Orange Hill Special - Dutch Passion

Iv been growing this one in the background along with frosted guava but this was a bigger plant by the time the zamnesia gelato went weird (I never have good luck with zamnesia) so I killed it! Mwahah I then put this where the gelato used to be.

It’s been topped at the second node as I do with all my plants so I can bend those butches out and get loads of tops. It looks healthy but tbh isn’t ready for the flip but my wallet is starting to not allow the 18…well it’s already been cut down to 17 hours of light. I also just checked my stats and either I left the door shut or the fan is on too low coz it’s like 29c in there in daytime and then 23 at night swinging up and down between 23-25. I just changed the differentials so at least that shouldn’t happen at night. Gah, this all better be worth it. ATM, it’s looking pretty good, if it starts to take off like the Tropicanna (it has a similar structure) then we are in business and I can flip soon and do the last couple weeks of the autos life in 12/12. ‘T’is what ‘t’is

Looking really good - it had already been topped just before I went away and when I came back I had two more nodes on top that had grown back, so I topped them. It’s growing really nicely and tbh I think I just need to get it to sexual maturity - it doesn’t have to be a monster like the Tropicanna is turning out to be! Hopefully I can actually keep it fed also! Seems to be growing great to be honest. I started training today just pulled the tops down to redistribute the oxen’s. It doesn’t appear to be a heavy feeder like the NYC Diesel from sweet seeds - also the frosted guava seems to be really quite hungry but then she missed a couple of feeds so I’m not surprised about that one. At least the auto that’s in there is actually starting to look desirable now. It should puff up over the next week or so but it’s never going to be a huge yield because I vegged it in such a small space! Stupid really. If I’d left it where it was it wouldn’t be as sticky or smelly though. It is annoying and in the way though!

Same as the rest really, doing good. Everything was a coming together okay but it’s going to be CROUDED in there so some tactical training from the ceiling with string like tomatoes may have to happen. We’ll see with the new tent. Edit a couple days later - okay so iv put up my new tent, I wanted one that was slightly better quality and so my budget lopped about 30cm off my grow height - which kind of sucks but I’ll just look into more efficient ways of hanging my lights at the end maybe even using loads of zip ties or something to ‘tie’ them to the ceiling maybe? I dunno, tbh I mainly grow Indica’s and I always train them pretty hard and low so I think I’ll usually be okay but it is a bit annoying. The tent is much better though! The other one wasn’t light proof at all, the zip was glowing last night I noticed in the middle of the night! Trouble is I now need to get rid of the bloody skin and piles of the old one!! Super annoying when you don’t have a car! Oh well. I put my plant in my shower where there are no windows and I use as a dark room for photography when i need it so they should be fairly okay tbf - I think the most light exposure they got was after I’d put them in I flooded the tent by leaving the end stopcock type switch open (dickhead I know) and so now I need to refill my res but there is something in there)

Okay and so this is a bit of an impromptu update - I can’t remember Exactly if I added an extra week to this. Iv switched the tent to 12/12 now - it’s been like that for about a week now and I’m starting to see which plants are sexually mature and which arnt. I have a bit of leeway, re nutrition because my nutrient schedule runs on a 2 week change basis so I only changes every 2 weeks which is useful. It should be interesting to see what happens actually given they are all at different stages of growth. I guess I won’t be dropping the amount of nitrogen, simply upping the amount of phosphorus and potassium etc so I should be okay - or THEY should be okay. Anyway, I was able to add a couple more images today due to the fact that I took it out the tent. Edit: So I was going to get the plant out and train it to the pot but tbh when iv done that with all the others iv put them back in and they’ve struggled to fit - you can see the Tropicanna poison directly next to this plant is butted up against the tent a bit. I decided to super crop and just squeeze the stems to bend them where there is free space. I’ll see how well it’s worked over the next few days but still, it’s what I used at the very beginning of all the others so they’ve all had a bit of that going on. I made sure there were no pistols being chucked out yet as I don’t like to do it once the plant is sexually mature.

It’s pretty hard to see but this plant has exploded in growth but I don’t see any pistols on it yet. This is one of the plants why I’m considering doing yet another week of the same nutrient schedule (for the first 2 weeks of flowering). On the other hand, the tropicanna poison may not be too happy about that and so I was thinking of upping it to a ‘heavy feed’, from a ‘normal feed’. I need to make a decision fairly quickly as the res is out now…. I think given that I have 2 plants in veg (although one is literally JUST showing pre flowers on the frosted guava) and 2 plants in veg still - seems strange that the NYC diesel that’s been alive the same amount of time as the Tropicanna Poison. On the other hand, if I change it to a heavy feed, the N stays the same and the rest goes up. Anyway, with regards to this plant, it’s obviously a big producer because it’s not been alive THAT long and it’s bigger than the diesel already that’s been alive twice as long! Oh well. It’s the one nearest the radiator also and it’s also under the crappest light where as the tropicanna and the orange hill special are where the overlap in light is. Makes sense… Edit: okay so this was the last plant I was able to pull out and defoliate and train a little. Tbh, it was quite shameful when I pulled it out as you can see. I cleared her up and put her back in and now there will be better air flow. I packed too many large plants into the space I have really but oh well, sometimes things just don’t like up how you want them to! I’m going to start turning up the light (fc-e3000) from 50% now that I know they are all in flower. Some are a little early and some a bit late but hey ho.

