8 Ball Kush

Canada for the win! (Yes I'm using Miracle Grow, I've had lots of success with it and it's super cheap! When I get 2 weeks into flowering, I'll use some of the more expensive purpose-specific stuff rather than MG, and then will flush at 6 weeks of flowering so the plants use up their internal nutrients). My soil is some local grow medium from a nearby farm. I've found chunks of horse poo and twigs in it (I picked out most of the twigs). I used the same soil this past spring/summer to grow an awesome garden to test it out before growing cannabis in it. Since I'm doing an indoor grow in a 2x2x5 Secret Jardin DS60, I sterilized the soil in the oven by pre-heating the oven to 275F, filling a big turkey roasting pan with the soil (lots of water in it, but not muddy!) with a BBQ thermometer buried halfway down in it and covering with the roasting pan lid... Got the soil up to 190F and then turned the oven down to around 190, opened the oven door for a minute to let the main heat escape and stabilize the inside of the oven a bit... then kept the soil between 188 and 192 for 30 minutes. Let it cool naturally. It took many times of doing this but I'm patient. I also boiled some rocks from the driveway to line the bottom of the pots to keep the dirt from flowing out the drainage holes. I have a 300-watt-equivalent LED setup with heatsink and fan, and a 189 CFM-CAPABLE (have a rheostat set to about 30 CFM, that's all this tent needs) fan pulling air at the bottom of the tent and pushing it out through a carbon filter, with a blackout/filter screen over the air inlet hole at the top. Climate control is performed via an air conditioner during the day and an electric space heater at night. Light cycle is 18/6, running from about 4am til 10pm. In the previous week, they had stopped growing and were starting to yellow between (but not including) the veins and the edges were "tacoing" slightly. Normally I water with distilled water, but we're on a well (live on a farm) whose pH just happens to be right around 6.6, so I completely flushed both plants until about 2 gallons of water had poured out the bottom of each one, there was some nasty reddish orange water coming out. May have been nutrient or salt buildup. Then I fed with the CaliMagic, Miracle Grow, and pH down to 6.3 in distilled water combination listed in this week's grow diary. By the end of this week (week 3) the colour had returned and they were growing like, well, weeds. When I planted them, I purposely planted in less soil so they'd start sprouting about 4 inches down from the top level of the pot. Today at the final day of week 3, I pruned off the lower 2 sets of limbs and filled with dirt, then watered with a mixture of half-strength CaliMagic and distilled water, pH downed to 6.3 -- not a normal watering, just enough to make sure I soaked the new soil on the top layer. Now I have more stem support in the dirt, only 7-leaf pattern (yeah call me picky), and the stem part that got buried will grow roots! So technically the plants were about 8 inches tall and I just halved that. Which is fine with me, because a patient older person who is in it for the long haul, at least 10 weeks of veg before flowering! I noticed some slight clawing in the leaves, so I'm going to hold off on giving them any more Miracle Grow. They may stunt for a few days while they adjust -- but now I'll just let them grow in peace, other than some fimming, topping, and/or defloration at some point. I eventually want to try LST, but I'm really looking forward to this harvest as I recently fell in love with 8BK and don't want to try anything too fancy this time. I plan to create two clones out of the best one of these two plants and then grow those next -- one of which I will try LST.

