Wedding Cake & Tropicanna Glookies Grow

----- WEEK 4 ----- ----- Day 22 ----- Looking great today. Bud sites are REALLY developing fast, no burned ends at tips of new leaf foliage even at 1500ppm feeding 20 liters yesterday. Residual humidity is finally under 50%. Dehumidifier took out 5 gallons of water over last 24 hours bringing basement from 50-52% (had 4 humidifier gauges all reading 50/51/52/52%) down to 47%. At this rate 3~ days basement is at 35% and tent is good at 40%~ residual humidity. Not a lot of smell yet, but I smoke all the time so my ability to smell pot is kind of hindered by the fact I waft the smell everywhere I go. Fertilizer regiment is the exact same this week. 1500ppm 18-20Liters depending on how long last feeding takes to dry. Still wet today, but these ladies drink it up during the day at an astronomical level compared to my last grows. Probably will put 1-2 more photos at end of light cycle tonight, maybe gets some shots at lights off to get true color for the diary. Humidity is pissing me off. Have 2 dehumidifiers going right now. Humidity is just ramping up and down all day. Turned 2nd one on about an hour ago. 4 hours from now i'll check the basement humidity and as well plants for some shots before lights off to wrap up today. Feeding tomorrow, wet dirt is almost unseen, can feel some residual moisture below a knuckle of soil depth. *EDIT* even 2 dehumidifiers aren't working as quick as I want. So i'm going all out.... 8lbs BULK silica gel (Biodegradable non-toxic food grade safe) orange colour that doesn't contain the toxic substance (BLUE COLOR) that turns green at 50-60% full capacity. Can be dried in oven at 0-2hrs at 250 Fahrenheit by watching color go back to orange. (use parchment paper!) 4lbs will go in bottom of tent in pillow case, i'll flip it over 2-3 times a day to allow exterior silica gel balls (4mm size) on floor be able to switch spots for maximum effect. Based on how fast it completely hits green, i'll then do this: 4lbs in tent goes into oven during A.M when i wake up lights on to dry, dry 4lbs goes into tent until next morning, newly dried 4lbs of silica gel bulk put into container just large enough to hold the amount and not add water... rinse repeat.. Time to % fully wet is what will change how often this happens. Will spread out the pillow case as thin and long as possible to try and have no "hidden" beads in the pillow case from humidity/moisture capture. I'll continue to discuss this strategy, it'll be delivered supposedly tomorrow. Humidity is the most dangerous portion remaining of my grow. Now that pruning was 100% successful and feeding/watering is something i can do in my sleep, the last remaining problem is humidity (mold, botrytis). I plan to use this diary to make a single diary for each strain, for august and september newbie/grower of the month contest entry. I will pull no punches making sure this grow goes off perfectly with high times award winning buds. I've done it before and I can do it again in bulk at 5x5 25sq foot tent size at 1000watts instead of 4x4 600w. No new pics for ... 3 1/4 hours before lights off. ** FINAL DAY 22 UPDATE ** Lights off time. here's some shots of a bud sites (used LED Flashlight for true white color under HID) I might have by accident switch labels on these plants (rofl) when I transplanted.. thought I caught the error.. but the Tropicanna Glookies is showing pink pistils which is Wedding Cake trait, and the Tropicanna Glookies will turn purple as bud coloration at end of grow.. so time will tell... Doesn't mean anything as both are fed and watered and pruned all same time same amounts. Sugar leaves are clawing showing potentially too much Nitrogen. Tomorrow's feeding I'll increase the Liquid Koolbloom and lower the FloraNova Bloom to let plant soak up some nitrogen... but this could be just due to other small factors. I'm not too worried there's no real signs of nute burn in the tiniest of new leaves. I'll find out how the lower FloraNova Bloom reacts to the clawed sugar leaves, and to the currently properly green fan leaves/new leaf structure on bud in a couple days from tomorrow's feeding. Will watch for magnesium/zing issues like last time although due to changes in nutrient requirements for growth factors (bud instead of leaves), zinc might not be as needed this feed and will not show deficiencies hopefully. Speaking of last feeding. The girls are done with the 20 Liters of water from yesterday morning. 