4 Fat Bastards (photoperiods) in 5x5. Blimburn Seeds.

Going with 1/4 strength nutes to start. I do not see the General Hydroponics products listed so I added the 3 I use as custom nutrients. FloraMicro, FloraGro, and FloraBloom. All are available on Amazon and I have had great luck with these nutrients. Be sure to use way less than what the bottle says thought. Typically about 1/4 nutes for 2 weeks, then I bump to half nutes on week 3 and beyond. I water in between feedings with plain ph'd water so I get around 30-40% runoff. You cannot overwater your plants in Coir, I have tried by mistake! :) Keeping the runoff at 30-40%, the whole pot stays wet and it washes out the excess nutes that may be building up. If you do not do this, you will see nutrient build up on your pots, usually dried up minerals and the such. By doing runoff this way, I never run into issues with nutrient burn and the roots love it! Remember, treat coir like a hydro grow. There are no natural nutrients in the coir. Have a great week! Still figuring out if I am going to do a single top on each plant or FIM. Decisions decisions! But we have time! Bonus pic since we are still in the seedling stage - me with my unicorn coffee mug, represent. Next week will have much more and better pics for your viewing pleasure!

So far so good! We are entering week 3 shortly and all things seem to be going as planned. 🤞 Keeping the nutes light and then going for either a FIM or a single topping once they are a bit larger, perhaps late in week 3 or in week 4 of veg. I want a minimum of 5 nodes, but I want to make sure I am doing it early enough so that the branches are more pliable come the LST. We will eventually be putting a net up to help with the training and organization of the colas. Remember, plain water (ph'd!) in between feedings so the nutes do not build up and burn the plants. I am watering at most every other day since they are in 4 gal pots and retain lots of water. As the grow progresses, and from past experiences, the watering will become daily depending on how hungry they get. Stay tuned for week 3 coming on up!

So far so good. They are growing well with little issues thankfully. We are at the start of week 3 and the majority of the plants are on their 4th to 5th nodes. I am going to wait until the end of week 3 and the beginning of week 4 to evaluate when I should top them. They need some more time to get a bit hardier before the topping. Perhaps 6-8 nodes deep. Expect next week to include pictures of before and after shots of the topping. I will probably dial back the nutes just a tad bit more to be safe and then let the girls tell me if they need more. It is looking to be a promising grow this year. Have a good one all! 👍

FIM and Topping week! So, out of the 4 Fat Bastard photoperiod plants, I have decided to FIM 2 of them and then top the other 2 to see which perform better. Out of the 2 topped plants, I will top one of them once (2 mains) and the 2nd one twice (4 mains). Then I can compare between all plants - 2 FIM'd, 1 topped once, and 1 topped twice in order to see which will produce the best and if there are any change or difference between the flower size as well. There is so much information out there that sometimes it tends to get all muddy. So, for this specific strain - at least I will get a bit of testing done and see if we can make any comparisons with the 4 that I have here. 👍 I plan to Scrog (Week 5-7 area) the fimmed plants out using a trellis net and some tender LST. 1-2 weeks between tops for recovery of course! And I took out a few light blocking leaves from the FIM'd plants 5 days after the FIM. Now we let them veg up and thicken and bush up for a couple weeks!👍

This week - LST and Pipe Cleaners! So, out of the 4 plants - we have FIM'd 2 and Topped 2. One got topped twice (Mainline style). The FIM'd plants then got some LST love to expose the branches and new soon to be colas to light and air. I have added comments to the pictures to help explain more. And now we just let them chill for the next 3-4 weeks and get some good veg time in and will slowly incorporate them into a Scrog setup! I added just a few pics with the tent/light so you could see how the LST bending allows more light in to make more delicious colas.👍

