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bya1305 2017 First time grow log

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bya1305

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Hey everyone this is my first time growing and by the time they are ready to transplant into their containers it will be close to end of season. So i will be doing an indoor grow in the garage and some in a greenhouse that I will construct. I will add photos of these setups when they are done. I enjoy pipe tobacco and just started cigar smoking with a friend last week after my second son was born and it wasn't too bad, I enjoyed it. I have been parsing the forums for a bit now and have an idea for what to do during the grow but any help would be much appreciated.
 

bya1305

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Ok so my group 1 was started on 9/7 and 9/9 as seeds came in the mail on different days. The first seven columns from the left were started on the 7th and the last three on the 9th.
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Left to Right: 9/7, Virginia Brightleaf, Named Mix, MD 609, Long Red, Virginia 116, Little Dutch, Florida Sumatra (all from sustainable seed), 9/9 Virginia Gold, Commercial Burley, Havana 608 (from hart seed on amazon, not sure what commercial burley is since I haven't seen it from any other seed seller since I started searching more and they told me that is the strain name)

I was worried that my watering start would fail as it seemed to stay too soggy for days and days. What I did for that one was lay the starting soil into the trays and then add water from the top and letting excess drain out through the bottom. It made the jiffy trays cold after a few days and kept me on my toes. The picture above is actually a direct copy of group 1 which I ended up throwing out prematurely because I thought they were doomed. My actual group 1 was on the kitchen table near a window that faced east with no heating mat or anything. But for some reason I only took a photo of this group I had on the rack at the beginning. Anyways moving on, while I laid the seed for the last 3 varieties on this tray on 9/9 I put a couple varieties in red solo cups (16oz) with the same Jiffy Seed Starting Mix

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Like I said I worried a lot about how wet it was staying in the tray but then on 9/12 I started seeing some white popping out of the seeds and some green on other strains and this next picture is from 9/13, 6 days and 4 days after laying the seeds

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These are the cups on 9/13 - 4 days since planting
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9/15 8 and 6 days since laying seeds
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bya1305

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9/16 after thinning a bit - Group 1
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On 9/11 I restarted Group 2 with a heating mat and using less water when putting the starting soil in the tray. It's the same variety line up from left to right. This is a picture of my shelf setup in my office room. Group 1 is stacked on books to put it close to light next to it on the left is group 3 which has since been terminated. Group 2 is on the bottom shelf using only natural light, mostly, for germination. The light setup I ave on top is two 4' T8 shop lights with one 6500k and one 4000k bulb in each fixture.
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Group 2 - 9/16 5 Days
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Group 2 - 9/18 7 days old after and before a little thinning of the heavier sprouted
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bya1305

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I ended up having a busy 19th and 20th as I spent them and half of the 21st in the hospital since my son was born. When I came back I was worried (after reading about negative reviews on these forums of Jiffy Seed Starter) that my plants that seemed to be doing great would stall and not grow much do to the poor setup of Jiffy Seed Starter. This was encouraged more by the fact that the plants in the 16oz cups had already passed my group 1 tray in size even though they were on track at the beginning. These have Jiffy Seed Starter in them but I think because the cups are big and have so much in them it has sustained their growth. So I decided to move them into 9oz paper cups with a potting soil. I used a few different ones to see which might do best. Natures Organic (neon green bag), Miracle Grow Indoor mix, and Black Gold (has tomato on front of bag).

Group 1 - 9/21/17 - 14 days and 12 days after start
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The cups are labeled with the variety name, seed supplier, date started and potting mix brand. These pictures are representative of the average size of the plants of every variety in the tray

I spent a day wondering if they would take to the transfer as it was my first time transferring seedlings in my life. I did 3 cups for each variety making it 30 cups. I had 4 that were flimsy and falling by the end of next day so I tossed them. The natures organic potting mix seemed to do very poorly with water retention and was drying out fast. I also noticed that paper cups had a very hard time pulling water into them from the tray I set them in. This has had me on my toes everyday since I made the transfer. In the time since I tracked down 9oz red solo plastic cups. I ended up using these plastic cups for group 2 transplanting. In the time since I started my group 1 and group 2 I was doing research and reading every day and found Skychaser and Northwest seeds and what a godsend. I started a couple more groups with different starting mix with varieties I bought from him but unfortunately my time at the hospital had me come back to long spindly sprouts and so I tossed those two trays which were groups 4 and 5. The germination rate was amazing though. Of course when I saw his site i went crazy with all the variety choices. I decided to start a ton, try to take a couple of each to maturity and see what does best in this scenario. I'm a dreamer haha. I also have gotten a couple friend into this so I will be passing a few varieties to them as potted and ready to grow.
 

