Time-lapse Gorilla Zkittlez vs. Critical

3 out of 4 Gorilla Zkittlez came out so I started one more which is now on its way and will go separately from the others(in hydro) It’s my first time using this lamp, I got it from Hong Kong, and it’s exciting to see what it can. I have a friend that recommended it. He got 750g dried buds from 4 plants under it. So let’s see if I can get near that.

The plants got to starve a bit in the beginning, they showed slow grow and light yellow color, so I pumped up the nuts and things are looking much better now. I unfortunately didn’t buffer the coco with CalMag to start with, I’m learning on the way, so I’m giving them CalMag foliar supplement. They are very beautiful plants, I love watching them grow! 🍀

Things look great right now. I had some problems with too high ppm in the beginning of last week, the girls started showing signs of a nut burn(burned tips on two of the plants). I changed to using rain water this week (fingers crossed everything goes well), despite the warnings that “it’s not a good idea” I got from the grow shop owner. The ppm of rain water is at 30, compared to 330 of my tap water... so that allows me to give the girls much more proper food(nutrient rich) in rain water. Oh, the ph is also much more stable with rain water. I’m looking forward for their 5th node so I can top them and soon after to switch to blooming.

I started using Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) in the nutrient solution as I use rain water. I kept getting a 7.4 high ph in the run off water even though I was watering with 5.5. So I done a flush with FloraKleen last night till it got down to 6.4 and it just wouldn’t get lower then that. So after a little research I found out that my coco is actually buffered at a 6.4 ph... so.. I hope that will work out fine, it seem to have been so far. The girls got the ‘claw’ in the last week, which is a sign of Nitrogen overdose as far as I know, so I hope the flush will help correct that one 🤞🏼 Oh, I also topped them this week and I hope I get to do it once more before flipping them. The little Gorilla in the dwc got some root slime which I treated with H202. The roots got completely clean, but it seems like this was a too big shock on the plant, so it stopped growing. So I decided to take it out of the game and make some more space for the rest of them instead. Day 32 I flipped them to 12/12. I’m still getting high ph of run off, trying to correct it by hand watering with 5.5 ph-ed nut solution. I will try to do it as often as possible.

I flipped the girls to 12/12 exactly one week ago, so in total they got 32 days of veg. There are a few pistil sites starting to show up. I did a second topping two days before the flip.. not much time to recover.. hope that will be fine! They showed very obvious claws, downwards bending of the tips of the leaves, and then turned dark green, so I lowered the nuts and now it looks better. Overall there’s not that much stretch, but let’s see as they go more in flower... 😅 The Criticals are definitely more bushy and also less flexible, I noticed that the branches started snapping after LST, luckily only one of them snapped completely off the stem. I’m doing my best to tuck the fan leaves underneath so the ‘buds’ can get more light. I did a bit of defoliation as well, but I don’t want to do to much at this stage. The little Gorilla Z. that is in the DWC stopped growing after I treated the roots with hydrogen peroxide. So I took it out from the grow tent and unplugged the oxygen pump. After 2-3 days in the dark and starving it started growing 😳... the leaves got a bit purple as well. So eventually I thought... why not give it a second chance? 😃 After just a few days in the tent it got back on track(strong roots and leaves growth), but I decided to give it away as a Christmas gift anyway 🎁 as I don’t really have space for it.

Edit: 1st January 2020 I started playing with making time laps video. You can see the first trial video over 28h period. It starts a bit slow cuz I was still figuring out the shooting interval. The second half of the video is shot with 1 picture every 1,5min, and I love it! It’s gonna be fun playing with this! 😁 31.dec.19 Happy New Year everyone! 🎉 And let the show begin, the girls are half way and starting to show pistils. I’m doing my best to tie them down to keep an even canopy. The Ph got finally stabilized at 5.5-5.9, I’ll start getting it a bit higher next week 5.9-6.2 In order to accommodate them all the ppm seems to be in the sweet spot around 650-700 at this point. It looks like the Criticals could use more, while the slowest of the Gorillas... well, she is slow, so she needs less. The temperature gets a bit low here, but won’t do anything about it, I don’t want to spend more on the electric bill then I already do. I’m looking forward for my friend to come and pick up the DWC GZ so I can have some more space to stretch out the rest of the girls. Oh, I’m working on setting up an old iPhone in there to make time laps videos 🤞🏼Just imagine watching those buds fattening up 😃 Happy growing in the new year! 🍀

