BM Special Queen #1 from seed

Hi All, After doing three grows of the same strain. I am ready to venture out and start a new one. And that is Special Queen #1 from Royal Queens Seeds. But I am off with a rough start... :( GERMINATION: Super fast and easy to germinate. Four out of four seeds germinated after 3 days using the paper towel method. (my first sign that this is not going to be easy) transferred two to rockwool and two to jiffy cubes. The rockwool ones grew faster but when I transplanted them into solar cup size pots I severed the two in jiffy cubes while transplanting!!!!!! :( Sign one. SEEDLING: I am a person of experiments so I placed soilless medium in both containers and placed one in my Rainforest Aeroponics cloning machines and one just hand watered. After 2 weeks the one in aeroponics were three times the size of the hand watered one. TRANSPLANTING to VEG: (My second sign that this grow is jinxed) Again the curious BM in me can't resist experiments. So I transplanted the hand water one into a 5G pot and moved the aeroponics to a GH bucket DWC. The hand water transplant to soil went really well. And I thought transplanting from aeroponics to DWC should be a breeze but didn't realize that the holes that goes from the top chamber to the reservoir are so small that I only managed to get 3 out of 30 roots thru the holes :( So the hydro mother plant was stunned and had root rot. This leads to a whole slew of problems. There was severe light burn, nutrient burn on the mother although my solution was less than half strength compared with the aeroponics cloner and I went from 200PAR top of canopy from a CFL to a LED dialled down to 185 PAR top of canopy. I thought that would be good enough, cause I tried that with the WW clones before. But I think because the root ball (size of two fists) were mostly on the top chamber under clay balls. I am kind of sad because the mother plant was thriving under the aero cloner ( The fan leaves were the size of my hand) But it is now half dead and severely stunned :( SOIL USED IN VEG: Foxfarm Ocean Forest 40% Coco 40% Perlite 15% Wormcastling 5% Brewed Compost tea - Microbes 36hours and soaked soil mix with tea before transplanting. Wormcasting, Greatwhite, Mykos, himalayan pink salt, kelp meal, molasses Take aways from all this: Got to think about when and where to transplant and the risks and implication of transplanting too many times. Cause theoretically vegging in hydro and flowering in soil is the quickest method to get your plant to a certain size in the shortest time. But unforeseen things do happen more often the more you handle/transplanting. So next time round I will use rapid rooter cubes or plant the germinated seedling directly into 2G air pots and see if that is the balance I am looking for. I will try to update sooner this time around so stay tuned... Happy growing BM 4TwenTee

She is adjusted to the LED and she is loving the organic nuetrient and tea.

Hi all, It the start of week three. Am thinking of switching the switch this week but since I am doing this grow with a bunch of WW 2nd gen clones and they seem to be drinking a bit too much (need to water everyday) I knew this would happen but didn't expect it to happen before flowering. I only filled the pots with 2/3 soil initially, so I topped all the WW and the SQ with a mix of worm casting (50%), fox farm ocean breeze 25%, Perlite 15% and coco 10%. Will wait two days to see if this will slow down my need to water the plants in smaller pots. WIll update this over the course of the week. Mid week update. I only tested out adding the wormcastling is to the WWs will wait and see cause I don’t think they like it that much. Will probably flip next week.

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Hi Guys, ***Update this week*** Added light mover to the 4by4 tent - Increased coverage and more even distribution of the LED light. Thinking of adding some CFL light bars to widen the spectrum of light - I find that LEDs are just too strong for small scale growing because my mother plant under CFL/Hydro of the same strain is growing much healthier. Hi Guys, Sorry for the long delaying on flowering. A lot has happened and I actually made a few clones and they are all rooted and ready to be transplanted then I am going to run Organics on the matured plant and do SoG for the clones. Will let them settle in their pots and will flower them right away along with some WW clones. So stay tuned and promise to start flowering before year end.

OKay Guys, Finally ready to start another wave of flowering. Should be anytime before the end of the year so please stay tuned. Currently I have one from seed in soil using organics and 8 that are in coco taking synthetics. I might separate the cocos to a different diary.

Hi guys, As you probably can tell I am in transition right now. I have all the photos, I just need to organize them and post them in the correct order. But by the looks of it, I had a light timer malfunction on me a few ago when I moved the ladies to the 4x8 tent. So by the looks of it, I think she is more in the second to third week of flowering. I will change it over the weekend. Thanks for checking out my grow.

Hi guys, The plant is done stretching but am showing N deficiency in lower leaves. I don't know if its because of the light mover, the lower plant not getting light, or maybe its the genetics. But should I be concerned? I tried to add some blood meal in my weekly tea and an extra dose of macro nutrients just for this one plant, but still seeing deficiencies. Well this is why I like to grow these girls, they behave differently.

Comments on the way

Its the end of week 5 and the girls are really sugaring and bulking up. This is my first time growing this strain and the trichomes are really starting to develop. I can even see sugar on the big fan leaves at the top of the canopy. I must be doing something odd when I feed the girls, not just this strain, but also the White Widow strain. I find that the girls always start to show nitrogen deficiency in week 4-6. I know it is normal for some leaves to yellow, but I think there are too many yellowing leaves. I think my problem is either having too small of a container for flowering, hence not having enough stored nitrogen in the soil and plant. Or I must be keeping too much vegetation. I am going to place them in bigger pots next time. Updates this week: So I started to do some limited Defoliation this week. I don't have to do much for this strain because the lower leaves fall off every two days, so I am just taking fan leaves that are blocking lower bud sites only.

Hi All, The girls are ripening nicely and I think we are close to harvest. Checked tricomles and they are mostly cloudy with very limited ambering. Will check the next few days and see how that progresses. Stay tuned!!!! Happy growing BM 4TweentY

Hi All, We are approaching harvest and will only use PHed water this week. Trichomes are mostly opaque and maybe 3-5% amber. This is my first time growing this strain so I don't know how she will finish. So I think I am going to chop part of it and leave the rest to ripen for another week. So stay tuned... ***Mid-week update*** Week 7 day 5 Made a cut and dried it for a day. Placed it under the microscope and took some photos and video. I think she has at least another week to go. I will only use Phed water this week. Maybe a molasses flush on week 7 day 7. Since this is my first time growing this strain and this is from seed so I might do a first cut and let it really mature for another week or two just to see if the bud will keep swelling up. Happy growing. BM 4TweentY

coming soon... Harvest week..... Cut the girls down week 8 day 5. Did a quick truim and now will hang dry. Will report back on details in a week or so.

Thanks everyone for visiting my diary. Will continue to use this great site and share my grows with fellow brothers.