water from the reservoirs. Added a little h2o2 to kill what’s in the reservoirs. Hopefully h2o2 plus total dryness will help kill anything plus air prune the roots.

• Watered with 3 gallons of 6.1 pH water, from the top.
• No runoff.

Maybe tomorrow or the day after, I’ll give enough water to get runoff, so I can test the pH at the root zone.

But for now I want the reservoirs to dry out to help kill anything living in them.

LEDs: Turned both up to level 4

Day 82 (Flowering Day 37)

It’s going to be a lot of weed!

Gave 3 gallons from the top

• Added 1.5 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH

Finally got a bit of runoff, around 6.7 pH

So definitely it’s high at the root zone.

Luckily we’re on top of it!

Let’s water from the top for a while…

I’m going to simplify things. I’m going to water normally from the top and just use the reservoirs to catch runoff.

At least until the pH is in a better range, then maybe I’ll try bottom watering again.

Luckily the plants have stopped drinking such crazy amounts!

Overall they look good.

I see the hairs are starting to turn. To me that says this is about the final size the buds will be,just they’ll get more filled out.

Going to be a lot of weed!

Day 83 (Flowering Day 38)

Looking good 💯

Day 84 (Flowering Day 39)

Soil mostly dry on top.

Gave 3 gallons from the top

• Added 1.5 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH
• Gave about ½ gallon to all
  • but I didn’t give any to Mandarin Cookies, as the top soil still seemed a bit wet.
  •  I gave a bit extra to the Purple Ghost Candy as it seemed particularly dry.
• No runoff, but all felt cool at the bottom, so I feel I gave enough to wet them thoroughly.
• Will wait until tops are dry to the first knuckle before watering again

LEDs

• Turned both up to level 5

Training

• Removed some lower leaves
• Removed big fan leaves covering bud sites that couldn’t be tucked
• Removed lower bud sites that hadn’t gained any heft yet. If they’re dinky now, they’ll never get big and dense. Might as well let the plant focus on the biggest top buds, which tend to be the most potent and high quality.
• Strung up the Blue Dream colas since they were starting to fall over

I checked on Blue Dream plant from the side, since I saw some buds were falling.

I have plant wire strung across the top of my tent to use with plant yo-yos to hold up heavy buds (also handy for drying).

Plant yo-yos are specially designed to hold up heavy cannabis branches.

Plant yo-yos gently hook onto stems without disturbing buds.

So for the Blue Dream plant, I use plant yo-yos on the falling stems.

The big Blue Dream buds are now held up by the top of the tent.

New view of the Blue Dream with the plant yo-yos from the side window.

Now from the front, you can spot yo-yo strings holding up the heavy Blue Dream buds.

In regular light

Bud readiness

• GG4 x Zkittles and Candy Games #38 both starting to get brown hairs. Maybe 4 weeks left?
• Remaining three plants are still all white hairs that I can see. At least 4+ weeks left on those

I’ll take detailed pictures of all the buds next week!

Week 13

Day 85 (Flowering Day 40)

Oct 20 – day 85 flowering day 40

Gave the rest of the plain pH’ed water from yesterday to the plants where the soil looked totally dry on top.

Nutrient burn after watering from the top…

I noticed the plants have more nutrient burn today! They’ve been getting just plain water for quite a while but I guess there’s still excess nutrients from before. Now that I think of it, this happened right after I started watering again from the top.

I wonder if they’ll want nutrients again before harvest.

The Candy Games #38 has it the worst. I also noticed some marks on some of its top leaves. Light stress? Nutrient problem? Did I accidentally hurt the leaf mechanically? We’ll see if it spreads.

It happens!

Maybe I’ll turn the light down a bit on that side until I’m sure it’s not spreading? Lights are out now, but I’ll check on plants first thing tomorrow.

Day 86 (Flowering Day 41)

I saw later I apparently didn’t write any notes or take any pictures. Did I even check on the plants today?

Day 87 (Flowering Day 42)

Note from tomorrow: They should have gotten watered today…

I peeked on the plants, and they looked good. But their topsoil was almost totally dry and I knew they needed to be watered today. I filled a container with water, but I got a call. By the time I got back, the lights had already turned off for their 6pm bedtime. I didn’t want to interrupt their dark period, so I decided to wait until tomorrow.

Day 88 (Flowering Day 43)

Oct 23 – day 88 flowering day 43

Underwatered! Droopy! Nooooooo!

Oops, plants are underwatered, especially the Blue Dream.

Here’s a closeup of the droopy underwatered Blue Dream.

You could really see the drooping on the Blue Dream’s “undercarriage”.

Gave the plants 3 gallons of water, pH at 6.5.

Two hours later they looked mostly back to normal.

2 hours later, Blue Dream looks a lot better.

It’s funny that as soon as I got rid of the auto-watering pots, and got busy, my plants immediately became underwatered. Especially considering that they’re not even drinking that much compared to before during the flowering stretch period.

Day 89 (Flowering Day 44)

Seem recovered from going thirsty

Plants look back to normal for the most part.

Some of the lowest leaves on the Blue Dream seem a bit wilty, but I think the plant was already giving up on those leaves, since they didn’t get any light.

The tops of the soil already look dry, so I gave the plants another 3 gallons of water at 6.5 pH.

Buds are developing beautifully. I’m surprised how the Purple Ghost Candy and the Blue Dream still don’t have any darkened hairs on their buds yet. They are going to keep getting bigger, and they already seem pretty big.

Purple Ghost Candy buds – Still all-white hairs

With the Purple Ghost Candy, some of the stems and parts of the leaves are turning purple. I remember that last time we grew this strain, the plant was mostly green until the last few weeks before harvest,  but also had the same splashes of purple on the stems. Then about a week before harvest, the leaves on the entire plant, sugar leaves and all, turned purple almost overnight. I’m curious to see how the purple expresses itself in this plant as we approach harvest!

Blue Dream buds – Also all-white hairs!

When will they stop getting bigger and start maturing? lol

The Mandarin Cookies looks especially mouth-watering!

The Mandarin Cookies buds are so covered in trichomes it’s difficult for the camera to catch anything but white reflection. I can’t seem to get the camera to focus on the buds themselves or capture much color, even when playing with the settings. But to the naked eye, the buds look like long silvery-blue spears.

Any stem on this plant turns bright purple the moment it gets exposed to light now.

There’s a deep purple stem in this picture, which appeared after a heavy bud started sagging over and left a “hole” in the canopy for light to get through.

Can you spot the deep purple stem where light got into the canopy?

Since the branches keep flopping all over from the bud weight, there are new bright purple stems every day wherever the stems happen to face “up”.

I remember last time I grew Mandarin Cookies the plant looked and grew the exact same way. It’s getting me excited because I absolutely loved those buds! I don’t think this plant will be a big yielder, but I don’t mind when buds look this good!

I tried to get a couple different shots to help you see the plants.

Side view (see the plant structure)

Three quarter view of canopy

In regular light

So happy to see under normal light that the leaves finally starting to lighten up! It’s been over a week of just getting plain water, not nutrients. The lower levels still a bit on the darker side, especially on the Candy Games #3 plant in the front right, but a much more “Kelly green” kind of color now. The darker leaf plants will continue to get plain water until those lower leaves start to lighten up.

I love peeking in on the plants. When it’s just as window in the front of the tent, I can do it as much as I want without worry about bothering the plants at all.

I keep finding myself in the grow room, peeking in at the plants, admiring the beauty of the flowers.

It’s crazy to just grow weed at home! What a great time to be alive.

Day 90 (Flowering Day 45)

Looking happy! The topsoil is dry, so I’m giving plenty of water today.

3 gallons

• 1.25 tsp pH Down
• 6.2 pH

Not one drop of runoff water.

Made nutrient water just for the Blue Dream

I noticed the Blue Dream is paler than the other plants. I also noticed that it’s lowest leaves are turning yellow and falling off. It needs more nutrients. Luckily it’s got tons of leaves left so losing a few lower ones is no big deal since we caught this right away.

Blue Dream looks hungry for nutrients. Lower leaves are getting pale and starting to wilt.

Note: When a plant doesn’t have any other nutrients deficiencies (spots, etc.) but the lower leaves are turning yellow, wilting, and falling off on their own. It means the plant wants MORE nutrients. Not that the pH is off, but that it literally is running out of nitrogen and needs higher levels of stage-appropriate nutrients.

All the other plants still have regular-to-dark green leaves, and zero yellowing, so they get plain water.

I made up a gallon of water with half strength week 10 nutrients and that’s going just to the blue dream.

1 gallon for Blue Dream

• Week 10 half strength
• 1 1/2 tbsp of Big Bloom
• 1 tsp of grow big
• 1 tsp of tiger bloom
• pH to 6.3

I did give a little squirt to all the other plants.

• Gave the rest of the water between them
• They all got a little bit of runoff except the Mandarin Cookies. I gave it less than the others. It tends to drink the least. I did confirm that water got all the way to the bottom by touching the bottom of the pot.
• I gave a lot of water to the Blue Dream. So much it got enough runoff to fill its reservoir to the max. I tested it’s run off water and it was 6.3 pH and 1600 PPM. That seems fine to me, within the recommended pH range of Fox Farms, with a bit high PPM but I know it needs more nutrients. So I’m just going to leave it. I’ll let him have all the extra water.

I think I’ve done the right thing so we’ll see how they look later

Environment

I noticed it’s 70% RH in the tent. Hmmm, why? It’s been pretty consistently 50-60-% RH this grow so far.

Then I looked at my humidity monitor in the living room, and my outside thermometer, and the weather forecast for this week. All say 70% RH or higher!

So my local environment was causing the humidity to rise in the tent. Everywhere in the house is 70% RH, so it makes sense the grow space will be as well.

The big dehumidifier

I’m going to turn on the big dehumidifier and close up the room tight. The dehumidifier tends to raise the temperature of the room but that’s okay considering it’s coolish in the tent already. The only problem with this dehumidifier is you have to empty the water out all the time, because it holds so little. You can connect it to a hose, and have that go into a bucket, but if you forget to change the bucket it could overflow. It’s meant to be put over a drain. I could take a long hose to the bathroom I guess… but what if I have guests? Hard to explain a hose going from the spare bedroom and dripping into a bathroom drain!

It’s not crucial to control humidity yet at this stage, but buds develop tighter and denser (with lots of sparkle) if you can keep the humidity around the buds under 60%. Ideal humidity after buds are forming is 45-50% RH, but that’s unrealistic for me when the air everywhere is 70% RH and I don’t have a totally sealed grow room (cracks under the doors and such).

When you’re at the mercy of your environment, you just do your best!

Day 91 (Flowering Day 46)

Humidity down to 54% RH in the tent with the dehumidifier going. Much better!

Plants still seem well-watered. They soil looks we and the pots feel wet on bottom.

There’s still a little water in the Blue Dream reservoir, and in the Purple Ghost Candy reservoir, but the rest are empty. The Blue Dream plant looks pretty pale/hungry to me (back right this picture). The next time I water it I’m definitely going to make sure that one gets nutrients again.

The Candy Games #38 is looking decidedly more purple around the buds, than earlier this week.

Big and beautiful Candy Games #38 buds!

I’m at that part of the grow where there’s not much to do so I keep looking at the buds and fussing about the plant’s environment and water 🙂

Week 14

Day 92 (Flowering Day 47)

Looking good. Plan on giving the Blue Dream some nutrients and maybe give everyone else just a little splash. 

Picture: The Blue Dream (back left, blue label) is the only plant that seems “hungry”. It cannibalized several bottom leaves. Which is why it’s getting nutrients in the water. I want it to keep all its leaves for many more weeks, as its buds are still all white (which means they have several weeks to go before harvest day).

Only the Blue Dream seems “hungry” for nutrients.

Even though it lost several leaves off the bottom, when I peeked in on the Blue Dream plant from the side window, I see it’s still got tons of green leaves. Maybe even too many. It’s crazy how wild plants can grow in the back where you can’t see them. But overall I think the Blue Dream looks great.

Here’s what the Blue Dream looks like from the front! Seems a lot more orderly from this direction haha.

You can see it’s more pale than the other plants. It’s an okay color but I’m going to make sure it gets some nutrients with every watering, maybe get those leaves just a tiny touch darker like the Purple Ghost Candy to its left.

1 gallon nutrient water 

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• pH 6.5
• 670 PPM 
• Gave mostly to Blue Dream but a splash to others 

3 gallons x 2

• Plain water pH to 6.4 ph
• Split between all

Noticed no one had runoff after giving first 3 gallons from the top. Added another plain water gallon from the top, until some runoff, then 1 gallon to the reservoirs. 1 gallon remaining. I’ll check their reservoirs later today and if any are low I’ll give the remains 

Environment 

• It’s 75% RH in the air outside, and in the rest of the house 
• So I have both the AC and dehumidifier running with the room closed up as best I can.
• Lights are at Level 5
• Getting it around 81F in the tent and 55% humidity in the grow space.

Day 93 (Flowering Day 48)

• Gave the rest of the plain water from yesterday.

Plants look good. 

