BCBD Tangie Cookies - Tent troubleshoot

Today the experiment begins. The plants were in 1 gallon nursery bags that had promix hp and Gaia green amendments for the last little while as I was stunting growth waiting for room to empty out. Finally have room available soon so decided to get them started again. The Experiment: Problem: Trouble shoot what is going on in my flower tent last grow, and causing the plants to struggle all of a sudden. Hypothesis: The issues arose after I switched 3 things 1) Soil was switched to sunshine mix 4 (covid had caused a shortage of promix HP) 2) Lights were changed to 2x phlizon ph-3000 3) Nutrients were switched from synthetic to Gaia Green My hypothesis is one or more of these factors contributed to the crops odd behavior. Procedure: I have 2 clones of BCBD - Tangie cookies taken on the same day from the same mother treated and trained the same (one seems to have grown slightly taller, likely based on the location under the light, but the difference is minimal, especially once training actually begins) Clone 1 was transplanted into a 3 gallon pot of promix HP amended with Gaia green 4-4-4 and worm castings with perlite watered with ph'd and calmag water Clone 2 was transplanted into straight promix HP and watered with ph'd calmag water with 1 teaspoon/gal maxigro putting it from 330 ppm well water into 1050ppm nutrient solution They have both been place under the center of the mars 1600 and will remain there until the last two strains finish flower in the 5x5 flower tent. Once the tent is cleared and cleaned I will center each one under their own ph 3000 and have a few smaller plants around to fill out the corners. The plants will be vegged a while longer and transplanted into new 7 gallon fabric pots Once they are in the 7 gallon grow bags the plants will be scrogged and vegged until a decent canopy is present. Lollipopped, vegged a few days to recover, then swapped to flower. Observations: Currently one plant is slightly taller (The one that was transplanted to amended soil) its not by much, but once trained it will be unnoticeable. More observations, updates, and weeks will be added as they happen. Feb 8th, Looking happy. Feb 10th, Light watering for Gaia plant 900ppm feed for GH plant as the future mother plant was looking a bit malnourished and thirsty from waiting so long to transplant. Will be left alone for a couple days now, when they dry out will be cal mag ph water for everything *note to self don't feed for a couple more waters*. I will be clearing out the plants from the flower tent tomorrow. Have to do some wrenching and got asked to help out at work Saturday. Sunday will be tent cleaning day, then will likely move these ladies into the flower tent Sunday evening, reset the timers and get them vegging in their new home. I will have to decide what goes where tonight, will be some shuffling to set up for the next few months.

Got the tent cleaned out and wiped down from the last grow. Moved the ladies into the flower tent, lights at max height and lowest power. Have the plant that will be running Gaia soil amendments on the left. The General Hydroponics Maxigro/Maxibloom plant on the right. I have a few clones from a seed I gave a buddy. Seed was from the nicest smelling male and female tangie cookies from the pack I got, I let 'em fuck and gave the seeds to a few friends to learn to grow with, and play round. These are clones of one buddies favorite from those seeds. I'm excited to see what they do, and it gives me some more plants to use in the experiment. Not sure where they will end up being placed, once everything gets put into final pot sizes (will likely be 7 gallon for the big girls, 3 gallon for the little ones) I will move them around and train them up. Update 14 Feb 22: Decided to use Photone and another PPFD app (to confirm) to test what light output was sitting at. Adjusted lights to 60% putting down 500ppfd at the top and somewhere around 250 to the shorter plants. Will keep a close eye on everything for next few days, plants seemed happy under 400ish ppfd of blurple, don't think this jump will shock them too much. Plants have been drying out the soil that was in the original 1 gallon nursery bags pretty quickly. Been giving a light watering around the outside of the pot to encourage roots to venture out, and been heavy watering in the bag to keep plant from going limp.

Transplanted the big girls into "7 gallon" pots.. something makes me doubt they are 7 gallon, seem closer to a 5 gallon. Either way, will give them a couple days to adjust to their new shoes, then going to start defoliating, and training.

