Grow Like A Rookie!! Journal + easy tips

[RookieBuds]

Top o the morning, Hunters 🙋‍♂️

I wanted to take a moment to fire up a new journal. I feel like I really have a decent system going, and would love to share some of what I've learned from growing over the last 3+ years. ...

First and foremost, my #1 main goal is SIMPLICITY; less moving parts, least amount of monetary investment W/O cutting corners, and with simple easy-to-get tools & equipment. Quite literally, something a rookie can jump into and copy with "satisfactory+" results.

Remember the old saying to sucker men into buying a diamond, "what's two months' salary for forever" or some bullshit 🤷🏻‍♂️🤣 lol! Same can be said for investing in your grow setup: what do you spend on weed over 2 months? --be willing to drop that amount as your starting point. On that note, at least 50% of your overall budget should be just the lighting IMO.

Having said all that. . .. let's GET TO GETTIN 🤘

This run will consist of:
1) All Gas OG fem seed drop 6/17


1) Raspberry Ice Cream fem (unreleased)
Raspberry Parfait x Ice Cream Cake drop 7/6

1) Garlic Budder fem seed drop 7/25


1) Chernobyl S1 fem seed drop 7/30

The goal is to flip all these at the same time even though they're all 3 weeks apart. The AGOG will be a great sized plant come flip time, should be about a 12-wk veg, 9-wk veg for Raz IC which also isn't too bad.

Current state as of today:

This will all get flipped in about 15 days. Can't wait! My last run was all versions of PBB, so it'll be nice to have some real variety this time.

 

[RookieBuds]

Rookie Tips:

#1. I advise getting started in coco coir. Buy whatever is local & readily available to you, or whatever is cheapest+easiest for you to use. .. think about it, is it worth your time rehydrating and buffering bricks, or just buy ready-mix coco? Up to you. .. i use Tupur Royal Gold because I can get it locally & it's cheap.

#2. Nutrients; pick your own, but I've been using GH Flora Nova series, and these squeeze bottles to dispense them;


Even easier, the squeeze tops fit the pint bottles! I refill the pint with the quart:

 

[RookieBuds]

Another Rookie Tip:

This reposted pic PERFECTLY depicts my basic process:

Step 1 (Chernobyl). Germination of seed in solo cup of buffered coco, use baggie for dome, within 2-5 days seedling emerges

Step 2. (Garlic Budder) emerged seedling loses dome, acclimates to conditions & within about 3 weeks will look like Raspberry Ice Cream.

Step 3. (Raspberry) just let er rip for about 3-4 weeks in the solo cup. Should have nicely bound roots at the bottom of the cup.

Step 4. (All Gas OG) transplant into #1 plastic pot & yet again just let er rip for another 3-4 weeks. ***From here, two options; can go from #1 plastic into 3gal fabric pot & flip, or go up to a #2 plastic pot for an additional 3+ weeks then into final 5gal cloth pot for flip.

 

[RookieBuds]

I should probably discuss my general equipment as well:
(some gear has changed, but this is the "meat")

A super cheap 4x4 (Giantex brand) and a super cheap 2x2 (CoolGrows brand). I think they were 90usd and 55usd each. *As pictured, I was using one exhaust fan, teed off to the 2x2 to exhaust both tents, see the tubing. Doable with a 6" inline fan but i was using a 4" so I eventually went with dedicated inline fans for each tent.*

In the 2x2 I have a Bloom Plus BP1000 95 watt board light, I love it. Inside is either one or sometimes two 6" little Walmart clip fans. The 4" inline fan now exhausts this tent just straight into the lung room.

4x4 flower setup:

The 4x4 now has a Mars Hydro FCE 4800 light, a Vivosun 6" inline fan and filter, two cheapie Walmart 6" clip fans, one oscillating Vornado V6 Flippi, one 28" oscillating tower fan and one non oscillating 10" turboforce fan that just blows across the open vent flap at the bottom of the right tent wall. FANTASTIC airflow with this setup, having lower oscillators but upper fans that are static seems to work nicely.

These are my timers:

2x2 tent timer. I quite like this one. I keep the instructions handy because I always forget how to change things, lol


4x4 tent timer (not my pic). The GOAT, i love this thing. Has like eight presets, which I accidentally overlapped before but it helped me fully understand how to work this thing. It's not Rolex-accurate, matter o fact it's like a half-second off, but still works perfectly fine.

 

[RookieBuds]

Screw it, time to move things along. Chopped down the PBB at about day 60, as last time it's "close enough" without this being too early a chop IMO.

Onto the next run:

We have:
All Gas OG back left
Raspberry Ice Cream back right
Chernobyl front left
Garlic Budder front right.

Now, I have to figure out what to start in the 2x2.

 

[RookieBuds]

Wow, haven't updated in a while! Sorry. OK so this run went "okay" I'd say. .. harvested my teo biggest plants to date, back to back! Not bad --- more on that in a moment. Without further adieu


BobBitchen Chernobyl. Man, I'll tell u what, this is one of the frostiest plants I've ever seen let alone grown. This particular one, finished product is an almost pie-crust semi sweetness with an odd mushroom-lime finish. Smokes really nicely, stellar high. Got right about 2oz off one plant, vegged about 28 days flower for 68 days.


HSC All Gas OG, got an amazing 6.2oz off one plant! 🤘 vegged 70 days, flowered for 65 days. This one i may have mildly overfed or possibly went a lil heavy on the Floralicious Plus for this plant's liking (2ml/gal), same with Chernobyl, I also had issues with this plant being in too small a pot of coco, & would be bone-dry between waterings although the plant itself NEVER showed wilt, I think the end result of the watering shock was "mild toxicity". Anywho, finished product is nice but smells a little "spinach-y" in the jars but smokes like a basic mid-quality Kush. Not horrible 🤷🏻‍♂️ I think I can do better next time.


HSC Raspberry Ice Cream, unreleased tester. I hope u guys don't mind me swearing because OH MY LORD SON OF A GUN, DOOHICKEY DARN HECK this motherfricker came out FAN frickin TASTIC. During trimming it was such an OVERWHELMING scent of fresh lavender, it literally gave me a headache and was just WAY too much of a good thing. As it's curing some of the "raspberry candy nail polish" vibe is coming back. Smokes SMOOTH, very herbal and "cool" but the smell doesn't exactly translate to the taste. Great daytime buzz, spacy and peppy. But it just smells so incredible, I can't shut up about it. 6.9OZ ONE PLANT, vegged 61 days, flowered 70 days, biggest single plant to date, and this thing really only had like 4 main branches and a couple side branches 🤘

 

[RookieBuds]

More Rookie tips:

*Bigger pots of coco = more leeway between waterings. In 3gal pots, the coco would be too dry between waterings. These 5gal pots stay wetter for longer, and don't shock the plants as badly with moisture fluctuation.

*The crossbars, aka "CFM kit", keeps your tent walls from sucking inward, and allows you to truly use the full square footage of the space.

*The tomato cages: although a trellis net would allow me to create a much higher yield, using an individual cage per pot still allows me to remove or move individual plants as needed.

 

[RookieBuds]

Next run is going to be EPIC!

Seedlings are Archive Slurricane, and the clone is BobBitchen Chernobyl. I also snuck in one extra:

This is a new cross by Budderton @ Overgrow. Here's the lineage:

I'm gonna grow 2-4 of these in January but I was itchin' to get one going now 🤷🏻‍♂️ lol