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This was a spontaneous action starting to grow again. After moving from Washington to a state without the same accessibility I finally hit the point of frustration to carry out my plans starting to convert a utility room in my basement into a grow room. It's still a work in progress, but sometime in the future, I'll divide the room it's in creating a 4'x4'x6'7" space.
In the meantime, I am growing in a 32"x32'x63' grow tent, with a 4" incline and scrubber, bottom-fed DWC buckets, and a 450w Viparspectar Reflector Series.
The seeds are from a friend of mine, he bought them from a bank and had a hermaphrodite ruin a more than one pound yield. On the bright side, we have a near lifetime supply of seeds! Germination officially started 9/28/2018 and the first pictures are from 10/02/2018. Being regular seeds, I started eight an am hoping for three ladies.
Week one was successful and they’re finally past the “seedling” phase. I was concerned at the beginning because the room was a little on the colder side ~64F, but it’s now a steady 73-77F with all the equipment running.
My back-ups were running pretty far behind from Week One but grew a solid 2-3” in one week and the first nodes are forming, two more to-go until topping and mainlining.
I swapped the germ-CFL I was using on the back-ups (aka a desk lamp), for a cheap 150W LED I have hung about 30” over them. The 150W is a ~$40 LED from Hytekgro on Amazon a friend gave to me. Despite the light being cheaply made, I can’t take anything away from the results its had over the last week. I will keep it over the back-ups (which are outperforming their siblings in the tent) until I can sex everybody. Not too worried about a height differential since I will be mainlining everything as flat as I can.
Today I’ll finally set-up my pulleys so I can move my 450W in the tent closer to the plants, probably 12-18” off of them. Other than that just prepping my lasso anchors to mainline some baby colas :)
Looking to the future, would it be at all beneficial to set up a scrog net following the mainline training?
Space will be limited and I feel the only way to get real cola separation if I end up with three plants, will be with a screen.
Also for 32"x"32" would 3-4 be too many?
Hi @PurpleDreamz! I'm also a big fan of the mainlining method, however I don't use any scrog net after the training is done. Here's why: 1/ The net will make it hard for you to work on your babies. Once everything is tie down to the net, you can't even rotate a container. 2/ The net could be useful to control plant's height, but the mainlining training method already has a big impact on the preflowering stretch, by dividing the main apex to 4 - 8 or 16 colas, you will also reduce the stretch phenomenon. 3/ The main goal of the scrog, besides controlling the height, would be to increase light penetration onto the buds. But light penetration is already very good on a well mainlined plant. Rotating your mainlined plants everyday will help the colas to get homogeneous amount of light. 4/ Scrog implies a lot of daily work, to adjust the new growth and tie everything down, whereas mainlining by itself implies a minimal work. 5/ I've seen some mainlined plants "cracking" when tied to a scrog net, in some circumstances the manifold won't survive to hardcore bending manipulations and you'll break your main stem. So to summup, I'd say that the net could be useful in some cases, not as a real scrog net but more as a stem support, if buds are heavy and stems are weak. The net could also be great if you have a height constraint, but as mentioned earlier, there are other ways to limit this height. It's up to you, now you have all the informations to make your choice and move on. Hope this will help, keep us up-to-date, and happy growing! 👊
UPDATE: Unfortunately when I set up the CO2 tank I found signs of root rot in four plants. It’s early enough on and I’m confident the issue was the black buckets absorbing too much heat. Turned up the ventilation and now the water temp is around 65F. The real thing that killed me was having to flush all the roots with CO2 to see if they’re salvageable. I lost some leaves, but I managed to them all. I dumped two of my back-ups just because the root systems were pretty weak and the smell was getting to be a little too much so everything needed to go into the tent.
Due to the weakened plants, I will no longer be mainlining eight colas. Probably am going to top all six and use soft ties to train. I plant to push into flower, once they’re around 12”-16”. Mainly ready to sex them all so I can go down to the best two females.