I saw a fallen bud from the GG4 x Zkittlez.

It got too heavy to hold itself up anymore.

I strung it back up with plant yo-yos.

I plan to lift up the Mandarin Cookies (tiny plant in the middle) on an extra reservoir platform, like I did the GG4 x Zkittlez, so it gets more light. The Mandarin Cookies center spot is between the two LEDs, so it could be higher up, and still be a good distance from the LEDs (since it’s not directly under any hot/bright spots).

Right after the LEDs turned off, I took a picture of them in natural light, to get a better idea of what their leaf color looks like.

I’m happy the leaves look less dark on all the plants compared to a week ago. However, besides the Blue Dream, I think the rest of them still need to use up some of the nutrients they have before I give any more.

I dropped my cellphone on the poor GG4 x Zkittlez while taking pictures, but luckily he didn’t seem the worse for wear. Hopefully these pictures were worth it!

GG4 x Zkittlez from the front. Considering it is only day 49 since 12/12, it looks surprisingly close to harvest. Definitely a fast strain!

The GG4 x Zkittlez buds are unusually leafy. I removed just about every big fan leaf from the long buds, and they’re still covered in so many leaves. Might be a good strain for outdoors as those leaves would do a great job protecting the buds from the elements. Plus, a fast-flowering strain like this is more likely to be totally ready to harvest before wet or wintry weather comes.

Closeup GG4 x Zkittlez bud.

Candy Games #38 is the exact opposite. Almost no sugar leaves, just naked buds!

Day 94 (Flowering Day 49)

Moved the Mandarin Cookies up a few inches, like I had done previously with the GG4 x Zkittles. It seems to have stopped stretching on the shorter side. I had reached the top canopy, but since it was right in the middle there is no LED panel directly above. It’s getting light from either side. I figured that was the perfect opportunity to give it more height. That way it’s getting more light from each side, yet doesn’t affect any other plant from getting light.

Peeking through the grow tent window in at my plants. The silvery mini Mandarin Cookies plant in the middle has been raised up a few inches now.

I’m so excited with how they’re turning out!

You may noticed in the pictures that the front right plant (Candy Games #38) seems a bit leafier (big fan leaves, at least) than I’d normally do.

Candy Games #38 plant in front right spot. Why did I leave so many big fan leaves?

It’s because it has those big fan leaves, but pretty much no other leaves. The buds are bare with barely any sugar leaves. Compare that to the GG4 x Zkittlez in the front left, where I plucked every fan leaf off the main stems at the top, and it’s still insanely leafy.

I want the Candy Games #38 to have plenty of leaves to last until harvest. Since it has so few, it gets to keep them even though normally I’d defoliate away any big fan leaves like that to expose buds to more light.

Environment is perfect for bud formation! Not too hot, not too humid, nice and breezy.

Defoliation/lollipop experiment

Speaking of leaves, I am experimenting with a different kind of “lollipopping” than previously. You may see that in my pictures.

Normally, I pull all the leaves off below the “lollipop” point. BUT this time I tried something different. I picked off all the buds below the lollipop point, yet left the leaves alone as long as they weren’t touching each other.

Why? My hypothesis/theory is that those bottom leaves aren’t taking from the top buds, but it’s the bottom buds that take from the top buds. In my mind, I wonder if the leaves act more as like a reservoir of easily usable nutrients the plant can draw from.

I’m happy I did that with the Blue Dream plant. One day I came in and realized it was taking nitrogen from all the bottom leaves. They all were stripped by the plant, wilted and died. The issue was it was using more nutrients than I was giving it. It’s an extremely nutrient hungry plant and I hadn’t realized it was lightening compared to the others, since it was in the back.

But I noticed those bottom leaves dying, and immediately gave it a feeding of nutrients, and the leaves stopped dying. I will be making sure to watch that plant a lot more closely.

BUT the cool thing is even though it lost maybe 15 of the lowest leaves overnight, as it took nutrients and brought them to the top, the entire top of the plant was totally unaffected. Those leaves gave the plant some buffer when something didn’t go quite right because of my mistake.

Note: The Mandarin Cookies also showed one or two leaves being halfway devoured, so I’m going to make sure I give that one extra nutrients too, especially since it’s buds are still 100% white and it’s now been moved into a position of stronger light levels. And it’s cool because it still has a massive buffer of lower leaves, yet the plant isn’t putting any effort into growing lower buds.

And it makes me think, the plant has to put energy into GROWING buds, but how much energy does it really waste on maintaining an already-fully formed leaf that isn’t even having to do photosynthesis. Is the plant really losing energy on those leaves, or are they just a free reservoir of nutrients we’ve been needless plucking away, because the REAL secret was we needed to get rid of those lower buds being developed, and just the losing of the leaves was okay as long as you took PERFECT care of the plants and kept all the top leaves until harvest.

All the little buds with no size after several weeks of flowering? GONE! But I didn’t strip the fan leaves.

Anyways, it all makes me wonder, considering one of the biggest struggles in the flowering stage is keeping healthy leaves until the end, if we’re reducing our “buffer” by removing those lower leaves. Clearly removing the growth improves yields and bud quality. I’ve tested that very carefully with both photoperiod clones AND autofloweirng strains. The lollipopped plants produced better than the unlollipoped plants. BUT, what if you could get further gain, or maybe further buffer, by leaves the leaves and only picking off the lower buds sites?

So far, I feel like this strategy seems very promising. At least in the case where the Blue Dream was able to go through a problem in the middle of the crucial flower stage, and experience no ill effects because it was able to draw on that buffer of lower leaves, which I don’t care when they died.

For the other plants, it’s less clear the effects. I can see that the plants are clearly carrying a lot of nutrients. Their lower leaves are still dark. So for those plants, I’ve been experimenting with just giving water. It seems like they’ve been happily getting all their nutrients because I don’t see a single nutrient deficiency on any plant besides the Blue Dream which lost a bunch of lower leaves, and the two half-lost leaves on the Mandarin Cookies.

I haven’t been removing the dead leaves either. I figure if it can get any last bit of something from it, I’m leaving it until the plant decides to drop the leaf on its own. 

Of course, I will immediately pick up any leaves that fall, and also remove any leaves touching each other but that isn’t the case here.

What do you think of my experiment? What do you think of my hypothesis?

Should leaves and buds, or only buds, be removed when lollipopping?

To summarize

New Lollipop Method: Remove buds but not leaves from bottom of plant.

• Main Hypothesis
  • Get the well-proven benefits of lollipopping (bigger, denser top buds), but extra leaves give extra buffer in case you mess up with nutrients.
• Secondary Hypothesis
  • Plant might produce more energy from extra photosynthesis, raising overall yields vs if those leaves simply weren’t there.
• Alternative Hypothesis
  • It’s possible that this lowers bud yields by diverting energy away from buds to lower leaves. So I need to make sure the experiment controls for that possibility.

Informal Experiment (what I’m doing with this journal)

• When lollipopping plants (I think I did it about week 2 or 3 after 12/12 in this grow journal, I only removed lower bud sites but let most leaves remain.
• I didn’t worry about “light hitting the ground”. I made sure that top buds were well exposed to direct light, and then I made sure to remove any buds that weren’ well developed compared to the top buds. So if the lower buds were just wisps of hairs, even though the top buds were developing, I removed those buds. But if there was a bud that was developing well, even if it was a bit lower, I left those buds.
• Essentially, since I wasn’t moving the plants at all at that point, I decided to let each plant “tell me” which buds it was “working on” and which were an “afterthought”. And removed the afterthoughts and left the big buds.
• Now that it’s week 6 or 7 or 8 (can’t remember exactly) since 12/12, I will go again today and remove any remaining lower buds I missed that simply aren’t developing.
• If this seems to get good results compared to my sort of “intuition” then I am going to do a much more formal hypothesis. Like how when I tried defoliation and lollipopping originally, it FELT like it helped, but it was hard to be sure since other factors change between grows. So I did detailed, well measured experiments and found my intuition was correct. Defoliation and lollipopping doesn’t just increase yields but bud size, density, and even POTENCY at the labs. It’s outstanding.
• So this first informal experiment is just to test that it “seems” like it goes well. And if it doesn’t, next I’ll do a FORMAL experiment.

Plants in this journal were lollipopped, but only the buds were removed. Lower leaves were left alone.

Formal experiment (next experiment if this goes well)

• Background: If this works, it would be a totally FREE, new, and easy way to improve both yields and overall fun. A goal worth testing.
• Experiment Structure
  • Grow space: Two tents, same nutrients, setup, everything exactly the same as much as possible
  • Plants: Use clones of 4-5 different strains, one of each clone per tent.
  • Experiment
    • One tent gets lollipop stripped (traditional lollipop method)
    • One tent gets lollipop of lower buds only (lower leaves allowed to remain)
  • Results
    • What will happen?
    • Will one tent produce significantly more weed than the other?
    • Will one tent’s plant’s be more resilient and fun to grow?
    • Or will it work the opposite way? Will the full strip lollipop actually produce more/bigger/denser weed. It’s well proven this offers improvements over not lollipopping at all, but will it beat Nebula’s experimental “Lollipop Tek”?

Day 95 (Flowering Day 50)

I love the new raised Mandarin Cookies getting lots of light on all the buds now from both sides 

The Mandarin Cookies buds were hidden before, but now they’re raised a few inches and getting lots of light from both sides.

Had to string some of the Mandarin Cookies buds up with plant yo-yos. They’re small thin spear-shaped buds, yet amazingly heavy! I think they’re going to be extra dense after harvest.

Gave 3 gallons plain water, 6.5 pH, to all plants.

I noticed the Purple Ghost Candy and Candy Games are finally starting to lighten up in color, though GG4 x Zkittlez (front left) has not yet.

Blue Dream deficiencies stopped spreading. It needed that dose of extra nutrients.

It got plain water today, but I’ll definitely give it more nutrients next watering. All the hairs are still totally white, so I know it’s going to need a lot of nutrients yet.

Blue Dream is still all white hairs, so I need it will need plenty of extra nutrients for a while.

The Purple Ghost Candy is also all white hairs still, for the most part!

Purple Ghost Candy has just a few darkened hairs, and starting to get random spots of purple here and there on the sugar leaves.

Day 96 (Flowering Day 51)

Starting to get colorful in there! Especially the top leaves.

Made up 1 gallon of water and gave to the Blue Dream, and a little bit to the Mandarin Cookies and Purple Ghost Candy. Since those are the ones that have mostly white hairs.

Fill the rest of the reservoirs about 3/4 full with plain 6.5 pH water

I’ve got the dehumidifier running 24/7 in the grow room now to try to keep it under 55% RH in the grow tent. It’s tough because the rest of the house is at 65% RH, so I’m fighting the natural environment.

I just get nervous because those Blue Dream buds look so big, and nearly all white hairs still. I feel like they’re going to keep getting bigger and be prone to bud rot.

I know that keeping the humidity lower and a fan on the buds not only helps prevent mold immediately, those conditions can help the buds grow tighter, with fewer air spaces that cause humid air spots leading to bud rot/mold ideal conditions.

I am thinking about setting up some more little fans in there, specifically to have one that completely blows over the Blue Dream buds so I can see them constantly moving slightly in the breeze.

Can’t touch the buds without gloves now, or my fingers get sticky and reek of delicious weed smell.

Day 97 (Flowering Day 52)

Reservoirs all have a little bit of water left, so I’ll leave them alone for now. 

Played around with the fans today.

I moved the oscillating fan to be over the shortest plant, so it can blow directly on all the taller plant’s buds.

Added two small fans on low at the bottom of the tent blowing up through the “undercarriage”.

And a quick view of the tent!

Day 98 (Flowering Day 53)

Nothing to do today but enjoy!

Week 15

Day 99 (Flowering Day 54)

Plants look happy!

Pots seem really dry today (the top soil looks very dry) even though they seemed really wet yesterday.

Made 1 gallon of half strength week 10 nutrients

• 750 ppm
• 6.5 pH 
• To split between plants with white hairs

Made 3 gallons plain water x 2 (they were thirsty!)

• pH 6.4
• To split between all

Added fans

Now I have a fan pointing up through the plants

And an oscillating fan blowing over all the big buds.

Nice and breezy in there!

Day 100 (Flowering Day 55)

Getting full in there!

It feels like I need to add a new plant yo-yo every other day.

All water is gone except the GG4 x Zkittlez. I think it’s slowing down getting ready for harvest. Still white hairs and clear trichomes so not yet.

GG4 x Zkittlez is the shortest plant, and looks closest to harvest.

But if you look close, there are still plenty of white hairs, so I know buds need more time.

Candy Games #38 also is starting to look close, with big buds and relatively few white hairs left.

Though the Candy Games #38 buds do still have lots of white hairs if you look closer.

The good news is that means all the buds are still getting bigger, more dense, and more potent!

Made 1 gallon of half strength week 10 nutrients

• 750 ppm
• 6.5 pH 
• Split between Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream reservoirs 

3 gallons 

• 6.5 pH
• To reservoirs of all

Day 101 (Flowering Day 56)

A quick peek at the Blue Dream from the back right side window, as I strung up another bud that was falling over. Otherwise left the plants alone today.