I have now completed week 4! The plants are labelled. Plant "A" came from the seed that floated in water for the shortest length of time before sinking. Plant "B" was the seed that floated for the next shortest time (which was quite a bit longer than A) before sinking. There were two other seeds that sank overnight (plants "C" and "D"), and one seed that kept floating. The funny thing is all 5 seeds looked kinda meh in the package, but once I soaked them to the point where they sank, they got the nice marble pattern?! The 5th seed did not sink nor become marbled, so I threw it out. As each of the other 4 seeds sank, I planted them into the same 5 gallon bucket. All 4 sprouted, but D never finished pushing out of the shell all the way before giving up. Otherwise, A B and C popped up in their order of sinking, with a significant margin between each. Could be completely random, but I definitely noticed. I wanted to grow two so I can clone them (which will cause me to hit my legal limit of 4) before flowering. I thought 4 seemed like plenty, but it'd be nice to have multiple clones going if for no other purpose than keeping the dream alive! I sadly discarded C while contemplating this, and the fact that these are the first plants I've ever developed FEELINGS toward, during germination no less. When I plant a vegetable garden, I do well but I don't really care. I can plant as much as I want, or if stuff fails there's always the grocery store. But I know what cannabis returns, and I'm really looking forward to it. Back at the beginning of this week, I noticed some nitrogen burn forming on plant A. I flushed the soil with 6.3 pH water / no nutrients. The bottom 4 leaves were burnt to the point where I could just lightly pull them apart into pieces. I decided to snip them off. The plant still looks healthy and I'm not worried, but the scenario definitely stunted the growth! However, trimming also opened up a treasure trove of growth. Today, at the end of the week, I gave healthy watering of the same 6.3 pH water / no nutrients. What is now labelled plant "B" also got a heavy watering with the same 6.3 pH / no nutrients at the beginning of the week. It grew fast during the week! And as it grew quickly, I noticed the leaves started to give a hint of yellowing. So I mixed up a jug of nutrients (Miracle Grow and CaliMagic) about 1/4 the strength as last time (I REALLY don't want this one to burn). I watered heavily with this nutrient mix at 6.2 pH. Note: I made sure the water was warmed up to around 78F by soaking the jugs in a bathtub of hot water for a bit. After staring at plant A's uncovered undergrowth, I realized some LST might help. I've never done this before, but I fiddled around with the branches a bit and I noticed how easy they were to bend into position. They also had a tendency to stay where I put them for an hour or so. I decided to implement LST on both plants, which I think is really going to help! I'm considering starting flowering at the beginning of week 9 instead of 11, as long as this keeps up. Otherwise I'll run out of space, and the spousal-unit wants to see return before I'm allowed to setup a second grow tent! (so I can have 2 recent clones in veg while the main 2 are flowering) Hoping to post less next week, but this week was definitely eventful and worthy of a wall of text. I've learned a lot for next week as well as next clone cycle, which is sometimes all you can really expect until you figure it out.

CLONES: I boiled rocks from the driveway, steamed some new Canna Terra Professional Plus soil at 190F for 45 minutes (people were complaining about thrip eggs in the soil) then ran some well water through it to populate some "safe" bacteria and/or micronutrients (I did this with the other soil as well, lots of minerals in our water). I am a bit worried using this soil for my cloning medium, even though it comes highly recommended with good reviews there's absolutely no perlite in it! 😲 We'll see what happens. Took a healthy cutting with a fan leaf (which I chopped off half of to make it fit in the chamber) from each plant and set up the clone in a solo cup, with rocks in the very bottom for weight and anti-soil-erosion, then piled up with the Canna Terra soil. Used the Miracle Grow rooting powder with stems trimmed at a 45 degree angle or so. My whole setup seems promising, I just have to keep an eye on it! I gave a very small watering of 6.2 pH distilled water no nutrients, so I had runoff of the same pH coming out of each one. Didn't take long at all for the humidity to start building up in the chambers! Then I took care of the main plants. I'm giving the main plants and the clones 7 days to recover. I don't care if the main plants stunt for a week, I'm already running out of horizontal room. The ultimate plan for the clones once they are rooted and healthy, is to put them under a low level LED table lamp to keep them growing slowly while the others flower. If they are struggling, I'll put them in the tent for several hours a day as necessary. Plant A received some more LST. I also FIMmed the main cola, and removed a fan leaf which was hiding a bunch of other potential colas! Plant B also received some more LST. Instead of topping its main cola like I planned originally, I FIMmed. No fan leaves removed, it's a pretty openly spaced plant compared to A. Watered both with 6.2 pH distilled water no nutrients until 6.2 pH runoff came out the bottom. I also did a small watering in between for both plants, they are really sucking it down and it dried out about an inch in from the top mid week, AND was dry like that again today! No nutrients necessary, they seem to be taking off. Both plants are starting to stink a little, but my charcoal filter is taking care of it when they are in the tent. Side Note: I decided instead of using expensive nutrients in the flower phase, I'll use some 2-7-7 cactus nutes... It has the EXACT same micronutrient ratios as the miracle grow, but only 2-7-7 NPK which should be compatible with flowering mode. Combined with CaliMagic, I don't think I'll have any problems. We'll see :) Plus, I can finally feed those cacti we've been neglecting for years...