Overall an exciting week! Parts to the CO2 tank all came in finally, so I should have time to set it all up tomorrow. Injecting about 1100 PPM in and swapping my light out for a 600W VIPARSPECTRA (found an awesome deal and can still return my 450W). Now that it's cold enough for the basement furnace to go on I'm considering letting the tent hit ~85F and 50% humidity once I can see how well they take to the CO2 injection.
Last week I decided moderately amp up the nutrients to see what would happen and all of my plants took on better than expected. So well, that later on, this week I’m going to really start to push my nutrients even higher.
Started LST and they’re staying pretty flat so far. The third node popped today, and I should be able to top and tie down the branches for mainlining by Friday too! Going to try and avoid the SCroG nets, just going to rely on soft ties anchored to the DWC base to micromanage the direction and angle the colas grow. Can’t get over the thick leaves, for sure a heavy Indica. I can't wait to see the flowering growth spurt!
Root rot recovered! Had to swap to a bigger tent to get the temp and airflow right, also added Hydroguard in. Now I have a 40”x40”x72” from MarsHydro and it’s way better quality the smaller one I was using (thank god for Amazon’s liberal return policies).
Had to pull the light up and swap to bloom on the light to stretch the plants. Topped after node three and already have the baby colas sprouting. Sex started showing burn still too early to tell. I’m hoping I can slim down to two or three plants soon. Six are really stinking my basement every time I have to open the door.
Really noticing the CO2. It’s growing like crazy right now. Also defoliated some lower fans. I’ll probably take a few more off this week.
Finally heading into flower! Found the first, very likely, male and female today with the other four being still unclear. With the roots back to being healthy after I added the Hydroguard I’m definitely excited to push to flower and only cut down to the best two females (tired of individually changing five DWC buckets and measuring nutrients). If I was running feminized seeds, I would probably let them veg longer, but I really do not enjoy carefully looking over plants that I’ll just throw out after six weeks.
Swapped out my ventilation for a more robust 410CFM exhaust and swapped the old one to be an active intake. My tent is in an airtight small room without much breathing space on the sides, so it dropped the water temp (since the intake blows onto the buckets) down to 68F during the day time. CO2 in the tent has been holding steady at 1300-1400 PPM since the air is just recirculating in that room. Using a lot more than I would if I could just send the exhaust back into the tent, but I don’t have a chiller :(
Placed an order on Seedsman taking an advantage of the Halloween sale. Already excited for the auto-fems next grow! After a few years of not growing, I definitely forgot what a pain normal seeds are compared to fems, or better yet autos! Hopefully, in the next few months, I can justify investing in a water chiller, so I can keep the water at 68F and recirculate the tent to 82F+ to really have some fun with the CO2.
Sorry for the lack of pictures this week. I was very busy, but I'll compensate soon. Everything is going well, they made a strong transition into flower, although I did have some bad luck... Only one of the six that I sexed is actually a female :(. Two are still not entirely clear, so I'm being patient and waiting until hoping that they're slow bloomers.
My one 100% female thankfully has been my strongest plant all the way from fresh out of seed.
Quick, early update for week 7: Down to officially two beautiful ladies! The strongest two from right out of seed no less as well. The left plant was a late bloomer, but it’s a girl! I was probably going to pull it Thursday if pistils didn’t pop. Despite the recovery from root rot and the overall calibration of the new grow area I couldn’t be happier with the progress so far.
Both canopies are pretty level, with the right plant in the picture developing amazingly. I’m expecting to see them get close to doubling from this point. I will probably make a few more anchor adjustments over the next two weeks once I see how the colas start to develop, but pretty much on autopilot.
Will try to keep more day-to-day photos coming with the exciting part coming.
