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Real week 1 will start week 2. I jumped the gun as you only see 1 set of leaves and is more of seedling stage but there isn't a week for that. Anyway... 2 of the sprouts got a little leggy. It seemed the HLG 65 V2's weren't strong enough at 14-16in(2nd season in use). I had to push down to 8 in. to see better results. Decided to just turn on the Vipaspectra P4000 for now and and follow their suggestions at a height of 30'' and 60% strength for young seedlings. Seen great response from plants in less then half a day. Think I am back on track. The PH and TDS in the water were a bit too high as well, had to replace RO filter on RO system, has been a couple years... Glad the grow forced my hand! lol...
Went a little crazy this week. This is only my third grow. The second was better then the first but neither was what I would have expected or wanted. Both times I had to battle root rot issues, among other newbie issues mid-flower, even with hydroguard. There was many issues to deal with. During the first two grows, I've managed too resolve the room air filtration, which helped a bunch for peek day air temps. Today was 90+ degrees here today and the tent didn't go above 85 in the non-air-condition unattached garaged, vented out an exhaust pipe through the roof.. So that is working out better this time. I've also resolved my fertilization issues by learning how to read the ppm/ec to know where I am truly at.
*This may help others, didn't expect it
*Never had an issue with PH since I used PH Perfect nutes with an RO unit, until THIS grow. I replaced the RO filters and the ppm was too high and it has been a couple years. But lo and behold, this ended up being a downfall for me this grow. The filter replacement kit had a alkalizing filter to add back removed minerals, since this is also the family drinking water, I thought nice... But NO! This thing turned the PH all the way up to 8! For the first time I have had to use Ph Down.... A step I did not want to add into the mix. PH was above near or just above 7 for a bit. It's hard to tell from the pics since it has recovered but one of them had what I guessed to be Nitrogen Toxicity, which cued me in to looking at the PH in the first place. Lesson of the story, do not add and Alkaline filter or "remineralizer" to your RO system and expect the PH off your PH Perfect Nutes to be PH perfect :P Oh my. Lesson learned.
I also decided to attempt to resolve the warm water issue. I had some reflective insulation left over from a green house i put together against the shed. Without adding anything and just using these, the water temp when from 82 to 78. Ok.. pretty nice, but after rotating freezer cooler packs in each, which need to be rotated around every 12 hours it seems. My temps are hovering around 69. Now that is a great improvement, but still not good enough, it needs to be at least a degree lower consistently. I should probably be filling these with water and not just the cooler packs.. hrmm.. During all this, a cord a hooked myself to snapped pp#3's neck, poor guy, had to go to the compost.
Lastly, started LST on main cola. About 45degrees angle for each, away from strongest light source.
Continued to LST. Trying to keep around same height. Main branch on each is about 14". Bushed to about 9-10" height atm. PP#2 is a bit smaller because of the PH issues week 2, but is keeping up just fine. Been hard to pump all the heat out with it being 90's here all week. This week weather should be 80 and lower, so plants should be a bit happier. I'll probably hook up the net for support and attempt continuing the LST through ScrOG instead of rocks on plant ties. Since plants are getting wider, I decided to also turn on the two 1000W LED King Plus.
Boys boomed this week. LST with a very minor amount of center leaf pruning looks to have created a fair amount of heads. Setup the ScrOG and prepared the lights for bloom.
What is a smart amount flowering branches to keep? You can see at least 10+ on pp#1. As many as I can? Remove all the smaller center ones? I see a variety of ways out there. Looking for quality more than high production value. Thanks in advance for any advice.
a lot of personal preference there and what your intentions are.
