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Good growth this week. All 4 plants have 5 nodes with their 6th pushing up. Plants #1 & #2 are showing more vigorous growth and larger fan leaves. Will be topping down to the 3rd node in the coming week with the intent of building manifolds.
Been busy these past few weeks.
2 of the 4 plants didn’t survive an overly aggressive plant wash, so I had to pop more seeds. 1 of which appears to be a super strong pheno.
Got the thrips and mites under control using beneficial nematodes in the soil and cucumeris predatory mite satchels at the base of the manifolds.
Apparently the coco I used wasn’t pre buffered as advertised and I ran into a major magnesium deficiency. Could’ve been a lockout due to the dolomite lime I mixed into the medium, but if I had to guess I’d put my money on the coco hogging all of the mg in the worm castings. Top dressed with worm castings and Gaia green 4-4-4 all purpose, and then watered in max dose of cal mag+, cleared the deficiency up it appears.
Lots of new lessons being learned this run. Still hopeful of a solid harvest at the end of the day.
Yesterday I topped dressed with worm castings,4-4-4 All Purpose, and 2-8-4 Power Bloom in preparation for the flip to 12/12 light schedule.
Today, after defoliation, bending, and weaving the stems through the trellis, the light is now 24 inches from the canopy at 70% power resulting in a ppfd ~550 at the canopy.
The 2 big plants are drinking at least 2L/day now. Giving them a liter at lights on and another liter midday with no runoff.
Between the LED and the coco based medium, I continue to struggle with an apparent cal-mag deficiency which is why I've been adding Cal-Mag Plus to the water with a PH between 5.8 & 6.4. Will restart foliar feeding tonight in the hopes that it clears up before the start of the flowering phase.
I've been decreasing the light period by an hour/day over the past 5 days. Tomorrow will be the first day of 12/12. It's been a long veg period due to the issues with bugs and my killing two of the original plants with, but I need to initiate flower if I have any hope of chopping these plants before the end of August. Wish me luck!
Kept shortening the days by 30 minutes until I hit 12/12 on Wednesday. First pistils arrive today.
Have been increasing the Gavita by 3%/ day and increasing the Co2 by 40 ppm/day.
Now at 85%(836 ppfd at 21") and 980 ppm on the first day of flower.
The light will be at 100% and the Co2 at 1200 ppm within 5 days. Stretch has started and so let's see how much distance they close between the top of of the canopy and the light (currently 21 inches).
Still watering at lights on and 6 hours later. About 5 liters/day between the 4 pots. Declorinated tap water PH'd down to between 6.0-6.5. Continuing to use the trellis to spread them out.
Excited to see the progress over the next week as they approach full intensity. Stay tuned.
Plucked a lot of leaves this week.
2 smaller/younger plants are already falling behind the 2 older/bushier plants in terms of flower development.
Plain water all week until some recharge today on the 8th since first pistils popped.
Noticed a little bit of tip burn on the top leaves. Might be the light distance. Will keep a close eye on it.
One pheno is looking like it might be a keeper. Colas are stacking up like I’ve never seen in my young growing career.
A couple issues this week:
Issue #1.) The plants looked to be suffering stress. Light green leaves at the top of the canopy, and red/purple discoloration at the tips of the leaves. Going over my Trollmaster data I saw that the air temperature in the tent peaked at 92.5 F back on the 20th. I had been providing supplemental Co2 at 1200 ppm, and the leaf surface temperature was consistently 5 degrees cooler than the air temp, but clearly something was wrong and my best guess is heat stress combined with light stress resulting from the plants growing to within 14 inches of the fixture.I've since rigged ducting from my central AC to the tent, raised the light to 24 inches, and set the Trollmaster to begin dimming the fixture if the air temperature exceeds 82 F.
Issue #2.) There are still a few thrip pupa munching on the leaves. Nothing crazy but something I want to stay on top of before they get out of hand. I've dropped the RH to 55% and started spraying Lost Coast Plant Therapy at lights off. I will be spraying every day after lights off for the next 3-5 days, and hopefully I'm able to kill them off once and for all.
Other than that I watered in some microbial mass over the weekend.
The plants are filling up the 4x4 nicely and the one pheno is stacking up beautifully. Each plants is getting about 2 L/Day of plain water PH'd to ~6.5.
I'll be posting a grow question to confirm my suspicion about heat stress. Stay tuned for next week's update!
Stress at the top of the canopy. Is this heat stress, light burn, or a combo? Something else?
Temp in the tent hit 92.5 F at one point, but it's been high 80's in the tent and the leaf surface temp's have been low 80's.
Light was 14 inches at one point but now 24 inches
Looking at your diary your growing in coco and been using very little nutrients. Also your ph is always at 6.5 which is at the high end for coco. If you get your ph closer to 6 and feed some blooming nutrients and cal mag she should bounce back. Try feeding a Ec of 1.2 or 1.4 and make sure you get run off. Go feed, let top inch dry, water, let top inch dry and repeat.
