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Dry bean into a soaked eazyplug as usual popped in 3 days, nice dark green colour. Everything looks good, the first baby leaves have some interesting red tinges around the edges so this one looks like she's going to be a pretty girl. Can't really say that about Purple Gorilla, she was a bit of a beast.
Everything nice and normal. I have a good feeling about this one, especially, I think she's going to be something special. We shall see in another 11 weeks. Just upped the nutes a tiny bit this week. I'll keep the same reservoir and just add a bit extra of the FloraGro for the next week.
She was looking to be very stunted, didn't look like topping was a good idea, so for the first time I have not topped but bent the her right over and so far this might even be better than topping. Looking forward to see how this one turns out. Nice to see that she is looking very healthy.
Still following on from last week for my first bend over rather than topping. Still looking good no shoots are below the canopy, she looks like she's going to want to be fairly bushy, so I'm keeping a close eye on her. Not really any defoliating at all yet as it's not necessary. However I'm evolving my thinking on defoliation, I'm wondering if I should keep lots of leaves until flowering begins thus building up the biggest root system and then defoliate. I may test that out on this grow, with a single huge defoliation next week. We shall see. EDIT: at the end of the day I went back in for some light defoliation on the new shoots, all the large fan leaves are still attached but tucked. I'm figuring that there's enough greenery to power the new shoots without needing to build more leaves.
All seems to be coming along better than expected for my first attempt at bending instead of topping. This is my first time growing Lemon Pie so I don't have anything to compare it to regard to topping. Also I will top the next one to see the difference. Meanwhile though I have gotten the first six branches out easily and I have branch 7 from the 4th node going straight up, then I removed the next pair, then there's two shoots coming straight up from the 6th node. And all the while there is no height increase. What I've been able to achieve that I could never do by simply topping is that I have kept all the large fan leaves even large leaves near the top because they are not covering anything. Once I could see I have a large outer ring of huge leaves, I thought I may as well do continuous defoliating from the new shoots, before they actually use their energy to build unnecessary leaves. I have also been keeping the ppm much lower than I used to, around 700 ppm. Interesting to see what takes place from here.
Everything going smoothly. I have been able to keep lots of large leaves around the outside meanwhile I have been doing daily defoliation in the central area. Everything is spread out quite nice but things could start to get a little crowded. Early flowing underway.
I have been doing continual defoliation around the middle, meanwhile she seems to be tending towards a willowing more sativa type of shape. Could be a bit tricky spreading this one out as she looks like a long bloomer.
I have been doing continual defoliation since a major undergrowth clear out. She is beginning to bud up nicely now. Appears to have stopped growing so this will be a fairly shortish plant less than 20inches. It looks like it will be harder to spread the branches out using this bending over method rather than topping but all seems fine so far.
Edit: I did a late night understory clean up and more defoliation. This will probably be all I need to do now for the next few weeks.
The only thing that has happened since last week is she is starting to bulk up and sending out dank vibes. The trichomes looks dense and while fairly short at 17" there's not much wasted stem. I bought a new Viparspectra for the corner of my L shaped space, I like this a lot due to it's handy 10" square size, so I can just keep my two QB96's for the main flowering girl.
This is not a large plant at 18" and while she has very dense trichomes, I am fretting a little bit, she is beginning to chunk up with a few orange hairs here and three at the top of a few cola, which I'm also seeing with multiple heads at the top, so that is encouraging. Little purple tips appearing amongst the flowers and resin productions appears like it's just gearing up, could be another four weeks, I'll have a better idea next week. Meanwhile because she is short, I have manage to squeeze her in the corner with the new 100W viparspectra above her plus more light spilling in sideways from a 190W QB96 and some light spilling off the puck above the new seedlings, so she is getting light from all directions but not too much of it. 50k LUX maximum. I took a lot of overcooked leaves off and the new exposed leaves seem happier.
Not much change this week, some more maturity and a bit of bulking but I don't think she's going to get a lot fuller, still only a small amount of orange anthers. The buds further down look like they have a way to go yet but they are very densely packed with trichomes. Not an overpowering smell just a very pleasant citrus. I do like the form the colas are taking, however I am fretting a bit, I need to really get 8 zips off this at least, but she is looking more like a 6 at this stage, if that.
Remember this is the first plant I have not topped but tied down severely such that the top cola is actually down the side somewhere, although it is big, my overall impressions is that it fills the space nicely and all the branches get to go straight up, I'll have to do another grow with normal topping in order to make a definitive assessment, but this was my best effort at not topping, so if I can do better than this then that will settle the issue for me once and for all.
