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This will be my 3rd grow, this time splitting veg and flowering into 2 separate tent. Here's my previous run: https://growdiaries.com/diaries/49610-star-pupil-five-star-grow-journal-by-azgrows
I'll be growing a Katsu Pupil (along side a Putang Nevil Chem), bred by Mass Medical Strains and bought from Great Lakes Genetics. Here's what I know about the strain:
*Katsu Pupil x Star Pupil
*Heavy indica
*Flavor: coffee, chocolate, pupil funk, sweet, spice
*Effects: uplifted, positive, psychoactive head high with a warm, powerful and narcotic effect
*7-9 weeks flowering
*vigorous, bushy structure
I'm running a mix of Fox Farm's Happy Frog and Perlite (~20%), and will be using the following nutrients from TPS: TPS-One, CalMag AOC, Signal, Silica Gold and LiquidSoil Remediator. The Plan is to veg for 8 weeks then flip to flower, not totally sure if I'll be topping this time but I'll definitely going to SCrOG again.
05/02: Popped a single feminized seed
05/04: Transplanted the germinated see in a Solo cup, was watered right away
05/05: Moved her under a 40w incandescent bulb and added a humidity dome to keep the humidity as high as possible
05/07:
-Moved her under the 2x4 RapidLED fixture, 3 Growmau5 pucks v3 on a Meanwell HLG-320H-C1400B dimmed down. It's hanging under a table while I wait for my new tent to arrive.
-Added a humidifier nearby
-She was so excited to get out of her shell, she ripped one of the cotyledons, we'll see how it affects growth.
05/14:
-Now running the dehumidifier through an Inkbird controller.
-Noticed the Katsu Pupil is growing quite slower compared to the Putang Nevil Chem, pretty sure it's due to the missing cotyledon (if I understood correctly, the cotyledons store the energy needed for the seedling to grow until she forms the first set of leaves and starts pulling food from the soil).
05/16: Prepared my 7 gallons pots for when I need to transplant.
-Mixed some Happy Frog soil with about 20% of perlite, making sure not to pack the soil like last run.
-Flushed with 3 gallons of: warm tap water, 10mL/gal of TPS LiquidSoil Remediator in order to clear the soil of unwanted salts/heavy metals and to stabilize any potential imbalances. 20% run-off
-Added back some Calcium and Magnesium with 0.75 gallon of tap water, 4mL/gal of TPS CalMag AOC.
05/20: Pretty busy day between transplanting the babies and prepping the tent
-Emptied the tent from the freshly harvested grow, turning it into a Veg-only tent.
-Cleaned the tent with a mix of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide and Tea Tree essential oil in a spray bottle
-Set up the veg LED (15inches dimmed to the minimum), humidifier on an Inkbird controller
-Transplanted the seedling directly into a 7 gallon pot (prepped a few days ago), I had to remix the soil after finding a couple pockets of just perlite.
05/23: The 6" Hurrican fan I ordered still hasn't arrived and I can't pull one out of the flower tent (being used for airflow to dry my fresh harvest), sucks that there's no real air movement besides the passive intake and outake fan. Because of that the soil is having a hard time drying and some mycelium is starting to form.
05/27/20: Still bumping the intensity of the light a little bit every day.
- watered with 0.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2, 5mL/gal TPS-ONE, 1mL/gal Silica Gold, 1mL/gal CalMag AOC.
05/30/20: noticed the newer growth to be more yellow
- watered with 0.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2, 5mL/gal TPS-ONE, 1mL/gal Silica Gold, 1mL/gal CalMag AOC.
- T: 80F, RH: 45%
Overall was a pretty chill week, she's starting to grow at a faster rate!
06/01/2020: I need to water the whole pot this time (instead of around the stem) so the roots can propagate horizontally instead of just vertically, right now the main stem moves a lot, you can tell she's not fully "anchored".
- Cut the first node on both plants.
- T: 82F, RH: 45%.
06/02: I noticed what I think are signs of Calcium deficiency, so I'm bumping up the dose of CalMag from 1 to 1.5mL/gal.
- Watered with: 1 gallon of filtered water, Ph: ~6.2, 5mL/gal TPS-One, 1.5mL/gal TPS CalMag AOC, 1mL/gal TPS Silica Gold.
06/05:
- Watered with: 1 gallon of filtered water, Ph: ~6.2, 5mL/gal TPS-One, 1.5mL/gal TPS CalMag AOC, 1mL/gal TPS Silica Gold.
- Topped her above the 4th node and removed the growth coming out of the first 2 nodes.