Day 102 (Flowering Day 57)

Noticed the Purple Ghost Candy has lost a lot of color. I hadn’t noticed since the leaves are starting to turn purple, but I can see the entire plant is starting to look pale in natural light. The Blue Dream also looks light. even the Candy Games is finally lightening up.  GG4 x Zkittles is still dark, and Mandarin Cookies looks good.

Made 1 gallon half strength hydro nutrients 

• 2 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big (hydro)
• ½ Tiger Bloom 
• ¼ tsp pH Down
• 6.3 pH 

Split between Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy. Gave from the top. Not sure why. Need to kind of figure out what difference it makes, if any. I just remember that giving plain water from the top could give nutrient burn even if we haven’t been giving nutrients in a while, so I thought it might make the nutrients more available if I gave them from the top. In my mind, it might make some of the nutrients in the soil more available to the plant if it’s wet.

I may water the other plants later today but they’ve all got a tiny bit of water left in their reservoirs. I’ve been trying to let the reservoirs dry out between waterings, to prevent anything growing in the reservoirs.

Day 103 (Flowering Day 58)

Gave clean water to the GG4 Zkittles, and a little bit to the Mandarin Cookies and the Candy Games. For the Purple Ghost Candy and Blue dream I made up some nutrient water.

3 gallons (⅓ strength) – Gave to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, plus a small bit to Mandarin Cookies and Candy Games.

Mandarin Cookies buds look and smell like magic!

Blue Dream, when will you start dreaming of harvest day?

These LEDs provided 100% of the “food” (energy) these plants turned into buds!

There’s never been a better time to be a grower than today. Modern LEDs are outstanding 🙂

Day 104 (Flowering Day 59)

Gave the rest of the nutrient water to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, from the top. Both still have some water.

I feel like some of the buds have the sign of possible light stress on top (growing new hairs closest to the light). I turned one light down a bit. 

Purple Ghost Candy – Lots of new white hairs. A sign of light stress, or just regular bud development? It’ll be clear in a few days!

Blue Dream – Still mostly all white hairs, going to be a BIG yielder I think. As long as I prevent bud rot haha

All the Blue Dream buds are so fat and long. Absolutely crazy genetics.

Mandarin Cookies – Long, thin pointy buds that smell sweet and fruity! A unique silver-blue tint on the leaves and buds.

GG4 x Zkittles – The buds were small and leafy at first, but lately started to put on weight.

Candy Games #38 – Pretty bud structure, color, leaves, and sparkly. Very “modern” or trendy looking genetics. This look is kind of what’s “in style” in the American cannabis breeding scene right now.

The Candy Games plant stretched a lot in the flowering stage and had a lot of long empty stems. No more! Each of those stems is now carrying multiple fat “bud balls”.

Buds grow like golf balls (not the typical long “cola” shape).

Can’t wait to see what these buds look like after drying!

I feel like we’re in the home stretch. I definitely want to push the plants with lots of light to get the best yields and potency, but never to the detriment of the buds themselves. It’s better to have a little bit less yields with better buds, than a ton of buds that aren’t at peak quality because the plants got too much light stress.

Such a crazy assortment of different bud types!

Other plants still have a bit of water left in reservoirs, and tops look a bit wet still. I’ll give them plain water tomorrow. If the reservoirs dry up between waterings, I feel like it helps prevent anything growing in the reservoir.

Day 105 (Flowering Day 60)

1 gallon plain water

• Gave to two front plants, which have the darkest leaves

3 gallons – ⅓ strength nutrients

• Gave to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, plus a small bit to Mandarin Cookies and Candy Games, with some left over

A different view! “Underskirt” picture.

Week 16

Day 106 (Flowering Day 61)

Gave the remaining nutrient water. All still have some water in the reservoirs. 

My view opening the tent each morning.

Mandarin Cookies buds have a cute bud structure. Thin and pointy yet compact and sparkly.

It’s the small plant hidden in the middle (long spear-shaped buds with a silvery-purple tint).

It’s hard to see in the middle of the sea of bigger buds!

Day 107 (Flowering Day 62)

Gave 1 gallon plain water to three front plants, fed from bottom in reservoirs 

I love taking pictures of the plants these days!

3 gallons to back two plants. 

• Same nutrients last time 
• 6.5 pH 
• Fed half water from top, until I got some tiny runoff, then filled the reservoirs

Tops of plants are starting to look a little rough. I think just because they’re getting closer to harvest, and also just accumulation of small mistakes like with nutrients, underwatering, etc. These are the same leaves that have been working hard for several weeks without replacement, and it’s starting to show!

Buds look immaculate though!

Day 108 (Flowering Day 63)

Nebula from the future: I didn’t take any notes or pictures. I don’t think I actually checked on the plants today.

Day 109 (Flowering Day 64)

Strung up some more falling stems with yoyo’s. Overall, the buds are all progressing beautifully.

The GG4 x Zkittles buds are surprisingly starting to fatten up a lot! I’m not going to lie, I’m impressed as they didn’t seem like they were going to be that big at first. Its buds were surprisingly leafy at first, but now that they are bigger, the buds are a lot more spread out. You can much more clearly see the bud structure underneath now.

GG4 x Zkittles buds are not so tiny anymore! They’re actually getting pretty fat.

Environment is good. Under 80°F/26°C, around 50% humidity with the dehumidifier. The local weather has been cooperating, not being particularly hot or humid this week. Hopefully it lasts to harvest day! Luckily the summer is over so at least we (hopefully) won’t get any heat waves.

I tried to use a ring light for more light from the front so I could take clearer pictures of the GG4 x Zkittles buds. I don’t think it made any difference, but the ring did make a kind of cool picture border for the plants.

Day 110 (Flowering Day 65)

All I have for today is a blurry picture from the webcam (above the Blue Dream plant with all the white hairs).

Day 111 (Flowering Day 66)

Gave very light nutrients, 1/12 strength, 6.5 pH.

Flowering day 66 the Blue Dream is still nearly all white hairs, meaning it likely needs several weeks before buds are ready to harvest.

Is the Blue Dream playing with me?

Many white hairs = weeks until harvest (for this plant)

Not much else to do but wait!

Day 112 (Flowering Day 67)

Plants looking good today. Here’s a tour of the tent as we finish up the week!

The grow tent

GG4 x Zkittles – looking juicier every day!

Mandarin Cookies – such fanciful, sparkly buds

Purple Ghost Candy – finally turning purple

Blue Dream – white hairs for days

Candy Games #38 – looks like candy for real!

So nugget-y

Harvest Week!

Day 113 (Flowering Day 68)

Gave several gallons of water.

Tonight’s plan: drop the temperature so the Purple Ghost Candy and Mandarin Cookies plants turn purple from the cold.

I turned it only down to 70°F which isn’t that cold. But I wanted the plants to purple up all pretty 🙂

Day 114 (Flowering Day 69)

I think they look a bit more purple today. I turned off the AC for the day, but turned it on again right before they went to sleep.

Gave the rest of the water from yesterday.

Day 115 (Flowering Day 70)

The room is now set to 60°F/16°C (as cold as my AC can go) and about 50% RH. Hopefully it helps the big plants finish faster, and grow tighter buds. It’s also the perfect conditions for drying weed.

The Candy Games #38 looks ready to harvest. I’m going to let it go just a little long to try to harvest the plants all together so I can hang them in the tent to dry.

Day 116 (Flowering Day 71)

The Candy Games #38 is ready, but I don’t have time today to harvest. The reservoirs are all just a touch wet still, so I’ll tend to them and harvest the Candy Games tomorrow!

Day 117 (Flowering Day 72)

The plants all look like they’re getting closer. I think the cold has helped them finish ripening faster. Maybe, just maybe I can harvest them all together.

Day 118 (Flowering Day 73) – Harvest!

Today, I was looking at the buds under magnification and all looked pretty ripe. The Blue Dream doesn’t look ready yet but I saw some bananas. I don’t want the buds to grow seeds I think it’s been decided, today is the perfect harvest day!

I love the assortment of different colors in this tent.

These HLG LED grow lights really outdid themselves!

GG4 x Zkittles – The first plant to get harvested! Buds feel heavy, with a fresh herbal scent.

Mandarin Cookies is the tiny silvery plant hidden in the middle. It was second to get harvested.

And then there were three.

I turned off the LED to snap a picture in natural light, which gives a different perspective.

Candy Games #38 – I love how these buds look.

All the Candy Games #38 buds have lovely mild, sweet, tantalizing smell.

The Purple Ghost Candy looms in the back. Leaves turned a dark purple in the last few days.

The buds have a classic mid-2010s California dispensary smell I haven’t smelled in a while.

The Blue Dream roots had totally grown into the ropes in the auto-watering pot bases.

The roots actually shredded the ropes!

Branches hanging upside down in the tent to dry.

Filled from top to bottom, front to back!

“Sweet Dreams” Journal – Final Weigh-In (Yields!)

Here are the weigh in results!

The entire harvest – Over 1 lb of top shelf buds!

I’ll post pictures in better light soon, with smaller labels for all the jars so you can more clearly see how much weed there is in each jar. I forgot about the label maker until the last two plants I jarred.

Final dry weight buds:

• Mandarin Cookies: 78.94 g (2.8 oz)
• GG4 x Zkittles: 67.69 g (2.4 oz)
• Candy Games: 98.89 g (3.5 oz)
• Blue Dream: 190.11 g (6.7 oz – WOW!)
• Purple Ghost Candy: 135.43 g (4.8 oz)

Total: 571.06 g (20.14 oz)

The Candy Games #38 plant made 3.5 oz of FAT, beautiful buds.

Here’s my weigh-in and notes. I had to weigh the Blue Dream in two batches because there was too much buds for my bowl ^.^

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Nebula, Co-Founder of GrowWeedEasy.com

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The post “Sweet Dreams” Photoperiod Grow Journal appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

A beginner grower recently asked, “How do I grow cannabis in a grow cube like that?”

Cannabis plants in a 2’x2’x3′ grow tent under a Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light.

I realized this grow setup really is like a “grow cube” for marijuana plants. It’s a tiny “microgrowery” without any DIY aspects like a space bucket. It contains smells and nurtures small cannabis plants from when they’re seedlings to a productive harvest. Just follow the instructions on this tutorial to achieve similar results yourself at home.

A “Cannabis Grow Cube” with a good LED grow light can produce a ton of weed in a small space. For this size tent, I recommend an LED that uses about 100W of electricity. A bigger size tends to get a bit too hot for this small space. All of the pictures on this tutorial page feature either the HLG 100 V2 4000k or Spider Farmer SF1000 (which are both 100W LED grow lights) and those models get excellent yields and bud quality. However, any high-quality cannabis LED grow light  in the 100W size range should work.

When set up right, you can produce a surprising amount of weed in a tiny space!

What is a cannabis “Grow Cube”? It’s just a cool way to refer to a small, versatile grow tent well-suited to growing weed.

When it’s all closed up, it looks like a big black cube.

This is a remarkably easy way to grow weed and fits in the corner of your bedroom.

A Pineapple Chunk plant I grew in one of these cannabis Grow Cubes.

That cannabis plant above was only 18″ (45 cm) tall at harvest, and produced several ounces of weed!

Follow the step-by-step instructions below to copy these results.

My partner Sirius took a picture of me holding it just before harvest. All the buds started falling over from their own weight.

I will show you exactly how to grow 1-4 plants successfully in this cannabis grow cube so you also make a ton of high-quality buds in one quick harvest, even in a really small space. Make sure to start with good genetics and follow the directions below to ensure you produce a top-shelf weed (and lots of it!).

Here’s an example of bud quality grown in this setup.

Supplies for a Cannabis Grow Cube Setup

Here’s a complete supplies list to make your own cannabis grow cube.

2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent

A small grow tent that is 2’x2′ and 3-4′ tall. Most pictures on this page use the 2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent by CoolGrows, and a few use the slightly taller 2’x2’x4′ grow tent. I have had good experiences with the CoolGrows, Vivosun, and Melonfarm brands for small grow tents. But any similarly sized grow tent will be perfect for this cannabis grow style.

Cost: $50

A 2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent is tiny but can produce several ounces of weed when used correctly. Get a slightly taller 2’x2’x4′ grow tent if you want to grow bigger plants.

Here’s my CoolGrows 2x2x3′ grow tent with cannabis plants inside. CoolGrows is a good brand, but any similar 2’x2′ grow tent should work with this tutorial. Vivosun’s version of this size grow tent is the most popular on Amazon.

100W LED Grow Light

Cannabis plants grow fast and healthy under the Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light, which costs only $90 and comes with a handy dimmer to adjust the brightness.

Cost: $90

The Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light in action. (Can be surprisingly close to plants without light stress)

Alternative light: I also have had great results with the $150 HLG 100 Quantum Board (100W LED grow light) in this setup. However, it costs $50 more and doesn’t have a dimmer. Cannabis plants seem to respond really well to both, and both produce excellent bud quality/yields. I still need to do a side-by-side experiment to see if one outperforms the other when it comes to potency or yields.

