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I've taken a month or so off, given I have plenty of cannabis on the shelf and/or it's a great time to be able to do some vacationing, not to mention easier not to fight the heat/humidity fluctuations of summer. But now looking at fall, it's time to get back into it.
As usual, I pulled everything out of the tent, vacuumed and wiped it all down pretty carefully so we have a sanitized grow. For germination week it will be dark but once we get some action, I'll use the center 225 for lighting until they're big enough to need more/wider lighting. That'll also keep the heat/humidity a bit more under control for the last part of summer.
The seeds are Victory Chocodope (their version of Chocolope)...an 80/20 sativa/indica hybrid leaning heavily on a variety of landrace Sativas and some hazes. The description is OG Chocolate Thai x Cannalope Haze (Original Haze x Mexican/Colombian/Thai/Indian Sativas). I'm ready to manhandle these to stay short as needed.
The prep is ProMix HP+ with Xtreme Mykos added; wetted with water(dehumidifier condensate)+Ca/Mg+Epsom+1g Maxigrow, then adjusted to 6.3ph just to give some nutrient value to the soil into 3/4 gallon pots. Seeds are inserted in the medium @ half an inch, and they're on a heat-mat set to 81f degrees with the sensor inserted into one of the pots at seed height.
Other setup stuff:
Tent is 32"x60"x80
3x HLG 225's
Ventilation: AC Infinity T6 and S6 fans with a Terrabloom filter (in tent) Currently running a Controller 67, but will soon move to a Controller 69Wifi once available.
Heat/Humidity: Inkbird wifi heat controller with just a small oil filled 400w panel + Inkbird bluetooth humidity controller with a small humidifier. Any dehumidification will happen outside the tent and there's two other dehumidifiers picking up that slack.
8.23.2022: Both seeds came through the soil today, turned on the light/timer set to 18/6 and hitting at about 165PPFD.
Beginning of week 2, week one of veg:
-really light nutrient feed in the water from last week. As ProMix doesn't hold much if any charge, really after a week you need to give the plants something to work with.
-Lights are now set at ~290ppfd. All week since they broke soil I've been slowly increasing from 150ppfd upwards. The goal is to keep them compact though sativa, so I can work to keep them fairly low and spread before they stretch.
Week 3; 2nd week of Veg. All looking good. Watered on Thursday night right before heading out for the weekend, and upon coming home today these two were ready for a bit more. Fed with just under a gram of Maxibloom, added .5g of epsom and 1ml of Ca/Mg. Topped with a bit of Recharge. You can see a little light/dark mottling on the leaves (now with 3 fingers, though the next node is starting to show), that's most likely from going a little heavy when I first hydrated the Promix. I added about a gram of maxigro initially and it's probably a bit too much, though the plant isn't burned.
Entering veg week 3. Plants are 3.5" tall & look pretty healthy. Adjusted the lights to get up in the 400PPFD range (still using only one of the HLG's). Watered today (Saturday, 9/10) with condensate water with 1ml of Ca/Mg added plus half a gram of epsom salts, added about 1/4 teaspoon of molasses to feed the mycos and keep the root zone happy. Today was the first day I watered to full runoff, each .75 pot getting about 1/3rd of a gallon.
One of the two plants shows varigate discoloration and some real funky mutant early leaf growth, but I'm sure it'll outgrow.
Mid-week I noticed that the plants were hungry. Lowers on both yellowing, and I realized that while I started with an initial 1g Maxi at planting it wasn't enough and I was slightly off my usual schedule by a week. So on Wednesday I fed with 2g Maxi (1g gro, 1g bloom) and I'll bump it up to 3 next feeding.
One of the plant obviously has mutant tendencies and whorled leaves, we'll see if that ends up being full whorled phyllotaxy or not. The varigation seems to be stopping.
Lights were adjusted to 41DLI, at ~730ppfd.
Week 6...Honestly these ones have been a bit of a moving target. I've continually bumped up the feed due to them looking hungry and done so without doing a straight water feed in the past week or so. I'm at 4g of Maxi this time around. They're looking better than before and I'm sure are going to outgrow their funkiness. The smaller, being the 'whorled' plant has a whole lot of growth action and greenery happening under the larger top leaves, and I think it's probably putting out more branches per node than normal too.
...anyway, they're transplanted, they're fed, and the lighting has been adjusted to a good DLI, with PPFD being about 770. I've moved to two lights now that they're in their bigger pots...and once they're really full sized I'll turn on the third light too.
I'll give these a week or so to get used to the new digs and then I'll work at topping them and trimming out a few of the lower nodes.
So these are moving along but do seem to want more feeding. Though a week or two one (the whorled plant) got some tip-burn at lower levels, they're both persisting on having a bit of yellowing so I bumped up my feed and leaned a little more heavily on the Nitrogen heavier Maxigro. I ended up with a 50/50 mix of Gro/Bloom with 2.5mg of each, then 1ml of Ca/Mg as well. While at it, I did top the plants somewhere around node 6, and they're starting to branch a bit. Once the feed thing is more under control all will be good. Last run with Durban Poison the plants were more prone to over-feeding with less than I'm feeding now, so its been a bit of re-learning. By next week I'll start some LST to get everything spread; They're pretty dense in terms of growth.