bya1305

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Group 2 - 9/26 - 15 days old getting ready for transplant into 9oz plastic cups
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The second picture is the end of a pair of tweezers for a little size comparison. I used all of the same potting soil varieties as the paper cups for this group as well. I refined the way I transplanted a bit as well so there would hopefully be better root health in the transplant compared to group 1. What I ended up doing was keeping the best looking transplants from group 1 in the paper cups and tossing the rest so that there would be more of the better transferred from group 2. The third picture is how the plants from group 2 looked on 9/27 after I finished transplanting from tray.

Group Mix - 9/27/17 - Group 1 in white cups (left half) 20/18 days old, Group 2 red 9oz cups (the ones on the right half that are smaller and look wet) 16 days old, and Group 1 16oz cups 18 days old
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bya1305

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On 9/23 I started two new groups, each tray containing 12 varieties. I decided to go with trays that had plastic instead of jiffy peat because I found that when transferring the roots were stuck and pushing through the wall of the jiffy peat started cubes and I was thinking plastic would prevent this. I also wasn't too keen on all the mold popping up with the jiffy stuff. Here's a little overview layout of varieties for the groups:

varieties are listed left to right for tray layout (SSC is sustainable seed co and NW is northwest seed)

Group 6: Pennbel 69 (SSC), Japan 8 (SSC), Big Gem (SSC), Gold Leaf Orinoco (SSC), Izmir Ozbas (SSC), Shirey (SSC), Prilep (NW), Comstock Spanish (NW), Yellow Twist Bud (NW), Cuban Criollo 98 (NW), Habano 2000 (NW), Havana 142 (NW)

Group 7 (All NW): Virginia Gold, Ohio Dutch, Little Dutch, Cherry Red 401, Burley 21, Black Sea Samsun, Wisconsin 901, Pennsylvania Red, Connecticut Broadleaf, Helena, Stag Horn, Southern Beauty

Now I tried something new with Group 6 and 7 in the starting soil way. When looking down on the tray the top 3 cells of each column are Miracle Grow Seed Starting Potting Soil and the bottom 3 cells of each column are Sunshine Natural and Organic. I dumped the soil in a bucket and added water and mixed until I had a damp consistency and then put it in the cells from there. I had these on a heat mat which was controlled by a thermostat programmed at 80. The days sometimes got warmer due to room temp and the nights stayed usually at 77 or 75 room temp. They were covered with the clear plastic cover.

Group 6 - 9/28 - 5 days old
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Group 7 - 9/28 - 5 days old
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bya1305

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Most current status on all as of creating this grow log

Group 1 16oz cups - 9/30 - 21 days old
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Group 1 and 2 mix - 9/30 - White Cups 23 days old, Red Cups 19 days old
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Group 2 - 9/30 - 19 days old
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Group 6 - 9/30 - 7 days old
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Group 7 - 9/30 - 7 days old
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bya1305

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That's pretty much where I'm at so far. Yesterday on 9/29 I swapped out the 4000k bulbs and put in extra 6500k bulbs after reading more about lighting. I am trying to come up with the money for T5 4 bulb strips which I've seen a couple people say really changed the growth rate for them. The weird thing that happened yesterday was (first day with all 6500k bulbs over them) the plants went from horizontal layout to being super vertical and when I checked on them this morning the leaves were all back to horizontal. Is this normal?
 

deluxestogie

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That was quite a reading assignment. You appear to be off to a prodigious start. And for an indoor grow, no less. I wish you well with it.

Bob
 

greenmonster714

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First off. Congrats on the new member of your family. It appears your gonna be a busy man with a new baby and a ton of new green babies..lol. Your attention to details kinda reminds me of someone I've seen in my bathroom mirror. I wouldnt worry to much about those T5 lamps. A good old shop light works fine as long as you keep the lights real close to the plants. This should prove to be an interesting thread. I don't recall ever reading about an indoor grow attempt throughout the winter months.

