Think Big auto & Trippy Gorilla auto

Soaked seed in 25C temp overnight then in paper towels, tails popped on 2nd Jan, placed into 1" chocolate muffin overcoat on 3rd Jan, Day One. The plan was to grow Think Big and Trippy Gorilla both autos but the Trippy Gorilla looks like it might have a genetic deformity, not sure if I'll continue with it but I might. Think big is starting fast and powerful, Trippy Gorilla tiny but well developed and Auto Glueberry which is going in the garden looks a little spindly. But we see how they go.

Think Big is getting very strong, Auto Glueberry in the pot remaining spindly but fine, Trippy Gorilla is still a worry with the deformity. Think Big looks like she's going to be a strapping lassie.

Think Big powered on. I topped her at 16 days at the forth node. Some light defoliation just to get some more light into the lower branches. The plan is to fill a 2 x 4 space with a scrog. The Trippy Gorilla is twisted and deformed. I was about to pull her but the first set of normal looking leaves appeared. So I'll keep her and see what happens. I located various items and jerry rigged a sort of circular pre scrog, The roots are out the bottom of the large pot filled with clay, and sitting in their shallow water reservoir. Lights are currently at 75% White and 25% Red and 25% Blue. I had the red at 0% and the Blue at 50% but added some red as they plant seemed compact enough.

I have increased the grow area from 3 x 2 to 4 x 2. And I have installed two QB96 Elite Engines, with an HLG 185H 54A on each one. Currently running at half power. I found some very lightweight grid wire at the local hardware. very light, only 250gm for a 2 x 3 foot piece, I cut it down a bit so it only weighs 130gm. The pots I'm using for this grow are the Nutrifield Pro Pot system. They can be configured in many ways and you can customise them. I like to a large area of clay, so they are sitting in a 10 in pot filled with clay pellets, as oppose to the last grow which just had a 4" pot but the roots are allowed to form in air rather than sit in the main reservoir. Next I bought some 8mm wooden dowel and cut it to 40cm length and drilled a 1mm hole in one end to put some wire through which it turned out I don't even need because the sticks are locked in position so that can exert enough tension on the mesh to hold it in place.This means it is attached to the pot which means you can move the post. The original round scrog did some initial training but I now have to plan for the rest of this week. Update on the Trippy Gorilla, it seems to have recovered somewhat it's chunky and stocky but it's still obviously has some sort of genetic problem. It also appears to be already setting itself to go to flowering mode. Began week 5 with a defoliation as per sneak preview from next week.

Everything proceeding as expected. Trippy Gorilla seems to be doing well and both girls are gearing up for the flip and stretch. I did a couple of defoliations and I've been trying to keep Think Big evenly spread on the net.

There's some tip yellowing on the Trippy Gorilla but as it's impossible to diagnose I'm just monitoring it, there appears to be a slight improvement so I don't think it's serious. More than likely some heat stress from the 34C ambient temps but we're in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave so they're doin' OK considering. The new lights are pretty bright and don't generate too much heat. I have already exploited the new scrog attached to the pot because I decided to turn Think Big 90 degrees. Pistils are well underway but I'm still calling this a veg week because it's more veg than flower. I've got Think Big spread out as much as I can. She is developing some decent sized stems so I hope it doesn't get too crowded. I have no idea whatsoever what Trippy Gorilla is going to do. She was not topped just bent over a bit. I am expecting/hoping that the next two weeks will see the main part of the stretch and setting of the final form. A couple of update pics of Auto Glueberry in the garden, (see week one) she had a hard time in the garden and didn't do much for a couple of weeks but she's taken off now, although very squat at 12". All the best and thanks for watching. Any ???'s just ask away.

GH nutes were used in the following ration. 1 part Micro 0.5 part Grow and 1.5 part Bloom Plenty of stretch and vigorous growth. Trippy gorilla seems to have shrugged off her weird start and I'll be turning her around at the end of the week which will require some creative re-plumbing of the drain pipe. You can see the large 12" pot is completely filled with clay pellets and there is a few inches of space under the pot with a 2" pool of water, but the roots sort are a bit springy like a mattress.

last two weeks was GH at ppm about 900. in the ratio of 1 part Micro 1/2 part Grow and 1 1/2 part Bloom. Has buds all over but no trichomes yet. So I'm hoping that the next two week brings out the character and trichomes. Trippy Gorilla still looks a bit odd to me, but I'll get a better idea of what she's gonna do in a couple of weeks. Think Big has been growing steadily and if she fulfils her promise this could be a big yield, but no trichomes at all yet. Funnily enough the Auto Glueberry that I put in the garden have very developed flowers, but it's only a foot tall and will probably be lucky to get one ounce. There have been a couple of big defoliations. And now I just wait. I have upped the ppm to 1400 see how that goes. Still using Micro/Grow/Bloom in the ratio 0.5/1/1.5. in. two weeks I'll cut out the grow and just use micro and bloom at 1:2 They've been stretching at about an inch a day and still going. These could take 14 weeks to finish, maybe even more.