Happy Thanksgiving! We’re on autopilot out here now. Bud development so far is phenomenal, so I could finally cut the CO2. I was a little afraid after the root rot that it’d be weak since a few of the earlier brothers and sisters had hollow stems. Now I realize I could have manifolded pretty aggressively. Hopefully, I’ll be harvested before x-mas!
Update: Added post defoliation pictures. Cut everything that's not producing or is blocking cola's light.
This is my first time using the FloraNova series and I feel like it's doing a good job. Are the dark-stained roots normal for this series?
My roots couldn't look healthier overall now, but I still don't know if the off coloring is still from the root rot.
Nutrients that have coloured dyes in them tend to stain the roots. Its no big deal generally the stain will wash off the roots anyways . How ever if its root problems they will just break , they will feel slimy the wont be as robust lots of signs to look for when your looking for root rot or the beginning signs of . A good way to assure yourself is that your leaves don't look burned or damaged in any way which leads me to believe that your roots are also fine because usually the damage you would see on the top of a plant would also be the damages in the root mass as well and based of the pictures i see in your diary your rocking and rolling ! I hope this information helps you to understand the dyes some companys use for their products and the signs or rotting roots . -Happy Growing!
Autopilot is set. Just topping the buckets and waiting to flush. Colas are growing great. Unfortunately, my clones from the right plant died on a cold flash. That plant is growing fantastically. Even after the rot in week 3 it restarted and now it’s drinking about 7 gallons a week.
Just a quick weekly update. Cola growth has exponentiated this week. About 50% of the pistils are now turning darker, so I planted two new seeds today. Should be looking to flush and harvest in the next two weeks!
Still flowering strong! Not too much further left to go. Some purple actually is starting to sprout too. If more purple leaves pop up in the buds I’ll probably delay harvesting as long as I can.
Other than that I’m thrilled with the tric development. Never growing without terp again for sure! Wish I could capture the frost better, but don’t have the white light to in the tent. The smell has gotten so intensely strong floral, and fruity. If the smell wasn’t as powerful I would bring it to another room.
Despite having a 6” 410 CFM exhaust and a 4” 260 CFM just statically running in the room and forcing intake to the tent, the plant’s smell still blows through the whole house when the tent is open. I had to swap from the 4” to the 6” because even in veg these girls stunk. Ultra-skunky amazing smell, just not the one I want dominating my house. For example, I was messing with the equilibrium fan speed of the intake and exhaust and turned the exhaust down a little too much. The intake was pulling more in than the exhaust was pulling out, so some air was being force out of the tent. I left because I didn’t notice at first. After barely an hour that was the only smell left in the whole house haha.
Bud sites have developed milky trics! - This will be the LAST update before I chop and dry!
One plant is in a perfect harvest window. The larger one should be ready to flush on Xmas day, but I just want to see a few more orange hairs. It's probably ~65% orange right now, but I'm sure it will darken up and be ready to harvest before next week's update. Probably going to do a 3-4 day flush with some molasses to close this grow out before the new year! Looking like it should be a solid yield from this guy.
I ran very low on bud, so two weeks back I prematurely harvested some weaker low colas. Even despite not being done right had a great flavor and pretty strong effect. Super excited to actually try this strain without it being overloaded with seeds.
Overall I'm pretty bummed my clones all died overnight in a cold flash. This is definitely a plant I would enjoy to grow again starting under better conditions. I do still have about two dozen seeds left from it, but I also don't see myself wanted to grow regular plants again for a long, long time. I forgot how depressing it is to have to throw away plants you spent a month nurturing.
Most importantly thank you to the whole community out there! The support was awesome trying to get back into growing, and first time growing hydro at that. Hope to see some more awesome harvests soon into the new year! Right now I have a GG#4 Auto, Black Cream Auto, and NL Cheese Auto all ready to start filling the shoes of this grow.
Reasonably happy with the grow. Once everything is cured my opinion will for sure sure change. Super leafy, but still good.
Easy grow, but not exactly the most potent strain.
PurpleDreamz