HLG 100 LED grow light in action in this setup.

Exhaust Fan + Smell Filtering

Cannabis plants can create a lot of humidity in the tent (at least if your grow cube is filled with cannabis plants like in the pictures) and cannabis buds don’t form well in high humidity. You need a good exhaust fan to ensure that the humidity from all the plants doesn’t build up too much. An exhaust fan can also be hooked up to a carbon filter in order to filter smells from leaking out of the tent.

Option 1: Loud, But Cheap

This iPower 4 Inch 200 CFM Exhaust Inline Fan with Speed Controller and Air Carbon Filter costs $80 and includes a loud but effective exhaust fan and a matching carbon filter to scrub smells.

Cost: $80

The iPower 4 Inch kit is effective but the fan is kind of loud.

Option 2: Much Quieter, But Costs More

Mars Hydro 4″ Quiet Exhaust fan and Short Carbon Filter kit ($130 high-end alternative). If you want a fan that runs almost silently, you need to invest a bit more money and get a quiet fan like the AC Infinity version or this just-as-effective-but-cheaper Mars Hydro knockoff. The Mars Hydro 4″ kit includes the fan and a matching carbon filter. The reason I like this kit is it includes a small yet effective carbon filter. This is the kind of carbon filter I use, and I have a hard time finding them in this size anymore.

Cost: $130

The Mars Hydro 4″ kit is quieter but costs more. I use this in my bedroom.

Do I need a carbon filter to prevent weed smell?

Although a carbon filter is not necessary for cannabis plants to grow, if you don’t hook up a carbon filter to an exhaust fan, your tent may fill the surrounding area with a pungent weed smell as buds start forming. Normally it wouldn’t be such a big deal with such a small grow space, but you are going to be growing a surprising amount of weed in here!

Use a carbon filter for a smell-free cannabis garden!

Grow Medium + Pots

A cannabis grow cube can accommodate just about grow medium. I’ve grown in these with cannabis in soil, coco, or hydro (in a mini DWC kit). If you’re not sure what to use, here’s my recommendation:

• One $40 big bag of Coco Loco, a coco-based soil with perlite. This 2 cu ft bag should be enough to fill 14 gallons worth of pots (for example seven 2-gallon pots). You’ll have enough to last a few grows if you’re growing small, and any extra can be used later.
• 2-gallon fabric pots (here’s an example of a 5-pack for $14) – Just about any brand of fabric pot works great.

Cost: ~$55

Coco Loco is a coco-based soil that makes thriving cannabis plants.

 Example of a 5-pack of 2-gallon fabric pots (any brand works great).

Containers: I like 2-gallon for this size. You can go bigger, but I recommend sticking to 3 gallons in size or less, to keep plants a bit smaller. Plant tend to get much bigger in a big pot then if kept in a small pot. Plus it’s more difficult to overwater plants in smaller pots.

My experience with each size pot in this setup.

• 1-gallon pots help keep plants small by restricting their root size. This is a great size if you want to grow multiple plants in a small grow tent. If you go with the 1-gallon size, make sure to get a hard-sided plant pot (like a plastic or clay pot). This helps hold in water so the soil is slower to dry out. I’ve found that 1-gallon fabric pots need to be watered all the time because the grow medium dries from the sides extremely quickly.
• 2-gallon fabric pots give the benefits of fabric (faster growth by getting more air to the roots) but are big enough they can be watered much less often than 1-gallon fabric pots. This is my preferred size for this setup.
• 3-gallon pots were the easiest to water, but the plant really wanted to grow big. I had to do a lot of bending to keep the branches from growing into the light. Best if you’re only going to grow one plant in the grow tent.

Nutrients

The soil recommended above, Coco Loco, contains some nutrients already, but cannabis plants will use it up by the time they get to the flowering stage. Growers should give extra nutrients while buds are forming to ensure the best yields, density, and overall potency. There are lots of awesome cannabis nutrient options, but if you’re not sure, the following option is cheap, effective, and easy to use.

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom

• Grow bottle: Give about 1 tsp per gallon of “Grow” during the vegetative stage
• Bloom bottle: Give 1 tsp/gallon of “Bloom” during the flowering stage

Cost: $15

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one for bloom. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple and effective!

Professional Nutrients: My favorite nutrients for growing cannabis is the $40 General Hydroponics Flora trio. This is what I keep coming back to when I’m not testing out new nutrients. Unlike the 1-part Dyna-Gro bottles, it requires 3 bottles and you have to measure different amounts of each bottle depending on the stage of life. How to Use: Follow the instructions on the side of the bottles at half-strength. You typically don’t need to go up to full-strength nutrients under a smaller grow light like the 100W LED size in this tutorial.

My personal favorite cannabis nutrient system is the General Hydroponics Flora trio. Use at 1/2 strength what the bottles say.

Other Supplementary Items

• Get your seeds – $10-20/seed on average, but can be more or less depending on the breeder. Make sure to get “feminized” seeds to ensure every plant is female and makes buds. I personally like autoflowering strains for this setup because they are usually ready to harvest in 2-3 months from germination and tend to stay small. NASC is the seed vendor I’ve been using lately, and they have an excellent selection of autoflowering seeds.
• 24-Hour Timer – Growers put a grow light on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule – $9
• Water containers – You may have something already around the house. I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work. If you need to buy one, it’s much cheaper to buy these at Wal-Mart or a water container store ($5-15) than online.
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent (unless you got the really fancy Cloudline exhaust fan with a temperature and humidity probe built-in). It’s nice to have more than one so you can measure the air in different parts of the grow space. – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $18
• Clip-On Fan – You can get a basic clip-on-fan for $13, but they’re a pain to clip onto the poles of a grow tent. I recommend spending a little extra for a small fan that is made to clip directly on the poles of your grow tent, like this $36 Vivosun Aerowave grow tent fan.
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $10
• (Optional) Zip ties – the hanging apparatus that comes with many grow lights add several inches of height for no real reason. They just aren’t designed for height-limited growing. In a mini tent like this, height is at a premium and a few inches can make a big difference. When you need to get your light all the way to the top of your tent, nothing seems to work better than industrial zip ties! Once you start using zip ties you end up using them for everything. They’re weirdly permanent and strong for something so disposable – $10

Total: ~$80 plus seeds

Estimated Cost for Basic Setup: $370

How to Set Up a Cannabis Grow Cube

1.) Assemble the grow tent according to the instructions (similar to setting up a camping tent)

Here’s a quick idea of what that looks like.

A typical grow tent comes with these pieces, including the directions.

First set up the structure by clicking all the poles together.

Then put the “tent” part over the outside, like you’re giving it clothes. Last, put the flexible waterproof tray in the bottom. You’re done!

Unlike most grow tents, this one is so little it’s easy to just pick it up and bring it anywhere in the house.

2.) Set up the carbon filter and exhaust fan in a bottom port

This step is needed to cool the grow cube, remove humidity, and stop smells from leaking out. This setup doesn’t have a whole lot of extra room inside. If you’ve got the smaller 3′ tall version, you have two main options to setup the fan and filter.

Option 1: Carbon filter inside tent in bottom port, connected to exhaust fan outside tent (with air pointing out).

Here’s what that looks like (lower right) The downside to this configuration is it causes you to lose a little room inside the tent. This pulls the air through the filter so the smells have already been filtered before leaving the tent.

Option 2: Carbon filter and fan are outside of the tent.

This allows you to have the full inside of the space for your plants. To do this you have the fan in a port pointed out, and connect that to the filter. This pushes the air through the filter before it is released into the room. With this option, you can either have the fan and filter in a bottom port, and they’ll be laying on the floor. Or you could put them in a top port and have them both sitting on top of the tent.

This is what I ended up settling with, since I can easily hide these behind the tent it lets me keep the clean look of the grow cube and have full space for the plants inside. Note: this is using the small filter included in the Mars Hydro 4″ kit. If you got the cheaper kit, your carbon filter is likely several inches longer.

Don’t forget to install your small clip-on grow tent fan to blow over the tops of your plants.

3.) Plug in the timer to an electrical outlet.

Plug in your electrical timer. I put my on a power strip for extra protection. Set it to the correct time, and then have it turn off the lights for 6 hours a day (so they’re on for 18 hours every day). This is known as an 18/6 time schedule. Whatever strain of cannabis you’re growing, 18/6 is a great light schedule to start plants on.

4.) Hang the LED from the top using the included hanging hardware and then plug it into the timer.

On the Spider Farmer SF1000, there is a dial to adjust the intensity of the light, and also a switch that lets you easily turn it on and off without having to unplug it.

5.) Turn everything on and let run for 24 hours before adding plants.

Let everything run for 24 hours, just to make sure everything works, and you’re ready for plants.

It’s cannabis time!

How to Grow a Ton of Weed in a Cannabis Grow Cube

Now it’s time to grow some cannabis. Follow the directions to achieve results like this:

1.) Germinate Your Seeds

Easiest method is to just put the seeds directly in soil.

Dampen your soil then get your cannabis seed.

Poke a little hole and add your cannabis seed, then cover it up.

Put it in your cannabis grow cube with the lights on, make sure it doesn’t dry out, and you should see a seedling in a few days.

The key to watering cannabis seedlings is to give just a little water at a time, and wait a few days between waterings. Once the seedling grows bigger, it drinks more and can be watered normally.

We have a complete “how to water” tutorial but check out this example schedule for watering seedlings.

Day 1 – Give 1 cup (250ml) water per seedling
Day 3 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per seedling
Day 6 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per seedling
Day 8 – Give 2 cups (750ml) water per seedling
Day 10 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per seedling

This is just a general starting guide. You need to watch your plants to see if they need more or less water at a time.

2.) Vegetative Stage

Main goals in the cannabis vegetative stage:

• Keep plants healthy – Keep watering plant regularly and giving nutrients. If using Dyna-Gro, give them 1 tsp of Grow per gallon of water. Check the pH if you notice any nutrient deficiencies. In soil, the water should be between 6-7 pH or you’ll see deficiencies (spots or markings on your leaves).
• Train plants to grow wide and flat like a table  – Full instructions below
• Wait until they have reached half the final desired size – Once plants have reached half their final desired size, it’s time to move to the next stage. They double in size (on average) after they start the flowering stage.

Overview of how to train plants to grow flat and wide like a table

• Cut off the top of young plants – Cut off the top of young plants in the vegetative stage. Cutting off the top of a plant is often called “topping” in the cannabis growing world. Topping splits any stem into two, and a plant with two tops is easier to spread out to create flat plants than a plant with one main top
  • Beginner tip: Wait until the seedling has grown 6 sets of leaves. Cut off the top through the main stem above the 5th set of leaves (pictures below). Easy and simple, yet won’t stress plants. After being topped, your plant is easier to spread out and naturally grows more bushy and wide.
• Tall stems should also be “topped” – Cut off the ends of any stem that’s growing much faster than the rest. Each new pair of stems grows slower than the original one. Topping is a great tool to curb fast-growing stems in the vegetative stage.
• Spread out – As the plant grows, spread out the stems by bending them down and away from the center of the plant. Don’t forget to tie branches down with something like plant twist tie or they’ll spring right back up the next day!
• Supercrop (if necessary) – Cannabis stems get hard and woody as time goes on. If you find you need to bend a stem that’s already stiff, use the supercropping technique to bend even the toughest stems at any angle. This is a bit advanced because you can accidentally split stems. But don’t worry if you do. Simply tape broken stems back together like a cast and the plant can heal. One of the things I love about cannabis plants is it can recover if you make big mistakes in the vegetative stage.

The main goal is to bend over tall steps to create flat plants…

…with full plant coverage from above.

Why? Later, this shape leads to a cannabis plant with tons of buds sites filling the mini tent.

Auto-flowering training guide

If you’re growing an autoflowering strain, follow this autoflowering-specific plant training guide. The following guide also works for autoflowering plants, but there are a few things you should watch out for and the full autoflowering training guide breaks it all down so you know exactly what to do.

Click here: How to Train Auto-Flowering Plants

I’ve fit up to 4 autoflowering cannabis plants in one of these mini tents!

Main Idea: Bend over tall branches as they grow, so they fill up the whole space.

Your Goal: Total plant coverage in the grow tent.

Example of training a photoperiod plant in a cannabis grow cube:

Cut off the top of a young plant right above the 5th set of leaves (“top” the seedling above the 5th node).

When cutting through a stem, be careful not to damage the growing tips at the base of each leaf. These will become your two new stems.

Topping splits the main stem into two. You can see the two new “main stems” on each side of the cut.

Since you waited until the plant had several sets of leaves before cutting a small piece off the top, it will continue growing as if nothing happened.

As the plant grows, spread out the branches and cut off the top of any stem that’s getting bigger than the others. You don’t want your plant putting too much energy into any one branch.

The plant was given a week to grow after being topped. Now it’s training time!

Bend over all the stems down and away from the center until it looks flat from the side.

I used plant twist tie to hook on to each branch and tie it down where I wanted. I attached the other end to the fabric pot.