Plants are growing nicely. Decided they should be good enough for the experiment. Lollipopped and defoliated the large ladies today. Will be doing the smaller girls tomorrow hopefully. After that will stretch the screen and scrog the plants as best I can with the height difference. Give them another week or so and flip them to flower. I top dressed the Gaia plants a few days ago with half 4-4-4 and half bloom. .5tbsp/gallon each of those and 3 tbsp/gallon castings. GH plant is getting 1 tsp/gallon water every 2nd watering. I will start adding bloom nutrients the day before I flip the cycle, will likely give .25 tsp bloom .75 tsp grow first water, 50/50 2nd and 3rd feed, and that should be nearing end of stretch, so bloom from then on. Update 12 Mar 22: Decided I'm going to play with the small plants.. going to do minimal thinning out on one of each (1 lollipopped Gaia, one unmolested Gaia, one lollipopped Maxi gro/bloom, one that was left alone, just going to clear out some of the leaves/branches in the middle of the bushy gals to cut down on chances of mold and other issues. Other plants had heavy defoliation and lollipopping. Want to see what kind of effect all the LARF has on top bud size. Figure since the small plants are all clones of the same mom would be a good time to play with that and see if there is a big difference with this strain. Will get those last 2 done tomorrow then flip in 5 or so days. Update 15 Mar 22 Started attempting to scrog height difference is pretty noticeable. There was far too much empty space so I just added a couple clones that have no place else to be. Not even going to up pot them, just looking to see if the genetics are worth keeping in the mother tent. They are in half full 1 gallon nursery bags. 1 is the same as the 3 gallons (clone from a tangie cookies female that a buddy grew from a seed I made (took my smelliest tangie cookies male and pollinated the frostiest female that I got in my BCBD pack back in 2018)) The other is gorilla bomb x tangie cookies I made at the same time. Gave seeds out to a few new grower buddies to let them have some fun and experiment without them having to invest in seeds. Most of the plants died, but one of the dudes that figured out growing pretty quickly kept the genetics alive, and happened to still be running clones of the originals, I asked him for a couple cuts and here we are today, finally get to see the results of that project. I whacked the small branches and bullshit off the bottom half of them quickly and chucked em in the tent.

Fuck!!! Was doing last second training/scrogging. I snapped a branch nearly all the way off. Tried to reattach it now I gotta wait a week or two to see if it heals. God damnit. Tempted to snap it off and just flip to flower.. ^that was last week, got busy with life and turned off phone before hitting save I guess.^ Also noticing both larger plants starting to yellow a little, gonna cut light power down a little. Will top feed the Gaia plants half bloom, half grow, and worm castings. Going to try to cut out calmag on GH plants during feeding day so I can increase nutrients without increasing PPM, then just hit with calmag during watering.. Will see what I can come up with to make them happy before next week. Should be ready to flip by then.

April 2nd - Day 1 of 12/12 Hit the general hydroponics plants with a heavy feed of grow a couple days ago, they seemed to appreciate it and regained some colour in the leaves, after the top feed the Gaia plants also seemed to be happier. Brewing a tea now, should be ready Monday morning. Worm shit Langbeinite Kelp meal Mineralized phosphate And some molasses. Will be dumping that in Monday morning, and will likely hit the general hydroponics plants with some molasses water Update April 4th. Dumped tea into all plants (made too much), majority into the Gaia plants, but figured a little tea into GH might help out with recovery from the nute deficiency she had. Seems like 1000 ppm (2.0 ec) was not enough for the big girl. Hit her with 1500 ppm (3.0 ec) grow, then next water was 1000( ppm (2.0 ec) grow for back to back feedings instead of a water in between, she stopped yellowing and new growth looks nice and healthy. The GH stock is almost 2x diameter of Gaia and she seems to be picking up speed now. Will be letting them finish stretch then hitting with another defoliation. Waiting for the plant to recover from the branch snap allowed a lot of growth up top, making my previous lollipopping not as effective as I would like. When stretch is done will clean up the undergrowth.

