Dude Grows Cream & Cheese CBD

Welcome to the 2018/19 indoor grow season!!! I am totally psyched to be growing Cream & Cheese CBD from Seedsman as one of the first strains this season. This strain looks like it should be amazing, 21% THC and 18% CBD!!! I'll definitely be cutting clones as she goes/ I started this girl in my humidity dome using a single 18W T5 that came with the dome. That seemed to be too weak for the seedling stage and resulted in a larger stretch than I would prefer, but I'm confident it will grow out of its funk in time. I am seeing some signs of burn, I guess the soil must be too hot. I started to try to flush through with straight ph'ed water, but then I started seeing signs of overwatering (rookie mistake, I know). Now I'm just trying to keep a little water on the bottom tray so it generates some humidity in the dome. There's also a heat mat under the tray I have the heat mat on a timer also, 30 min on/30 min off cycling all day. It seemed to get too hot on 24/7. I'll be transplanting and moving to my 2'x4' tent in about a week. They will live there during veg, then I'll be moving to a 4'x8' tent (not purchased yet) for flower. I'm also planning on adding some COB LED's in the flower tent. Then I'll dedicate my 2x4 tent to mothers, clones and seedlings. Its going to be a little different this season with both photo period and autoflowering strains going at the same time. But I'm looking forward to it! 👍 Stay tuned...

Week 2 and this girl is still looking more yellow and funky than I like. I'm pretty sure my soil is just way too hot. I tried flushing it through, but that just seemed to lead to general overwatering issues. I'm planning on transplanting to larger pots with more neutral soil this weekend and hope that will help straighten things out.

Transplanted into larger containers with fresh soil. The soil is a blend of Peat Moss one Perlite. I then mixed some older soil with the new Peat/Perlite blend. After the transplant I watered with Recharge to help get some healthy microbes starting to develop in the soil. Since she was stretched out a little I tried burying her a little deep during the transplant. I'm hoping to see some nice improvements over the next few weeks. Stay tuned...

Things are starting to turn around. The girl is looking much better overall. Starting to see some nice color and growth. I've beed watering mostly with plain ph'ed water. But I've also started adding a little Cal-Mag (from Symbys) and Recharge once per week.

Well, the photo period plants are looking great now. The Seedsman Cream & Cheese CBD came back from looking pretty small and lanky, to starting to look like a nice fat bush. I'll be topping and cutting clones in another week or two. I plan on getting the 2nd of 3 tents set up this weekend.👍

This week I’ve seen lots of nice growth overall, but especially with the Cream & Cheese CBD. Great node development, nice color and even has a but of a nice odor starting to emanate. New tents coming soon too. Another 2x4 and a 4x8. I'll be cutting clones and spreading the plants around to give them more space once the new tents are up.👍

I’m baaaaack!!! Sorry I’ve been away for a while. I’ve been busy getting everything together for the next phase… Welcome to the Dude Garden 2.0! I now have 3 grow areas. Two 2x4 tents (one for clone/veg, another for mothers) and a large 10x12’ish flowering area (its actually larger than that, but I’ll be conservative). The tents are running 300w LED’s and a T5 for the cloning/sprouting station. The flowering area has a 1000w HPS!!! I’m totally psyched to see how the HPS does with flowering for me. From all the research I’ve done It seems to still be undisputed that HPS is the best for flowering (but not so good on the electric bill). I moved all plants from the tents to the new flowering area under HPS. That includes 3 Blackberry’s (FastBuds), NYC Diesel Auto (Barney’s Farm), DinaMed+ and Critical+ (DinaFem), Cream & Cheese CBD (Seedsman) and 3 Cherry Hemp (Elevator Supply Co). The Cream & Cheese CBD is looking very nice and she smells great! I am looking forward to watching her stretch and bloom under the new 1000w HPS. Then I'm really looking forward to the results. I'll definitely get her tested and hope the specs are even close to true. 20%'ish for both THC and CBD sounds too good to be true, but fingers crossed that's what she actually brings! I transplanted the photos from the 3 gallon grow bags to 7 gallon fabric pots. And also purchased some Pot Elevators that they are sitting on. The Plant Elevators are pretty cool, they have a mesh base to allow better drainage and air flow to the bottom of the pots. I have clones of all of the photos cut and planted in Jiffy pellets in a humidity dome. I took 3 clones of each. The strongest clones will become mothers, the others will be grown out. Note: The HPS gives much more of a yellow wash on the pics than I was expecting. I tried to color correct the pics the best I could and tried to get to the real colors, It should be pretty close.