How to attach to the pot? You can use safety pins or binder clips but I think this is easier. Poke holes in the fabric using sharp pointy Fiskars pruning scissors and thread the twist tie through.

Back to training. Here’s a top view. We’re trying to fill the entire tent with this cannabis plant. If you’ve got multiple plants, then you’re trying to fill the whole space with them, too.

A few days later the plant has filled in nicely.

Repeat the steps until you’ve filled your entire grow space from above.

Regardless of the number of cannabis plants, just focus on achieving the a wide tabletop canopy. This makes it so that all your buds will be about the same distance from the grow light in the flowering stage.

When to go to the flowering stage:

• Auto-flowering strains – If you’re growing an autoflowering strain, the plant will automatically start making flowers/buds 4-6 weeks after germination. At that point, regardless of the plant size, you have to move to the next stage.
• Photoperiod strains – If you’re growing a photoperiod plant, then it will stay in the vegetative stage until you “tell” it to start flowering/making buds by giving it a 12/12 light schedule. The long nights simulate the late summer sun and cause the plant to “think” winter is coming so it starts its second stage of life.

3.) Flowering Stage

Main goals in the flowering stage:

• Initiate flowering by putting the lights on a 12/12 light schedule – Get plants to start making buds/flowers (this step is unnecessary if you’re growing autoflowering strains because they automatically start flowering after a few weeks regardless of the light schedule)
• Expose bud sites to light and air – Use strategic defoliation and/or tuck away extra leaves to make sure that your bud sites get access to a ton of direct light and gentle air circulation. Maximizing light to your buds will greatly increase both yields and THC levels/ potency.

Initiate 12/12 when plants have complete coverage at the height you want. Look at all the bud sites on this 1 plant right as it starts flowering.

Here’s a side view. At this point, the only thing to do is water the plant and give it nutrients until harvest.

At harvest, this plant was just over 18″ (46 cm) tall, yet yielded several ounces because it was trained to grow wide and flat. Talk about making the most out of one small plant.

Here’s a cannabis grow cube with multiple plants at harvest.

4.) Harvest, Dry & Cure

Buds are ready to harvest when nearly all the white hairs have darkened and curled in.

This picture shows examples of ready-to-harvest cannabis buds. Buds should appear solid and the hairs should be curled in.

Read the tutorial on how to dry and cure your newly harvested buds!

5.) Enjoy your weed!

You’ve worked so hard. Now it’s time to enjoy your weed!

This was my first harvest out of the mini tent.

About the Author: Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze is an experienced cannabis cultivator and co-founder of GrowWeedEasy.com, the web’s most comprehensive online resource for growing marijuana indoors at home. Since creating the website in 2010, Nebula has dedicated her life to understanding the cannabis plant and teaching fellow growers how to produce huge yields and captivating bud quality at home. Stop paying other people a ton of money for sub-par weed and start growing better weed for a fraction of the cost today!

Check out my easy 10-step guide to growing cannabis.

The post How to Use a “Grow Cube” to Grow Cannabis appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Intro to the Best LED Grow Lights for Weed

1. Spider Farmer SF Series (Best Beginner Budget LEDs)
2. Horticulture Lighting Group (HLG) (Best Yields)
3. HLG Diablo Series (Best THC Production)
4. Mars Hydro (Best Overpowered Budget LEDs)
5. AC Infinity (Most Popular Cannabis LEDs)

Did you know that in 2026 LED grow lights can increase your cannabis yield by 30% or more compared to old-tech generic LED grow lights? Cheap LEDs are cheap for a reason. But honestly, there’s never been a better time to grow weed indoors than 2026.

How to grow 1 pound of weed from LEDs: 450w+ worth of modern LED grow light in a 4×4 grow tent can consistently produce a pound of weed per harvest. Example: 1 x AC Infinity EVO6 LEDs (premium cannabis LED grow light), or save yourself some money and get 2 x TSL2000 from Mars Hydro (cheaper, and can grow even more weed).

Best LED grow light for a stealthy but productive cannabis grow: One dimmable TSL2000 LED grow light by Mars Hydro in a 2×4 grow tent (up to 14 oz harvest). Check out the pic. Are you a first-time grower? Mars Hydro has a beginner grow kit with everything to grow weed (just add seeds and soil).

The TSL2000 is a cheap, effective, overpowered LED grow light for cannabis growers.

LEDs grow magnificent cannabis plants indoors without much heat or electricity. Today you’ll learn about some of the best LED grow lights for cannabis plants in 2026!

It’s important to understand that the best LED grow lights available today are more effective at growing weed than even the best LEDs from 2-3 years ago. Modern LED grow lights are getting tested on live cannabis plants, which results in huge speedy improvements in cannabis LED grow light technology.

Cannabis growers should choose LEDs tested on actual plants, like this Spider Farmer SF2000 LED, which produces 5-11 oz per harvest.

Today, get your LED grow light questions answered today from a marijuana grower who’s tried them all!

If you are looking for an LED grow lights review by professional cannabis growers, you’ve come to the perfect tutorial! This regularly-updated 2026 LED grow light review page focuses on how to choose LED grow lights in order to get the best cannabis yields, growth, and bud potency (maximize THC) so you produce top-shelf bud quality every harvest. These reviews are based on my LED experience and results growing high-THC cannabis plants.

Note: Avoid weirdly-cheap LEDs from unknown companies. Especially avoid older-tech “blurple” colored LED grow lights for growing weed (like this one on the right).

At least, avoid them if you want to be impressed by your next harvest. The specific model of LED you choose affects your cannabis yields, appearance, and even the THC levels in your buds. There is no “best” LED grow light for growing cannabis, but there are great ones (and there are LEDs you should avoid).

The Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light is a great mini beginner cannabis grow light that can produce 3+ oz in a small 2’x2′ grow tent.

Why LED Grow Lights for Weed Plants?

There are multiple types of grow lights, but LEDs are the best option for most cannabis growers because of their efficiency and custom spectrums.

• More light, less heat – LEDs produce more light and less heat, watt-for-watt, than cannabis grow lights that use bulbs (like HPS, LECs, or fluorescent lights)
• Make plants more heat-resistant – Not only do LEDs physically run cooler, cannabis plants grown under LEDs actually prefer warmer temperatures. That means LEDs are the perfect grow light to deal with heat (a common challenge for growers). If your grow space gets warm, LEDs are your best grow light choice when it comes to cannabis plants.
• Use less electricity – If you choose the best LEDs for your cannabis grow space, you will produce more weed for less electricity, saving money on your electricity bill every month.
• Best yields – In my side-by-side grows using clones, modern LEDs produce higher yields than other types of grow lights for the amount of electricity used.
• Colorful buds – LEDs tend to bring out colors like pink and purple on buds and leaves. Although some strains will stay green no matter what, many strains have the ability to turn color in certain environmental conditions. LEDs will almost always bring out colors in those strains especially as plants approach harvest.
• Higher bud potency – In smoke tests and lab tests, some LED models seem to produce stronger bud potency. When smoked the effects feel stronger, and when buds are sent to the lab they often test for higher THC than plants grown in identical conditions with grow lights like HPS and LECs.

I test new LEDs on cannabis plants regularly, and every year the rate of improvement on new LEDs seems to be speeding up. I continue to be impressed with new models. It may come as a shock to us old-timers who were underwhelmed by older LED technology, but new LEDs have fairly won the title of “best cannabis grow light” for home growers. Today, I’m going to share some of the best LED grow lights for cannabis in 2026 so you can harness that power in your own grow.

Modern LEDs like this HLG LED grow light make dense heavy cannabis buds with excellent yields.

5 Best LED Grow Lights for Cannabis Plants (2026 List)

Some LEDs are far better than others for growing cannabis, and the “best” LEDs change constantly. Since I used my first LED grow light in 2008, the top LEDs companies have changed drastically. Many of the old popular LED companies aren’t even around anymore.

If you’ve got older LEDs, maybe your 2026 gift to yourself should be upgrading to something new. The LED choices are better than ever as more and more people figure out ways to tweak LEDs to produce even more yields and better cannabis bud quality.

Today, the best LED grow lights for cannabis obliterate the results of the worst LED grow lights. The challenge for the grower is figuring out which models to avoid and which LEDs work the best. After tests with real cannabis plants, we’ve narrowed down the 2026 list to the 5 best LED grow lights for growing weed.

1. Spider Farmer SF Series (Best Budget LEDs)
2. Horticulture Lighting Group (Best Yields)
3. HLG Diablo Series (Best THC Production)
4. Mars Hydro (Overpowered Budget Lights)
5. AC Infinity (Most Popular)

1.) Spider Farmer (Best Budget Light)

Spider Farmer (official website) is a sleeper. If you’re not sure which grow light to get and the cost is an issue, get one of these lights. They’re not perfect but are well constructed, don’t need any setup, are easy to use, and cannabis plants grow fast. I’ve tried multiple models in the SF series, and they get surprisingly great yields for a small amount of electricity. I was impressed with these lights even after using more expensive LED models.

A grow featuring the Spider Farmer SF-2000 (buds are amazingly fat at just day 28 of flowering)

Spider Farmer SF-1000

• Price: $150
• Grow Space: Perfect for a 2’x2′ grow tent or closet
• Actual Power Consumption: 100W at full power, and can be dimmed. This light uses the least electricity on this list but still produces hefty buds.
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 18″ for the vegetative stage. 12-18″ away in the flowering stage (keep as close as 12″ away but if top leaves appear pale from light stress, move to 18″ away)
• Average Yields: 2-4+ oz – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.

Spider Farmer SF-1000 – up to 4+ oz

I grew this plant under the SF-1000 in a tiny 2’x2’x4′ grow tent. Check out the grow journal here.

Chasb40 said this about the SF-1000: “Loving the light, plants are as well. Solid build and I don’t have to worry about hot temps in my tent, much cooler than the older blurple LEDs…and quieter.”

Spider Farmer SF-2000

• Price: $230 (2’x4′ rectangle version) or (3’x3′ square version)
• Grow Space: Perfect for a 2’x4′ or 3’x3′ grow tent or closet (choose the version that matches the size of your grow space)
• Actual Power Consumption: 200W at full power, and can be dimmed for younger plants. Its low power consumption is another reason this is a great budget grow light.
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 20-24″ for the vegetative stage. 18-24″ away in the flowering stage (keep as close as 18″ away but if top leaves appear pale from light stress, move to 24″ away)
• Average Yields: 5-10+ oz – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.

Spider Farmer SF-2000 (2’x4′ version) – up to 10+ oz

Spider Farmer SF-2000 (3’x3′ version) – up to 10+ oz

I grew these plants with an SF-2000 in a 2’x4′ grow tent, which produced over 10 ounces of buds. Here’s the grow journal.

Janelle’s results on her first cannabis grow (three SF-2000s in a 5’x5′ grow tent)

Spider Farmer SF-4000

• Price: $395
• Grow Space: Perfect for a 4’x4′ or 5’x5′ grow tent or space
• Actual Power Consumption: 450W at full power and can be dimmed.
  • Note: No front-facing dimmer. You have to unscrew the driver from the board, and then you’ll see the dimmer.
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 24″ for the vegetative stage. 18-24″ away in the flowering stage (keep as close as 18″ away but if top leaves appear pale from light stress, move to 24″ away)
• Average Yields: 10-20 oz+ – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.
  • Note: the SF-4000 light can get quite hot compared to the other Spider Farmer LEDs. Unless growing in a particularly cold grow space, you will probably need an exhaust fan or AC to control the heat from this light. Keep the temperature between 75-85°F (24-30°C) when lights are on to get the best yields.

Spider Farmer SF-4000 – up to 20+ oz

“Very nice little 450w lights indeed! My buddy’s little medical garden did very well and produced very high quality medicine. 1.91grams per watt, organic notill beds. Strains were, blackberry Kush, GG4, 501st OG, and a special cultivar called Pineapple Dreamwreck.” ~Robert

2.) HLG – Horticulture Lighting Group (Best Yields)

Horticulture Lighting Group (HLG – official website) made a mark in the LED world with its line of “quantum boards” released in 2016. These quantum boards were based on hobbyist lights that cannabis growers designed and constructed. HLG has been a leader in LED grow lights for cannabis ever since, and I’ve noticed that all the other LED grow light companies copy their best-performing LEDs. HLG regularly releases new form factors, like the Blackbird, R-spec series, and the Diablo series listed here. On the one hand, I like that they’re constantly innovating, but they do occasionally stop producing awesome light models for seemingly no reason, so the downside is that you should buy the light you want because it may not be around forever. HLG lights are tested on real cannabis plants and in my experience, get some of the best yields per watt of any LED grow lights currently available.

Features of the HLG LED grow lights for growing cannabis:

• Outstanding yields with long, dense buds
• Excellent bud potency and quality
• Fast vegetative and flowering growth (great growth speed from seed to harvest)
• These are some of the best LED grow lights for cannabis for the biggest yields

HLG 350R Quantum Board – this is an even better version of the now-discontinued HLG BlackWing (which was an excellent 225W grow light).