36 hours right after they're dry. Tomorrow i'll be doing 24 Liters total watering. Tonight I fed each 500mL of tap water (10ppm 6.3-6.4ph) to prevent turgor pressure loss overnight. They're getting THIRSTY!!!! Till tomorrow! ----- Day 23 ----- Humidity still a pain in my ass can't wait for the silica gel. 24 Liters @1400ppm 6.4ph feeding Smell has increased to a very candy sweet smell. Its delicious. ***UPDATE*** Great pics from this evening. Sugar leaf clawing still happening but only in the shade. I'm not concerned I used 4mL total of FloraNova Bloom (4-7-8) so I HIGHLY doubt its nitrogen excess. (*EDIT*) I forgot I had fed a full dose of FloraNova Bloom to stop zinc deficiency symptoms so it's probably over nitrogen from the zinc feeding. The plants are huge luckily and today's 24L of watering had nearly zero nitrogen and would have flushed out any remaining, I will watch those leaves closely, luckily there are a lot of sights for photosynthesis even if the clawed leaves yellow or die off as they're in the shade and barely get any light as it is... Time will tell. Total amount of leaves effected would be under 10% easily so I am pretty confident things are moving forward as normal for the plants. Only Wedding cake effected too. Randomly pick off fan leaves that hide other bud sites. Wedding Cake has pink pistils in the LED light faintly, don't think I miss labeled them anymore. Not much to say today, just a slow battle with the Humidity and a beautiful time to watch the "grass" grow over the 12 hours of lights on. Bud sites are already connecting on larger stems, and are thickening much faster than I expected... she's in full blown bloom now look out !!! ----- DAY 24 ----- Humidity is finally dropping. Down 7% from normal tent wake up humidity. Gotta get down another 7%. No pics yet. Gonna let em grow a bit today. I am not too worried about the nitrogen issue, might get a tiny bit of die off but I went into the canopy underneath the trellis and the plants are great and looking healthy. I'd say under 1% of leaves showing any form of yellowing, didn't see any browning. The smell is RIDICULOUSLY sugary. My God it's like breathing in pure candy. Hopefully within a week or two the smell will develop just enough to be able to separate them from each other to figure out what each plant individually smells like. **UPDATE** Humidity goes up and down 5-7% throughout the day. Silica Gel is now in tent, will see how that does overnight. Plants doing well, I remove any fan leaves in the way of buds but try and not remove more that 7-10 a day to not induce stress. No worsening of Nitrogen excess, Yesterday's big feeding with barely any nitrogen looks to have helped. Buds are fattening nicely. Will be looking next grow to switch out floraNova Bloom for a less nitrogen filled micro feeder as i have liquid koolbloom and powder for the flower macro nutrients. Way too many nitrogen issues with this flower feeding. Tomorrow should be feeding. Soil currently moist, but within 3~hrs of lights on tomorrow I expect the ladies to need another 24 Liters. I'm going to do some research on specifically what micro nutrients i'd be missing with no FloraNova Bloom but utilizing everything else I normally use and maybe not use it at all for the next couple feedings and just increase the KoolBloom liquid and maybe throw in some Triple phase black strap molasses. *EDIT* Looking at the micro nutrient content of Blackstrap Molasses I will be using it instead of FloraNova Bloom from here on out, and only use Bloom once every 3 feedings to give just enough nitrogen for bud development. ----- Day 25 ----- Humidity is okayish. I'll be able to probably get away with it at this level if I clean up some fan leaves as buds thicken. Time will tell I've got about 14 days more before it becomes an issue. Plants look great. Watering