End of the final week of veg! Have changed timers so that today will be 15/9, and tomorrow forward will be 12/12. Exciting times! Will continue to feed them as if in veg for a couple weeks while they stretch. The heater has been kicking on at night. I had posted a pic of plant B at the beginning of the week, thinking it was starting to have issues. Toward the end of the week it became apparent there was obvious yellowing happening that's now appearing in the bottom leaves too. However, both plants have been booming with growth this week and plant A is even starting to show tiny signs of some yellowing. I think it's a nitrogen deficiency, however to facilitate the plants getting all the nutrients they need, I decided to be a little unorthodox and add 15ml/gal of well water to the mixtures this watering. I also added a few drops of 2-7-7 cactus food, which I'm planning to use for the flowering phase. Hopefully both pots are rich with a nice balance of nutrients. Plant A received quite a bit of LST as 3 colas spawned out from where I topped! Trimmed 3 fan leaves that have been dragging in the soil and weren't getting much light, now I don't have to worry about anything underneath. Plant A received half the Miracle grow as plant B (1.25ml/gal) but pretty much everything else the same. Plant B received no LST as I think it's just fine the way it is. Also trimmed 3 dragging fan leaves, no more dragging. Gave it double dose of Miracle Grow compared to plant B (2.5ml/gal) to help stop the yellowing. Will monitor the reaction. The clones, after 7 days, haven't changed much other than yellowing of bottom leaves. They've had the same droop all week too. Removed humidity domes often for short periods turning into longer periods, domes have now been off for 24 hours. Given all of this, I think they are in a lot better shape than they could be :) We'll see what happens. Giving them one more day's ride in the grow tent, then due to flowering mode I'll have to alternate between the tent when the moms are awake, and LED desk lamp for the rest of the time. I gave both of them 15ml of plain 6.3pH distilled water, just to make sure the roots (if any?) have some motivation. Onward we go...

EDIT: I said "Potassium deficiency" but meant "Phosphorus deficiency". First week of flowering :) Man they've stretched like crazy! Almost 6 inches in a week. I'm now REALLY wishing I had purchased at least a 2x3 instead of a 2x2. At the end of last week, I fed a potent dose of nitrogen-rich solution to both plants. By day 3 of this week, they stopped turning yellow and started looking like normal again. The pots were also fairly dry so I flushed with 6.3pH distilled water and nothing else, about a gallon each. Throughout this week, clone A thrived with very little effort! I gave a few sprinklings of water during the week to both clones when they needed it. Clone B has finally rooted. B had completely sucked the lower leaves dead, so I cut them off a few days ago and as soon as I did, she started to perk up. Every time I water the moms, I end up with crazy soil displacement which exposes some roots and what not, I always have to backfill with my hand after. I got a big bag of perlite, which I have proper plans for in the next grow, but this time around I just want to use it on top of the moms' soil so I don't have to backfill after every watering. I tested it with clone A just to make sure it wouldn't kill my plants (I know it shouldn't, but it's my first time "playing" with perlite). Sure enough, it acts as a buffer when I pour the water in, which keeps the soil in place. Now I have to backfill perlite, but I'm not displacing soil so it's a win! Today, I noticed plant A has some sort of deficiency as indicated by a few lower leaves. It looks like probably a magnesium deficiency, but maybe also a bit of potassium deficiency? Otherwise, she's strong and healthy, just giving me some early warning. Plant B seems to be doing just fine. For each plant, I put about a 1cm thick later of perlite around the top, then watered (each) with 1/2 gallon of 6.2 pH distilled water, and 1/2 gallon of some balanced nutrient mix at 6.2 pH. Runoff is at 6.2 pH. I also trimmed off some fan leaves that were completely blocked and not getting light, thus yellowing. I've seen people with similar grows who get around 8 ounces, which would be great. Just gotta keep it moving forward! Oh, and I also mixed up a weak nutrient solution for the clones in a 500ml bottle. 1 drop of miracle grow, 2 drops cactus food, 2 drops calimagic, and then pH down to 6.3. HOWEVER, I have not fed it to them yet as the soil claims to have enough nutrients to support a seedling or clone for up to 2 weeks. Just want to have it ready for when I need it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention how much I love the smell. It actually makes me salivate! The clones are now in their own diary! :) And being serviced on their own day of the week so I spread out the labour. Gave both plants a flushing with 6.8pH pure distilled water at the middle of the week, about a gallon each. (they are "4L" jugs in Canada but the exact same gallon jugs you get down in the U.S., since I water each plant with one of these full jugs every time, it's easier math to go by the gallon) They grew about another 6 inches this week :O I haven't seen many cannabis plants, but for MY setup, these things are monsters! I'm glad I didn't veg any more than 6 full weeks. Anyway, entering week 3 of flowering, I've defoliated both plants. I was trying to strike a balance between opening them up and killing them. I think I've achieved a balance but time will tell! I took about 30 leaves off the upper portion of each plant, which was maybe 1/3 of their total fan leaves -- however they were almost all toward the top so newer, smaller growth. As long as they live through this, they're going to get WAY more light and air flow! For end of week 2 watering, I started using Supernatural Brand Bud Blaster. Very small amounts. It calls for 5ml to 10ml in 5 GALLONS of water... so I put 1.25ml (1/4) in each of my gallon jugs, on the lower end of the spectrum. We'll see how it goes. Also added a little bit of nitrogen-heavy miracle grow, just a tiny little bit to ensure enough nitrogen and the other micro-nutrients it provides. Also some CaliMagic. The pH was right around 6.0 after adding this stuff in, so just a few drops of pH-up brought it up to 6.2. Liking my new digital pH meter. I was using litmus paper before, which I'm pretty good at reading, but having a digital meter takes it to a whole new level! Onward and upward... Wait, no, no more upward!!! I'm running out of space! XD

