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On the day of the full moon, the seeds were planted directly into hydrated Jiffy peat pellets. The pellets were put on top of a seedling mat with thermostat set to keep the temperature in the tray to about 80 degrees F. No dome was used. The pellets were misted with a spray bottle each day to ensure they were kept moist.
These are regular, not feminized seeds. I plan to grow these large enough to take a good-size clone off the top and root then flower the clones to sex them, then grow out the females. The (best of the) original plants started from seed will be kept as "mother" plants to use for cloning for future grows.
This is my first photo grow. Only autos up to this point. My flower tent is currently empty, since I was waiting for this new 2-chamber tent to arrive to get started, received the wrong tent, a 3x3' one-chamber tent, on the first shipment and had to wait for the correct tent to re-ship, then once it finally arrived I had to wait nearly a month for the full moon in order to germinate. The previous grow finished about a week or so after this tent finally arrived, while I was waiting for the right moon timing.
4/5 Flo seeds sprouted
1/4 Rainbow serpent
0/3 for bagseed
All of these seeds were free. Flo was a promotional bonus for buying DJ short seeds and the Rainbow Serpent was thrown in as a freebie. The Rainbow Serpent seeds looked very small compared to the others. I don't know if that says anything about the maturity of the seed or its viability. The Flo seeds (and all the DJ short seeds) were very nicely packaged with nice shiny full-color information cards with photos. I don't know if all DJ Short seeds come that way, but it was very nicely done.
I need to track each individual plant since I will be cloning them and need to be able to match each clone to its mother after I sex them. I decided to label them from the start to ensure there is no confusion later. More pictures next week.
This week, the sprouts that were started in Jiffy pellets were planted into 3" pots using Mother Earth coco/perlite blend. They were potted a little deeper than they were in the pellet, so they look like they did not get much taller. They almost immediately produced a new pair leaves, which is their second set of true leaves (after the cotyledons) and their first set of three-fingered leaves. Now, they are seedlings!
I wetted the coco first, because it is several months old and so dry that it could be hydrophobic. I used the same water I'd been spraying the sprouts with, that had a very light dose of General Hydroponics FloraGrow in it, because of concerns that if the dose were any higher, the seedlings could get burned. Because the coco was moist, the seedlings didn't need watering until today. That was long enough for a couple of the seedlings to start showing early signs of deficiencies. Starting with today's watering, and for the following week, I'll be increasing the nutrient dosage to week 2 of vegetation levels.
I feed half strength of the dosage that GH recommends, which was recommended by several sources. Today only, due to the pale leaves, I did add 100% of the FloraGrow dosage. I will consider doing that again during the following week.
Water got onto a few leaves when I was spraying the sprouts, and caused the spots on the leaves. If I am not really careful when watering and accidentally splash any onto the leaves, it leaves spots like this when under the lights. My watering can starts pouring from rather high above the plants when it is full and it tends to splash.
It's easy for me to forget how little water the seedlings need, so I don't need to fill the can all the way. I could avoid this by being more careful when watering or timing my watering just before the lights turn off. I really should be more careful of these since I will keep them as mother plants. I wouldn't care about lower leaves that get just a few small spots and will end up being stripped off soon enough.
If the coco looks water logged, it is because the photos were taken right after watering. A few minutes later, they looked less wet.
The seedlings are small plants now, with a few nodes. They grew at uneven rates, with a few getting taller than the others and growing into the light very quickly and getting a bit burned. The plants were rearranged from shortest to tallest and the light angled to match, so it is an equal distance from all plants.
I wonder if the height is an early giveaway that the tall ones are male. Flo 4 is tallest, followed by Flo 2. Flo 3 and RS are the shortest, with Flo 1 in the middle. So does that mean 2 and 4 will be male and RS and 3 will be female? Anyone care to make guesses?
The leaf tips are starting to curl down a bit, so maybe the nutrient dose was a bit too much. The next watering will be either plain water or half water and half nutrients to compensate.
The FloraMicro is for Hard Water but that is not an option in the nutrient selection.
These will grow for another week and then they will be topped and the tops will be rooted, flowered, sexed, and the females will be grown out. These babies will be kept in veg as mother plants.
I found another bagseed that was kicking around and I missed it during germination so I'm going to stick that in a peat pellet and see if anything happens. I do not have much hope, but nothing to lose. It looks large and dark, like a good seed should.
