Green Crack - Single Monster Plant

This is going to be a grow where I try to raise a single monster plant to fill up the whole 3x3 tent. The reason for this is that seeds and clones are hard to come by where I live. Plus, I'm a very light user. So a single harvest can last me at least half a year. For these reasons, growing a single monster plant makes more sense in my case. My setup is an Optic4 LED, drawing ~350W from the wall. As I am located in Asia, I have no access to the usual nutrients listed on this site. I will instead be using a regular hydroponic nutrient for Tomatoes. During the flowering I will lower the tomato nutes and supplement with a 0-10-10 NPK nute to mimic the normal flowering nutrients. As for other supplements, I always put in Epsom salt and humic acid in my rez. Based on previous grows, I have found that the humic acid helps buffer overfeeding, as well as prevent algae from forming in my bucket. Attached in this week's photos, are some of my previous growths. The current grow is Green Crack. I aim to develop the roots all the way to a 150 Liter (~35 gallons) container this time. Wish me luck!

Normal development, still under 15W CFL. The 1-finger leaf is drooping, but I don't know why. This has happened to me in previous grow too, so I'm not too worried. The overall strategy here is taking it slow. I have found that these plants are tough motherfuckers. Wait-and-see is not a bad strategy. Just as well, since I'm leaving for a 5-days business trip. This is why I love DWC; as long as I can make sure the res is enough, I can leave it for a reasonable amount of time. I am increasing the nutes to 900ppm @ 5.6 pH before I leave. Also, I am switching the lighting to my Optic4 grow light, at 4 feet distance just to be safe.

Day 17: I came back from my business trip and the plant is developing nicely. There are signs of nute burn on the 1-fingered and 3-fingered leaves, but it seems the plant powered through and carried on. Tough bastard. The rez has drifted to 6.3 pH, but EC was still at 1.8. I changed the rez to be at the same PPM level. The water itself is 0.3 EC. The nutes brings it up to 1.2 EC. I might have added too much epsom salt, because it went up to 1.8 EC. Humid acid only increased it very little afterwards. pH at 5.6. Day 18: FIM’d the little guy at the 5th&6th node. If everything goes well, we will end up with 6 colas. I plan to then top each of the 6 to produce 12 colas. The SCROG net will be put on at that point. Day 21: Another Rez change yesterday. I think the browned lower leaves is caused by cal/mag deficiency due to the low pH. I recalibrated my pH meter and sure enough it was reading higher than its supposed to be. Rez is now at 6.1 pH, with a sprinkle of cal/mag supplement. I also lowered my AC temperature. Today it looks better; but I cant be sure until a few more days.

Day 23: I decided to scrape my FIM away and instead topped to the 3rd node. Reason being 2nd and 3rd node are stacked on tight. So I cleared away the 1st node as well, and am expecting 4 main colas emerging from the 2nd&3rd node. Day 22 - 25: In the mean time, my plant's leaves were still showing Potassium deficiency -like symptoms. Namely, the yellowing/browning along the leaf edges. As the week progressed, the edge yellowing spread, and the interveinal area started getting cholorosis too. I had no idea what to do. Potassium deficiency, afterall, was very unlikely here because there were plenty of potassium, and the absorbtion pH for Potassium is very wide. Day 26: Luckily, I noticed that the stem of the fan leaves were purple. The interesting part was that it was purple only on the top side. The side that is receiving light. I thought I had nothing to lose anyways. so I raised the lamp another 1.5 feet from the already high 4 feet. God damn it, it worked. In 1 night, the new growths had better color, and grew faster than it has been the last 2 weeks. Day 28: The new growth area is doing great and I couldn’t be happier. But the fan leaves are showing browning along the vein. I’m hoping that’s just residual damage from the previous problems (see the last 2 pictures).

Day 29: I cut off the 4 damaged fan leaves because they're beyond saving and is just draining resources. I then also LST'd the 4 colas to be at the same level, as well as trimmed off budsites lower in the stem to focus growth on the 4 upper sites. I need the 4 sites to start developing their topmost budsites so I can do the last round of topping and end up with 8 colas. I also lowered the lights back to 4 feet. Day 30: I saw that the plant have responded very well to the LST. The 4 colas "look up". I also saw that the new growths were pronounced enough for me to easily top. So I topped the 4 colas, as well as got rid of all budsites other than the two on top of each cola. I will let the plant recover for a couple of days. Lowered light to 3 feet. Day 34: the plant has recovered and is showing the 8 bud sites. That’s great. But I can’t help but feel this is taking much slower than it is supposed to. I lowered the light to 2-1/2 feet. Rez change, ppm at 900.

