Minigrow:Wedding gelato RQS & Black Bomb

This is my second grow with Leds lights now , before 10 years i grew some plants with Hps for about 2 years ..Now after all this time my first grow was an autoflower grow (royal dwarf )and had these plants(Wedding Gelato & Black Bomb) for vegging as side plants nearly 9 weeks.((( when I noticed that royal dwarf started flowering i plant the seeds. That particular pheno of Royal dwarf took me 100 days from seed to harvest and also burned it almost killed it at the vegging phase because i had the lights as close as 25 cm when more than 60 cm distance needed with this light in veg phase in my opinion and without Co2 added.As i had never grew with leds I learned it the hard way but in the end I harvested something more than 30 grams from it ,so it was ok for me))). The plants were stressed due to low humidity at the last weeks of flowering of my auto(around 30% RH). After chopping my auto i switched to 12/12 and add Co2 by fermentation method using sugar and yeast. I think its working because of my small grow room but i have to wait for a Co2 meter i ordered to be sure. Anyway, the plants look far better than 1-2 weeks before and hoping to be even better the upcoming weeks. The biggest plant in the biggest pot in the front of the grow room is the wedding gelato and the one at the back right corner the black bomb).

Plants look good and nice budlets have formed on both Wedding gelato and Black bomb. I added 2 more 1.5liter bottles with sugar-yeast (fermentation) to achieve the production of an adequate amount of Co2 in the grow tent, until i receive my CO2 meter to test if this method worth it for my set up otherwise I will be using C02 bags like exhale in the upcoming grows .Plants were not stretched that much, i was expecting. I will try to shorten the distance between lights and the plants' canopy when they finally finish stretching . I will do this gradually ,because in my last grow i found out that Leds can easily burn plants when you put them too close to the canopy even if they don't raise the heat that much.. This is also one of the reasons I added Co2 so i could bring the lights closer to the plants to be able to produce denser buds.

Plants just overcame the stress of defoliation+ the stress caused by too high humidity >85% because I had the grow room totally sealed for the most part of lights on period ,for Co2 to work but the humidity was too high for this so for now on I will run (only) the exhaust fan to keep temp and %RH in ideal levels, and let the bottles with sugar yeast at the bottom for extra Co2 build up. Many of the top buds' pistils turned brown in the previous week because (maybe) of the humidity that was over 90% sometimes and the fan pointing straight at the canopy of the plants. I also lower the lights closer to the plants the last 2 days and so far wedding gelato responds really well but black bomb's leaves seems to have some light bleaching(I elevated the Black Bomb with a small ,5 cm height, box to fit the height of Wedding Gelato's canopy ) maybe I will lower the plant if I see its leaves get worse than that. ***Midweeκ edit day 25 flowering : I decide to take away the box that elevated Black bomb to fit WG because of serious light bleaching at 33 cm distance from my Led light, while plant still needs its fan leaves, now at almost 40cm from the light i hope it will be fine. (I don't know why but WG seems to do a lot better from BB at 30 cm lights distance from canopy, maybe it is that BB is almost pure Indica and in a smaller pot and generally smaller plant...)

I am now running the intake fan also together with the exhaust fan to keep temperature and humidity a bit lower in the grow room. On day 33 of flowering I lower the lights 2 inches and now standing at 28 cm above the canopy, if I see the plants can take it the next day or 2 I will keep this light distance till the end. Plants' were tip burned from excess nitrogen as i up the dose on fish mix at 6ml/lit for three days ,and then cut it down completely and up the bio boom to 5ml/lt. In the final days of week 5 I lower the lights to 25 cm above canopy as I don't have much space to cover I go for high intensity at about 800 μmol ,leaves are deep green and buds are everywhere and both plants seems that they can handle this intensity.(before 2 weeks Black Bomb suffered from light bleaching when i was putting the lights even at 35 cm distance from canopy. Now on day 35,I don't know how ,but it seems to do well at 25 cm distance from lights. Was it harden threw these weeks or from the previous light stress at 35 distance? I don t know...But I saw that the light bleaching was reversible on Black Bomb as the yellow leaves became green again, maybe Alg-a-mic played a role there and that I saw the signs early.

Plants grow smoothly, and starting to look sticky. I kept 25 cm light distance from canopy threw the end of this week and plants seem they can take it. Today the last day of the week after testing for real that levels of Co2 in the tent is adequate(1000-2000ppm) I lowered the lights even more at 22 cm distance from canopy to achieve an intensity of almost 1000 μmol/m2/sec because the area of the tent I grow is small for this light I go for intensity .