• Price: $550
• Grow Space: The rectangular shape makes this model perfect for a 2’x4′ or 3’x5′ grow tent or closet.
• Actual Power Consumption: 330W at full power, and can be dimmed down to 60W for younger plants
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 20-24″ for the vegetative stage. 16-24″ away in the flowering stage.
• Average Yields: 8-14+ ounces – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields. This LED model has performed better than most others in this size.

HLG 350R Quantum Board (for a 2’x4′ grow tent) – up to 14+ oz

The 350R has a big empty space in the middle third of the panel, with many ultra-bright lights on the two outer thirds. HLG found this increases the diffusion of light, which results in better plant coverage and deeper penetration into the plants.

HLG Blackbird (for a 4’x4′ grow tent)

• Price: $700
• Grow Space: Perfect for a 4’x4′ grow tent or closet (specifically designed to fit in a 4’x4′ grow space)
• Actual Power Consumption: 600W at full power, and can be dimmed for younger plants
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 22-28″ for the vegetative stage. 20-28″ away in the flowering stage (keep as close as 18″ away but if top leaves appear pale from light stress, move to 24″ away)
• Average Yields: 14-24 oz+ (note: 24 oz is 1.5 lbs) – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.

The HLG Blackbird LED grow light is particularly and thoughtfully designed to be optimal when used in a 4’x4′ grow tent. A better choice for a 4’x4′ grow tent than other LEDs by HLG in this wattage range, like the overly powerful HLG Scorpian Diablo, which tends to be better suited to a grow room or commercial grow.

HLG Blackbird (for a 4’x4′ grow tent) – up to 24+ ounces

The Blackbird LED light is thin and lightweight

HLG Scorpion Diablo (for a 5’x5′ grow tent or larger)

• Price: $1300
• Grow Space: Perfect for a 5’x5′ grow tent or bigger (also excellent in a grow room or for a commercial grow).
• Actual Power Consumption: 630W at full power, and can be dimmed for younger plants
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 22-28″ for the vegetative stage. 18-28″ away in the flowering stage (keep as close as 18″ away but if top leaves appear pale from light stress, move to 24″ or even 28″ away)
• Average Yields: 15-25 oz+ (note: 25 oz is over 1.5 lb) – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.
• Note: If you’re growing in a 4’x4′ grow tent, get the Blackbird!

HLG Scorpion Diablo (for a 5’x5′ grow tent) – up to 25+ oz

Side view of the Scorpion Diablo

3.) HLG R-Spec series (Best THC Production)

Horticulture Lighting Group (HLG – official website) is the only company on this list twice. That’s because their “R-spec” series is so different from their other LED grow lights. They cost a bit less and still get decent yields, but their specialty is bud potency. Their unique red spectrum (“R-spec”) produces the highest THC levels of any grow light I’ve tried. In side-by-side tests, although the R-specs got lower yields than some other LED lights, their buds consistently test at higher THC levels.

Pros

• Highest bud potency (in tests, the buds grown under HLG lights produced measurably higher levels of THC than other grow lights)
• Good yields (but not quite as good yields per watt as the HLG lights listed above)
• Excellent bud quality/appearance with high “sparkle”
• Tends to bring out quite a bit of purple color in many strains
• Slightly cheaper than other HLG lights

Cons

• The main downside to these R-spec lights is they tend to produce stretchy growth in the vegetative stage (which can be controlled with plant training but is a little annoying).
• They get good yields, but not quite as good yields per watt as the other HLG lights

These Mandarin Cookies buds grown under the HLG 300 R-spec measured 28.3% THC at the lab. Buds from a clone of the same plant grown under a LEC only measured 26.94% THC at the lab. We found increased potency across the board when we lab-tested clones grown under HLG vs other grow lights. HLG LEDs seem to help maximize the potency of buds.

HLG 100 R-Spec Quantum Board

• Price: $150
• Grow Space: The small square shape and low heat output make this model perfect for a 2’x2′ grow tent or in a closet.
• Actual Power Consumption: 95W (cannot be dimmed)
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 15-20″ for the vegetative stage. 12-15″ away in the flowering stage.
• Average Yields: 2-4+ ounces – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields.

HLG 100 R-Spec Quantum Board – up to 4+ oz yield

Here are some plants I grew under this HLG 100 R-spec light in a mini 2’x2’x4′ grow tent.

HLG 300L R-Spec Quantum Board

• Price: $380
• Grow Space: The rectangular shape makes this model great for a 2’x4′ grow tent or closet.
• Actual Power Consumption: 270W at full power, and can be dimmed down to 90W for younger plants
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 20-24″ for the vegetative stage. 18-24″ away in the flowering stage.
• Average Yields: 7-11+ ounces – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do will make a huge difference in your final yields. This LED model has performed better than most others I’ve tried so far.

HLG 300L R-Spec Quantum Board – produces high THC levels and up to 11+ oz yield

A recent grow under the HLG 300L R-Spec using defoliation in the flowering stage produced almost 11 oz (check out the full grow journal)

The HLG 300 R-Spec really brings out the purple for many strains!

The one downside I’ve noticed with the R-Spec HLG LEDs is plants tend to grow tall and stretchy in the vegetative stage due to the high amounts of red in the spectrum. However, that can be controlled with plant training like bending the stems over and tying them down. If you’re looking to produce the highest THC in your buds as possible, it’s worth the extra care.

HLG 600 Quantum Board R-spec

• Price: $580
• Grow Space: Ideal for a 5’x5′ grow tent
• Actual Power Consumption: 600W at full power, and can be dimmed down to 60W
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 30-36″ for the vegetative stage. 24″ away in the flowering stage (may need more distance for light-sensitive plants, or in a hot grow space).
• Average Yields: 12-21+ oz – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do makes a huge difference in your final yields. Keep the temperature between 75-85°F (24-30°C) during the flowering stage to get the best yields and bud quality.

HLG 600 Quantum Board R-spec – produces high THC levels and up to 21+ oz yield

The HLG 600 R-Spec LED light is thin and lightweight

Cannabis plants grown by cannabichiro (check out their Instagram profile for more!)

Cannabis plant in DWC grown by rumplenuggrower (check out their Instagram profile for more!)

4.) Custom LED Mix (Most Customizable)

If you’ve got an unusually shaped grow space, or just want a lot of flexibility with your LED placement, sometimes the best option is to choose multiple LEDs. This is also a good way to start really small and scale up as needed.

It’s common for beginner growers to start with one small LED for their young plants, then add more lights as plants grow. For example, the growers below needed to increase their wattage and coverage so they added additional LEDs to focus a lot of light directly onto the plants.

Many growers mix and match LEDs, like Mental24 who used two Mars Hydro TS1000s and one Spider Farmer SF-2000 to grow this beautiful harvest for less power and heat than a 600W HPS

Another popular option is to mix LEDs with other types of grow lights like HPS or LEC.

If you’re a beginner and afraid to completely take the plunge into growing, it can’t hurt to start small. Get a small cheap LED like the Spider Farmer SF1000D for $90 which only uses 87 watts. It is plenty for a small plant and you could even get a plant to grow buds and produce a few ounces. If you catch the growing bug then you could start adding bigger or more expensive lights to the mix. For example, Damian has been slowly adding more LEDs as his plants grow and he identifies dark spots.

4.) Mars Hydro (Best 300W Budget Light)

The Mars Hydro grow lights (official website) produce excellent PAR levels that are spread out evenly through the grow space. In many ways, their models are comparable to the Spider Farmer lights. I think the companies may actually be producing lights in the same factory because some of their models look so similar. However, I have much more experience with the Spider Farmer LEDs and know that all the different SF models work great for growing cannabis. That being said, when I grew with the Mars Hydro LEDs I had a good growing experience, too. In this section of the LED grow lights review, I’m only listing the one model I have personal experience with so far.

I used their Mars Hydro TSL 2000W model, which at $270 is the cheapest 300W LED on this list. I personally feel the 300W size is a great grow light size for most home growers, so if you’re trying to maximize power for cheap in a small rectangular grow space, this may be the best LED grow light for you.

Mars Hydro does well in the vegetative stage but really shines in the flowering stage. These plants are only 28 days after 12/12!

Mars Hydro TSL 2000W

• Price: $270
• Grow Space: Designed for a 2’x4′ grow tent or space
• Actual Power Consumption: 300W at full power, and can be dimmed
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 24″ for the vegetative stage. 18-24″ away in the flowering stage
• Average Yields: 7-12+ oz – keep in mind that the strain (genetics) and any plant training you do make a huge difference in your final yields.
• Note: The biggest downside of this light is it’s a bit bulky and the aluminum reflector is sharp at the edges. You could easily cut your head on one of those edges. When I used it, I covered the edges with tape. I much prefer how all the other LEDs on this list have smooth rounded edges.

The Mars Hydro TSL 2000W produces excellent PAR levels that are spread out evenly through the grow space.

My last Mars Hydro TSL 2000 harvest with the light kept about 24″ away

Here are those buds drying. I was impressed to get these results with such a low-wattage LED

Now about those PAR levels. Let me show you how well this light covers a 2’x4′ grow tent by measuring the light levels 24″ away at 100% power

Here are the results with an Apogee MQ 500 PAR meter (measured in µmol m-2 s) when measuring light levels 24″ away at each plant. The light levels stay between 564-594 µmol m-2 s at the top of every plant. That means there is barely any variation of light levels throughout the tent. This is a huge advantage over other LED models where the plants on the sides are often underdeveloped.

Here’s what grower Andres had to say about the Mars TSL 2000, “my plants came out absolutely beautiful at harvest time and I could not have been happier”

Amanda used her Mars Hydro TSL 2000 in a 2’x4′ grow tent: “The plants absolutely love it & so do I. Very bright. I like having the dimmer on it as well. Well worth the money.”

5.) AC Infinity LED Grow Lights (Most Popular)

AC Infinity was added to this list in 2026 after we saw many home growers document excellent cannabis results with their AC Infinity LED grow lights.

A little about AC Infinity: This is a company that has taken it upon itself to offer support to cannabis growers at every stage of the cannabis growing process. They offer everything from grow tents to thermometer to fans to entire cannabis grow kits.

Across the board with AC Infinity you can expect excellent quality, combined with premium (higher-than-average) prices.

If you’re looking for an overpowered budget light, go with Mars Hydro. If you want an easy-to-use premium LED grow light dialed in for home grow, go with AC Infinity.

Grow up to 1 pound of weed with an AC Infinity EVO6 LED grow light.

CHECK BACK SOON FOR A BREAKDOWN OF MODELS. I’m still gathering a bit more info. ~Nebula

Conclusion

You have just learned about the 5 best LED grow lights for cannabis in 2026. These LED grow lights are my personal top choices for cannabis growers who want to get the most out of their cannabis plants in terms of yield, grow speed, and bud quality. I hope that between the choices you can find an LED to fulfill your budget and needs. With any of the LEDs on the page, you will be ready to start growing amazing weed at home with LED grow lights.

What do you think about LED grow lights? Have you tried any of the models I reviewed in this article? Do you have any questions or suggestions for me? Please use our contact page or submit a picture and let me know. I would love to hear from you.

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze

P.S. Here’s a quick history of LED grow lights for the other history nerds:

Quick History of LED Grow Lights for Growing Weed

Until 2018-2020, most LED grow light improvements for marijuana plants were led by growers. Many modern LED innovations initially came from experimental DIY LEDs created by home growers wiring their own lights. Home growers would make discoveries, and as those DIY models became popular, LED grow light manufacturers slowly incorporated the new ideas.

When I first started growing cannabis in 2008, my first grow light was an LED. I got the best-of-the-best version for the time, but those LEDs were terrible for growing cannabis. With that old LED technology, vegetative cannabis plants grew strangely, and flowering plants would be riddled with nutrient deficiencies. Plants grew tiny, none-potent buds under the old-tech LEDs.

But that has all changed. As of 2026, LED grow lights have easily overtaken HPS and other older-tech HIDs as the best cannabis grow light for nearly all home growers. Modern LEDs not only produce comparable yields, but also increased THC and overall bud quality in some cases.

There are still some situations where alternatives like LECs or HPS may be a great choice. For example in a cold space where the heat of these burning hot lights is a positive thing. Perhaps you’re making concentrates on a major level and want to use special bulbs to increase trichome production and terpene levels/smells).

That being said, generally most home growers will be happiest with LED grow lights. On top of the improving grow light technology, the cultivation of weed has been legalized in multiple parts of the US and other parts of the world. If you want to grow weed, now is the time!

About the Author: Nebula Haze

I started growing weed in 2008. To be honest, in the beginning, I struggled. There just wasn’t great information available for cannabis cultivation. I had to find my own way through trial and error. After I had figured out how easy it could be, I decided to create GrowWeedEasy.com in 2010 with my partner Sirius to make cannabis-growing information easily available to everyone who wants to grow at home.

Weed companies charge way too much for subpar weed, and we want home growers to learn how easy it is to grow higher-quality buds than most weed you can buy. The secret doesn’t take a ton of money or require you to learn special tricks. You just need good genetics and the right information so you get the best results for the least amount of effort.