intake has changed, but I don't know if it's the different irrigation feeding heads so I will be replacing all of them with 1 standard type (8 spitter black) or if the plants themselves having different intake requirements now. Order of Driest to most wet: Front Right - Tropicanna (1 old broadcast 1 old spitter) Back Right - Tropicanna (2 old broadcast) Back Left - Wedding (1 new spitter 1 old spitter) Front Left - Wedding (2 new spitters) Front left is the biggest one by hardwood girth (stem thickness) but the Tropicanna's have a ton more side branching and is more advanced in the budding size, so I feel if it's not an internal issue about to manifest and get worse, that it's about the amount of stomata each plant has, and the Tropicanna would probably have more. I have not backed this part up i'm about to say so take it with a grain of salt. I believe in plant botany, a large leaf or small leaf from the same plant will have the same amount of stomata but the larger leaf will be able to release more as the stomata hole is larger. So then it becomes a quantity vs quality. Wedding Cake can pump out water more per stomata, but Tropicanna has exponentially more stomata to release water at smaller amounts. Again don't quote me on this If I get bored I'll check it out in my Plant Botany books. Okay so I just checked an online scientific (frontier plant science) article titled "The Smaller the Leaf Is, the Faster the Leaf Water Loses in a Temperate Forest" and it doesn't prove my theory but states that due to border thickness and other reasons smaller leaves will lose water faster. So most likely, this isn't an irrigation issue, or a deficiency issue, but rather a simple botanical truth that my Tropicanna has much smaller leaves and a hell of a lot more of them then the Wedding Cake, so they will dry out faster, especially in a full sunlight environment. With this new knowledge, I will be feeding all plants as of normal, but keeping 2~ Liters at the bottom of the bucket and giving Tropicanna each 1L after auto irrigation for the additional water loss from smaller leaves. I mostly theorize and hypothesis out loud during my grows if you haven't noticed yet. It allows me to work out problems and see patterns that end up manifesting themselves in the future. The more I understand the beginning and subtle stages of an issue, the faster I can fix it or prevent further damage. I'm sometimes wrong, I'm sometimes right, but I always learn in the end and every one of my grows has been an exponential improvement on past mistakes. It's also why you'll never see me edit out where I'm wrong. That's just stopping me from learning, if a year down the road I come back and read this I won't remember that I withheld info and the exact details, hurting me and potentially making me re-do my error. Anyways... I fed about 200ml to Front right, 150 to back right and 100 to back left of tap water (10ppm 6.3ph) to even out the time between feeding being needed and turgor pressure loss. Going to tone back the feeding today, no FloraNova Bloom, going to aim for 1100ppm before ph adjustment. Went overboard on the nitrogen by accident when I saw the zinc deficiency and full fed FloraNova Bloom (starting to hate this fertilizer), and less than 5% of the back right plant have yellow tips on mature fan leaves but not new growth and the clawing hasn't worsened but remains the same. Third grow in a row FloraNova bloom has been a massive pain. At end of this grow I will be doing the nutrient math to find out what's missing micro nutrient wise in deficiency #'s present when removing FloraNova Bloom and choosing something else like the Molasses that has a hell of a lot less nitrogen and spot feeding with a Advanced Nutrients Micro (4-0-0) when nitrogen deficiencies could present themselves. Will still do 24Liters, but switch Bloom for Molasses. I've had molasses steeping at 1150ppm in 1L to give roughly 55ppm in 20 Liters overnight. I expect it to add 40ppm total to the 24L but I didn't do the math on a calculator just half assed it in my mind right now. Will update as need be today. **UPDATE** Fed 23L 6.3ph 1100ppm. No reason for 6.3 over 6.4 