I moved the plant to its final DWC container earlier this week. It’s a huge 40 liter (~10.5 gal) container that I’ve used for 3 grows before this. The container volume seem overkill. Yes, there is the aspiration of growing a monster plant with monster roots. But more than that, my work takes me out of town a lot (~1 week at a time), and often on short notice. But as long as the DWC container is big enough, I can just leave the plant anytime without too much worry. There’s enough water volume for the nutes concentration to stay stable. The container has a float valve connected to the tap as a low water level safeguard at the midpoint. I fill the reservoir above the float valve. But if for any reason the water level falls below that float valve, water level will at least remain at midpoint. The container also have a small DC pump to circulate within (normally turned off; I turn it on when mixing nutes), a mini submersible pump for draining, and a 1/4” hose connection. I use these for reservoir changes so that I never have to move the reservoir or lift the lid (difficult to do once SCROG net is down). I connect this reservoir with a smaller bucket as mixing point. I will post pictures later, as that will explain this better.

Day 43: Finally the preparations are finished, and so the SCROG net is up!!! The reservoir now have a larger air stone pad, and a drain pump installed in it. I put the 8 colas through the net, and right away supercropped all of them to tuck them into the neighboring opening. From here on out it will be weaving through the 8 directions and a little bit to the side to fill up the whole net. After which we will switch to flowering it’ll probably take another 2 weeks. Day 49: canopy is filling up with daily LST. I try to not cut off any leaves, and instead just tuck in fan leaves out of the way. I noticed that older leaves that aren’t getting light are discoloring, getting crispy, and dying. But I thought they were supposed to yellow out slowly? If you see the last 3 pictures this week, the leaves just look... diseased. Any thoughts?

The calcium deficiency is solved. As it turns out, I was using a calcium supplement meant for soil. Problem was, it also contains epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). Apparently the calcium binds with sulfur and forms gypsum. It just drops out of the solution and hence my calcium deficiency. I bought a calcium nitrate meant for hydro, and used RO water instead. I start from RO water of 0.03 EC, added the CaNO3 to 0.20 EC, then added epsom salt to 0.4 EC. The rest of the A/B nutrient mix was added to 1.9 EC. I have not seen anymore horrible looking dead leaves other than the ones that have been damaged beforehand. At the start of the week I did a major LST sesh with supercropping on the SCROG. The net makes everything so easy. Just pinch and tuck. I know people see it everyday, but it still amazes me when I see the plant recovering like nothing happened mere 12 hours after. I mean, after the LST it looked like the plant was trampled by a herd of elephants! This plant is crazy resilient. Looking at the development, my now ~75% full net should be full enough at the end of week 9. Unfortunately, I'll be away for work the whole of week 10. I'm not comfortable not being there during early flowering, as I want to do some light gradual defoliation during the first 2 weeks of flowering. So I will postpone the flip until start of week 11. Let's hope it stays this bushy.

Because I am about to leave for a week on a business trip, this week is all about preparing her for it. I did a BRUTAL training session on day 59, supercropped almost all the growth tips, and weaved/tucked all the fan leaves under the SCROG net. This thing was mangled. Accordingly, it took about 1.5 days for it to fully recover. Afterwards it kept recovering and it was doing alright. I have noticed that the plant has been drinking like crazy these days. About 1/4 of the tub every day. Of course, the stage of the growth has a lot to do with it. But I wonder if the root size is also displacing the amount of water the tub could have fit inside. I can't be sure because I can't open the tub anymore due to the scrog net being on there. So I have set up my RO machine's outlet hose to be inside the DWC tub. It is scheduled to turn on for 15 minutes everyday. Here's hoping that's enough. We'll see in 7 days I guess.

I just came home last night, which is exactly the end of the week 10. The water in the reservoir is still there, but at ~1300 EC only. And boy did this plant bush out! My tent area is ~95% filled. I'm happy with that. Overall, not disastrous. But I can see that the week of neglect have not been kind to the plant: 1. some of the lower leaves have obvious calcium deficiency damage. 2. Lots of leaves beneath the scrog net are crisping up because they are not getting enough light 3. The growth tips in the middle area got covered by the leaves of the peripheral colas, and so they are much less developed compared to the rest of the budsites 4. I've found that the ~6" of clearance between the top of the rez and the scrog net is too narrow. It's really hard to reach to the back of the plant and maneuver. Not to mention uncomfortable because I have to crouch down to do it. So what I will do: 1. This should resolve itself after a rez change 2. I will lollipop the plant during the next 2 weeks 3. I will defoliate slightly to allow light penetration to the middle area 4. Can't do anything about it now. But a good note for next growth. I wanted to conserve as much vertical space as possible, but I screwed up here. Regardless, I have changed the light schedule to 12-12 today. I will continue with veg nutes for the next 1 week, then slowly transition to flowering nutes. All the defoliation and lollipopping will be done gradually over the next 1 week; possibly 2 depending on how it plays out. I’ve also put up a picture of the preflowers. That’s a female right?