Happy New Year!!! Over the past week I did some HST bending. The branches are starting to recover and straighten out after the HST now. I still have some issues with pale leaves and a few spots here and there. I’m going to try adding some Dolomite Lime with the next watering and think that should help with the paleness. I’m also going to up the amount of CalMag and Mammoth P to see if that helps with the spotting. I’m not sure if I should see the spotted leaves recover or if the spots will remain. I suspect the spots will remain on the existing leaves regardless of what I do at this point, but hopefully no new spotting will develop. The lights went off before I was done taking pics, so some pics will look a little different. The pics with the lights on I had to color correct, they still look a little more on the yellow side than in reality, but much closer to reality than the pre-color corrected versions. Once the lights went off I turned the flash on for my camera, those pics did not need any color correction. You can see the differences in the pics of all plants, the first 2 are color corrected with the lights on, the last 2 are taken with a flash and no color correction. I read several books on cannabis over the past few days, some good, some not so much. One that I liked was “Marijuana Cultivation Reconsidered: The Science and Techniques For Huge Indoor Yields” by Read Spear. This book is available on Amzon’s Kindle Unlimited service, which costs $9.99/month, but they offer a free 30 day trial (which is what I’m using at the moment). Reed’s book is broken down into 3 sections, the first and third go fairly deep into the science behind growing, he does a pretty good job at breaking it down in easy to understand terms, but I had to read several sections 2 or 3 times to really get it (or just move on with as much understanding as I could digest). The second section is the nuts and bolts of growing. Most was a review but there were several topics he touched on I hadn’t thought of in a while. And again its well written. He also offers the section only in a separate book called “Small Spaces, Big Yields”. If you are not interested in going deeper into the science behind growing, “Small Spaces, Big Yields” is what I would recommend (if interested in reading books on cannabis). I took some notes while reading and I’m going to add some of these notes in my dairy updates over the next few weeks. This week I’m going to include a note on electrical, this should be a fairly basic concept, but it is super important IMO… “Electrical Items In a sealed grow room or in a tent, you will have water pooling on the floor from time to time. There is no avoiding this. Mop it up when you see it, and never put your electrical gear directly on the floor. Never. Not even for a moment. In fact, let me stress this point in bold capital letters. ALL ELECTRICAL GEAR MUST BE MOUNTED SECURELY ON A WALL OR TENT POLE.” -Read Spear I’ll add more did bits like this in my diaries over the upcoming weeks. If anyone has any good book recommendations please let me know in the comments. I’m looking for books that might not be as popular as the ones by Jorge Cervantes or Ed Rosenthal (I’ve read those). I did just order “True Living Organics” by The Rev which I’m looking forward to reading. But I’m looking for more. I really want to step it up and learn as much as possible. Your comments, feedback and recommendations are very much appreciated! Until next time, Happy Growing! Stay Positive! And have an amazing 2019!!!

Hello everybody! Here we are a week later and I’m starting to see some nice improvements and developments. This week I fed all plants pretty heavily with Recharge and Dolomite Lime (and a little Cal Mag). The plants seemed to like it, the color is really coming back to a nice shade of green instead of the pale yellow’ish green and I'm starting to see nice bud sites developing! I’m going back to my normal nutrient routine this week and think it should be fairly smooth sailing from here. One negative is I seem to have inherited some bugs from my wife. She asked me to put one of her outdoor plants in the room so it would survive the winter, well it looks like that plant was infested with bugs. The little f’ers had a feast on some of the leaves. My wife gave me the OK to toss the plant, so with the plant removed it should be fairly easy to irradiate any remaining bugs with some sticky paper. I’d like to say thank you to all who answered my question regarding recommend reading on cannabis. I’m selecting the answer for the Grow Bible by Greg Green because I was actually unaware of that one. I’m familiar with the Cervantes and Rosenthal versions but not Greg Greens. I’ll be ordering that book after I receive and finish “True Living Organics” by The Rev (should be here tomorrow). This week I have a new question for my GD friends…. CO2? I have not been using CO2 but EVERY book I read recommends using it, I’m not prepared to go out and buy a CO2 tank, regulator, etc… at this time. Has anyone ever used one of those CO2 bags? Or do you have any DIY CO2 solutions you can recommend? I’m looking forward to your answers on CO2. I’ll leave you this week with another interesting excerpt from “Marijuana Cultivation Reconsidered: The Science and Techniques For Huge Indoor Yields” by Read Spear: “I prefer to use high-pressure sodium lamps. With the exception of LED's, HPS lamps are the most efficient source of light you can buy, both in terms of light output and light spectrum. Having read nearly every book on the subject of growing pot, I feel that their authors tend to overemphasize the importance of light spectrum. You do not need to alternate between metal halides (for growth) and sodiums (for flowering). That is an oversimplification of the plant's light requirements. You may do this if you like--it certainly won't hurt--but I firmly believe that the gains are just not great enough to justify the cost of the extra MH lamp.” -Read Spear

January 16, 2019 Everything is moving along nicely now. Bud sites are building day by day. This week I fed some Recharge and some Espoma Organic Bloom (available at most big box stores). I’ve had it kicking around since last season and figured I should use it up before it goes bad. I’m looking into more organic nutrient options for the future. I’m not sure I’m ready to start making my own organic compost teas yet. But BioBizz seems like they will take care of what I’m looking to accomplish without needing to make my own teas (fingers crossed). I removed the house plant that brought in the bugs and everything is back to normal now, no new bug damage. I finally received and read “True Living Organics” by The Rev. Its a good book, but growing the “TLO” way is vastly different from other growing methods I’ve read. I’m going to have to read this one again before making any comments. Thanks to all of the answers on CO2. Seems like its more valuable with larger setups than I’m running.