- Temperatures are peaking up to 86F!
Pretty good week, they are both starting to explode, doubling in size just this week!
06/08/2020:
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.2, 6mL/gal TPS-One, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC, 2mL/gal Silica Gold.
- Moved the lights up to 28inches, trying to see if it makes the plants stretch a bit.
06/11/2020:
- Removed the growth coming out of the 3rd node.
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.3, 6mL/gal TPS-One, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC, 2mL/gal Silica Gold.
- Checked the soil pH for the first time using my new soil pH Pen (also does solutions), pH: 6.3, T: 74F (was checked in the evening, about 8h after watering).
06/12/2020:
- Lowered the intensity of the light to ~80%, trying to see if I can get my plants to grow stretchier.
06/13/2020: I noticed a couple bugs crawling in my soil and up the stem. Not exactly sure what it is so I'll be doing a ton of research tonight and figure out what I'm dealing with.
- Tied down more branches on the plants
06/14/2020: Didn't see as many bugs as yesterday, it might have something to do with letting my soil dry an extra day before the next watering.
After some research I'm thinking it's either aphids or hypoaspis miles but I can't tell for sure, one is terrible and the 2nd is a beneficial predator bug.
06/15/2020:
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.3 @74F, 7mL/gal TPS-One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC.
- Soil pH: 6.3, 71F.
06/18/2020:
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.3 @82F, 7mL/gal TPS-One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC. I didn't notice much runoff so I'll probably need to increase the amount of water in the next couple feedings.
- Cut off the 4 biggest/oldest fan leaves.
06/19/2020:
- Removed a few more of the big leaves to allow more light to reach the newer growth.
06/20/2020:
- Swapped her position with the Putang Nevil Chem so she's directly under the Royal Blue Veg puck, maybe she'll start stretching a bit.
06/21/2020:
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.3 @82F, 7mL/gal TPS-One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC.
- Soil pH: 6.3, 78F.
- Removed 2 more fan leaves.
- HST to try and spread her out, the nodes are growing very tightly and growing thick so I can't tie her down (LST). She grows a lot like my Star Pupil (previous grow, check the diary ;) ).
06/24/2020:
- Watered with 1 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.2 @77F, 7mL/gal TPS-One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC.
- Soil pH: 6.3, 74F.
- Cut a few more leaves
06/26/2020:
- Removed a few more of the older leaves (that weren't getting much light or covering new growth).
- I was finally able to tie her down to spread her out and let more light in the inner canopy.
06/27/2020:
- Watered with 1.5 gallon of: filtered water, pH 6.3 @80F, 7mL/gal TPS-One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL/gal CalMag AOC.
- Soil pH: 6.3, 76F.
- Tied down some of the secondary branches to open her out some more.
07/01/2020:
- Watered both plants with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @78F , 7mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold and 2mL CalMag AOC
- Took a few leaves off
07/04/2020:
- Watered both plants with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.5 @80F. Doing a mid-grow flush with fresh water, as recommended by TPS.
- Moved her in the flower tent (pretty much the same light setup but running at 2100mA instead of 1400mA (what's in the veg tent), and has a lot more height at 7.11" so I don't have to worry about plant height at all!
07/05/2020:
- Starting to flip to a flowering schedule but progressively, the plan is to decrease the lights-on time by 2h every day, over 4 days I'll reach my goal of 11 On - 13 Off.
- Humidity finally going down
Pretty chill week, just getting ready to flip to flowering and finally put my new flower tent to use! I finally pulled the trigger on a pack of Putang from GreatLakesGenetics, bred by MassMedicalStrains, There's not a lot of those packs around anymore and I just had to see what she's all about!
07/06/2020: Today marks the start of the flower phase, I'll be switching to a 11/13 bloom schedule progressively, over 4 days (decreasing Lights-On time by 2h every day)
- Set up the lights to turn on at 8am instead of 6am (17/7 to 15/9 schedule).
- Removed a decent amount of leaves.
07/07/2020:
- Set up the lights to turn off at 9pm instead of 11pm (15/9 to 13/11 schedule).
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @78F , 10mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold and 2mL CalMag AOC.
- Cleaned her up a little bit, trying to expose the top sites to as much light as possible.
07/08/2020:
- Set up the lights to turn off at 7pm instead of 9pm (13/11 to 11/13 schedule). This gives my plants the wanted 11-13 bloom schedule (brings out more of the genetic expression)!
- Cleaned her up following Kyle Kushman's selective pruning technique, leaving as many leaves as possible while removing the new growth forming, keeping only the top 3 on each branch. Removing branches that would not be able to reach the upper canopy, I'll just throw those in the cloning machine.