IF I’m being totally honest, I shouldn’t have really put 4 plants in there - or if I did, I should have either chosen small plants (like the diesel- really easy to control OR done less plants due to the fact I vegged the two oldest ones for like 8 weeks before flowering. It would have been fine had I chosen plants that were even slightly similar - in a way I guess I did but in two different categories, the proper indica plant - NYC Diesel by sweet seeds, then next to that is the huge Tropicanna Poison - furthest into flower and is taking up the most space also! It’s their F1 ‘quick flowering’ variety so hopefully it should flower and piss off to allow this plant the space it actually needs! ATM, this plant is basically impossible to take photos of because you can’t distinguish it from either of the plants next to it!! It’s a bit annoying but at least it’s making using of the weirdly shaped spare space, I suppose. I have updated all week and yesterday night the res needed refilling. We are so close to the weekend res change that I figured I may as well just switch the proportions and get some P and K as the majority in the irrigation solution. I am pretty consistently going in and defoliating slightly - mainly below the canopy. I can’t tell if she is still stretching or not but I don’t think so to be honest -it looks like she is in REALLY early pre-flower and I’m hoping that the irrigate will encourage them to flower - we will see. I was surprised to see how far along the diesel had come tbh but that’s another story. Ah yes, I also raised the strength of the light right up to 300w and then also lowered the 150w light - thinking about it, I probably should dim the 150w light and make sure there Is no shadow cast by the lower hanging light. It’s pretty annoying in there tbh, in terms of it being uneven - the middle seems to be a very powerfully lit space. It is where the biggest plants are but then they are also the most sativa leaning hybrids I would grow - if it wasn’t for those auto genes in there which makes it flower really quickly I probably wouldn’t have picked it. Iv wanted to grow it for years and have tried a few times before - it’ll probably be a massive let down because iv waited so long for it. So far, the trichs on the very edge of the leaves smells very tropical yet skunky. It does wreak tbf - I open the tent and even from really early flowering it smelt quite a lot to be honest!

It’s a really hard plant to take photos of but it’s the lighter coloured one here.by the fan.

It’s a really hard plant to take photos of while the tropicanna is in there because that is by far the biggest plant. Oh yeh, one thing I had to do was to zip tie the carabiners that the light hangs by to the actual frame of the tent. I was going to just zip tie the actual hooks that screw into the light, only, I was worried that it would be too hot and melt the plastic! Anyway, it really spreads the light out a lot more evenly, even if it means the tropicanna isn’t as strong. I’m not sure that’s how it works exactly though. Thing is, I am on a pre-pay electricity meter, which is a lot more expensive than them billing you monthly. It basically means you are on a ticking clock the whole time and is way more ££. Still, if I get what I expect to get from this Tropicana plant alone, it will save me a fuck load of money in the coming months. It’ll be a case of the tropicanna and the diesel having finished when the other two are a little behind. In a couple of weeks, I shall start looking for replacement seeds…. I would like to find some seriously high THC % genetics…any suggestions? This plant looks a lot more sativa than I was expecting, really thin leaves - not what I’m used to, in all fairness. I think it takes a while to flower this one out. I seem to remember her being like a 10 week flowering strain but I could be wrong about that tbh. Iv not changed anything, I’m just letting them do their thing - oh apart from I added a tiny bit more N for the plants that are still stretching as well as the slight yellow in the diesel - god that plant, although small, takes some serious nutes!

It is the one that’s between the radiator and fan. It’s kind of hard to see with the massive Tropicanna next to it. I’m going to remove the TSl-3000 and replace it with the TS-1000 because the long light is just blocking the fce. It will mean I can drop down the 150w light to an acceptable height for the NYC diesel. Edit: this plant is still in stretch, I’m really quite surprised it’s not showing signs of N deficiency. I guess because iv used the ‘heavy feed’ schedule, it means it has enough N there to not need to eat itself from the bottom, upwards. It is getting to the point where the tallest node is as tall as the Tropicanna. I get the feeling the Tropicanna will finish first and that will open up space for this one. As it’s in stretch still and the nutes are on PK boost mode, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to revisit this ratio of N to P and K, either that or just keep it like this for longer, although the chart says to up both of them in the weeks after this.