The girls look good, they definitely filled up the place and now FINALLY the buds are taking shape 🌸 Surprisingly the Criticals stretched a bit more than the Gorillas, so far at least. Today my new tent arrived(120x120x200cm). So I’m excited to move them in their new home.

Such a beautiful week with the girls. I moved them in a larger tent(120x120x200), they deserve it :) The buds are taking nice shape, it felt like it took for ages since I flipped them. The Criticals were more vigorous, but now the GZs seem to be catching up :D They turned a bit dark green, so I will go back to 750ppm. Next week I will focus the time-lapse on the GZs, as I feel they are more trendy.

So I was thinking that growth is quite slow in the last two weeks. Then I discovered that the roots were looking weird, and noticed fungus growing on them. So I took the roots out and you can see the problem yourself in the pictures. I removed the bottom part of the roots and I added new coco in the pots, then I placed the girls back. It's been one week now and I can see new roots coming out at the bottom of the pots. The strange thing is that the 2 plants that were healthy(completely white roots) are also having the smallest buds 😒 Btw, I also flushed them with FloraKleen and H2O2(10%, 2ml/l). Then started feeding again, but with reduced nutrients - 630ppm I also elevated the pots, so they don't touch the trays anymore and started using the dehumidifier(50% humidity). I also bought a RO system and started using RO water instead of rainwater. Damn, I hope the harvest will look decent!

The progress is visible looking at the timelapse video, which I'm happy for, considering the events of last week. It's disappointing though to see the huge difference in size between the Criticals and the GZkitzs, the Criticals are 3 times larger.

Well, what to say other than the pictures can already show? I wish the GZkitz buds were just as large as the Critical ones :D Maybe they will surprise me and flower one week longer then their sisters :P :D For some reason I get an error when I try to upload the time lapse video, hope it workes out in the end!

They surprised me how fast they reached the finish line. I've been flushing them with only water for a few days now. I'm quite pleased by the results, considering that this is my first time in coco. The trichs are getting 50/50 clear/milky and over, so it's harvest time this following week. There's a purple theme going on and I enjoy watching it :D I'm quite sure it's because of the low temps at night.

Finally, the tough work is done, I spent about 20h in all taking these ladies down. As soon as they are dried I will post the results. I can already tell you that the first one to go, the Critical, is already dried, I was expecting something like 70-80g from it, but it completely surprised me scoring a total of 127g hard rock material. Beautiful plant. I'm really curious to see how the Gorillas did as they are some of the most beautiful plants ever! I thought they were done earlier than it turned out to be, so that's why I'm posting week 13. The last of the Gorillas even went one day into week 14. They got plain RO water for more than a week, which I'm very happy about. There was such a nice transition from the dark green colors to light green/yellow autumn colors. Please write to me if you have any questions about these strains ;)

I'm very happy with the results of this grow considering that this was my first time in coco, and that I had root problems in the last weeks of blooming. The only downside I encountered was that the branches are not that flexible, so two of them snapped off while doing LST on them. They reacted very well to HST(pinching and bending the branches 90 degrees). They enjoyed a higher ppm than the GZkitz, and I'm sure they would have yielded even more if I gave them one more week to recover after the second topping.

The most beautiful plants I've been so far growing! I was expecting about 50g dry bud/plant, but they impressed me and went all the way up to 90g. The reason was the rather slim buds. They are packed with crystals though! Very nice, flexible, long branches, ideal for LST. Beautiful purple color towards the end. They were quite sensitive to feeding, didn't like too much Nitrogen, showed 'the claw' and dark leaves especially after the flip... but maybe that's just fine for this strain.