Life got in the way, and I did not take care of my plants that much this week. So, not too many pictures. Not that the plant needed much care for the past 7 days. I flipped to flowering with 12-12 cycle on Day 71 ( 1st day of the week). The bloom booster of my optic4 is also on now. Within 3 days, the sex is obvious. It’s a female plant! I saw those 2-haired things appearing all over the place. That’s a relief. Fortunately, the stretch has not been much. So far it’s 3 inches gained this week. We will see how it goes in the coming weeks as far as stretch is concerned. I adjust my light to always be 2 feet away from the foliage. The plant have been exceptionally hungry this week. I only top the Rez with RO water when it gets low. Usually I see a drop of about 100-200 ppm over the course of the week. This time it dropped nearly 400 ppm. I did some light defoliation during the middle of the week. All I did was take off ~15 fan leaves that were blocking all the light at the top. I really don’t like taking off perfectly good fan leaves, but I think the light penetration to the middle areas of the tent will offset the loss of those ~15 fan leaves. At the end of the week, I changed the Rez, and the feeding is now 95% veg nutes, with 5% bloom booster added, in the form of MKP (Mono Potassium Phosphate) powder. This will continue to be increased along the week.

Oh man I hope the stretch is over. To date, the plant have stretched to a height of 29 inches. That’s 11” of stretch over 2 weeks (60% of height at flowering). I’ve raised the light to keep a 2 feet distance. I think I only have about 6” more of grow light distance to spare. The growth have been astounding this week, and I see it from both the height, as well as the reservoir PPM during the week. As far as the height goes, the first half of the week was where the fastest growth was. It went from about 16” above net to 21” in 3 days. We closed the week at 23” above net. The reservoir ppm have been swinging wildly. I checked on Wednesday and Sunday, the ppm have gone down from ~1050 ppm to ~600ppm. Both times, I topped up with RO water as well as nutes and pH up. This is because the pH have gone down to ~4.9 from 5.7. I’m not sure if I did something wrong when mixing this rez. I’m gonna do a reservoir change out in the middle of next week. I have decided to try not doing any more defoliation. I’ll continue with a bit more lollypopping though. I want to see if the no-defoliation practice works for me.

Yeah... The stretch didn't stop by week 2. The plant grew another 9" this week. But since the buds have now started popping out a lot of stigmas and some trichomes, maybe this is it for the stretch. Hopefully. Nothing noticeable yet as far as smell is concerned. Aside from the typical vegetation smell (that I've always thought smells like eucalyptus). I completed the lollipopping, and also have been gradually defoliating the canopy along the week. I don't know if this is enough though. Or should I keep going? Could someone with more experience defoliating advice me based on the pictures? I could provide more pictures if you needed.

I didn’t have time to really take care of my plant. And then my week was cut short due to a work trip. So this week’s report and photo is just the Wednesday and Friday. It’s doing fine. The colas are all frosting up. The stretch has thankfully abated. I think it only grew another 2-3” this week. That should be it. My defoliation work came undone, as the plant bushed up again. Screw it, I’ll let it be. I’ve never really ran my flowering phase totally bushy anyways. Might as well try it this one time. Who knows right? Next week onward I will change my nutes to half the calcium nitrate, and supplement with growmore nutra-zorb instead (calcium and phosphorus) instead. That should give me something close to 5-15-15.

I came back on Wednesday. Plant was doing fine, but I do see sign of heat stress. Most likely from the light being too close, and inadequate circulation. The trichome development is coming along fine. I must say, I don't notice too much of a difference between last week and this week. It was very difficult, but I managed to raise the light a bit more. I basically took it off the pulley, and tied it right to the tent roof frame. It gives me a distance of 17" above canopy. This is the best I can do. I also lowered the scrog net on the 4 poles, pulling on the stems and so effectively "opening up" the canopy a little bit. I think it gives a little bit better light penetration, as can be seen on the picture Day 105 Side View. As for the inadequate circulation, I opened up the flaps on the bottom of the tent as I saw that the tent was bowing towards the inside. Hopefully this allows more air in and solves the problem. We'll see!

Many of the top leaves' edges are curled and burnt. I don't know if this is the leftover effect of the light burn from previous weeks or Potassium deficiency. Just in case, I added 100 ppm of potassium sulfate; as I haven't had the chance to change out rez. The buds are doing fine; I can see that they are developing a bit more compared to last week. but not by much. I'm gonna flip through others' growth diaries to see if this is normal. I will wait until the middle of next week to see what is happening. If the lower leaves start exhibiting the same symptoms (OR they got better after adding the potassium sulfate), then I know it's Potassium deficiency. Either way, I think this will be the last week where I have Optic4+'s both COB and bloom light on at the same time. Next week, I will turn off the COB and continue with just the blurple until harvest. Not much to do as this is 6 weeks into flowering. I checked the trichomes and they are still clear. Will check back again next week. My gut is telling me harvest is still at least another month.

