Big Bazooka

Big Bazooka so far has been a quick sprouting plant, some strains take longer than others however very few come up so nicely. If a plant doesn't grow all too well, I will usually leave it in a solo cup longer in hopes that the root structure will develop better. If for some reason things go really bad where the top of the plant looks like it might cause it to bend over on itself, a clothes pin or some other object should be used to help prop it up and support it for a week or so. Sometimes I use clothes pins when plants develop a twist at their base and want to topple over, clothes pins can help by putting tension on the plant and help them correct themselves. To transplant, take the new vessel and place enough soil at the base so that the height of the old one will be where the top soil line will be where the new top soil line will be for the new one. Take the plant and the old vessel and flip it upside down and gingerly work it out through shaking, avoid tugging, and if need be squish the base of the solo cup until the contents are loosened. Then place the plant into the new vessel, now is the time to center the plant in the middle. Then fill in the sides with new soil and leave extra soil over the old soil line as a way to account for future settling. With fabric pots sometimes, sometimes pinching the base may be required to free roots that may have been stuck on the old fabric pot. During transplanting certain strains may be stressed out, signs are usually lower (often oldest) fan leaves start to die off or top leafs change to a lighter color. Usually if plants are planted in fresh soil with lots of nutrients and water PH'd correctly, within a week the stress should pass. Usually the younger the plant the less likely the stress will be and Autoflowering plants shouldn't ever be transplanted as stress can be detrimental in the long run. If transplanting to larger fabric pots, I'll usually line it with top soil to help retain moisture and to prevent seepage from underneath or at least slow it down. One thing I would try in my future grows is adding mold to add to the root bundle as I hear it may prevent stress and benefit plant and soil health. Transplanting is an easy and should be taken advantaged of by folks who are new to growing. I usually am quite vigilante and like to observe my plants, usually sitting and staring at plants for a good 10 minutes a day is quite tranquil but has the added advantage of spotting issues. If watering is done correctly then most issues can be corrected by transplanting, my first grow hadn't had PH'd water until fairly late in the grow. A good way to gauge is when a container gets too small the bottom node leafs will change yellow. A good passage of transplanting through it's life is solo cup to 2 gallon pot, to 3 gallon pot, to 5 gallon pot, to 7 gallon pot, to 10 gallon pot. Once experience and skills are gained going the route some sizes can be removed, if a strain is too sensitive to transplanting it may take longer to grow but it will allow a safer route. Usually transplanting to something double the volume is best. After transplanting I usually will wet down the very top soil as it will usually be too dry and allow water to penetrate too deep too fast. Then slowly keep adding water in the evening. My watering habits are that I check my plants first thing in the morning and the first thing when I get home from work.

Big Bazooka is doing great at the moment! Current water schedule is pretty much water when it needs it some times twice a day. Watering usually is done twice a day, usually check my plants first thing in the morning and a second time at night after dinner. I usually have 4 1 gallon jugs, 3 for water and 1 for feed. Usually I’m using about 1-2 gallons a day. Every time using about 3ml of Calmag per gallon and then enough PH down to make the PH anywhere between 5.8-7. As for feedings, I’m still figuring out but usually don’t feed until flowering as the soil usually carries enough nitrogen through flowering especially when doing enough transplants. Usually I have issues with phosphorous so lately my feed has been nothing but bloom nutrients with a little nitrogen. As you see in the pictures there are some clothes pins, I use those to help seedlings and small plants to stand up. After awhile a single pole may have to be used if the plant doesn’t grow and balance itself. Currently I like the results with this strain a it grows about as fast as an auto flowering strain through it’s seedling stage.

Growing steadily larger, last week it was transplanted into larger 3g pots. Plan on vegetating for 2-3 more weeks and flip them. Currently one of the better strains I have or have grown. Right now, having harvested 4 plants, and have probably 2 dozen more underway. I found the hurdles I’ve overcome are mainly lessons that had to be learned. First and foremost was patience, then learning. After those it was learning PH and now my struggle is nutrients.

Big Bazooka is still growing vigorously, have noticed some yellowing on the bottom leaves. However I still don’t really thing much of it, more often it’s because of slight PH or mute variations. One question I’ve seen on forums is how do you measure and keep nutrients and additives. Usually I keep all additives and nutrients in factory containers unless they start leaking. I keep all mixed solutions in 1 gallon milk jugs, usually with caps removed to allow chlorinated tap water to dechlorinate through evaporation. I’ve found that dechlorinating water doesn’t affect my final PH so I’ll usually premix CalMag and use PH down. Since tap water stays around a PH of 8, the same amount of PH down is used. To do so I use pipettes, usually 2 different sizes, 1.5ml and 3ml. 1.5 for PH solution and 3ml for everything else. As for feed and PH issues, it’s something that should be monitored closely. Starting out one should be conservative and do a quarter of the feed charts. Also keep in mind that different stages should always be treated differently and good note keeping will be greatly beneficial. Especially being observant, daily observation of each plant will give you a better eye and understanding issues and properly diagnosing then so that you can fix and not have them happen again. My first grow, I lacked understanding of PH and nitrogen. Every time an issue happened where yellowing of leaves would happen in veg, I’d think it was a nitrogen deficiency, all the while watering with un-PH’d water. You can water hot soil with water which has a PH of 8 for so long, however this lesson taught me that I won’t have to PH water for seedlings in solo cups with hot soil or they’d burn. The opposite is that I can PH water with more mature plants and have less headache and transplant when the time is right for the plant or my schedule. Overall the right tools make the difference and make life easier.