Not much to say this week, other than talking about a deficiency in plant A below. Steady going for plant B! Mid-week flush and then Fantastic Nutrient Friday today ;) Put in less bud blaster and more CaliMagic this time, I think all the potassium in the Bud Blaster was causing a calcium lockout in plant A??? Would appreciate input here from a more experienced grower, there's a couple pics above of the deficiency. Some pistils starting to turn brown. Clear trichomes allllll over the place. Exciting stuff!! Still waiting on the last piece of the still to be delivered. Have ordered parts for the next grow setup which will mean I can tend to the plants without having to remove them from the tent, which I'm also excited about. Breaks my back bending over into a 5 foot tall tent and lifting out or putting back 5 gallon pots.

EXPERIMENT: Still waiting on the teapot to boil the water properly, but the photos and video of the "still" attached to this diary shows proof of concept. The sludge coming out is from the copper tubing manufacturing process, it'll eventually stop. I need to get the real setup built and run a couple gallons through the tube. Plant B is coming along nicely! I have a feeling it's going to finish around week 6 rather than the full 8 week period advertised. So I've started the flushing process. I can always add nutrients if necessary. Flushed twice this week with 2.5 gal of pH-adjusted distilled water. Plant A doesn't seem to like the bud blaster. I think it'll finish around the 8 weeks advertised. I flushed all week same as plant B, though I will probably add more nutrients to A next week. It just seemed to be getting some nutrient burn so I wanted to back off.

Sorry for the crappy pics. I don't want to move them out of the tent any more unless I absolutely have to! My hands are shaky from nerve damage so hard as hell to do pics in the tent. Maybe I should get out the "real" camera with the tripod some day. Basically just steady as she goes. I was told that since I don't like couch lock, I probably want to harvest them at 50% clear / 50% milky as this will give a nice head high without leaving me stuck on the couch. That being said, harvest will likely be at the end of next week! I'm excited! About 5 days ago, my clumsy hands knocked off a little popcorn bud. I dried it out and smoked it. It was a little too racy of a high still due to lacking maturity, but man it got me EFFED UP! No joke. The plants are now beginning the standard end-of-flowering death process, the leaves are changing and at this point no amount of nutes would stop it so not really worth adding any. Just flush flush flush!