The plants are getting a bit taller and growing at very different rates. Flo 3 shot up and overtook Rainbow Serpent that was previously taller. Flo 4, the tallest, continued to shoot up. A plain watering earlier in the week was followed by nutrients that were clearly needed as shown by continued yellowing of lower leaves, but the curling has not stopped so perhaps that was caused by heat and not excess nutrients. The light was raised to allow a slightly larger gap (increased from half inch to one inch) between the light and plants to try to ensure they don't over heat.
One more week of growth and then they get topped and the tops are grown as clones to flower.
[I am also a week behind on logging my updates and hope to get caught up, not that I think anyone is following this in real time]
I was supposed to take pictures and top the plants to make clones this week. Life intervened and I barely managed to water them. They wilted pretty bad and all but one came back nicely, that one is struggling. One grew right into the lights after getting watered and got burned pretty bad. It's a mess in there.
I was supposed to top the plants and make clones last week but it didn't happen because life got in the way. There weren't even any pictures last week!
I had missed watering for a few days the previous week and the plants all recovered except for Flo 2, as can be seen before they were topped/cloned. That means no clone for Flo 2. I'll have to make and flower a clone quickly later on, once she recovers (I think that one might be female, she is on the shorter side out of the 4 Flo plants). Flo 4 was a tall boy, I say boy because I suspect that one will turn out to be male and get tossed when I flower it. It was quite a bit above the others.
I trimmed all of the plants above the third node and dipped the top portion in rooting gel then powder and put them into solo cups with slits cut into the bottom for drainage and filled with Mother Earth coco/perlite blend to which I mixed in about 25% additional perlite. The tall one got a bit of stem trimmed off and the leaf tips were trimmed off to reduce moisture loss. These clones went onto the lower shelf of the veg tent under a humidity dome with the vents closed for the first few days, then they will be opened after a few days. Ignore the runoff that hasn't been removed yet in the photos.
The original plants will be kept small as miniature mother plants, once I determine which are female.
This will be my last update for a month, since I will be out of town. My roommate will be watering the plants but I won't have any photos or other updates until week 11. There won't be a lot of activity other than rooting of the clones and the continued vegging/recovery of the little mothers. I will catch up in a month or so!
The clones were a disaster and all of them died while I was on holiday. So did a couple of plants. I was left with three intrepid survivors: Flo 1, Flo 4, and Rainbow Serpent 3. At least I have both varieties left! I still don't know if I have any females at this point. I suspect that both Flo plants may be male by their tall, lanky growth patterns but that could be totally wrong. At least there is something left alive!
Then I fed them and they sprouted up about 2 inches overnight. They grew into the light and the tips got fried and had to be trimmed off. I had to trim off some dead leaves and branches and this is what I was left with. Now I have to wait for the growth tips to recover before I can start cloning all over again.
Flo 1 had a really long branch that managed to push its way beside the light instead of into it so it didn't get burned like the other tips. I chopped a piece off of that and put it in a cup of water to start rooting a new clone. The other branch was very long. To keep canopy level, I used cups of dirt (actually coco/perlite blend) since I had them handy. I used one as a riser to put the clone closer to the light and another to pin down the long branch of Flo 1.
Plants are recovering and are slowly getting ready to be trimmed back to bonsai mothers and provide clones to make flowering plants. Took another clone this week, from Rainbow Serpent. Soon the rest will be to leave a healthy plant behind after the clones have been taken.
No signs of any rooting in the clone that was taken last week, but it is early yet to see anything happening there.
Now that there are two clones, they have been moved to their own level in the veg tent, so the mother plants are on their own shelf with the light adjusted to match their height. The other shelf has its own light that is set to match the height of the clones.
I did not take very good photos this week. I have been busy. Better pictures next time.
All of the mothers got trimmed down to miniature bonsai size and clones were started from all of the trimmings so I have at least two clones going from each of the plants. I even stuck some rooting gel on the cut ends before sticking them into the cup of water. Hopefully this will give them a good kick-start for rooting. It's been almost 4 months since I popped these seeds and I've done a lot of work with very little to show for it!
At least now I know that I have two female plants at a minimum. I am shocked that both of the Flo plants have shown female preflowers this week! There is no doubt about it, they are both very much femal. The Rainbow Serpent, on the other hand, has been much slower to show preflowers at all so I am trying to will them to sprout some pistils though the odds of all three turning out female are slim. But it could happen! Send me good vibes for the RS to come out female! I'd rather have had one of the Flo plants turn out male and had one female RS and one female Flo. But we can't always get what we want.