It’s a really hard plant to take photos of! It’s so squished behind the massive tropicanna and then the frosted guava is squeezed in there - if I were to do 4 plants again I’d do the Dutch method with less vegging - although I am just about to germ some more seeds. I figured in 6 weeks time, these plants will be VASTLY different, I would Imagine. I also must admit, I do find it hard doing everything I need to do in there before 11.30am which is when the lights go out because from 20:30 to 08.30am, electricity is substantially cheaper - so I’m paying extra for the couple of hours after 8;30 but it allows me to have some time to get in there and do things. Electricity is so fucking expensive atm and I’m still having to buy medical cannabis in the full quantity (80g/month) so I just need a successful harvest and it’ll REALLY unburden me a bit and stop me having to worry as much…. I was surprised to see that this week it actually started to compete with the tropicanna, so it’s still stretching for sure! You can see from the photos that it’s now taller than the tropicanna. I need to get in there and defoliate, only I’m in benzodiazepine withdrawal and so I’m finding the effort hard! It does seem to be rewarding me though - I just need to get my timings better next time. I’m looking at ‘original sensible seeds’ strains for the next grow - they just have so many 28-33% strains and so iv decided it’s a good idea. When I start saving money that is currently being wasted on cannabis, I will actually upgrade it so I have two of the fc-e3000’s in there and mainly dim it right down. It just leaves room for expansion - I also like how they are smart now and Mars Hydro assured me, if I daisy chain my current non smart fce3000 to a newer ‘smart’ one then it will also behave in a smart manner. The thing that puts me off, if I’m honest, is the app. I use it for my fan and iv still not got the Wi-Fi connection to work, just Bluetooth. It’s very odd - iv tried everything, including resetting everything. Iv never come across an app that when you try to connect to wifi it doesn’t search and give you options of which network to pick, it expects you to write it in….its really weird. I expect this plant to really take off when i have harvested the massive tropicanna, it’s kind of dominated the grow- and isn’t even an impressive, red pheno (annoyingly) but damn she makes up for it in smell. May sound stupid but totally tropical terps - she is less greasy and WAY further into flower than the frosted guava and yet the frosted guava is already more sticky and resinous - just less visually. I’m going to lollipop her this week I think because there is loads that is just creating popcorn - and I don’t like popcorn really!

Again, a hard plant to photograph because it has kind of grown around the others and looks similar so the photos that are taken from above, it’s the plant that’s by the fan at the back of the tent. It’s definitely got ‘hairier’ (as I like to say about pistols) since last week. It HAS put on weight but not at the rate of the fast flowering plants. It’d be good to do some more fast flowering , high indica but also high THC flowers - mind you I guess that’s what everyone is trying to do! Haha

This week has been fine but the bigger the buds get, the more paranoid I get, it’s really weird. Anyway, I’m just carrying on with the same feed apart from the tropicanna is getting water only. Iv a feeling the buds on this will get really big where as the other one has lots of tops. It;l help this one and the rest when the ‘fast flowering one is out of there’ as it’ll get more light to side branches. The best trained one was the smallest NYC D TBF.

It’s struggling to stand upright now that it’s not crammed in there - the buds are far too heavy for the stems apart from that main cola that’s refusing to finish and just gets bigger and bigger. I have to take all this setup down for a flat inspection after this run so I only have a certain amount of time and can’t really have drying weed hanging all over the gaff! I’ll figure it out!

Annoyingly some of the photo’s were slightly overexposed - what can happen when you forget to turn the grow light down and use a 1.8 aperture. Oh well, I got a few good ones - this is coming out bit by bit. I’m probably going to do the rest all at once. It seems like they just keep going and going and going compared to fast flowering strains. I’ll certainly be factoring that in on my next run after it’s all come down - been hidden and my mold problem sorted! Then in 6 months or so (housing people are slow as fuck!) I can setup again - I have to pick my drying times carefully - can’t be doing that in the middle of summer!

So this plant smells SO nice. It took longer to stretch than the Tropicana and due to the fact it was so packed in when the Tropicana was in there, it didn’t think the stems needed to get as strong and fat as it did due to the fact it was propped up at the time of stretch. It REALLY shaped itself to the small quantity of space it had in there and just went upwards but then when the ‘support’ was taken away the buds got too fat to hold themselves up - it’s the worst case of it iv ever had tbf. I know buds shrink HARD and have the first small side cola dried and in a tub next to me, I kind of harvested it bit by bit to be honest. So one branch was totally ready like a week ago and so I took it off and dried it. It smells absolutely incredible!! It’s hard to think back to an orange strain iv grown before but I think it was the orange sherbert by fast buds and it was nice but so long ago I don’t really remember it. Iv been getting this ‘orange cake’ via the med system here which works really nice but I’m guessing the orange hill special won’t be 27-28% - it’ll be significantly lower for sure. It does look like the frosted guava is more oily than the rest but it’s also the smallest plant by far!