Objective:
Grow a 500g crop from a single plant using longer veg and advanced growing techniques, mostly topping, and super cropping.
The main idea here is to keep things as simple as possible, keep costs and maintenance to a minimum.
I don't bother with pH meters, EC measurements, or any of the supplements grow shops sell.
For soil growers they are a waste of time and money.
Seed:
Early Skunk by Sensi Seeds.
https://sensiseeds.com/en/feminized-seeds/sensi-seeds/early-skunk-feminised
(free)
Medium:
Soil, the cheapest I could find in my garden supply store.
150L for 10 euros
Lights:
The cheapest LED 'Mars' type clone I could find on Amazon, sold as "400w", the real wattage is 150W, I got 6 of those plus 2x100W white cob LEDs.
The 150W ones are 100cm from the plant top.
The white ones are mainly there so I can see what I'm doing, they are on the ceiling.
Total illumination: 1000w REAL watts.
6 x Chinese LEDs = 500 euros
2 x White LEDs = 150 euros
Grow space:
My tool shed. it's a 2m wide x 4m long x 2.6m high.
Well insulated and dark.
Nutrients:
The cheapest fertilizer from my garden supply store.
N6 - P2 -K5, recommended concentration: 7ml/ liter
1 liter = 1.5 euros
Pot:
35 liters, about 70% full.
5 euros
Air circulation:
30cm oscillating fan, with CO2 supplementation.
I have no neighbors so no odor control is necessary.
Fan = 8 euros
5 kg CO2 tank +regulator: 150 euros, +60 euros for every refill.
Total cost of setup:
825 euros.
Day 0:
I germinated the seed in wet paper towels, room temp is 20c.
In retrospect it probably would have been much faster if I put it in water for 24 hours and put it somewhere warm.
Day 1:
Seed is starting to crack open.
Day 2:
Root begins to emerge.
Day 3:
Moved towel to +30 degrees incubator.
Day 4:
The Root is growing much faster.
Day 5:
The Root is about 1.5cm long, the seed was planted in a 35L pot.
The temperature is 22c-26c, humidity 30%-40%, light cycle 19/5.
Only one 150w LEDs + white LEDs are working at this point.
The plant was watered with 500ml tap water.
Day 6:
The seedling broke the surface.
Day 7:
The seedling is 2-3cm tall, and first set of true leaves is developing.
The plant was watered with 500ml tap water.
I've really enjoyed reading your journal. I've also never been able to find anything definitive about the benefits/drawbacks of defoliation during flowering. I'm inclined to remove large fan leaves early in flower and then leave it alone.
@Toothless, that was a lesson I learned in my first grow, to trim the stuff away under the main canopy. My plants wasted a lot of energy in larf that should have gone into buds. Next grow I'm going to veg long enough to mainline into 4 colas then leave them alone in flower.
@OldCoolSativa, Thanks man! Yeah I think the plant knows what it's doing, so I tend to just leave it alone. The lower parts I trim because the important part is the canopy which is exposed to light, but once the canopy is even and full - that's all we can ask for :)
I think the problem of most beginners is over doing. Over watering, over feeding, over training, over lighting. It's so exciting to start growing that most people forget that the best thing for the plant is to just leave it alone and let it grow :D
@Toothless,there's an article proving that removing the biggest leafs is beneficial since those biggest leafs compete with your buds. http://www.rollitup.org/t/scientific-evidence-that-selective-defoliation-is-beneficial.825108/
@Bstoner, Hey Bstoner, thank you! Yes I have considered it. There are mixed opinions about defoliation even among experts, and I tried really hard to find some conclusive evidence to sway me either way - I couldn't find any.
So I decided to leave it like this because my own logic says the leaves are after all quite important, and the top canopy is quite uniform and that's the most important part of the grow. I don't think light penetration to the lower parts of the plant is that important and sacrificing top leaves to help bottom leaves grow doesn't make sense to me, but what do I know? :D
I will however harvest the plant in 3 stages from top to bottom to let middle and lower buds a chance to mature. As you can see I'm not in any hurry with this grow :)
This is a very beautiful plant ! I have a few questions if u dont mind ? How many flowers do you top at the same time when they are used to topping ?
How many branches at a time did u supercrop on the first time you did it ?
How many branches do u supercrop at a time afterwards ?
Good luck with the flowering time !!
@Toothless, Thanks a lot i looked thru the diary before ( which helped me well for the start of my topping) so thanks dude and thanks again for these answers ππ
Wishing you the best πͺπͺπͺπͺ
@Doudou, Thank you Doudou. If you browse through the journal I wrote down the toppings: Day 21: 1 topping, Day 23: 2 toppings, Day 25: 2 toppings, Day 26: 2 toppings, Day 29: 4 toppings, Day 34: 7 toppings, overall 18 times. I read online people recommend to wait 1 week minimum before each topping, but to be honest at least this strain didn't seem to care at all for the topping. About the super-cropping I don't remember the number in the first time, but I estimate 7-8 shoots at a time. I just found the shortest thick branch in the canopy, and bent all the branches that were higher so that they are all in the same height. and I did it every few days, no matter how many branches I needed to bend.
@bosgrower, at some point I would like to make a graph of veg time to yield to find the most efficient veg time of the strains I'm growing :) Also for me plant count is an issue, so in order to keep it down, I prefer to have fewer plants and veg longer.
I really liked your journals too!
The purple of the stalk could also be genetics and not a deficiency. Mine has a lot of purple around the same area and i am pretty its genetics. I might be wrong. either way this skunk looks amazing. π
@@shadowman, You are very correct, it can be both. However it came quite suddenly and it's very hard to give too much Magnesium, so I added just in case!
Thanks a lot for your nice comment! :)
I dont know if this plant would survive without CO2, as I can see that your temps are really high. I will add in my grow, thats why I ask. Here my temps go 32C like in a daily basis, I can see slow growth, as I dont use CO2 yet, I think it will help, dont you?
@babyburn76, As far as I know, CO2 in flower adds about 25% in yield. There is no data if CO2 in veg does anything, but I believe it does. From what I know and what I have seen in my grow so far, with CO2 the plant can be happy also in 40 degrees. My plants were 2 weeks in 36-42 degree and nothing happened, at least in veg. A real solution would be to control the temperature better, which is going to be harder in the summer. Hopefully I will have enough money to upgrade my setup before summer.