- Also "supercropped" her, again, following Kyle Kushman's plant chiropractics. I figured why not.
- Moved the light up a little bit.
07/10/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @80F , 10mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold and 3mL CalMag AOC.
- Starting to add crunched-up dried leaves to the top of my soil as I start defoliating the plant. Over time this will create a mulch layer and hopefully feed a bit of mycelium for soil health.
- Tied her down a bit to spread the taller branches out.
- Put up the trellis net for the other plant, but she's not reaching it.
- Added plant trays to collect the run-off water (I can't believe I've waited this long to get them, now I don't have to spend 20min cleaning all the runoff from the floor of my tent with a sponge anymore...)
07/11/2020:
- Elevated the pot so the canopy is at the same height as the Putang Nevil Chem, and able to use the trellis net to spread her out nicely.
- Pruned another few branches that would just produce larf if it stayed.
Overall, quite a busy week with the tapered flip to flower, but the plants are still looking healthy!
07/13/2020: She's starting to stretch nicely! Bumping up the CalMag amount slightly this time, I'm also starting to add some TPS Signal at 0.5mL/gal to start (gonna be tapering it up to ~2mL/gal).
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.1 @74F , 10mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC and and 0.5mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- Cleaned her up by removing the new growth under the canopy and removed leaves covering other top sites. I also cut out a secondary branch, it fell way too far behind the rest of the canopy to receive the wanted amount of light.
- Added the MMS supplemental LED bar from RapidLED, it adds a total of 55W worth of a mix of UVa (more like near-UVa), blues, royal blue, 660nm reds, far reds and IR. It's set up to the same schedule as the Growmau5 pucks.
- Covered the Mendel sensor with aluminium tape so its temperature probe isn't getting skewed result due to the dark green plastic getting warm from the lights.
07/15/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.1 @75F , 11mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2.5mL CalMag AOC and 0.5mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- Removed more fan leaves covering top sites.
07/17/2020:
- Did another round of selective prunning.
07/18/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.1 @75F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC and 0.5mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- Cleaned up the nodes below the top 4-5 (new one grew since the last time) while keeping the leaves.
- Soil pH: 6.7pH @ 78F
07/24/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.0 @74F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL CalMag AOC and 0.5mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- Did a big defoliation, removing any leaf covering bud sites (kept a good amount of the lowest canopy level).
07/26/2020:
So while updating this GrowDiary for the previous week (11), I noticed I watered my plants on 07/13 and 07/15, instead of waiting the usual 3-4 days between 2 waterings when the soil is very dry. It's pretty impressive how a single day can make the plant show signs of overwatering, this Putang Nevil Chem seems super sensible to that!
Overall a really chill week besides the F20 defoliation, had to wait an extra day before watering to make sure my soil dried completely and prevent anymore clawing.
07/26/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.0 @78F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2mL CalMag AOC and 1mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- Looking good and healthy, frost is starting to appear on the leaves!
07/29/2020:
- Noticed this morning some bronze stripes (between the leaf veins) on a couple leaves, I'm thinking it's pH fluctuation as she's been getting a good amount of CalMag (plus the markings aren't as random as with those types of deficiencies). Later during the day I decided to mesure the soil pH using my BlueLab soil pH pen, and unsurprisingly the soil measured at 5.9!
07/30/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.7 @74F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 2.5mL CalMag AOC and 1mL/gal of TPS Signal.
Bumping up the pH this feed due to the soil being acidic (tested at 5.9pH yesterday).
- Tested the soil 3 hours after watering: 6.6pH @ 76F
- Removed a few leaves
08/02/2020:
You can really see the nug structure start to develop nicely, and how different it looks from the longer, thinner buds. Here it looks like she'll have fatter, more spherical shapped nugs.
The stripping problem hasn't gotten too much worse, it started developing on a few more leaves but very slightly. Maybe I'll bump the CalMag to 3mL/gal see if it helps.
But I'm not going to worry too much, she still looks healthy and praying to the light!
08/03/2020:
- She looked a bit thirsty before watering in the morning
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.4 @75F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC, 1mL/gal of TPS Signal and 5mL of TPS LiquidSoil Remediator (it should help rebalance the soil pH while adding good bacteria and enzymes).
08/07/2020:
- She was drooping a good amount before watering, I should have watered her yesterday but it was way to late in the day to feed her before light going out.
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @76F , 12mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC and 1mL/gal of TPS Signal).
- I'm noticing some pretty deep purples starting to appear.