Years ago I used to grow indoors with various hydroponics systems like bubblers, ebb n flow trays, Coco coir, and I did many organic soil grows as well. I imagine yours will be soil but I am curious as to what kind of lighting you will provide for you adult plants. With the numbers your generating it looks as though your going to have a lot of plants to deal with. Have you considered the total space you'll need? Also, how many watts/lumes per square foot does a tobacco plant need? I'm imagining at least a 1000w metal halide on a rail system. But I do remember reading about the construction of a green house. That would avoid the need for heavy duty lamps.
By the way welcome to FTT. I'm glad your sharing this indoor attempt with us. It should prove to be a challenge. Also it is a good idea to keep a running log on your grow successes and failures to help you out for future grows. Best of luck to ya. I can't wait to see your garden move along.
 

bya1305

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Thank you guys for reading!
Green - yea they will be in soil. I keep a journal on paper as well as this log online in case in anything ever happens to the physical copy, though the journal is way more detailed. I am slowly buying all of the lighting i need as HID lighting systems are a little pricey. My local grow shop has been giving me some lighting tips. I am going to probably have 2 1000w MH/HPS lights for the garage. They said I wouldn't need any fluorescents on the sides since those lights penetrate the canopy really well but I may add some to the sides anyways, don't know. I'm not sure, some people have said, on these forums, that for lighting they have checked out weed forums since its similar apparently. I will be trying some plants in the garage with purely lights and another group outside in a greenhouse so we'll see. I want to see if I can achieve a healthy grow during the winter so that I can grow year round.
 

bya1305

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16oz cups - 10/8 - 4 weeks 1 day old
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Group 1 - 10/8 - 4 weeks 3 days old
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Group 2 - 10/8 - 3 weeks 6 days old
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Group 6 - 10/8 - 2 weeks 1 day old (thinned down to 1 per cell 2 days ago)
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Group 7 - 10/8 - 2 weeks 1 day old (thinned down to 1 per cell 2 days ago)
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I've noticed some yellowing of some of the bigger ones. I added a mix of liquid fertilizer on wednesday when I watered them
 

greenmonster714

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That little boost will help them. I noticed mine doing the same last year. A little food and they were fine. They all look good and healthy. Nice job.
 

bya1305

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Oh it's been a little bit since my last post and the plants seem to be doing well. I have taken some of the ones out of the running, a couple that seemed to not be doing well for whatever reason and some from a certain amazon seller. When I contacted this seller to ask what specific variety his burley was, he said it was just what it was labeled. When I looked more into the profile and description of them, it said that they like to create their own cross varieties so I'm not sure the havana 608/virginia gold I got from them were actually pure. I have since bought and restarted those from Skychaser.

Group 1 and 2 - 10/18 - 6 weeks and 5 1/2 weeks respectively
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The outside photos were taken this morning. I have had them outside a few times. In the afternoon sun the leaves go limp but when moved to shade they perk back up. Today I am making a rush to get all of the environments finished and set up and get these ones in their final pot. I noticed some minor bugs yesterday after they were out til night. Most looked like gnats that got stuck but there were also little white thin bugs that flew when i went to remove them. They were stick shaped, not round, to the human eye anyway. I am buying some spinosad and soap for a mix today. I'm surprised some of these have gotten so tall in a 9 oz cup. Florida Sumatra seems to be the strongest grower I have so far.

Group 6 - 10/19 - 3 weeks 5 days old
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bya1305

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Group 7 - 10/19 - 3 weeks 5 days old
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I am going to take 3 of each in these groups and put them into 3.5" pots today.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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Oh it's been a little bit since my last post and the plants seem to be doing well. I have taken some of the ones out of the running, a couple that seemed to not be doing well for whatever reason and some from a certain amazon seller. When I contacted this seller to ask what specific variety his burley was, he said it was just what it was labeled. When I looked more into the profile and description of them, it said that they like to create their own cross varieties so I'm not sure the havana 608/virginia gold I got from them were actually pure. I have since bought and restarted those from Skychaser.

This scenario where people starting out get ambiguous strains of tobacco seems really common. I feel like we should help out with Skychaser's SEO (search engine optimization), so his website comes up first on a Google search, by saying things like best tobacco seed order or cigarette tobacco seed that ships to Canada. You know descriptive tags such as that.
 

Tutu

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I couldn't agree with you more. For one, I like to make crosses too. But the idea is to document it well. Crossing gives unstable seed varieties. I would always refrain from buying seed that was crossed. The importance of keeping seed strains pure should not be underestimated. Too many people selling stuff while it's unclear what it really is doesn't really help in keeping an overview in what is what. Experimenting with it yourself is not a problem. But people getting ambitious and starting to sell their own experiments, hmm, not a big fan either. Unless it's done well.
 
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