Nothing had really changed from last week except that some trichomes are turning colours which I can't really show you anyway because the pictures through the loupe aren't very clear! Also, the plants were starting to smell so strongly that the entire house would wreak whenever I opened the tent. My wife became more interested in the plants and wanted to look them over with the loupe, I was showing her what trichomes are. She was like "Why are these ones brown-ish?" which was when I realized I should harvest! So, I harvested today. Took lots of pictures. Got a total wet weight, etc. Even ran one of the popcorn buds through a vape just to see what would happen, which tasted like crap (fresh wet bud doesn't taste good!!!). I had to run it through two 20 minute vape cycles toking away at it -- the first was to dry it out and the second was to actually get the THC LOL Anyway, I definitely got a head change from it but won't be messing with it any more until it's dry. It should be dry this weekend and then I'll post the "harvest" to finish off this diary.

Sorry, I was so excited I forgot to take pics of the plants before I cut them down :facepalm: So, that's it! First grow under my belt. I was a bit sad to cut them down at first, but as I started cutting off buds I couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear :D I listened to a bunch of 311 and Sublime, then finished off dancing with my non-stick Fiskars (kids: don't try at home haha) to some esoteric electronic music that probably no one knows. Yeah, I'm a somewhat older guy but fortunately for me I'm not stuck in the era of my youth ;) Anyway. 9.8oz wet and then into the grow tent in darkness with the negative pressure through the carbon filter, the only time I could smell anything was when I'd open the tent. I wet-trimmed anything that wasn't covered in crystals and called her done for this first time. 4 full days/nights worth of drying yielded 61.5 grams, or just over 2.5oz. Nice! Then into mason jars with 58% (my preference) humidipacks and stored in a cool, dark cabinet. Burped about 6 times so far in the last 36 hours, pulled out a little popcorn bud each time, smoked some of them and gave some away. One thing to note is that today, only 36 hours after curing began, the buds are already significantly less harsh to smoke. Buds from both plants are absolutely amazing. After smoking, a brief energetic/creative head high sets in, then shortly gives way to a full body stone that makes me feel like I'm skipping through time and screws with my vision. It ends with a nice calming feeling that could last all day, almost like that next day after doing ecstasy. Both plants are similar except plant A hits a bit harder. I can't stop grinning from ear to ear, laughing at everything and yet nothing! Yet if I want to get up and do something, I can. 8 Ball Kush has been my favourite for a long time, and when you grow it yourself, OMG it's way better than commercial stuff you buy. Definitely not something I could smoke all day every day. It was almost too much for my wife, but she did enjoy it, just wants to pack less next time :) The smell/flavour is very earthy and spicy. Almost kinda like a minty-mentholy-coffee background thing going on, it's hard to pinpoint. And then plant A has this pungent, sharp diesel thing going on that plant B does not. It just blasts me in the face when I open the jar! Burns nicely in the bong, into a fine ash and right down the stem. Also produces MASSIVE vapour clouds in a "Vapir NO2 V2". Could I do a better job of harvesting/trimming? Yeah. Could I do a better job of growing? Yeah. Did I dry it out too fast? Maybe. Could I write a better diary and do some imaginative stuff? Absolutely. But I'm happy with the outcome. Amazing cannabis, probably the best I've ever smoked (honestly!). I'm definitely going to keep growing more 8 Ball Kush, while also exploring other strains. I wish I could grow more than 4. I feel like 6 or 8 would be perfect, but I can't complain considering I'm just happy it's finally legal. The clones have been moved into the tent in their perlite hempy buckets, so I don't have to constantly pull plants in and out of the tent any more! And if I do need to move them, 4 gallons of perlite retaining half a gallon of water is much lighter than 5 gallons of soil soaked and heavy with water. That diary will be updated in a couple days. When I get close to starting flowering phase with the clones, I'll build two more perlite hempy buckets and pop some Girl Scout Cookies using Rapid Rooters to kick off a third diary. To everyone who followed along and/or gave me private advice, thank you. I'm the kind of person that will take the knowledge you gave me and increase it 10 fold at a rapid pace, then spread it to other new growers. Which I've already been doing when I can. Also a thanks to Grow Diaries for an amazing site and community.