7/29 - Week 9 of veg is starting. At this point, it is just let them grow up a few inches, and also fill out the pots some more with roots before transplanting to 5 gallon fabric pots (their final homes). I also plan on mixing a 'flower blend' soil to fill up the 5g pot around the rootball that is transplanted. This recipe for the soil is taken from MaximumYield:
Enhanced fruit/flower potting soil recipe
This soil recipe is designed for plants that are ready to fruit or flower. In particular, this recipe works great for ornamentals that are already in bloom and for fast-growing annuals that are entering their fruiting or flowering stage. Parenthesis indicate small changes or products I'm using.
1/2 cu. ft. (60 cups) sphagnum peat moss (Promix BX)
1/4 cu. ft. (30 cups) coco coir (Mother Earth Coco Peat)
1/4 cu. ft. (30 cups) compost (either compost or manure)
1/4 cu. ft. (30 cups) perlite
10 cups pumice (likely to just use perlite here)
5 cups worm castings
3 cups bat guano (high phosphorus)
1 cup fish bone meal (using regular bone meal, got Jobe's Bone Meal)
1 cup oyster shell
1/2 cup seabird guano (likely to just add as the high phosporous guano)
1/4 cup alfalfa meal
1/4 cup fish meal (Down to Earth Fish Meal)
2 tbsp. langbeinite (Down to Earth Langeinite)
1 tbsp. glacier rock dust (Azomite ordered from Amazon)
7/30 - While technically the morning of 7/31, lights haven't gone out yet, so it is still the 30th ;) It almost hurts posting pictures today, because they were really thirsty, but I honestly hadn't looked at them for a couple days. Anywho, the plants were watered with ~1.25 liters of water each, about 90 minutes before lights out. Will be interesting to post the 7/31 photos after a couple hours of lights on, and see the difference in appearance. I also mixed the soil for flowering, and it will now have a couple weeks to 'cook' and become ready for the plants. I did make a mistake and accidentally added 1 cup of fish meal instead of 1/4 cup (oops), and the alfalfa meal just smelled too good, so I added 1/2 cup instead of 1/4. Hopefully those 2 'changes' don't add too much nitrogen for flower, but I imagine it won't. I also instead of adding perlite (didn't want to buy a 4 cu ft bag when I needed at most 2.5 gallons (1/3 cu ft), so I opted to add 1 gallon of pumice. Since the coco peat and promix both have perlite in them, I didn't want too much added. There were also some worms from the compost that made it into the tote that is now storing the mix, so life has already started in the soil.
7/31 - It wasn't just after lights on, as I didn't have time to photo earlier, but this is just about 24 hours after watering, and praying/looking good. I had noticed that it looked like the fan had slipped down the pole a bit, and was causing some wind burn/clawing of the leaves yesterday, which probably attributed to poor looks, but looking better today! I am not that versed in checking preflowers, though I know the difference for sure once flowering starts, but it appears both of these may be ladies!
8/4 - After getting home from work, and realizing I hadn't checked on the plants in a couple days and I knew they were due for water either yesterday or today, I saw some THIRSTY plants. They each got ~1.2L of water, and also a quick trim back. Also, as shown in the pictures, and while still under 18/6 light, DC#2 has developed balls, and is definitely a male. I have been contemplating growing any males out for pollen, but that just might be further down the road for me. He will likely get the plug soon. On the plus side, DC#1 definitely has hairs!
@buddha61, I slept on the Topanga hoping for a rerelease even though I have a few OGs. Smoothie and Zkittlez should be fun grown a few zkittlez crosses so far pretty impressed with plant structures on them πͺπ½
@MMTSavage, I'm not a huge fan of the 'gas' of Sour Diesel, so Snake Oil doesn't sound like one I would enjoy a lot. Either some sort of Christmas, or New Year sale, lol. TBH, I have $100 that is stuck in Coinbase (tried to do online payment and messed up), $80 of which went into Bitcoin on coinbase, so I am prepped to buy more when another sale comes up lmao.
As to what I am going to run next, I am going to run 4 autos (Fastbuds Smoothie and Zkittlez), have a few seeds I want to get rid of, and try them in a proper grow (tried them in place of a couple males, but they were too far from the lights, in soil I had never used, etc). As for the GPS/HB seeds, I will likely pop a pack about a month out from the autos finishing, so that I can start to veg before pulling the autos and flipping to flower in the 3x3. Which pack, I'm thinking Topanga Canyon, find me a OG keeper, and then move to one of the purple strains to find a keeper, If I keep flowering in the 3x3, I'd like to keep at least 4 mothers so I could have strains going at the same time. Not sure I could keep more than 4 moms in the 4x2 either.
Damn man, she's looking frosty! How you feeling about GPS' stuff? It's hard to tell with the light, but a little yellowing on the bottom in week 5 isn't too big of a deal, just keep an eye on it (I think your top dressing/tea solution ideas should be fine). Good luck my dude!
@buddha61, That's good to hear man, I've picked up several of their packs, but I don't have any of the strains you listed so I'll be interested to see how they turn out for you. I just ran Golden Nugget (straight fire), currently running Skydweller (it's OK, really stretchy and OG-leaning, only in week 2 of flower but I didn't take any cuts because it was so fussy), and just popped some Dynamite Diesel (just popped up out of soil).
I might pick up another pack of Skydweller to try it again, maybe it was just a weird pack as all the phenos shared the same stretchy traits, but aside from that my GPS experience has always been awesome. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for those Pig Whistle, OBS, and Sundae grows!
@RussianPetrol, I should also add that I now have 5 strains of GPS seeds to try. Aside from the other 9 beans I have of this and the Chinook that is growing, I have Pig Whistle, Orange Blossom Special, and Sundae Stallion.
@RussianPetrol, I did just finish filling the pots with remnants of the soil mix for transplant. We will see how it settles, and does for the next week or so, after the next watering and just play it by ear. So far, I am impressed with the GPS stuff, but obviously it is still early, and a small sample size, so time will tell.
@buddha61, last time I did manifolds, I trimmed back like how you mentioned, but in retrospect I wished that I hadn't. The colas will form the same size anyway, and I would have had more lateral buds for a larger yield overall.
@MovingOn, Thanks, I appreciate that. I learned a bit myself from this, my first manifold, and when I do it again, I will have a better idea how much of the lower branches I can trim back. I left more than I would have preferred here because I didn't trim but the lowest. Now I know I could go up about half the total height of the cola, and I will be left almost nothing but the cola mass.
Great journal my friend lots of detail. Well done on the manifold and the finished product looks good, looking forward to the final weigh in and smoke report!
@MMTSavage, I'm jealous. I wanted to give the Banana Orange Daiquiri a try, but ended up missing it when the vultures cleared the feminized stock last week.
Looking good so far man! Excited to see how these turn out.
As a big fan of mycorrihizae myself, I've used that exact mycorrihizae product before and had good results. I think the full powder form of some of the more expensive stuff (great white, etc) is nice to have and saturates the soil a bit more thoroughly, but for transplanting right around the roots I think the Bigfoot stuff will work for you just fine.