That’s why we’ve made all the tutorials on the website easy and straightforward to follow. If you follow our instructions like a recipe, your cupboards will soon be overflowing with weed. I hope you enjoyed this article on LEDs and don’t hesitate to contact us and let us know what you think are the best LED grow lights for marijuana. Also, we’d love to see your plant pictures so we can feature them in our weekly newsletter!

• Sign up for the weekly growing newsletter – delivered every Sunday at 4:20 am Eastern time
• 10-Minute Cannabis Grow Guide – 10 minutes from now you could be a weed-growing expert!
• Plant Doctor (to diagnose your sick plants) – Find the plant problem and get the solution

Nebula Haze says, “Thanks for reading, and happy growing!”

The post 5 Best LED Grow Lights 2026 (Cannabis Yields, Speed, & LED Bud Quality) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

See Other Examples of Cannabis Growing Setups

600W Premium LED Grow Setup

Grow light: HLG Blackbird LED grow light

• Average Yields: 11-22 oz ounces (22 oz is 1.5 pounds)
• Plants: Recommended 2-8 plants
• Optimal grow space is a 4’x4’x6.5′ grow tent
• Actual Power Consumption: About 600W at full power, and can be dimmed down to as little as 100W for younger plants or if the temperature is getting too high
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 24-30″ from the top of plants in the vegetative stage, and 20-24″ away in the flowering stage (watch plants for signs of light stress)

HLG Blackbird LED grow light – great seed-to-harvest cannabis grow light designed a 4’x4′ grow tent that can produce up to 1.5 pounds of buds per grow

Estimated Setup Cost: $995 plus seeds

• Includes everything you need to get started: LED grow light, grow tent, fan, carbon filter, grow medium, plant pots, and nutrients

About the HLG Blackbird LED Grow Lights in this Cannabis Growing Setup

HLG has been serving the cannabis community for years, and test all their lights specifically on cannabis plants. They currently produce my favorite LEDs for growing weed and offer a variety of sizes and options to help cannabis growers whether they want to grow small or grow big. Under HLGs, I’ve found plants grow fast and healthy, producing some of the best LED yields of all the models I’ve tried.

Pros: The HLG Blackbird is a reasonably priced 600W LED grow light that offers the same or better yields and bud quality than any 600W LED grow light I’ve found in its price range. They are designed specifically to be used in a 4’x4’x6.5′ grow tent to grow cannabis from seed to harvest, and are lighter and easier to install than equivalent wattage LEDs I’ve used in the past. The diode spread and reflector system seems to get the same amount of light to nearly the whole tent, without major “hot spots” in the middle like LEDs from the past.

Cons: They cost more than a “generic” 600W LED.

Estimated Cost: $995 plus the cost of seeds

Summary of what’s in this HLG Blackbird LED cannabis grow light setup

Complete Grow Supply List

This cannabis grow room setup list includes all the supplies you need to get to harvest.

HLG Blackbird LED Grow Light (600 watts, can be dimmed down to as little as 100W)

HLG Blackbird LED grow light (designed to be used from seed to harvest)

• Yields: 11-22 oz per harvest
• Simple to use and hang. Works exactly as you’d expect.
• Great to use from seed to harvest (the spectrum works well for all cannabis stages of life)
• Runs much cooler than a 600W HPS or other common grow lights that produce yields this high

Cost: $700

HLG Blackbird can produce up to 22 oz of weed when used as instructed

This setup can grow many plants at once so you get a good amount of strain choice for one LED light

Grow Space

• Grow Tent Recommended Sizes
  • 4’x4’x6.5′ – an example is the CoolGrows 48”x48”x80” Grow Tent
  • Learn more about grow tents
  • Cost: $80
• Exhaust Fan + Carbon Filter Kit
  • When you’re growing enough weed to fill a 4×4 tent, you need to make sure that smell isn’t escaping. A good fan and a reliable filter will take care of this problem.
  • Example: Vivosun Exhaust Fan + Air Filtration Kit
  • Cost: $130

A 4’x4’x6.5′ grow tent is ideal for an HLG Blackbird LED grow light

Add a fan and carbon filter to vent heat away from your plants and filter the smell of weed.

Plant Pots

I prefer fabric pots or air pots because cannabis plants grow faster when their roots get air from the sides. However, the extra air from the sides also means that fabric pots and air pots need to be watered more often than standard hard-sided plant pots for the same size plant. Both types work great for growing cannabis indoors. Often the best plant pot is whatever is cheap and easy for you to get.

• Recommended: Fabric pots between 2-7 gallons (any fabric pots work great so I pick whatever is cheap or looks the best to me)

Cost: $20

These 5-gallon fabric pots work great in this setup

Grow Medium (Soil, Coco, Hydro)

Grow mediums can include coco coir or soil (hydroponics for more advanced growers) but if you’re not sure, a coco-based soil like Coco Loco is perfect for beginners.

• Recommended Soil: One 2 cu ft bag bag of coco-based soil with perlite should be able to fill 15 gallons worth of pots. For example, it will fill 5 x 3-gallon fabric pots.

Cost: ~$40

Coco Loco is a coco-based rich airy soil that cannabis plants thrive in

Nutrients

Many nutrient systems have a nutrient schedule so you give your plants the right ratios for each stage of life. Basically, you use a “vegetative” or all-purpose plant nutrient for the first part of your plant’s life and a “bloom” or low-nitrogen nutrients when buds are forming. Tip: Always start at half-strength with a new base nutrient system since the recommended amount can be too high for cannabis plants.

Recommended Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis indoors.

• Dyna-Gro “Grow”: Give 1 tsp per gallon of water during the vegetative stage.
• Dyna-Gro “Bloom”: Give 1 tsp/gallon of water after buds start forming.

Cost: $20

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for any grower that doesn’t know what to get. One bottle for veg, one bottle for after buds start forming. 1 tsp/gallon. Can be used in any grow medium from soil to hydro. Super simple!

Other Supplementary Items

• Get your seeds – $10-15/seed (on average, can be more or less depending on the breeder)
• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule) – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work) – Much cheaper at Wal-Mart ($5-15) than online!
• Extra 1/8″ Rope Ratchets (sooooo handy) – These can be used to hang your grow light or carbon filter from inside the tent, and still be able to easily move it up and down without needing any strength. Your grow light usually comes with a set of rope ratchets, but it’s a great idea to get an extra set to hang the carbon filter – $15
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $10

Estimated Total Cost: $995+ plus the cost of seeds

• $995 includes the grow light, grow tent, fan, smell filtering, plant pots, coco coir grow medium, and basic nutrients
• Optional extras add to the cost

The post [HLG Blackbird] 600W Premium LED Cannabis Grow Setup & Shopping List (up to 1.5 lb yield) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

See Other Examples of Cannabis Growing Setups

HLG 350R Quantum Board LED Grow Setup for Growing Cannabis

• Average Yields: 8-14 oz ounces
• Plants: Recommended 2-6 plants
• Optimal grow space is a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent
• Actual Power Consumption: About 350W at full power, and can be dimmed down for younger plants or if the temperature is getting too high
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 24″ from the top of plants in the vegetative stage, and 18-24″ away in the flowering stage (watch plants for signs of light stress)

HLG 350R LED grow light – great seed-to-harvest cannabis grow light

About the HLG 350R LED Setup for Growing Weed Indoors

This is currently the LED I’m using for growing weed. HLG does testing on live cannabis plants and in shows. Cannabis plants grow fast and healthy under every HLG I’ve tried, and it gets some of the best LED yields.

Pros: The HLG 350R is a quantum board with a great spectrum and ultra-high efficiency chips that seems to get better yields than some other LEDs for the amount of electricity. They’re gentle on plants and easy to use. It is also somewhat smaller and much less heavy than comparable LEDs, which makes it much easier to ship, store, move around, and set up.

Cons: More expensive than some of the similar wattage generic LED grow lights available.

Setup Cost Estimates

Estimated Cost: $700+

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering): $700
• Ultra budget + smell filtering: $800
• Premium – higher quality fan plus optional extras: $975

Summary of what’s needed for this HLG 350R LED cannabis grow light setup

Complete Grow Supply List

This cannabis grow room setup guide with shopping list includes all the supplies you need to get to harvest.

HLG 350R Quantum Board LED Grow Light (up to 350 watts)

HLG 350R LED grow light (designed to be used from seed to harvest)

• Yields: 8-14 oz per harvest
• Simple to use and hang. Works exactly as you’d expect.
• A little tough on younger plants compared to more gentle LEDs like the Spider Farmer models, but it’s worth it because this HLG 150R LED is extra powerful in the flowering stage and produces excellent yields and bud quality.
• Only uses 350 watts of electricity (can be turned down if necessary)

Cost: $550

The HLG 350R can produce up to 14 oz of weed when used as directed

Grow Tent (recommended sizes)

Just about any grow tent brand works great, but I’ve had good luck with the CoolGrows tents and they’re pretty reasonably priced. A grow tent is an easy and cheap way to instantly create a perfect cannabis grow space that can deal with water, light, heat, and smells.

• 2’x4’x6′ tent – an example is Cool Grows 48”x24”x72” grow tent.

Cost: $80

This Cool Grows tent is a good fit for the HLG 350R LED grow light.

6″ Exhaust Fan 

An exhaust fan vents hot air and can be combined with a carbon filter to stop all smells from leaving the grow space. The 6″ size is more than enough for a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent.

• Recommended:  6″ AC Infinity CLOUDLINE series of inline exhaust fans. These are quiet at top speed and completely silent at lower speeds.
  • S6 is the cheaper, simpler version which works well and gives you basic fan speed controls
  • The programmable T6 version has handy extras like a Temperature/Humidity Probe and Display Screen
  • I picked the 6″ fans because their 4″ fan struggles to keep this size tent cool if the grow room gets warm, though it could get the job done in a pinch.
• Budget choice (Cheap but loud): 6″ Vivosun fan
  • The Vivosun 6″ Fan – 440 CFM is significantly smaller and cheaper. However, it is also significantly louder and uses more electricity.

Cost: $80+ ($80-160)

The AC Infinity CLOUDLINE S6 6″ exhaust fan uses less electricity and runs quieter than most other exhaust fans of similar power. It is silent on the lower settings. The programmable T6 version is the exact same fan but has a digital screen that gives you more control over the fan settings.

(Optional) Carbon Filter – For smell filtering

When set up properly, a carbon filter removes 100% of odors but it must be attached to a good exhaust fan (like the AC Infinity above) to work.

• Recommended: Terrabloom 6-inch Carbon Filter, 6″ x 16″ version plus ducting/clamps

Cost: $100

I’ve had great smell filtering with the above 6″ Cloudline fan attached to this Terrabloom 6″ carbon filter with 6″ ducting.

Plant Pots

I prefer fabric pots or air pots because cannabis plants grow faster but need to be watered more often than standard hard-sided plant pots. Both types work great for growing cannabis indoors. Often the best plant pot is whatever is cheap and easy for you to get.

• Recommended: Fabric pots between 2-7 gallons (any fabric pots work great so I pick whatever is cheap or looks the best to me)

Cost: $20

These 5-gallon fabric pots work great in this setup

Grow Medium (Soil, Coco, Hydro)

Grow mediums can include coco coir or soil (hydroponics for more advanced growers) but if you’re not sure, a coco-based soil like Coco Loco is perfect for beginners.

• Recommended Soil: One 2 cu ft bag bag of coco-based soil with perlite should be able to fill 15 gallons worth of pots. For example, it will fill 5 x 3-gallon fabric pots.

Cost: $40

Coco Loco is a coco-based rich airy soil that cannabis plants thrive in

Nutrients

Many nutrient systems have a nutrient schedule so you give your plants the right ratios for each stage of life. Basically, you use a “vegetative” or all-purpose plant nutrient for the first part of your plant’s life and a “bloom” or low-nitrogen nutrients when buds are forming. Tip: Always start at half-strength with a new base nutrient system since the recommended amount can be too high for cannabis plants.

Recommended Beginner Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis indoors.

• Dyna-Gro “Grow”: Give 1 tsp per gallon of water during the vegetative stage.
• Dyna-Gro “Bloom”: Give 1 tsp/gallon of water after buds start forming.

Cost: $20

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is a cheap and simple nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one bottle for after buds start forming. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple!

Other Nice-to-Have Stuff

• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule) – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work) – Much cheaper at Wal-Mart ($5-15) than online!
• Extra 1/8″ Rope Ratchets (sooooo handy) – These can be used to hang your grow light or carbon filter from inside the tent, and still be able to easily move it up and down without needing any strength. Your grow light usually comes with a set of rope ratchets, but it’s a great idea to get an extra set to hang the carbon filter – $10
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $12

Estimated Cost: $700-$975 plus the cost of seeds

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering): $700
• Ultra budget + smell filtering: $800
• Premium equipment plus optional extras: $975

The post HLG 350R LED Cannabis Grow Setup & Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Unfortunately, the ES300 LED grow light has been discontinued. I’m keeping this page up for a little while just in case they come back, but until then the light I recommend as a replacement is the HLG 350R LED grow light.