One week into flower, not a lot of stretch, hoping week two follows suit. Minor defoliation of the front center plant (Tangie Cookies x Gorilla Bomb) Rest will have another few days to see if they are done stretching and will have fan leaves removed and some lower bud sites stripped. Observations thus far: Gaia plants grow slower, and seem to drink their water much slower (pots stay heavy for 4-5 days. I'm not even giving heavy waterings, just a light watering when droop starts and they take days what would take the GH plant hours to dry out.) They are staying healthy so far, but we will see how it plays out.

Gh plants are pulling ahead, starting to produce flowers, the Gaia plants are lagging behind. Update: 22 April 22 Gaia plants are showing deficiencies, top dressed again with bloom and worm shit. Gh plant is starting to yellow up, hit it with 1500ppm (3.0ec)

The Gaia plants are showing big deficiencies and lagging way behind despite being fed as per instruction and hit with the occasional tea. Will be brewing another tea and top dressing again once they dry out. They are taking forever to dry out. Gh plants are looking healthy for the most part. The big girl is looking a little deficient. Will be stripping her down this weekend to give some of the lower sites some light and get some air flow in there to prevent any issues. Will probably give a calmag, bloom booster watering at low ppm and see how she looks after that.

Week 5 flower has begun. So the cheap ass chemical nutes (general hydroponics maxi series) are still pulling ahead. The Gaia plants refuse to dry out and are deficient. Guess we found out what the culprit was of last grow. Weird how Gaia powers through veg but once flower hits is just not working, plants stop drinking and eating and go deficient. Despite being transplanted into soil amended with bloom nutes a month before flower. Later being top dressed several times with flowering amendments and teas. I am sure its partly my fault, but something seems off with my flower nutes from Gaia. Think I will be dumping the remainder of the Gaia amendments into my veggie garden with some composted manure this year. 3rd grow with those nutrients and all 3 had major issues once flower started. I bet you can guess which plants are running Gaia vs GH.. tempted to start pumping them all with Maxi bloom, but will not do it in the name of science.. well maybe one, hurts me to see the wasted space. Update - 7 May 22: My ph meter bit the dust. (I fucked it up forgetting it in solution overnight) Had to feed today, made a guess based off previous feedings what to do. Hopefully it works out. Gonna record feeding data here to recreate Wednesday when new ph meter gets here. 2 gallons well water 1cc ph down 3 tsp maxi bloom 8 cc liquid kool bloom 1400ppm (2.8ec) Update - 10 may 22: I tried guys and gals, I really did, but I can not leave those plants to die off like the last crop, and waste that space, time, and electricity. I hit em with 1500ppm (3.0ec) nutrient solution, we will see if they recover or not. Keeping mix data so I can check ph when meter arrives. 2 gallons of water(300ppm) 1 ml ph down 3 tsp maxi bloom (1200ppm) 8 ml liquid kool bloom (1400ppm) 6 ml magical (1500ppm) ( I know this should have been first additive, but didn't plan on adding it at all, then decided f-it, hit em with everything and lots of it.) New pics uploaded to show why I couldn't just leave it alone. I think it is safe to say what caused the issues last grow. Experiment was a success and conclusion is: A)I don't know how to use Gaia green amendments once flower hits (veg runs perfectly fine for months on end with 4-4-4, thats what I use for mother plants.) B)I got a bad bag of Gaia Bloom amendments (possible but unlikely) Or C)All of the above Either way, solution is run my cheap nutrients until I have selected the strains I want to mono run and after I have more grass than room I will try to run more experiments.

I have ended the experiment. As I stated end of last week, I'm pretty sure I have sufficient evidence to formulate a conclusion. I can not continue to waste the space, electricity, and time. Moving on from the experiment I hit the dying girls with 1500ppm nutrient solution, will see if I can salvage any of it. This is week 6 day 1 of flower which means flower is about half done. She is a 9 week girl once flowers start which was end of week 1 (at least the last two beans of it I ran were.) Long confusing story short, flower has around 4-5 more weeks so its likely the last week I run liquid kool bloom. Will likely give a heavy defoliation this weekend as well. Update/correction - 15 May 22: I read back to check dates, turns out I updated early at some point. I'm day 2 of week 6 flower, apparently I switched to 12/12 April 2nd. Also had a chance to check out that nutrient solution I ran when ph meter was dead. 1400ppm - 6.35ph so it was good to go. Fed plants again today, starting to see some nitrogen curl on some of the smaller plants leaves. Going to start cutting back on flower nutrients and supplementing with more bloom boosters.