10/5/2022: So after hitting them with a full 5mg of Maxi 4 days ago, these plants are pretty full-happy right now. Maybe a bit too much nitrogen (I'll pull back on the Gro and lean a bit more into the Bloom, and yes, I know I can just use Bloom. They've greened up and really appear to be excellent. I was worried that the 5g amount would be too much, but even though one of them got some burn at 3g, now they're both great with it. they also grew quite a bit and I re-topped them down a little further. Now I have about 3 or 4 nodes to work with in terms of getting them widely and evenly spread. I also removed any/all leaves that had been previously damaged. I watered them at about 2 gallons per pot with my filtered water + 1ml Ca/Mg and recharge. Ended up with about 1.5l of run-off each.
Week 7 Veg: Re-topped the larger of the two down a bit...It had too many nodes to work with and LST'ed and adjusted the branches to be well-spaced and even. The whorled smaller plant finally got big enough for me to LST some of the branches down, but not all.
Fed with 2g MaxiGro and 3g Maxibloom, 1ml of Ca/Mg per gallon, and a quarter of a teaspoon of molasses to feed any cultures in the medium. Overall, they're looking good.
Tomorrow I'll set up the new AC Infinity Controller 69 Pro (aka 69 Wifi), and set up the new AC-I Cloudline oscillating fan.
Week 8 of veg... Spent some time training the plants further out, and topped out a bunch of the laterals. Thinking of moving to a feed-water-water schedule as the plants are starting to yellow by the time I hit the feed on a water/feed schedule. Yet at the same time, one of the two is showing a little bit of tip-burn at 5g. Or I might Feed/Feed/Water and do one of the feeds at a lesser rate. We'll see. Anyway, I've moved to Maxibloom only at this point and we'll go from there.
I think I'm done with most of the topping and won't to much more tie-downs either. I'd like 'em to start getting some verticality, then I'll string up a net for sorting the colas and have a second net for when the tops start getting heavy.
10/25/2022: Plants really responded well to additional feed last week as well as running feed-feed-water. I'm up to 6g combined (2g Maxigro, 4g Maxibloom). Plants greened up nicely and are pretty lush. I don't know that I've had such densely foliated plants before. I'm not really cleaning them out (at least at this point)...I'm going to keep only removing leaves that are blocking my access below for watering.
Just watered with pH of 6.0 and recharge (about 1/3rd a teaspoon per gallon), topped the soil on one of the bags where things were a little compacted. They're drinking pretty well...over the past grows, 2g per bag has given somewhere around 2l of runoff, but this time around was closer to about 1l or a little less. May step up the quantities next round to pull more 'old' nutrients from the soil. Not so worried this round since they've been fairly hungry too.
Planning on flipping to flower in the next week or so. It's been a good long veg, but the plants are in a good place and at about 8" tall, once they stretch they should end up around 3' I'm going to guess, and that'll be perfect.
Sorry no pictures from this week. I've continued to feed/water though the plants seem to really like being fed. At 6.5g (2g MaxiGro, 4.5g Maxibloom), and I've upped the Ca/Mg to 2ml per gallon.
Still trimming out some leaves little by little to thin out the foliage which is about as dense as I've had.
Wednesday, 11/2 I moved these to flower, going 12/12 and adjusting the lighting for all three of my lights rather than just two. Starting to bring humidity down as well.
Second feed of the week, these plants are drinking/feeding more than previous plants I've had. I'm moving to a Feed/Feed/Water and every three days. Bumping the feed up to 6.5g per gallon (now that I'm pushing to flower, all Maxibloom, no Maxigro) the last couple has worked well. The plants are happy, and have started to stretch a bit. They're still super dense and I'm trimming out some of the leaves to give enough airflow through the mass of their foliage. I've been trimming back on the humidity, bumping it down to the mid to low 50's and getting my fans to work a little bit more.
11/7: watered @ at two gallons each, and the filtered water had 2.5ml Ca/Mg plus 2.5mg of Epsom salts for additional magnesium. Again trimmed out a bunch of leaves from the middle and/or lowers to keep things under control. Stil in pre-flower but we're starting to stretch about 3 or 4 inches this week.
I feel good about calling this the first week of flower. Pistils are starting and stretch is happening. I've started adding a bit of liquid KoolBloom to the nutrients (just a little extra right now, 1ml).
I won't be removing the plants from the tent to water/feed anymore. I have two nets, the first of which went in on 11/11/2022 and down onto the foliage enough to start using it to train the taller branches. On 11/13 I I went and bent any newly stretched tops under the net as well and will continue to do so for a good bit to keep things relatively even and spread. From there I will allow some height...and I have another net for after stretch to use to help keep the tops structured and supported. I've also trimmed and cleaned out below the plants a bit more and removed any of the lower very short branching sites that only clog up the airflow and won't produce appreciably.
LeastExpectedGrower