What an eventful week this has been! D115: Found my plants toppled on Wednesday. That's one way for the plant to tell me the bud is fattening up. I did an emergency scrog using wire ties. as well as hang some of the heavier buds from the ceiling. D119: This has been going for a while, but now it's very apparent. The leaf edges are burnt; like looking literally burnt! And some leaves are showing major spotting. These are mostly in the lower part of the plant. These leaves are destined to not get much light, but I don't think they were supposed to look like this. Can anyone help me? In the meantime, I noticed that I have always pH'd my rez to 5.7-5.8. This was okay during veg as the pH tended to go up and so it covers the whole pH range before I need to do rez change. But now that I'm using flowering nutes, the pH tends to go down. I do control the pH so it stays at 5.8, but I think that's part of the problem. It might have caused nute lockout for those nutes best absorbed in higher pH range. So as first aid, I changed the rez and pH'd the rez to 6.4. I will monitor and see if this helps. But if anyone can give me any inputs, I'd be most grateful!

It seems it indeed was pH problem. I constantly pH up the rez as it seems to fall from 6.4 to ~5.6 in a day or two. No further leaf problems. There's that I guess. New learning for me. I got myself a cheapo macro lens for my phone. It works well enough; just that the lens have to be at a ridiculously close distance to get a good shot (1 cm or less). Can you peeps help me take a look and judge how long I still have until harvest? They don't look too cloudy to me. So maybe another 2 weeks? I really could use extra pairs of eyes here.

I pretty much left the plant alone this week, let the auto-watering take care of it. The leaves aren't doing too well it seems, but that is to be expected since this plant is at its end of life. Smell has gotten stronger, but not overpowering. Thank god for that. I know some people like it, but I just can't afford that kind of risk. Something weird about the smell though, it makes me salivate a bit; sort of what happens when one thinks of eating sour lemon. I don't know why, or how else to describe it. It's not like I'm hungry or want to eat it, but there it is. Above are 5 pictures from Tuesday, and another 5 from this Sunday. I would like to wait another week at least, but I'll be away on work trips it seems. So harvest will have to be sometime this coming week. This week the plant have been on half nutes. I might flush the plant for 3 days beforehand with plain tap water. Depends on the timing. So, I guess report wise, this is the last? It's been really great and you guys have been really helpful. See you on harvest day!

I’ll just put this in as the last entry. I chopped her down on the Friday. I put her on quarter nute during the last 5 days, and reduced grow light to only 8 hours. I don’t see any noticeable difference, so I don’t think I’ll be doing that on my next grow. Above are pictures right before getting chopped down. Most of the trichomes are cloudy, and a small portion have turned Amber. I still see some clear ones, but I really don’t have any more time unfortunately. But I think the current state will be decent enough. Trimming is still ongoing. I will post the harvest part after I finish all the trimming and drying/curing. (I HATE trimming).

Well this is my first diary in this site, and I must say, it truly is useful to document everything. Thank you very much for the kind masters on this site who have helped me along the way. I water cured a portion of my harvest (~1/5) as I have always had nothing but good experience with water curing. Started with 901 EC @ the end of the first day, and finished on the 5th day @ 37 EC, then hang to dry for just 2-3 days. Unfortunately I didn't bother to measure the wet weight; I just don't think this tells me anything useful. Final yield after drying and storing everything is as follows: - Tops: 104 g - mids: 54 g - larfs: 29 g - Water cured: 40 g (most of the mids and some tops went here) - Sugar leaf trimmings: 33 g Total with trimmings is 260 g, but I think we should leave that out. Grand total is 227 g. I'm very happy with the numbers of course. I'm also very happy about how frosty the green crack is. I am very sure I got lucky with the genetics I got. I am still looking for that elusive great tasting weed though. There are quite a few things I have learnt from this grow for my next: 1. I went the long-veg way, and I don't think it was the best idea. Fun, but not the best idea. Because the tent was so full, I couldn't trim/defoliating the stems towards the back and so had a lot of mids and larfs. Those were HELL to trim. 2. I need to try better flowering nutrients. The current generic nute I use for veg is perfectly fine. But the flowering nutrient doesn't have enough buffering, I think. The pH swings are too dramatic (~6.5 to 5.6 pH in 2 days? Come on.). 3. I should have started the flowering a week earlier, that way I don't run out of headspace. Unfortunately during this grow I was away on a trip. 4. One layer of SCROG net is not enough. I must add a second layer above to support the heavy flowers. In this grow they toppled because they got too heavy and the stems weren't robust enough to hold them up. I'm gonna take a break from growing for a month or so. I need to do some cleaning and process the harvest to oil/rosin/etc. But once that's done, next stop: DNA Genetic's Blood Orange Sorbet. Stay tuned!