So, it’s the end of week 7 and these ladies are looking great! All three plants have stopped stretching and reached their final heights. The tallest is at 52" and it’s a 50/50 mixture of green/purple. The medium sized plant is 50" and the least purple of the three with only mauve coloured calyxes. The shortest is at 48" and it’s by far the purplest of the group with a truly black/purple colour throughout the bud and surrounding leaves. I am still watering every 2nd to 3rd day for the two largest ladies and every 4th day for the shorty- she’s just not sucking up the same volume of water as the larger plants. I am using aerated tap water, PH’d to 6.5-6.6 to protect/nurture the valuable microbial life within the plants soil/root zone. I have upped the CalMag for the largest two plants as they are both showing signs of a mild Calcium deficiency with some rust spots on the upmost fan/sugar leaves. So it’s 5 mls/gallon for the two biggest plants and 3.5 mls/gallon for the shortest. I’m not sure if I’m going to top dress/amend these plants again as they are not showing any signs of being hungry and there’s only a few weeks to go. The Gaia Green fertilizers recommend that you stop feeding your plants 3-4 weeks prior to harvest so I think it’s probably PH’d water, CalMag and maybe some molasses from this point on. Just water and wait! So cheers until next week and happy growing!
@BermyZH, so apparently putting the plants into the dark for 2-3 days/no water really stresses them out. Causing them to think and react to "the end is near!" Some growers feel that the plants produce more resin/trichomes in a desperate last effort to pollinate= seeds= self preservation. I’ve never tried this before so i’m going to shoot before/after pics and see if i can notice any real difference. Hopefully i open the tent up after 3 days and they’re dripping with sticky goodness, we’ll see!
@kitkat332986, i hope these girls fatten up a lot more too... the lower buds have doubled in size the past week but the upper buds are just putting on resin- lots of resin. Although the upper canopy could have been better, the buds are rock hard. All three plants have been staked up now as they are leaning dramatically without any support. The weight on the top half of these girls is impressive and i look forward to a decent haul from just 3 plants. Gotta love Dutch Passion- always reliably good bud and healthy, heavy yielding plants! Thx for checking out the grow.
@Philindicus, hopefully they’re huge! As large as my Auto Ultimate’s would be nice but I don’t think they’ll grow quite as big. Looking forward to the dark purple buds though, hopefully I end up with 3 different phenos!
@Philindicus, actually i take a small break to start my summer outdoor grow every year. I enjoyed a few weeks in beautiful Portugal too! Thx for welcoming me back and the sour crack is running a little low...😏
Nice haul they held their color nicely after drying. I have heard about stressing plants out to increase resin/terpene content. In the first week or two of bloom I have been using some branch pinching and something I've coined "half cropping" which is essentially super cropping to a lesser degree. Instead of bending the branch to 90 degrees I lightly roll and slightly squeeze the branch then slightly bend the branch creating some stress to the site it heals very quickly. Then using a bit of drought stress during the last stages of bloom. I've been backing my lights off during the last 10 days during ripening. I believe California LightWorks recommends decreasing the amount of red spectrum light during the ripening stage. https://news.californialightworks.com/what-is-the-best-led-spectrum-for-growing/
Although there have been some studies claiming uv-b light increases trichome/thc development no studies to my knowledge have been done to disprove that uv-a light doesn't do the same thing as uv-b. A lot of LED light manufacturers are adding uv-a to their bloom lights. I am not a chemist so I'm reaching here but I would think the 72 hours of dark would slow down or stop photosynthesis which will force the plant to stop producing chlorophyll and force it to feed or move sugars to its extremities like the leaves and buds. I would think it would be helpful in speeding up the curing process we go through getting the chlorophyll and sugars to break down to improve the over all burning/smoking quality. I would also have to say that Auto flower strains potentially may produce less terpenes than photo period strains based on how much Cannabis Ruderalis genetics they contain.
"update- plants have been chopped", ha, I know that one, you're thinking 'hey I'm gonna leave it till it's fully ripe', it doesn't change much day by day then one day you walk in and suddenly everything is screaming the 'time has arrived'. It's almost magical.