Interestingly in the last pic you can see that a large branch has been torn nearly off the main stem, yet this has had no effect at all on the cola it is supporting, not better, not worse. This sort of puts a dagger in the old hippie myth about putting a stake through the stem to "stress" the plant before harvest to make it magically anthropomorphise itself with the knowledge that it... must. not. die...ahhhgghhh
Right here we are at week 13, sometimes it feels like it's never going to arrive. This is the third week now where I have kept the same reservoir on my other grows too, and it seems to be fine, I'm going to push another week on each one. Back to this week though and all these shots are buds taken today and I'll be using them to gauge how they change. looks like another week perhaps. They are looking nice and crusty so as long as they keep fattening then I'll keep her going. Looking forward to topping the next one and comparing.
She looks close the lower calyxes have swollen and I don't think there's any more maturing to do, absolutely covered in heavy trichomes everywhere. Still most of the trichomes are clear she can grow for one more week then I need the space for the next bean but I think she'll come down in a few days. See how she goes. The smell is not overwhelming, and very classic looking buds, nice and rounded on top and very dense. There should be some decent quality larf to put through my FatMac. This has been the fourth week without a reservoir change, same with my other plants, all looking good. All got changed today for the next four week cycle. Next update probably in two weeks with the harvest report.
Turns out the weather was perfect for drying. This is my first time bending the plant waay over instead of topping, so it was all new, turns out to not be a lot of difference except the shape is more rounded. I was a bit worried that it was not going to be a good return, I thought I might struggle to get six zips. eight seemed a bit optimistic but in the end she produced over 13.2 zips. I've just been extracting resin from the lowest quality of the box of larf I have and she is returning what I'd expect from my best buds, so yes, this is probably heavier than she looks because of the resin. Nice and light golden with a spicy delicate aroma. I'll be popping a seedsman amnesia next, but the one following that will be another Lemon Pie but she will be topped. However I can't see that I'm going to improve on 13.2, but you never know. Nevertheless I am very surprised at the yield.
She looks very pretty! And she definitely is a long bloomer in my opinion. Seen some other diary’s in here that finish on the suggested time but mine will take 14/15 weeks before she comes down. Best of luck and hope she yields you well ✌️
@Freddd, imma keep watching 👍 just pulled mine down as having some humidity problems where I am! Hanging to dry atm. Stinks…very fruity, skunky with a little citrus. Painfully got to wait another 10days now! This always feels like the longest 10days of my life 😂. Good luck bro ✌️
Thank you for the detailed pictures and descriptions of training in veg, just starting out growing it's so helpful seeing that and then the final results.
Any chance of a well lit photo of the branch structure from underneath in week 9?
Best of health to you and this happy looking lady!
@Freddd, Aww yeah, money shots 😜 Nice thick branches pulled back super low down, looks nice.
Is that 800ppm-1000ppm on the /500 scale? Once I learned about how all the ppm/tds/whatever scales are just based on EC I learned EC and never went back.
Seems like every manufacturer has a recommended curve to the strength, makes sense, did that on my first grow and it turned out great.
Trying out just a super simple full blast EC ~2.0 mix from start to finish now as a bit of an experiment. The nutes I switched to are so damn cheap and I use the waste water outside, makes it that much easier if it turns out good enough. (Still have low standards for my own😁)
@Absurd, hey I appreciate the nice words I put a lot of love into these girls. This is the first time I've bent a plant over like this usually I'll top at the fourth node, or 3 node if I put two in a pot. I have also begun lowering my nutes ppm to about 800 growing and 1000 flowering, seems to be better that what I use to use which was about 50% stronger. This is a very branchy plant, I took a lot of undergrowth out and I'll take some more out and clean it up a bit. But basically the structure has grown out as you'd expect, however I have uploaded another two shots.
Que maravilha ✌️
Boa sorte no cultivo e aproveita o desenvolvimento 👍
E no final que tenhas uma grande colheita 🌱🌱
Se quiseres passa pelo meu diário e deixa o teu apoio
Orange stigmas, it's a good thing she doesn't have anthers 😉
Do you know what's causing the spotty necrosis?
She's bulking up! Took to the no-topping training well.
@Absurd, well you're doing pretty good in that bucket, it can only get easier. I think what really makes the difference is if the grower really loves this plant and the whole thing which obviously you do. If you had asked me a year ago I'd have been all in on those links at one stage I had calculations and charts and ratios it was like in that scene from 'a beautiful mind, https://youtu.be/hh84bamfe_A
You see I finally realised that there are so many variable, that you don't really know what's going on, if you really want to find out the stuff you want to know, then you have to create a dedicated space and do the direct reasearch yourself, direct knowledge, problem is to do it properly would be a giant undertaking, better to not bother, find something simple that works and then concentrate on growing variety.