2 of the 4 plants hermied. Chalk it up to light and heat stress compounded by nutrient deficiencies. I thought the Co2 would compensate for the higher temps and light levels, but obviously I was wrong. I assume the unstable genetics of this custom bred strain played a role in things, but the lack of environmental control and growers error was probably the main issue. A lot of orange hairs and I'm assuming that is due to pollination. At least I'll have more seeds at the end, and from the looks of things the flowers will turn out decent.
With the light intensity I think the plants were hungry with the organic only amendments so I've introduced synthetic nutrients to keep them fed. I've also set the Trolmaster to start dimming the lights at 77 F which has meant the Gavita fixture is running anywhere between 65-85% depending on how hot it is outside and thus how much my central AC is running.
Will be interesting to see how the plants finish now that they're pollinated and I've resolved the environmental stresses.
Plants are coming along nicely. Quite a bit of variation between the phenos. #1 plant is producing significantly more resin than the other 3 plants and already starting to swell.
Feeding twice per day. ~ 2.5 liters per plant per day at an EC of 1.3-1.6 and PH between 6.0-6.3. ~1.25 liters/plant around 8:00 am when the lights come on, and another 1.25 liters/plant around 2:00 pm. Usually get a bit of run off. Sometimes 20% and sometimes none at all, but I'm feeding by hand and the timing of the feeds varies a bit day to day and so the amount of runoff hasn't been entirely consistent. Plants don't seem to mind though.
Added a dose of Chitosal to the mix this week. The miicrobial mass has worked so well on the roots that I figured I'd give the chitosal a shot. I'll only be able to get 2 root drench applications in this run, but I'll apply the full protocol on the next crop.
Looking forward to the week ahead. Stay tuned!
Was feeding synthetic nutrients until day 33 and then PH'd water (6.2) on day 34 before top dressing on day 35 of flower with 1 Tbs/Gallon of 2-8-4 Bloom and 4 Tbs/Gallon of worm castings. Watered (PH 6.2) in the dry amendments with 2 ml/gal of miicrobial mass and 8 ml/gal of Chitosal.
The flowers are packing on weight and the resin production looks solid. Their smell is getting stronger by the day.
Plants looking pretty good at the end of week 6 of flower. Colas are stacked and putting on weight.
At the beginning of the week I top dressed with 4 tbs/gal of worm castings and 1 tbs/gal of 2-8-4 Bloom. Watered it in at a PH of 6.2.
Mid week I brewed a PK heavy compost tea made from worm castings (4 cups), 2-8-4 bloom (6 tbs), micronized dolomite lime (4 tbs), epsom salts (2 tbs), and blackstrap molasses (1 tbs). I brewed for 12 hours before adding the molasses for the last 12 hours. It was super frothy and came out to 1000 ppm. I have been giving the plants plain de-clorinated water PH'd down with a bit of citric acid ever since and the plan is to continue plain water the rest of the way.
Pheno #1 is substantially more impressive than the other 3 plants, at least aesthetically. Will have to wait to see how it finishes and what the effects are like, but its the clear front runner for this pheno hunt. I have a few cuts that I took before the flip to flower, but I'm really hoping to find a few seeds in its flowers at the end of this run.
My Co2 tank ran dry today but since I'm growing in my furnace room in the basement, the Co2 level is steady in the mid 700's. I decided not to supplement the rest of the run and I've set my trolmaster controller to dim the light if the temp climbs above 77 F (25 C). Even at 100% the PPFD readings are only in the mid 800's at the canopy 24" from the light. Will keep an eye out for any signs of stress, but with mid 750 ppm of CO2 I think I'll be gucci!
Straight water now and they're drinking less as they fade and ripen. Still popping some fresh hairs here and there but I've been keeping an eye on the trichomes and looking forward to harvesting whenever they're ready. Won't be long by the looks of things.
Chopped on day 57 from from first pistils. Could’ve let them go another week but I have some commitments coming up and I need to dry and jar these flowers before I head out of town for 2 weeks.
Will post the harvest report as soon as they’re finished drying. Stay tuned.
I made a number of mistakes this cycle but managed to end up with a decent yield of high quality medicine.
NEVER use unbuffered coco. It led to deficiencies and undoubtedly impacted yield.
Although I was running supplemental Co2, letting the temps get up into the high 80s low 90s stressed the plants and probably had a negative impact on yield.
Running Co2 in an unsealed tent wound up costing me about $150 because I went through three $50 bottles.
Thrips early in the grow slowed everything down and was a huge pain in the ass to get under control. Should have been much more careful with the compost in my medium, and will use preventative IPM in all future organic grows to avoid dealing with the same complications.
The prized pheno (plant #1) is an absolute stunner. Incredibly frosty with super dense nugs which resulted in a substantially higher yield. I took cuts in order to veg out a mother plant and I will be looking to flower 4 more clones of this pheno next run.
MediciGrade