So this week we did a tiny bit of defoliation just to expose some lower branches to better light. In addition we kept the LST bending the main stem and branches away from each other. This allowed more light penetration into the lower part of the plant while pulling the main stem away. As for the mainline, we finally bent the last of the colas on the ends down using pipe cleaners. I did this very gently and will monitor them daily and make sure the branches keep heading in the correct directions in order to give themselves some space and air flow room. We are hoping for 8 nice gnarly baseball bat colas off the mainline. 4 from the plant topped once. And possibly 8+ colas from the 2 FIM'd ladies. I have started increasing the CocoGrow for the next week or two (still giving plain water ph6.0 in between feedings), then I will lower all 3 supplements prior to flipping to 12/12 to let the plant get a rinse/recover as it starts its transition to flower, but only for a week tops. After that we start the bloom feed which will be higher Coco Bloom, lower Cal/Mag and about the same on the Coco Grow. I will increase the Coco Bloom steadily until about 12-15ml per gal at 21-25 days in flower. Then we will hold course the the rest of the flowering period, rinsing with plain 6.0 water in between for roughly 10-11 weeks. I currently water them them once a day. Feed a day, skip a day, then plain water rinse a day, then back to the feed day. I use enough water to full saturate the coco and allow for a minimum of 20%, sometimes upwards of 50% runoff. This keeps the nutrients from building up in the coco or on the fabric pots. Wow, a lot of info this week. Until next week! Have a good one everyone!

Well, here we are! As of today I have officially put the girls in flower! Now we watch them get all crazy! So I have 2 topped (1 just once, the other is manifold style) and 2 are FIM'd so we will see how it goes. Very excited as we just finished week 7 of veg. This puts 11 weeks roughly at Valentines Day! Fingers crossed, should be smooth sailing from here. I am going to do a watering today of just plain water, give it a day rest, then start on the light flowering feed before gradually having mostly Coco Bloom as the higher nute. 👍 So now I will add the net as they stretch and hopefully keep them under control. No defoliation for at least 25 days as we are just starting the flowering. This 5x5 tent is going to be packed!

Definitely not the best week for photo taking! Streeeetch and no defoliation for 3 weeks. We are in the stretch phase (First 21-25 days of flower), so I can not defoliate and clean them up for a couple weeks still. That being said, it is a crazy mess of chaos as they grow each day and pop out new branches and leaves. But that is the fun of it. All I am doing for the next couple weeks is adjusting them using LST and folding leaves back and out of the way so light hits new growth sites. It's a day by day process, but it will be worth it in the long run. I added a net for improved LST and support. Started dropping grow nutes down and will increase bloom nutes in a week or two. So, as we are in the craziness of the stretch and we are now under 2 nets, expect the picture quality to go down a tad as I cannot pull each individual plant out to photograph properly. I will definitely be making up for this in the latter weeks and especially during harvest where I will get pictures of each plant outside the tent along with its individual yield and close ups!

Finally got some defoliation in. I will show the before and after in the pics. I still cannot take them out to get some gnarly pics just yet, but I will as they mature in their flowering stage. Right now I have too much support going on with the nets inside. And I feel I will need them as the buds begin to form and gain weight. I will try to sneak out the manifold plant within a few weeks as it is pretty stable and get some beautiful pics without the LED's on.

Still flowering and looking good. I am at the nutes now that I will be using until before harvest! So I think I have it dialed in pretty good. I will reduce the nutrients and try for the first time to "fade out" the plants as we get closer to the harvest day. So many bud sites! Again, I apologize for the LED pics, but I cannot take them out of the tent and my light doesn't go into the tent that well. I will be sneaking out a plant in the coming weeks to get some really good shots under the proper lighting.

So now we got some better pics of the manifold out of the tent! Yay! You can see how I defoliated her to allow as much light into the center as I can. I am adjusting her spot in the tent so I can position another one in the center, which should be groovy as the stretch is now pretty much done. Supercropping?! What!? In the 4th week of flower?! I know right?! But check it out, it was initially a mistake. I was doing a little LST and a bend went a little too far. So I got the idea, since some growers supercrop early in flower anyways - I am going to go ahead and supercrop that entire plant where the branches are too long anyways! Woohoo! The theory being, it can grow even gnarlier and more potent buds, and new bud sites where the supercrop occurs. However, doing it at week 4 is a bit iffy! But, we will see - it could turn out super rad! Fingers crossed! I took pics of the bended branches so you can see just how far along I am in flower and how they are bent. We will definitely be keeping an eye on these. So that puts us officially at the following plant tests: 1 Topped Once (4+ cola) 1 Topped Twice (Manifold - 8 cola) 1 FIM (8+ colas) 1 FIM + Supercrop (8+ colas) Going to be fun to see how it works out! ✌️