Look take my seedsman grow the Northern Lights, is branchy and squat, the NYDiesel, is beautiful strong but still not too rigid. My seesdman grow #2 has a BigBug X NL which is massive Purple Haze which is diminutive. Now you see the advantage of the double planting I get to evaluate four beans, and lo and behold I now see that with my remaining beans, I should put BigBud X in it's own pot, and Same with NY Diesel. The other two might be nice but I'd have to evaluate the yield. If I wanted I could pull the Purple Haze, but instead, I'm taking the opportunity to see if I can just grow out a single stem.
Don't get caught up in the rabbit hole, grow more variety, you'll enjoy it more. That's what I do anyway.
@Freddd, from the GAs and ingredient lists I found I agree, GP3 seems to be just a slight tweak of GH flora trio.
You do you man, all for it as I'd be SUPER happy with any of those plants on your dairies.
I need the academics to guide my common sense, never had the knack for growing anything before diving into plant physiology and do cannabis in hydro. That said, the practical use of what I've learned reading so far has probably been minimal so I get it.
Regarding academic studies of effects of different spectra variations on whole plants though - there's been a few beyond comparing hps/mh/blurple/led, Bruce Bugbee et al., tons of citations on the Samuel Bilodeau et al. 2019 paper. I can link or share some if you want, Don't know the topic intimately, find it interesting but even less practical than learning general physiology for my home grow now that I chose my lights.
30L is a pretty good amount, should be able to get 4 weeks for the first couple of changes without too much drama I'd say, I've been getting 2 on a less than half volume in week 9 with one of my plants easy, not expecting to be able to safely go 2 weeks later in flower though.
What kind of source water do you have? Never had to hit mine with pH up even when I used GH flora (my tap is 7.4 so that raises it quick) but that's sounding a little like what my purple haze did, would just swing pH all over the place late in life.
Really hope I don't run into that again with my current plants, can't hear sativas talk to me yet, they just do whatever the hell they want😐
I think I can hear my black jack a little, but all it seems to say is "yeah, definitely a bush, yeah, I like being a short bush I don't like heights"
Speaking of doing whatever the hell they want, if you get some time could you give me a sanity check on my week9 strawberry cough update? I bent the shit out of a main cola to grow it right through the center of the plant to try and get her under control.
@Absurd, Yeah well I have a 30L outside res so definitely you'd need something stable like that. I'm hoping to just mix three times per complete grow, at 0, 4 and 8 weeks, after 8 weeks I'll just leave it. There's no way I'd head down the rabbit hole of trying to work it out on a cellular level, I reckon that it's the breeders who have really done the hard work and all we have to do is get a few basics right. I'm convinced that the 3 part gp3 or GHE (both the same basically) have everything needed and if I stick to a standard pattern it works well. So I'm just trying to forget the academic approach, I've been there, I mean all the academic studies that were done with different wavelengths of light and the effect on the plant cell were just done on single cells, not really useful in the real world. As everyone discovered as they switched to white lights.
I find the most satisfying results have come from me just using my own common sense. Take a look if you like at my first auto flower grow after 22 years, it's the OG Kush, I just rigged up a mini version of what I used to use, you can see the roots hanging in the air being sprayed a bit. Sort of. It worked well. But right from the beginning, I knew it is always about the roots. If the roots are bursting then you have to work hard to fuck it up!
30L seems about right for being big enough to stay stable, but small enough to handle easily. It's just like a buffer against the occasional wild swing. At the moment I've been experimenting with two things, one is to run the res for four weeks, and the other is to try and work out what the plant wants by the pH. For example usually I'm alway adding pH up, continuously up until there's come a point late in flower where she will stay stable for a while then suddenly go more acidic quickly, I figure something is happening, so I'm going to smoke some week and try and get into the plant spirit to explain to me what the fuck is going on. I want to hear it direct from the sativa's mouth, the cannabis whisperer.
@Absurd, Absolutely, there was hardly any trimming because I left some leaves on to protect the buds, but even the backs of the sugar leaves on the main buds are coated. It doesn't have "bag appeal" but it really does look fabulous. There's no knock you out pine terps, just a subtle lemon, spice. Yeah, I'd always be happy to go with either a Fast Buds or Short Stuff, they might even be connected somehow, but they do have the structure I like. I've gone off Dutch Passion they don't really grab me.
@Freddd, Squeezing fresh lemons 😂 Bottoms of the sugar leaves look nice and covered with trichs too. Think i'll be going with that breeder if I decide to pop some autos, looks like quality genetics.
@Absurd, Thanks man. I am pretty stoked, I didn't think I could do this without topping. This is the most all over resinous girl yet, the rosin just pours out of the Fat Mac before I even put any pressure on.
Freddd