So it seems like the Gaia plants liked the heavy feeding, they seem to have grown some flowers. I had a feeling I was over feeding the GH plants so I cut back the feed to 900ppm (1.8ec). The big girl was not impressed, showed deficiencies very quickly after. Hit all the girls with their first taste of powdered kool bloom at .25 tsp/gal on top of 2tsp/gal of bloom nutes. Ended up being 1666ppm(3.33ec) give or take on the ppm meter and came out a little low on ph at 6.1, will cut back on the ph down next feed, seems like the powder kool bloom brought it down a bit extra. Hit the girls with another feed today. .75cc ph down 3 tsp maxi bloom .5 tsp kool bloom 1350ppm 6.3ph Gonna do some quick counting and see where I'm at timeline wise... so apparently I need to learn to count again, lmfao. Last week I thought it was week 6, guess I skipped a day here and there when updating the diary and it added up to a week, also for some reason was counting when the weeks ended as the start, think I was a lil drunk n baked. Either way today 24th of May is Week 8 Day 4, this Saturday will be the start of week 9 flower. I think, lmao kinda tired, either way will give one more big feed this week then time to start flush. Guessing they will start to ripen soon. Alright week 8 day 7, last feed, gonna hit them with 2000ppm (4.0ec) as it's last chance to give em food, worst cast they lock out before flush, which doesn't really matter as I want them to eat themselves alive anyway, best case they love it and I know for next time I run these plants they can likely tolerate a heavier feed than I was willing to give. We're on the home stretch now, should be ready to harvest in 7-14days. Update: mixed up nutrient solution, couldn't make the 2000ppm target, just didn't feel right, still gave a pretty heavy feed. 2 gal water 1cc ph down 4 tsp maxibloom 1 tsp powder kool bloom 1750ppm(3.5ec) 6.1 ph Should be last feed. Will likely start flush next time they are thirsty. (Seems to be every 2 days.) Will observe the ripeness before I make that call, the larger plants seem to be maturing more slowly.

Just a quick update, Branches that did not reach net are now flopping over under their own weight, had a couple laying right down, I had to shuffle some shit around. Plants are getting smelly, nice fruity stank wafting. Will update again when the girls are getting closer to harvest. I am noticing that the plants in smaller pots appear to be finishing flower quicker than the larger pots. The 1 gal are almost ready, the 3 gal are not there yet, and the 7 gal appear to still be putting on weight with no pistil browning yet.. may be a future experiment. 2 June 22: Plants are still ripening and fading. The one front and center is going to be first to ripen (tangie cookies x gorilla bomb) I snapped a few pictures of the trichomes. Still quite a bit of clear going on, but it is still flushing and fading as well, I think I may have timed it right. We will see.

Flushing still. Plants continue to ripen and are fading more. Will update when they are ready to cut.

Plants are flushing and maturing a little slower than expected. Luckily they seem to still have enough built up nutrients to keep them moving along. Very few amber and very few if any clear trichimes left by the look of it. A couple plants will likely get chopped at some point this week, the larger general hydro plant is not maturing as quickly, as well as all of the Gaia plants seem to be a ways out yet, will see how they progress. Getting super stinky, very fruity and sweet, makes me want to pick a bud and eat it.

First two plants chopped, one grown in shade produces fluffy garbage but will be perfectly fine for making edibles, was only thrown there to reduce wasted light. Other plant performed very nicely despite being in a low light area and only having half a gallon of soil. More to follow.. 3rd plant down stinks so good. Battery on phone died so flash only worked on first couple pics.. Next tangie cookies (plant 4) down, this was the 3 gallon pot, general hydroponics nutes, minimal training and not lollipopped. There was a ton of tiny fluffy shit I didn't bother trimming. Another one done, last 4 plants are not ready to chop yet. Should be any day now.