Lots of bud sites! I'm so sorry about the grow light pics. However, I will be sure to add more by the morning which include just using a flash and close-ups. In addition, I have lowered the Cal-Mag just a tad. And now that we are in the middle of bloom - the fattening hasn't even began yet and we can see how many bud sites there are! All the plants are pretty gnarly and the trichomes are popping. The pistils are still extending out as the buds continue to grow. - Because of this, I know I got plenty of time, and as of this week I began their in-between rinse feedings (which was just plain water to flush out excess nutes from the coir), I now add the blooming nutrient Coco Bloom in about 5ml per gal. This allows it to flush out excess nitrogen and Cal/Mag in the coir and keeps the Phosphorus healthy in the mid-feed flushes. I feel this will help with the bud growth and keep the PPM low. I also keep the PH no higher than 6.2, and the mid-feeds go as low as 5.9. The smell is now kicking decent, skunky and sweet - with berry notes. I get, lemon as well? We will see how it progresses! But so far, a 5/5 on the plant durability and output. The bud sites on the 2 FIM'd plants are crazy. They spread like a little upside-down spider, all stretched out and equal in size on the nugs. They are very hearty plants as I have abused them quite a bit with some super cropping, lots of LST, and the initial FIM cut. The bud sites on the manifold are great! All equal in size, all with an additional few colas near the bottoms of what will become some beefy-looking clubs of nug sausages. But you can see I kept the inner manifold clean inside of any sucker growth. Haven't had any more in about 5 weeks. On the girl we topped just one time, she is breaking out beautifully. Breaking Beautifully. :) The nugs are probably a little larger than the manifold. The output is probably going to be similar to the manifold as well. We will see, cannot wait to test the different weights vs flower size between all the plants. So far, if I was going to fill a tent with 4 gals, like TIGHT, 9 planters - I would opt for the girl topped once. Much better spread, more suckers - which is ok, but you would be able to stagger them 3x3x3 which each planter rotated 90 degrees to the next. I will have to do a MS Paint of it someday. Anyways, the FIM'd girls are producing by far the MOST nugs, but also the largest nugs. However, they are also the hardest to control. Super cropping came into play on both of them. And the main colas stretch like Michael Jordan even when keeping a 1000w at 20" from them. More pics to come!

Wooo! They are getting juicy, stinky, and sticky! Just another week of flowering as they bulk up and do their thing. About 4-5 weeks to go in my guesstimation. Not much of a change in the feeding. Just steady as she goes. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Keeping it steady as she goes. Increased the Bloom nutrient and lowered the others a smidgen. Still have pistils flying out everywhere which lets me know that the wait continues. I am estimating about 3 weeks tops from here. The breeder says this is an 8-10 week strain. We are at week 7 so 3 weeks would put us right at 10 which looks about right. But we will keep a close eye on it. It is better to harvest a bit late than too early! 👍 Expect next week for the buds to be way fatter. It looks as if they have just begun their fattening stages. On next weeks update we should see some definite thickening of the buds. Fat Bastard - Wk7 Flower. - Impressed so far. Seems wicked sugary. The smell is a nice potent skunk/berry.

We have hit Week 8 of flowering on this 8-10 week flowering strain and it shows! Calyxes are swelling up. Buds are getting increasingly dense and the trichomes are beginning to get milky. They smell of fruity berries and pungent skunk. The trichome production is out of this world so I cannot wait to see what the next 2 weeks bring. I will be reducing the nutrients bit by bit over this week. I expect 2 more weeks to go, but I will be keeping a close eye on them. I plan to flush them out nice and slowly keeping the nutrients barely noticeable until the final week. As promised, better pics this week of the fattening beautiful bud sites. Until next week my friends!

Still rocking but still need some time. I took the girls out of the tent for some photo-loving and got good pictures of the manifold and buds on both plants. The buds on the topped once plant are gnarlier with much bigger calyxes, but the colors, sugar, and density of the manifold plant nugs are amazing. We are going to give them another week, see how the trichomes look then and either give them 3 days of darkness, then harvest/dry, or we wait another week for the ripening. 👍We are so close now!

Just a few days before harvest! We are about to chop! Next entry will be the Harvest entry. We made it folks! Bonus - I have added my entry to the AC/Infin Bouquet contest. I humbly present it to you in the last picture.