will go back to 6.4 next feeding was just lazy. Did a bit of fan leaf snippage. Took down some stems from bottom of bud stems on Wedding Cake that have shot up with long internodes. Cut off the from the first internode so the plant concentrates on the main stem for bud development and not lower side shoots wasting nutrients and time. Will do small defoliating here and there, not enough to make a difference, just any that could trap water and therefore botrytis/mold. I also shake all the plants multiple times a day (The stems are AMAZINGLY strong on Wedding Cake) to remove any moisture caught between leaves. Curling leaves are slowly lessening, seems like there were fewer when I went down to feed. Could be just my eyes but I feel like the plants back at 100%. Couple photos at lights off in 6~ish hours will be updated. Maybe able to see the difference in curling leaves. I'll make comparison shots from previous photos and if it's noticeable i'll post them here. *EVENING UPDATE* Pics popped up. Check out the cardboard pick and the single stem pick from Wedding Cake. Claw still there but the Buds are filling in SO FAST it almost looks normal lol. Tropicanna glookies is doing a popcorn nug style grow. Wedding Cake is just wild.. feels like easily 7-10 days ahead of some of my other grows on bud connection + thickness. Smells great, super sugary. I'm trying to figure out if it's cherry or strawberry notes. I can smell something fruity/citrus like but can't put my memory to the smell yet. Gotta let it get thicker dank first. This might be a redonkulous yield but I'm knocking on wood and not counting the chickens before they hatch yadda yadda. Till tomorrow. *last edit* Forgot that I put in Diamond Nectar for the molasses. 15ml total in 23L today. Used to assist in the chelation of the molasses and other nutrients. Will feed Diamond Nectar during Molasses feedings only and not during FloraNova Bloom iiiiiiiif it's needed to top up some nitrogen during bud expansion photosynthesis... there is thousands of leaves probably so it might need it. Time will tell. Cheers *Edit* ** YO I SEE MY ERROR, ALWAYS RE-READ YO SHIT lol** ((DOUBLE BRACKETS IS CORRECT MATH)) Been mulling around with numbers in my head. I wanted to do some math around the clawing of nitrogen and what it took per plant and eventually work out the ppm requirement to prevent clawing in these genetics further down the road for reveg. This may change somehow in the future: Day 15 - 1450ppm in 8 Liters of Full Flora Nova Bloom (extra feeding to prevent zinc deficiency... Usually only 100ppm in 12 liters was used) ERROR HERE -----> 1450/8 = 181.25 ppm per Liter of FL bloom <-- ERROR HERE Removing water won't change PPM!!!!! 8 Liters fed to 4 plants 181.25ppm / 4 plants = 45.3125 ppm of FL Bloom fed to each plant on Day 15 (( 1450ppm /4 = 362.5ppm)) That number x 4% (4-7-8 [n-p-k ratio of fertilizer]) = 1.8125 ppm of pure nitrogen per plant on day 15 feeding. (( 362.5ppm x 4% = 14.5ppm)) Anyone see any error in that math? (Also whats up with 181.25ppm /4 x 4% equaling 1/100th of itself in the end... too high to understand that connection) I'm going to go measure some stems tomorrow, but looking at Day 15 to day 25, 10 days (today) the fan leaf and sugar leaf has increased 40-60% on the Wedding Cake, and multiple main stems have increased up to 2-4 inches, while low side branches have sprung up to 10-12 inches in length before I cut them down today while also showing excess Nitrogen in sugar leaf clawing. This means that 1.8125 ppm of pure nitrogen in feeding Wedding Cake can produce massive vegetative properties during flower if applied at end of stretch transition phase of flower. ((14.5ppm!!!!!!!!) Especially since the canopy of each of the Wedding Cake plants is 2.5L x 2.5W x 1H feet in size so 6.25 cubic feet. If my math serves me right after a couple beers at 11 at night, 1.8125ppm of pure nitrogen can double 3.125 sq. ft. of Wedding Cake in 7 Gallon pots within 10 days. ((14.5ppm!!! 13~ x more !!! PREVIOUS MATH WAS WRONG DOUBLE BRACKETS IS CORRECT)) 1.8125ppm / 3.125 sq.ft of additional growth = 0.58 ppm... right? So 0.58ppm of pure nitrogen can