January 24, 2019 The girls are doing WELL. Seedsman Cream & Cheese CBD in a close second in the bud development category this week (just behind the Critical+). But as you can see in the video, she is sticky and stinky! 👍 This week I fed/watered 3 times (basically once every other day). The first time I fed with Recharge, Mammoth P and Big Bloom. The second time, I fed with Mr B’s Green Trees Bloom and Cal Mag. The third time was water only.

Update February 4, 2019 (Video and Pics actually taken Feb 1). I’m figuring I’m about mid-way into flower now with the 6 girls I have flowering. Overall, I’m very happy with how things are going. The buds are coming in strong on all plants, they are stinky and sticky and I’m not complaining about anything really. But, I still see more yellow than I like. Last week I fed Recharge, Mammoth P, MegaCrop, and CalMag+. I don’t feed all of those at once, Recharge & Mammoth P one time, MegaCrop & CalMag+ the next, then the 3rd is usually straight water. I also seem to be able to go at least a day between waterings/feedings. Anyway, yellowing leaves during flower seems to be most common with a Nitrogen deficiency as far as I can tell. I’m tempted to feed in a round or two of veg nutes to see how that goes. One more thing… I transplanted my clones and seedlings into larger nursery pots today. They were transplanted into pots with soil that has been composting/recharging for almost a month now based on some of the tips from the books I have been reading. I’m excited to see how they react to their new environment.

Overall everything is doing great. The Cream & Cheese CBD+ has medium trichome coverage and medium density. But she is the bushiest with the most amount of sugar leaves down the stalks with the buds. I think I'm about a month away from harvest. I'm not going to rush it, but that's what my guess is for now. Fed MegaCrop and CalMag this week as well as just straight water.

February 14, 2019 update: I rearranged the plants to get better airflow. In the video I mentioned that I thought I saw what might be spider mites. First off, I never saw any indications of this on the Cream & Cheese specifically, she looks awesome. Anyway, after closer inspection, I don't think its spider mites but more likely a combination of left over damage from the fungus gnats that came in with my wife's plant a few weeks ago (now gone) as well as ph fluctuations. But I like getting airflow on the plants themselves anyway, I just wish the oscillation worked on the fan I have now. I'll buy a new fan or two with oscillation soon. Also I failed to mention it in the video but there is also a ceiling fan blowing down on the plants. Overall, I'm very happy with my Cream & Cheese CBD+ from Seedsman. She's in the lead with just overall looking awesome!!! The buds are long and super healthy looking with tons of leaves along the branches and I've defoliated a few times. The remaining leaves don't seem to be blocking much because most branches are bent over due to the weight of the buds! She is supposed to be in the 20's with BOTH THC and CBD. I'm looking forward to smoking this one! 💪 This week I fed MegaCrop and Cal-Mag Pro (both by Greenleaf Nutrients). I fed according to their feeding schedule for late bloom. I think I'm going to stick with Greenleaf Nutrients for the duration of this grow rather than changing it up as I have been. Its super easy stuff to work with. 👍

February 20, 2019 update: Pretty much just waiting to be ready for harvest. Everything is moving along nicely at this point. Planning on feeding until the end of February, then starting a 2 week flush with most of the plants going in the flower room now, but I may let the Cookies & Cream go a little longer. Fed MegaCrop, Cal+Mag Pro and Mammoth P this week. I've used up the last of my Mammoth P at this point. It will be MegaCrop & Cal+Mag Pro only until flush. All pics were taken with the lights on. I tried color correcting the best I could, but the pics really don't represent the actual colors very well. Usually I try to get some pics with the lights off also, but I was not able to do that last week. I'll make sure to get some better pics next time. 👍

February 28, 2019 Update: Getting close to the end here. Cream & Cheese should only be a week or two away from flush. Feeding only MegaCrop & Cal+Mag Pro until the flush. This week I took pictures with the lights off and my camera flash on, I think these pics look better than last weeks. Bonus pic at the end of the view from my bedroom window. I'd love to see my buds get that frosty! 👍

March 7, 2019 Update: Cream & Cheese CBD have been fed this week with MegaCrop and Cal+Mag Pro. I'll start flushing this weekend for a week. The Cream & Cheese has the longest buds of the plants in flower. She's really very lovely. Looking forward to the first hit! 👍

March 13, 2019 Update: We’re getting to the end of the road here. The Cream & Cheese CBD is flushing with straight water and will be cut down this weekend. Pics were taken both with lights on and lights off. I used a flash when the lights were off. The first round of pics are with the HPS off and the flash on, the second round is with the HPS on and the flash off. I probably won't update this diary again until I have the test results back and final dry weights for all plants - 10 days or so. 🙏 p.s. I'm starting a couple new diaries next, check em out! 👍

This could become my new favorite strain. She smells fantastic, tastes wonderful, and yields very well. I have some clones in veg now that will be bumped into flower soon. Seedsman really hit it out of the park with this strain! I haven't had it tested, but its definitely high THC as its supposed to be. I expect the CBD content is high also because it is very relaxing, but not in a comatose or couch lock way, just chill. Highly Recommended! 👍👍