Open space around each cola is a good idea.. how much is optimal? no research on that yet that you can rely on. Make sure they aren't rubbing up against each other, as this isn't nascar, and you should be good.
e.g. in my Nova OG an dBBM grows, my shoots are too close together. MY future #1 plant they are probably about right, but i should have filled the middle better -- i didn, but i snapped off a stem when shaping plant early after 12-12 switch. that'd be a great example of well-spaced colas if i had one in the middle, as intended. (1 for 4 on that grow, lol, Big fail on my part!)
as far as what those colas look compared to each other -- that's more about genetics and shap of plant. a large bush won't produce a big fat huge cola if resources are spread around. over-lollipop like i did with BBM and NOG and you can get those but reduce yield too. (instagram has teh GB harvest pics -- nice large drumstick buds, lol, and like BBM and NOG was too tight in canopy and still turned out well)
Do your best.. keep some airflow, avoid leaves overlapping and getting each other wet or interfering with tranpiration etc etc... keep total coverage of canopy when removing things or at least will grow back to fill whatever gap is created... All is good at that point.
Another week managing the stretch. Flowering onset looks good. Afraid to prune very hard in order not to stress the plant. Still not confident on this balance between pruning too much or not but I try to keep the bud sites open to the light. PPMs seems to have shot up a bit past few days think I overfed them without checking ppm few days ago, so that makes sense. Will res change today.
There are bud sites and smaller branches with bud sites below the 'harvest line'. Would it just set the plants back a couple days if prune theses out from stress like with heavy leaf pruning? Or... Should I just leave them be and continue to keep canopy relatively open? Thank you
Yes, Defoliate and lollypop those bottom leaves. Anything at the bottom that gets no light. You want to the light to penetrate to lower branches and have a nice air flow. You'll notice a huge deference in yield and bud size. i have a video on week 6 of my blue frost, have a look at it, underneath my canopy is clear. Hope it helps, happy growing.
growdiaries.com/diaries/73750-blue-frost-grow-journal-by-chevs710/week/364186
Defoliate both and pruned a few branches early in week. A little LST was still needed. I was surprised to see PP#1, which has a noticeably larger root mass eating the nutes slower then pp#2. Weird. Maybe pruned pp#1 it too hard in comparison.... pp#2 does look a few days to a week ahead of pp#1 now, maybe it's from the early root burn during veg, not sure. Maybe plant expression, not sure really...
Had to cut back on nutes, didn't account enough for defoliation, some nute burn is apparent. Other than that, seems to be going well. PP#1 is defiantly thicker but a few days to a week behind pp#2. I do see purple on the buds, maybe it was the cooler nights we've had or maybe too many nutes... Either way, I'm glad it *seems* to be expressing it in both plants. Seems key word there...
PP#2 is definitely a week ahead of pp#1. Very small amount of leaf pruning to expose buds. pp#1 is still surprisingly eating less than pp#2 but is twice the size in root mass. Weird... Anyway, next week I will need to start monitoring trichomes
Week went well, cut back on nutes. pp#2 has about 90% cloudy trichomes, so I stared to flush it today with Flawless finish. PP#1 is still behind but will end up bigger, so that's fine.
I started flushing PP#2 last Sunday Evening but didn't started flushing PP#1 until yesterday(saturday). I pull the trigger when I think they are about 80% cloudy, HiGrade app said they were at 90% cloudy when I asked about each at different times. Maybe I'm finally getting a better eye for what the trichomes differences look like, between clear and cloudy, with the jewels 40x lupes... Anyway, I did cut a couple small tops from PP#1 to start drying as I'm pretty sure I scene a couple amber on 'em. Anyway, smell really fruity like it is supposed to and I look forward to tasting her. I'll post pics soon. I'm gonna harvest each section when they look right to me and not all at the same time, figured I can go for gold only having two plants.
PP#1 delivered 190.1g or 6.79oz of smokable bud plus another 27g, or about an ounce, of tiny nugs/final trim. PP#2 came in at 212g or 7.54oz, a couple ounces of tiny trim/nugs. I will add the tiny nugs I collected for joints in total above. PP#1 and PP#2 grew very different from each other but both ended up great in the end.
vmass20
