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I've been an avid grower of Mephisto gear since my state went legal in 2018 and since day one my goal has been to get my hands on a pack of Strawberry Nuggets. Finally, after several years and dozens of other strains collected from the Meph team, I was able to grab a 7 pack during a recent drop! I immediately set about to germination and am looking forward to running these in a trio of DIY 5gal DWC buckets. Mephisto lists this as a smaller cultivar so I'm hoping I wont regret running three in a 2'x4'x6.5"
This will be my first attempt at hydroponics of any kind and I'm super pumped to run Strawberry Nuggets to break these buckets in! Apologize as my Pixel 3 has a broken aperture so the camera cannot focus properly. So some of these pictures may be slightly out of focus until I replace it with a Pixel 6 in a few weeks.
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
The ladies are off to a smooth start. The buckets are fitted with a drip ring which will help keep things hydrated during the first week or two until the roots reach the solution. The drip rings run for 15 minutes every 4 hours. That said, the roots made it to the solution by day 4 so I'll probably only need it a few more days. It's not worth the added heat it adds to the reservoir after that.
The solution in the reservoirs have about 180ppm and the plants didnt really eat much as by end of week, the number had gone to around 190ppm. Makes sense this early on but I still want to provide something as opposed to pure RO water.
Week 1: 3.5Gal RO water with 5ml of M/G/B & 7ml of Hydroguard = ~170ppm | Light set at 26" @ 88-99W
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
Week two I removed drip rings and bumped the solution up to 230ppm starting the week. By day 3 of week 3, the solution had jumped to ~450ppm for all three. Drinking lots of water but still not eating much. I added pure RO to each reservoir to bring the solution down to ~200ppm where it remained for most of the week, ending around 150ppm. I'm happy with progress so far!
Week 2: 3.5Gal RO water with 7ml of M/G/B, 7ml Hydroguard, 2ml B52 = 230ppm | Light @ 26" & 110W
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
Week 3 ran smooth with not much to report. The ladies are really getting ready for take-off now. Slight increase this week to 10ml of each nutrient part to 4 gallons RO for a total of around 350ppm. Light was lowered to around 18" and intensity increased to 140W.
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
Week 4 and I'm starting to see the real work in DWC with hungry plants and a small reservoir. The plants are taking down 1-1.5gal of water per day and about 100-150ppm of nutrients daily. I'm refilling and adding nutrients about every other day but still spend less time doing so than I did running organics in soil.
I'm very happy with these results so far. Growth is absolutely explosive. I defoliated at day 24 and I can hardly tell by end of week.
Week4: 4Gal with 10ml M/G/B, 8ml Hydroguard = 350ppm | Light set at 18" and @ 200W.
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
Week 5 has seen these ladies absolutely explode during their preflower stretch. I'm definitely regretting my decision to run three of these as space is getting cramped now. That said, they are still happy and health for the time being though they are aggressively hungry, sometimes eating 250ppm and 2gal in a day.
That said, being autos I'm still going easy on the nutrients with 20ml of M/G/B for 4gal of RO water which is roughly 550ppm.
Light is set at 18" with intensity at the full 260W the board is rated for.
Week 6 has seen these girls begin to set proper pre-flowers and the stretch appears to be slowing some finally. I had to HST the tallest pheno (which is markedly different from her sisters) to get her to slow down as she was nearing the limit of my ability to give her proper distance from the LED. The plants are still drinking and eating well with water levels and ppm of the nutrient solution steadily dropping each day and requiring topping off every other day at minimum.
I am using 25ml per 4gal of M/G/B for a total of ~700ppm, light is set as high as I can take it at full rated intensity.
As always, thanks for following my work! If you liked this grow, please click "Like" below and follow my other diaries. Cheers! 👊🌱☮️✌️💪
Bud set continued nicely during week 7. The size of the large pheno necessitated that I cull the smallest of the three plants leaving only two remaining for this harvest.
Budset continued nicely during week 8. The big purple pheno drinks so much more than I expected. Sometimes drinking almost 2gal per day. I fell asleep early a few nights and forgot to top her up leading to some seriously crispy leaves and some loss of root mass. Won't make that mistake again.
Buds continue to develop well! I'm still a little upset that I let them get off track with a few days of letting reservoirs get too low but, lessons learned. This is, after all, my first DWC run. :)
The smell is absolutely unreal!! Exactly like berries or some type of strawberry dessert. I want them to be done so badly but they've clearly got a bit longer to go.. Fattening up nicely and really starting to show what kind of harvest they will give!
Getting closer now! I see why Strawberry Nuggets has such a stellar reputation. I can't say enough about how unreal the smell of these flowers are. They are also dense and well formed colas. Mephisto never fails to impress! Any day now they will come down.
The variation between phenos was a bit surprising for this being an F4 but at the end of the day both ended up true to the namesake strain. The bigger of the two gave me 8oz of dense purple buds that smell like a dessert and the smaller of the two yielded 2.87ox. The smaller pheno gave me mostly green buds with a pink hue and an earthy more kush-like smell.
For me, how she performs on the press is everything and this one was a bit of a disappointment. So far, I've been unable to achieve anything more than 16-17% return. Typically with most Mephisto strains i see 20-25% average rosin return on my flower. That being said, the extract she produces are top notch. The purple pheno rosin is runny and hard to collect but retains all of that lovely berry terp profile. The pink pheno yielded a waxy rosin that was very easy to collect and had a kush-y sandalwood and earth flavor.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to finally run and press Strawberry Nuggets as I've had my eye on it for several years but struggled to get my hands on the gear. It is clear to see why it is one of the most sought after Mephisto cultivars as she is a breeze to grow and the end result is phenomenal. That said, those running this for extraction on a press should know that you may be in for lower yields than you are used to seeing with other strains. For me, it wasn't really a problem as I got enough flower to make up for the loss of extraction yield. I probably won't run her often but she'll definitely have a place in my tent every once in a while when im in the mood for something truly indulgent.
Hey man, just wanted to say thanks for the diary. I have just switched nutrient companies to Advanced and needed a base feeding schedule for DWC. So far so good on the second week of flower!👊
Hey man, just wanted to say thanks for the diary. I have just switched nutrient companies to Advanced and needed a base feeding schedule for DWC. So far so good on the second week of flower!👊
samadhi