See a cannabis grow journal using this setup.

ES300 Quantum Board LED Grow Setup for Growing Cannabis

• Average Yields: 7-13 oz ounces
• Plants: Recommended 2-6 plants
• Optimal grow space is a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent
• Actual Power Consumption: About 300W at full power, and both can be dimmed down for younger plants or if the temperature is getting too high
• How Far to Keep from Plants: 24″ from the top of plants in the vegetative stage, and 18-24″ away in the flowering stage.

Electric Sky ES300 LED grow light – works great from seed to harvest.

These 3 cannabis plants were grown under ES300 LED grow lights (here’s the grow journal)

The 3 plants produced over 11 ounces after buds were dried and jarred

About the Electric Sky ES300 Setup for Growing Weed Indoors

This is currently my favorite LED for growing weed (unless you want to grow in a tiny space, in which case I recommend the HLG 65). Plants grow fast and healthy, and it gets some of the best LED yields of all the models I’ve tried.

Pros: The ES300 is a quantum board with a unique new spectrum that seems to get better yields than a lot of other LEDs I’ve tried. They’re gentle on plants and easy to use.

Cons: Expensive and heavy (the weight is my biggest complaint, otherwise it’s a perfect grow light even at the price)

Setup Cost Estimates

Estimated Cost: $890+

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering): $890
• Only the necessary stuff + smell filtering: $990
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $1100

Summary of what’s needed for this Electric Sky ES300 LED cannabis grow light setup

Complete Grow Supply List

This cannabis grow room setup list includes all the supplies you need to get to harvest.

ES300 Quantum Board LED Grow Light (300 watts)

Electric Sky ES300 (designed to be used from seed to harvest)

• Yields: 7-13 oz per harvest
• Simple to use and hang. Works exactly as you’d expect.
• Only uses 300 watts of electricity

Cost: $600

The ES300 LED grow light can produce up to 13 oz of weed

Grow Tent (recommended sizes)

Just about any grow tent brand works great, but I’ve had good luck with the CoolGrows tents and they’re pretty reasonably priced. A grow tent is an easy and cheap way to instantly create a perfect cannabis grow space that can deal with water, light, heat, and smells. Learn more about grow tents.

• 2’x4’x6′ tent – an example is Cool Grows 48”x24”x72” grow tent.

Cost: $95

This Cool Grows tent is a good fit for the ES300 LED grow light.

6″ Exhaust Fan 

An exhaust fan vents hot air and can be combined with a carbon filter to stop all smells from leaving the grow space. The 6″ size is more than enough for a 2’x4’x5′ grow tent. In fact, with some brands like Vivosun, the smaller 4″ version of their fan is enough.

• Recommended:  6″ AC Infinity CLOUDLINE series of inline exhaust fans. These are quiet at top speed and completely silent at lower speeds.
  • S6 is the cheaper, simpler version which works well and gives you basic fan speed controls
  • The programmable T6 version has handy extras like a Temperature/Humidity Probe and Display Screen
  • I picked the 6″ fans because Their 4″ fan struggles to keep this size tent cool
• Budget choice (Cheap but loud): 6″ Vivosun fan
  • The Vivosun 6″ Fan – 440 CFM is significantly smaller and cheaper. However, it is also significantly louder.

Cost: $70+ ($70-160)

The AC Infinity CLOUDLINE S6 6″ exhaust fan runs quieter than most others. It is silent on the lower settings.

(Optional) Carbon Filter – For smell filtering

When set up properly, a carbon filter removes 100% of odors but it must be attached to a good exhaust fan (like the AC Infinity above) to work. Learn more about controlling odors

• Recommended: Terrabloom 6-inch Carbon Filter, 6″ x 16″ version plus ducting/clamps

Cost: $100

I’ve had great smell filtering with the above 6″ Cloudline fan attached to this Terrabloom 6″ carbon filter with 6″ ducting.

Plant Pots

I prefer fabric pots or air pots because cannabis plants grow faster but need to be watered more often than standard hard-sided plant pots. Both types work great for growing cannabis indoors. Often the best plant pot is whatever is cheap and easy for you to get.

• Recommended: Fabric pots between 2-7 gallons (any fabric pots work great so I pick whatever is cheap or looks the best to me)

Cost: $25

These 5-gallon fabric pots work great in this setup

Grow Medium (Soil, Coco, Hydro)

Grow mediums can include coco coir or soil (hydroponics for more advanced growers) but if you’re not sure, a coco-based soil like Coco Loco is perfect for beginnners.

• Recommended Soil: One 2 cu ft bag bag of coco-based soil with perlite should be able to fill 15 gallons worth of pots. For example, it will fill 3 x 5-gallon fabric pots.

Cost: ~$40

Coco Loco is a coco-based rich airy soil that cannabis plants thrive in

Nutrients

Many nutrient systems have a nutrient schedule so you give your plants the right ratios for each stage of life. Basically, you use a “vegetative” or all-purpose plant nutrient for the first part of your plant’s life and a “bloom” or low-nitrogen nutrients when buds are forming. Tip: Always start at half-strength with a new base nutrient system since the recommended amount can be too high for cannabis plants.

Recommended Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis indoors.

• Dyna-Gro “Grow”: Give 1 tsp per gallon of water during the vegetative stage.
• Dyna-Gro “Bloom”: Give 1 tsp/gallon of water after buds start forming.

Learn about other cannabis nutrients we recommend

Cost: $25

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one bottle for after buds start forming. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple!

Seeds

See a list of recommended seed sources here.

Other Nice-to-Have Stuff

• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule). Why do cannabis plants need to be on a day/night schedule? What about autoflowering light schedules? – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work) – Much cheaper at Wal-Mart ($5-15) than online!
• Extra 1/8″ Rope Ratchets (sooooo handy) – These can be used to hang your grow light or carbon filter from inside the tent, and still be able to easily move it up and down without needing any strength. Your grow light usually comes with a set of rope ratchets, but it’s a great idea to get an extra set to hang the carbon filter – $10
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH: https://www.growweedeasy.com/ph – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $12

Learn about other cool growing tools

Estimated Cost: $890-$1100 ($990-1100 with professional smell filtering) plus the cost of seeds

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering): $890
• Only the necessary stuff + smell filtering: $990
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $1100

I used ES300 LEDs to grow plants in coco and super soil for a side-by-side experiment. The real winner was me because all the weed came out amazing.

Pineapple Chunk bud grown under the ES300

Buds grown under the ES300 get fatter than most other LEDs I’ve tried, like these Power Africa buds.

Example of Peyote Critical buds grown under the ES300

• Learn how to grow weed in 10 easy steps

The post [Discontinued] Electric Sky ES300 LED Cannabis Grow Setup & Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

See Other Examples of Cannabis Growing Setups

200W LED Grow Setup (For Hobby Growers)

This is one of the most forgiving grow lights I’ve ever used for growing cannabis. It stays cool, grows happy healthy plants, and produces great yields for only a little electricity. Cannabis plants under the SF-2000 seem to be more resistant to nutrient deficiencies and stress than many other LEDs. It is designed for a 2’x4’x5′ grow tent, which is a great size for the inside of a closet or corner of a bedroom.

• Average Yields: 5-11 ounces
• 3-4 months from seed to weed

The Spider Farmer SF-2000 LED grow light can produce up to 11 oz of weed.

Total Setup Cost: $555 ($600-695 with professional smell filtering and premium equipment)

Check out a cannabis grow journal featuring this setup.

Check out my grow journal where the SF-2000 LED grow light produced over 10 ounces with 3 plants in this setup.

Here were those cannabis plants at harvest.

The harvest after buds were dried and put in jars

Complete Grow Supply List

This cannabis grow room setup list includes all the supplies you need to grow from seed to harvest with a Spider Farmer SF-2000 LED grow light.

Spider Farmer SF-2000 LED grow light (200W)

Spider Farmer SF-2000

• Simple to use and hang. Works exactly as you’d expect.
• Light seems more gentle and less likely to cause nutrient deficiencies than many other LED grow lights
• I’ve gotten excellent yields per watt with this particular grow light, especially for an LED in this price range
• Doesn’t produce much heat or use much electricity

Cost: $260

The Spider Farmer SF-2000 LED grow light.

Grow Tent (recommended sizes)

Just about any grow tent brand works great, but I’ve had good luck with the CoolGrows tents and they’re pretty reasonably priced. A grow tent is an easy and cheap way to instantly create a perfect cannabis grow space that can deal with water, light, heat, and smells. Learn more about grow tents.

• 2’x4’x5′ tent – an example is Cool Grows 48”x24”x60” grow tent.

Cost: $60

This 2’x4’x5′ Cool Grows tent (listed as 48″x24″x60″) is a good fit for the SF-2000 LED grow light.

Note: If you plan to get a bigger LED down the road, get a taller 2’x4’x6′ tent ($120).

6″ Exhaust Fan 

An exhaust fan vents hot air and can be combined with a carbon filter to stop all smells from leaving the grow space. The 6″ size is more than enough for a 2’x4’x5′ grow tent. In fact, with some brands like Vivosun, the smaller 4″ version of their fan is enough.

• Recommended:  6″ AC Infinity CLOUDLINE series of inline exhaust fans. These are quiet at top speed and completely silent at lower speeds.
  • S6 is the slightly cheaper, simpler version which works well and gives you basic fan speed controls
  • The programmable T6 version has handy extras like a Temperature/Humidity Probe and Display Screen
  • I picked the 6″ fans because the Cloudline 4″ fan struggles to keep this size tent cool
• Budget choice (Cheap but loud): 4″ Vivosun fan
  • The Vivosun 4″ Fan – 203 CFM is just as strong as the 6″ Cloudline fans but significantly smaller and cheaper. However, it is also significantly louder.

Cost: $60+ ($60-160)

The AC Infinity CLOUDLINE S6 6″ exhaust fan runs quieter than most others. It is silent on the lower settings.

(Optional) Carbon Filter – For smell filtering

When set up properly, a carbon filter removes 100% of odors but it must be attached to a good exhaust fan (like the AC Infinity above) to work. Learn more about controlling odors

• Recommended: Terrabloom 6-inch Carbon Filter, 6″ x 16″ version plus ducting/clamps
• If you got a 4″ fan, get a 4-inch carbon filter, 4″ x 14″ version 

Cost: $50-100

I’ve had great smell filtering with the above 6″ Cloudline fan attached to this Terrabloom 6″ carbon filter with 6″ ducting.

Plant Pots

I prefer fabric pots or air pots because cannabis plants grow faster when their roots get air from the sides. However, the extra air from the sides also means that fabric pots and air pots need to be watered more often than standard hard-sided plant pots for the same size plant. Both types work great for growing cannabis indoors. Often the best plant pot is whatever is cheap and easy for you to get.

• Recommended: Fabric pots between 2-7 gallons (any fabric pots work great so I pick whatever is cheap or looks the best to me)

Cost: $20

These 3-gallon fabric pots work great in this setup

Grow Medium (Soil, Coco, Hydro)

Grow mediums can include coco coir or soil (hydroponics for more advanced growers) but if you’re not sure, a coco-based soil like Coco Loco is perfect for beginners.

• Recommended Soil: One 2 cu ft bag bag of coco-based soil with perlite should be able to fill 15 gallons worth of pots. For example, it will fill 5 x 3-gallon fabric pots.

Cost: ~$40

Coco Loco is a coco-based rich airy soil that cannabis plants thrive in

Nutrients

Many nutrient systems have a nutrient schedule so you give your plants the right ratios for each stage of life. Basically, you use a “vegetative” or all-purpose plant nutrient for the first part of your plant’s life and a “bloom” or low-nitrogen nutrients when buds are forming. Tip: Always start at half-strength with a new base nutrient system since the recommended amount can be too high for cannabis plants. Only move to full strength when plants are healthy and growing fast.

Recommended Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis indoors.

• Dyna-Gro “Grow”: Give 1 tsp per gallon of water during the vegetative stage.
• Dyna-Gro “Bloom”: Give 1 tsp/gallon of water after buds start forming.

Learn about other cannabis nutrients we recommend.

Cost: $25

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one bottle for after buds start forming. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple!

Other Nice-to-Have Stuff

• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule) – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work) – Much cheaper at Wal-Mart ($5-15) than online!
• Extra 1/8″ Rope Ratchets (sooooo handy) – These can be used to hang your grow light or carbon filter from inside the tent, and still be able to easily move it up and down without needing any strength. Your grow light usually comes with a set of rope ratchets, but it’s a great idea to get an extra set to hang the carbon filter – $10
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent. It can be nice to get two so you can measure the temperature in different parts of the tent. – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $12

Learn about other cool growing tools.

Estimated Cost: $555-695 ($600-695 with professional smell filtering) plus the cost of seeds

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering): $555
• Only the necessary stuff + smell filtering: $600
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $695

My first grow with the SF-2000 in this setup produced these plants.

Closeup of the buds from the left plant. Check out the grow journal.

Example of a Pacific Punch buds grown under this light

The post 200W LED (Spider Farmer SF-2000) Cannabis Setup – Shopping List & Grow Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.