double 3.125 sq feet of Wedding Cake fan leaf and increase stem height 2-4 inches while also showing excess nitrogen signs through sugar leaf clawing? That seems insanely low... but wow. ((4.4615 ppm of pure nitrogen per sq.ft.w of growth MUCH HIGHER)) Nitrogen during Transition stage is a very delicate beast even at very low properties and if only miss used once. Especially if your plants are friggin bonkers huge. In the future instead of full feeding a flower bloom with nitrogen included in the micro to offset a micro deficiency, I will just double or triple the normal feeding and lower the liquid koolbloom as the bloom micro had phosphorous and potassium. Also might switch out the fert for just Advanced Nut. Micro (4-0-0) and Molasses. I dunno yet, lets see how well the plants yield. Okay... end of stoner thoughts. *end of fixing errors hopefully* ----- Day 26 ----- Humidity still improving slowly, but it should be fine within the week, took 5 gallons of water out of the air last night between the 2 dehumidifiers. Basement is 43-45% Humidity depending upon what gauge you look at. Tent is roughly 50%. Plants are gorgeous. Everything's great. Will pop photos later tonight before lights off, slow day today, at most I might remove couple fan leaves if I see any in the ways of bud site development. I've figured out the candy like smells finally. Tropicanna Glookies has a pink bubblegum smell and the Wedding Cake is a sweet gum but hints of Cherry. Pretty wild as it doesn't even smell like pot. Roughly 35-40 days left. It's almost Big Bulk time. 1 more feeding in week 4 tomorrow. Starting week 5 no more big bud, will continue no FloraNova Bloom and spot feed only if nitrogen deficiency signs begin to manifest in small quantities. Molasses takes over for FloraNova Bloom with a bit of Diamond nectar to assist chelation. *edit* added photos. Feeding probably tomorrow early, or mid light cycle for sure. ----- DAY 27 ----- Feeding time shortly, prob 30min away. Updated some pics. No new real info. Slow boring part of the grow before big bulk starts. Going to feed 24 liters 1200ish ppm at 6.4ph with no FloraNova Bloom as there's no nitrogen deficiency signs currently. *UPDATE* Video 1 - Full shot of the tent, I moved the trellis netting to show how strong the stems are. Look at them wave like a sea of wheat in the wind. They're gonna be able to hold up POUNDS if they need to.. love it. Video 2 - Tropicanna Glookies Back Right popcorn buds filling in, they're already bigger than my thumb and I've got big hands. **UPDATE** god damn front right plant just stretched 3~ stems 2-3 inches... Why?? B-52 is 2-1-4 .. didn't even know it had nitrogen in it... Big piss off. I did not want more stretch. Will not be using b-52 anymore, will only use it for nitrogen if the plant shows deficiencies since it's pretty much a nitrogen fertilizer... god I wish i knew that earlier. Wedding Cake looks maxed out thank god as it's the highest. Tropicanna can always be "lowered" by removing the height supports under the pots thankfully. When you are feeding every 2 days 1300~ ppm at 24ish liters, 2 parts nitrogen is a lot of nitrogen... I'll be a hell of a lot more selective when choosing fertilizers with nitrogen (I've always known cal/mag is 1-0-0 but that's fine) Most likely from here on out its no more b-52 unless yellowing of under canopy fan leaves begins. Molasses is the replacement for bloom (with diamond nectar). .. Friggin Nitrogen, man. Luckily there is not a new production of fan leaves, only stretch and in only 3-5 stems currently. I'll watch closely. Luckily didn't do a full b-52 feed today. 20ml instead of 40ml in 24Liters of water. ----- Day 28 ----- Last day of week 4!!! No news is great news at this stage of grow. Added some pics, i'll add couple more before lights off. Feeding tomorrow, no more big bud, won't be using b-52 or FloraNova Bloom. *** CHECK THAT LAST PHOTO!!!**** 14 inch long stem, all internode spacing between buds is sufficiently short enough to get full coverage. By the end of this grow I am expecting this single stem to be a single bud structure 14 inches in length. We shall see but i am EXCITED!!!