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Things got busy towards the end of the third week, decided to do an early top at the fourth node, it was a bit tight prolly should have waited a couple more days to be safer but it grew out with no problems. This looks like it could be a decent yielder so I'm training for eight main limbs.
This is where it all begins to take off and the serious planning begins. There's eight main branches and this look like she'll spread out well. All caught up now after no updates for 3 weeks, next update May 26th week 5.
This is the week where some life changing (for the plant not me) are usually made, and this was no exception. The heavy rounded pre scrog was removed at the end of the week and replaced with the more permanent scrog that will be fixed in place. I am able to snip this scrog and bend the little bits of wire to make an opening so that I do not have to force the stems under the scrog. This is much less stressful for both the plant and me.
There are 8 branches, the lower six are evenly spaced around a circular pattern, the top two have been left to grow straight and I think I'm going to go with this layout and let the top two grow as tall as they will. It's like a hybrid technique between topping and not topping.
I've no doubt this plant could produce a pound easily like Think Big, but that is not what I want to do, so that's what I'll be thinking about for the next week, however, the grand plan seems to be unfolding is for two huge colas surrounded by a lower level of buds.
I wanted a more compact plant and she seems to be doing ok so far, I've decided to let the two top branches go straight up and perhaps create a bed of buds around them. I call this one Twin Towers. Moved into a transition nute phase now giving her 1:1:1: MicroGroBloom
The wire net has been cut off and inside the plant it she has been thinned out as I keep in mind I'm not going for the record harvest. I've moved her back under the Viparspectra and she'll be getting even heavier red light later in the grow, because I have two orange buds in another grow in my DIY shallow water culture, and I'll be able to compare the buds. Anyway here's some shots of week 7, the same age as the three in a pot grow (check my diary) but just starting flowering.
A major defoliation then another one a couple of days later. Otherwise everything is proceeding as expected. The Orange Bud is mainly under the very heavy red viparspectra and will be for the rest of blooming so I'll see what effect that has especially compared to my other orange bud grow which will be only under the Mars light (see my DIY shallow water culture grow)
She is a little behind in flowering to the three in one pot but both grows are sharing the same reservoir. She looks a bit odd at this stage.
Not much to report this week other than she has been a little disappointing, this was going to be my main girl and the 3 in a pot were the bonus but it's become the other way around. the three in a pot are all stinky and bejewelled but this orange bud seems to be a bit sad. The branches are very stiff and she is a bit crowded in on herself. There'll be another update in a few days it will be time for the 10th week. She is beginning to bud up a bit better though.
A few days late with this, week 11 coming up in a few days. She is starting to look a little better especially over the past few days. Some trichomes are finally starting to appear. She looks completely different to my two other orange buds in my DIY grow.
Finally starting to fatten up, stems are very rigid, I've done a lot of defoliating in order to decongest the plant a bit, especially because I cannot easily bend these stems. But looking good, now I just have to watch out for bud rot.
The grow room is smelling delightful.
OK we're at week 13 now as I've been a bit lazy because not much is happening at this stage. She is absolutely chunky and dense with trichomes everywhere but mostly white pistils so now I just wait.
I'll update this quickly to week 12 then I'll do week 13 straight away...
OK this is week 13 up to July 20th 2019. There's nothing really happening other than me waiting for the buds to ripen. It does appear to need another 2 weeks to me. We'll see how she goes.
Sorry about the slow update. Week 15 and the chop coming immediately...
Colas are surprisingly chunky compared to how feeble they looked at 9 weeks, however I'm now just waiting for them to get properly ripe, and I'll have to keep a close eye on the buds for problems, but they are nicely spread out to get air and the humidity is down. She's now running on 30ppm rainwater as there's plenty of green leaves on her. Leaves are beginning to yellow but trichomes are still mostly clear. You can see that every single branch from top to bottom has the same chunky flowers, there's no loose stuff at all.
Suddenly right at the end of this weeks they looked like they were ready, leaves were yellow and nothing more was happening, it becomes very obvious when it happens. Chopped on 3rd August.
Solid buds, heavy hitting smoke, a bit grassy no really distinctive flavours not really to my taste, but it has not had time to cure properly it will definitely get more interesting. I've been testing this out in my new Slug33 Fat Mac rosin forge.
freddd how many stars do you give the slug 33, I am a bho guy myself, but would convert since there are no chemicals involved. do you think it squeezes out most of the oil? thanks
@SHAMMYDOG, oh yes the slug is excellent it gets as much squish as anything, I get about 20% or 10-15% for the lower quality stuff. I'm about to start a reddit thread where I'll be juicing a lot of my current Moby Dick, you can find it at Reddit/r/slug33 should be some stuff up in a few days. I used to just use ethanol, but the slug is a lot of fun to use. Especially with some mods. https://youtu.be/FaFni3zeK54
@RastaMouse, Hey thanks Ganjaman, I'm pretty pleased considering how she looked at 9 weeks. Her two sisters are in my DIY grow they are growing totally differently.
@Salgeezi, thanks man. Yeah this is a good question, the answer is that it comes from experience but that experience has to come from working with a healthy plant, because defoliating needs a healthy plant and root system.
Next one needs to believe that defoliating heavily is a good thing. This is too high a bar for many people. This is not a blind belief like religion, it's a belief based on evidence that one has seen.
Now I'm still working it out myself but basically if the plant is healthy it appears that it's not really possible to over defoliate, up to a point of course. So the question is not how much to defoliate the question is 'what do this big frikken leaves do exactly'?
Do they provide magic stores of goodness which are necessary to pump up the flowers later? This is what our emotions tell us, but our logic tells us no. I'm still working this out. But I can say this my very first grow was the OG Kush, take a look at that at day 50 it was this massive bush and I knew shit about defoliating, by the time I finished it looked pretty poorly, looks how sad she looks at the 50 day scrog. I thought at the time I'm not even going to get 2 zips here, but look at the result, 13 zips, that's madness. So because of that and only because of that I just completely let go on my Think Big and that pulled 18 ounces.
Now as I said I'm still working it out and I'm growing smaller plants with more variety these days, on my current DIY grow I have two orange buds, I might treat them differently and see.
Oh one other thing is that I don't have exhaust just an open room and it's quite humid here so defoliating helps there too completely separate.
I haven't been growing long enough to think that I have all the answers regarding defoliating. I mean on my current Moby Dick I'm leaving a lot of large fan leaves around the outside because they are not covering anything. However I did cut a bunch off because I'm still not sure about whether it causes some sort of beneficial shock to the plant. Does cutting a bunch of mature leaves alter the hormones and signals in some way? Possibly, there's so much to find out.
Freddd Question... I have a friend running a system similar to yours , but his ppms keeps going up, he keeps adding straight water to his rez, maybe a gallon every other day, but still it climbs up. He is in flower, is this normal?
@SHAMMYDOG, Hey shammy, I have my new DIY shallow water culture diary, it's been designed to avoid all the normal problems that people get with DWC. Check it out.
Freddd