Have the plants now standing at 22cm from the lights with 1500ppm Co2 added with the sugar and yeast fermentation method. I expect ((from the intensity charts I found for this particular Led light at 22 cm distance from plants)) the intensity to be from 900-1000 umols at the top of the plants. I stopped giving them any fish mix and bio grow from the previous week ,to let the plant focus on bud ripening As I am reading in a forum the Co2 levels I have in the grow room right now for this weeks is too much and i have to drop around 1000,by removing some bottles.

Keep feeding Wedding gelato till day 53 of flowering, and will only use Flawless finish for 2-3 times now and then water only for 2-3 times before harvest for a total 10 days flush. I will let the plants flower for nine weeks as I see they still are not ready, but I keep feeding Black Bomb because it seems to be like a week behind so I am thinking that I have to give it an extra week alone at the end. After harvesting Wedding gelato, I think I will place Black Bomb in a near closet with the Led light hanging above because I need to use the grow tent for its ventilation system for drying Wedding Gelato in ideal conditions, which is my main grow( I have more Black Bomb seeds for the future but not another Wedding Gelato...Yet ,I have a Royal Gorilla seed for my next grow in autumn😉). I want for the first time to do an almost perfect drying and curing of my buds before even trying them, around 6-8 weeks total … slow drying and carefully curing them, monitoring the temp and RH% all the time ,and using Integra humidity packs 62% after some days of curing in mason jars. I think this strain worth the wait for it, and I wouldn't risk any mold issues I would have by hanging the Wedding gelato in a plain near closet to dry while leaving Black Bomb in the grow tent to finish its flowering cycle...I think the near closet will work fine for Black Bomb for a week even with only light ventilation, because I have very low humidity levels by using constantly a dehumidifier ,and I will use the grow tent for drying Wedding gelato((and Black bomb when ready)) in ideal conditions.

Trichomes at day 59 of flowering are half milky half clear in W. Gelato. I was thinking to harvest at day 63 ,but now I think I will give it 3-4 days more I count flowering days from the day I switch on 12/12 not when I first saw pistils. Black bomb might need 11 weeks flowering ,as I stressed the plant too much during the main defoliation before flip on 12/12,and from light bleaching. Also, yesterday that I run out of weed I took some popcorn buds(1-2 grams) from wedding gelato and fast dried them in the oven. The taste was pretty good for oven dried weed with strong aftertaste of mint, pine and candy and not harsh taste, the chlorophyll was the only downside. ***Edit day 63 of flowering : Wedding gelato seems ripe with 90% white trichomes , the rest keep turning cloudy and only like a 2-3% of trichomes' heads ) become amber I think I will harvest this Sunday morning on day 65 of flowering ( from when flipped to 12/12). Under the microscope in some places of the buds (not allover the buds) concentration of white trichomes is that high that I cannot even see the green colour of the bud behind them Black Bomb maybe coming to its end of flowering also, as it does not drink as much as it did the previous week so I think I will start flushing this one from the next time till the end hopefully 7-10 days.

Leaves are fading from green to purple in wedding gelato ,and as I see no amber trichomes yet I am thinking to harvest her at day 70,after putting her in darkness for 24 hours, hoping to get more potent and purple shading buds than right now. I am not worrying for 10-20% amber trichomes I even trying to get that, to be sure I harvest her at peak potency, right now still a 30% of the trichomes are clear and are ripening day by day.

Chopped her at day 68 after giving 16 hours dark .. I just left a branch to finish with Black Bomb in 4-5 days just for experimenting reasons (colours, and trichomes white to amber ration). I trimmed only the big fan leaves and will dry trim later. . Wet bud weight is "420" gr 😎! I hope it could stay there after the drying process😄 . The 2 things I did not like in this grow was the fat rope of the scrog net and that I left too many bud sites under the main tops which were already too many so the next time I will stretch all the budsites above the net and lollipopping everything under. I already knew it but I was experimenting with defoliation for the first time, now I think I got it how it works,.. I will upload dried bud weight in about 2 weeks ,and in 1-2 months photos of cured buds and a smoke report

Very well for the little space I gave her, bad pruning(too many colas and on top of that I left popcorns hoping they will be buds, but without light penetrating the top canopy defoliation cant work ) and stress she took(overfeeding ,light burn).I expect something about an oz. of her top buds when dried which is quite good and also a nice smoke for the end of the day..