08/08/2020:
- took a few of the bigger, older fan leaves.
- I'm noticing some of the leaves towards the top of the plant are turning yellow, towards the edges (not specifically the tip). An interesting thing happening as well is the underside of those leaves is turning purple!
- I also noticed the tip on only a few of the smaller leaves towards the bottom of the plant are burning, but not in a nute-burn kind of way, it's turns into a lighter color and takes more of the leaf. It only affects a few leaves so I'm not sure if it's related to the yellowing.
Honestly, not much to do this week besides waiting for them buds to fatten up and ripen while keeping on eye on any potential problems. With the leaf yellowing I'm not sure what could be the reason, the plant overall looks happy and the colas are still stacking up nicely!
08/10/2020: The burning on the edges of some leaves is getting slightly worse
08/11/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.1 @76F , 10mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC and 2mL/gal of TPS Signal.
- The colas are starting to get heavy, I should probably build a 2nd scrog net to use as support.
- The smell is getting strong!
08/12/2020: Noticed the leaves that got light-burned (I think) have their underside turn purple.
08/14/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.1 @76F , 10mL/gal TPS One, 3mL/gal Silica Gold, 3mL CalMag AOC and 2mL/gal of TPS Signal.
08/17/2020: Starting to taper off the nutrients
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @75F , 8mL/gal TPS One, 1.5mL/gal Silica Gold, 1.5mL CalMag AOC and 2mL/gal of TPS Signal.
08/20/2020:
- Watered with: 1.5 gallon of filtered water, pH 6.2 @75F , 8mL/gal TPS One, 1.5mL/gal Silica Gold, 1.5mL CalMag AOC and 2mL/gal of TPS Signal.
I might be chopping her down tomorrow as the PuTang Nevil Chem growing next to her is ready for harvest (she's been ready for a few days too!) I'm not too worried as she looks very close to be ready, had mostly cloudy trichomes with a couple ambers on Friday.
Honestly I was super surprised to see both plants ready this early (especially the PuTang Nevil Chem when she supposedly has a 8-9 weeks flowering time., but she looked pretty much ready at the end of Week 6 of flowering!). I wonder if the MMS supplemental LED bar from RapidLED (has some near-UVa, blues, 660nm reds , far-reds and IR) and TPS' Signal had something to do with shortening the flowering time.
Grow conclusion:
Growing her was pretty easy, the only real problem I had with her was due to pH fluctuation, but she grew healthy. Very bushy at first, I had a hard time spreading her out to get light into the bottom growth, it was only after the flip to flower and the stretch that allowed me to open her up into the Scrog net. I felt a bit down being forced to harvest her at Day 50 of flower, but the other plant in the tent finished super early (ready at 46F), buds were quite small but very dense and had plenty of frost, showing 100% cloudy trichomes. I did find a few nanners way late into flowering, I simply plucked them out and havn't found any seeds.
I popped a 2nd Katsu Pupil seed for the next run as I really want to take her the full 8-10 weeks!
Test report:
Flavor and taste wise, she has a somewhat sweet and touch sour smell with some sort of cantaloupe/melon fruit front-note, very interesting and enjoyable.
Effect-wise, she'll relax you but without the couch-lock or sleepiness, you'll get a wave a creativity on top of that. A friend of mine has been loving it for long juggling sessions. I wouldn't recommend this batch for any sleep problems, she'll kind of make your thoughts race, probably due to being harvested too early.
I just got my katsu pupil in the mail today. I am so pumped to see are growing the same stain under LED in soil.
I'll be keeping a close watch for sure. I got five pupil as my freebie. can you share any information about what you may do different if you grew it again?
@BryanD, sweet my dude!
by Five Pupil do you mean the Five Star? if yes, I'd probably flip her a week earlier and stop weaving her through the Scrog net earlier as well, she could have filled a 3x3 by herself with a single top and 8 weeks of veg. Besides that, watch out for not giving her too much nitrogen (find a calmag that doesn't have any N), and make sure she doesn't get rootbound early (specially if you start from a solocup). I have a diary on that whole run along with a Star Pupil if you wanna check it out, might be helpful :)
The high and flavor will definitely have more pop if you let them go longer. Bubba typically looks "done" at 7-8 weeks, but if you let it go 10+ it really becomes something special. This extra time does not necessarily result in any sort of proportionate increase in yield (if that's important), but the quality will be off the hook.
Hey I love those lights, I have 2 pucks in space-buckets, but moving so I get a tent! Do you have any experience with the supplemental light (like your blue) on other grows. I'd love to get some ideas! good work!
Azgrows