Think Big is looking very nice with very many colas covered in tufts ready to begin fattening up. Hopefully by next week I'll be seeing some serious trichome development. I've gone in and done a few very heavy defoliations. Also removed a lot of thin stuff to give it a bit more air as the humidity is very high. I've up the nutes to 1400ppm and she responded well. GH nutes were 1 part Micro 1/2 part Grow and 1 1/2 parts Bloom, after one week the ppm was down to 900 so I topped up with more Micro and Bloom only in the ratio of 1 to 3 to take the ppm back up to 1400. The Glueberry has completely finished, that's drying now. Maybe 1/2 zip, but it's smell nice and berryish. Trippy Gorilla is still a bit of a worry, but I figure if she doesn't make decent buds I might just to an extraction on her. This makes me think that the large root systems in my hydro is causing the development to slow down while the plant grows more.

beginning to fatten up, but trichome production seems a little thin. Could be the extreme heat and humidity but then it could just be a little late. No doubt there is some stress though. Trippy Gorilla has some good trichome production and has very compact buds should be nice is she fattens up as promised. The Think Big reminds me of the Silver Pearl I was growing 20 years ago, in which case I'd expect these buds to get a lot bigger before putting on the trichomes. However this not Silver Pearl so I'm a little concerned as the paucity of trichome production. But hey, I'm told this is a 14-15 week plant so there's another five weeks to go. Seriously though I am expected these to get get dense and fat during the next two weeks or I'll be a bit disappointed. But at the moment my main concern is keeping control of the humidity and temperature as best I can in order to avoid any fungus or powdery mildew. Next grow weather should be better.

Well it was a very exciting week. Everything is frosting up nicely. The Trippy Gorilla is very heavily covered in trichomes and the buds are small and tight but with the 80% humidity I knew there would likely be a problem. She started to ripen up quickly then I saw a hint of bud rot so I had to take down all the main colas and left the rest to mature a bit longer. The buds are very small and not very impressive, but they are covered in trichomes. As yet there is not special distinctive smell. I spent about another 3 hours today on the Think Big, and she has now expanded to almost fill the entire 4 foot width. She is large. I did my best to spread her out and defoliate and also to remove some undergrowth to get good circulation. I'm getting a dehumidifier tomorrow so all should be good. Looks like another 3 or 4 weeks for Think Big. She is a genuine princess.

Soon after I posted last week I found a bit of bud rot in the Think Big. I knew this was coming. I had just bought a small 20 pint dehumidifier but the temperature was 32C and it was just too hot to use. I was checking the buds every few hours all day for two days after, when I found two more small bits of rot, I took down all the main colas. I thought about it for a couple of hours but I knew this had to be done. Fortunately I have an air conditioned drying room so I was able to get them into the right environment. There was 820 wet grams of colas. And I've just trimmed down the dry buds now, and there's 5 + 1/2 zips. When I hung them all carefully I only found one more bit of bud rot. If I had waited two more days, I could have lost it all. I cut all the dry buds off today and inspected them all closely. Only one single bud had some residue rot which I got rid of. They are quite airy buds even though they are very dense on the plant, they were also a few weeks away from being ready so about half the trichomes are clear but half are cloudy. I've only been smoking some of the quality larf so far but its a very nice smoke, banana flavours, and covered in dense trichomes. I'll put some shots in that I trimmed up today. So even this early taste is good. That was only the main colas on the Think Big there's about twice that many secondary colas and they've been going for another week. They've made 12 weeks and there are still new pistils springing up. The temperature dropped to about 27C and 85% RH so now the dehumidifier is working well enough, it raised the temp to 31C but it gets the RH to 60% and so far all the buds look good. It's hot but relatively dry. They are ripening up quickly now but I think they can go for another two weeks. Too bad I had to harvest early but you have to take bud rot seriously. I leave the nutrients for two weeks now. So here's some shots of the harvest so far and what is left. I have the lights down to 100W each now. It seems to be enough.

After the bud rot situation it's all quiet down here. What is left of Think Big which is all the secondary colas, is enjoying the sudden cooler temperatures. I've been able to keep the humidity down to under 60% and 28C most of the time, so the threat of rot problems has receded. So far they are still shooting out new pistils and continuing to throw up strings of calyxes but overall the buds are not getting much bigger. They are however covered in trichomes but they are still only about 50% cloudy. This could go on for another 2 weeks.

Finally starting to look like she might be finishing, but every time I think that, a bunch of new pistils shoot out. Trichomes are getting more cloudy but still a lot of clear ones. Lots of stacked calyxes now packing on. Remember this plant has already had 5 zips of dried bud removed at 11 weeks! I have not changed the reservoir for 4 weeks, I topped it up with a little bit of extra nutrient after two weeks but there seemed no reason to do anything else, she has not been using much recently ppm is constant at about 800. Only now beginning to see some leaves dying. I'm going to let her go for as long as she wants.

Welp, I've made it to 15 weeks finally. She is starting to heavily frost up everywhere, but still a lot of new pistils, after giving her a close inspection for an hour all looks good and while some buds appear on the whole she could go another week, I'll tackle it on a day to day. One way or the other I'll chop before week 16 is done. Heads are very heavy and branches are very bendy, I've put three lights back on at 100W each in a triangle for the final few days. Overall the ppm is remaining at 800 although the reservoir colour is almost clear, so I'm not sure is the ppm is nutrient or waste. At any rate I've not changed the tank for 5 weeks, three weeks ago I added a bit of extra micro and bloom to bring the ppm back up to 1200, but it's remained at 800 for the past two weeks so it doesn't appear to be using any nutrient and the leaves are finally going yellow and starting to crumble. So I wonder how much of bud supplements that people use are just going down the drain. This is just conjecture though it's been interesting to see.

Well I went about 3 days into this week and it was time to chop, there was 2000 gm of wet bud so that could possibly be 13 zips plus the 5 already harvested would make 18 of this one plant, but we'll have to wait and see the final dried weight. The self supporting scrog was a good idea and made it easy to work with the plants as I could move them around easily. By the time it came to chop there were almost no leaves left on the plant.

This plant is a big producer and there was a Harvest at 11 1/2 weeks and a harvest ad 16 1/2 weeks. There was not much difference in the buds except that later harvest had more stacked calyxes. Effect was equally good. Not many amber trichomes at all. Still a lot clear too, even though the plant was clearly ready.