Now the mothers can recover and I wait for the clones to take root. Better pics next time!
I won't bury the lede: Is the Rainbow Serpent male or female?
It's pushing out lots of side branch sprouts and lots of the leaf tips are turning brown. A leaf sprout with a brown tip looks a lot like a preflower with a pistil growing out of it and one had me really fooled a couple of days ago. But it was not even a preflower at all! They grow from the node and they are so tiny, I just cant tell what is a preflower and what is a leaf sprout. I am really suspecting that this is a male plant but I will continue to wait just to confirm.
The clones don't look too happy. I put rooting gel on them last week to encourage some rooting action, and sure enough, I got a root off of the first clone that I took, which was about a week before the others. Hopefully the rest won't be too far behind. I also increased the water level in the clones' cups last week and I don't think they like that. Or maybe the upper level in the tent is too warm because both the lower and upper lights are on now, since I moved the mothers to their own level separate from the clones as noted in the last update. I put all of them into fresh cups with fresh water and will see if that helps. I may need try getting some extra ventilation in the veg tent to reduce the temp.
I may try planting that Flo 1 plant that has rooted. The flower tent is empty and I'm looking forward to finishing vegging in the flower tent so they can put on a little size (but not too much) before switching to flower. C'mon roots!
Ok, can anyone tell me what they think, IS THE RAINBOW SERPENT MALE?
The clones finally had enough roots to get potted up into solid medium! This is premixed, bagged Mother Earth 80% coco coir 20% perlite blend, with a bit of extra perlite added to bring it up to around 30% perlite. The pots are tan fabric instead of the usual black but they are the same stuff. The roots on Flo 4 were not as well-developed as on Flo 1 and it looked like it was not getting enough water. The humidity in the tent was a bit low, so I put some water on the bottom tray to try to increase the humidity a little and prevent the leaves from dying off.
I'll let them get well-established and growing vigorously then switch them to bloom. I don't want them to get too large because the tent is only 2' x 2' and 5' tall.
I didn't top these, they are clones and they are from side branches, so they are just growing that way.
The Rainbow Serpent clone from last week looks very male so I tossed the clone in the bin but the bonsai mother is such a pretty little plant that I haven't gotten rid of it yet. As per a commenter, I can't be positive that it's male unless I put it into bloom. I am wondering if I put it into the tent with these two once they are on 18/6, then check it every day, will I be able to catch it on time before it pollinates these it is confirmed to be male? It will be well below the canopy of these, so less chance of the pollen traveling upwards even if an errant speck does get released. Could I put something transparent (like a big glass jar) over it to contain any pollen but let the light in? It's just a little bonsai plant. If it turns out to be female, I'll reveg it then I can take a clone to grow out later.
9 Sept. The forever grow goes on.
Flo1 is growing vigorously while Flo4 looks rather strange. I think that there is some nutrient buildup in the "soil" (not soil, it's coco coir) in the pot that Flo4 is in because I am reusing the pot and some of the grow media. I am going to give plain water to Flo4 and alternate plain water and nutrients for Flo1 so the growth can try to even out for the two plants.
Started some LST by pinning down the branches of Flo1 to keep an even canopy.
16 Sept: Flo1 continues to grow in textbook fashion while Flo4 looks gnarly as ever, but growing!
Continuing with some LST to keep Flo1 flat and even, and giving plain water. The pots are large so they are watered less than twice per week. One feeding in two weeks for Flo1 to keep it from getting too much larger than Flo4 since they have to grow together in the same tent, otherwise plain pH'd water for all.
The bonsai flo1 grew so tall and fast I thought it was a male, so I suppose it should be no surprise that it is still growing quickly! Flo4 was no slouch either but not as tall.
@Faceinthecloud, I cant reply to the comments. Both of those blueberries are going to be my grow after next, I already have the seeds. These Flo were the freebies that came with them, so I thought I'd "practice" with these before moving on to those. Do you think if I put a (tiny, unrooted) clone of the suspected male RS in the tent with these girls when I flower them, then check it every day, I'll be able to catch it before it pollinates the girls if it is confirmed to be male?
Wondering when I should switch to flowering so the plants don't outgrow my tent. It's my first go with photos, I've only done autos before this. Anyone have input on this specific situation?
beachbum
