RDWC - Orange Sherbet Barney’s Farm

So, another diary and another grow! I have made quite a few changes this time to try and mitigate some of the issues I ran into on the last grow as follows: 🌱 Changed my extraction to an 8 inch Sytemair Vector EC fan, it is 3 times more powerful than the previous fan, but will nearly never be turned up much past 50% and only uses 23w at 55%. 🌱 Reduced plants back down to 4 from 6, am hoping this will help me get in there a little easier later on in the grow. 🌱 Installed an under canopy Honeywell fan to help circulate lower canopy during the entire grow. 🌱 Currently waiting for my preorder of 3 x Migro Array 240w lights, best in class efficacy and buys me an extra 1.5ft in vertical grow space as they only need to be hung 6 inches from canopy. 🌱 DWC now has the brain bucket outside the grow room to allow me to make amendments during lights out. 🌱 After last Botrytis outbreak everything has been thoroughly cleaned with bleach followed by 70/30 ISO. 🌱 Various Hygrometers dotted around the room now with 24hr high low displays That’s about all I can think of for now, happy growing all! 😎

Pretty smooth week until an hour ago, accidentally snapped a main (pictures above). Not overly concerned as she still has another main I’ll have to continue the mainline from, I guess she will just be a few days behind the rest. I topped on D10, will continue to let all the unbroken plants grow to the 4th node before their second topping. With the plant I broke, I’ll let her grow out her second and top down to the first to ensure vertical height isn’t lost. Some small signs of chlorosis on most leaves so will start with a cal-mag foliage spray from D15, EC approx 0.7 and PH around 6.4. New lights are coming tomorrow which I am excited about, looking forward to installing them 😊 Take care all and good luck with your grows! P.s, finding an app or adjusting white balance on phone/camera really helps with the yellow, think I’ve finally managed to get it right this week 😎🌱

Pretty smooth week, never got round to foliar feeding and I think it shows, plants look a little limp, hoping the res change out today will give them a bit more life. Lights arrived a few days ago, have two on at the moment, both dimmed so I have an average PAR of 550 across all 4 plants. Must say these lights are built very solidly, very light as well so pretty easy to move them up/down. Main reason I bought them is because efficacy is excellent and they’re able to sit 6 inches from the canopy, this will buy me an extra foot of vertical space so light burn will hopefully be a thing of the past. They have all been topped for a second time D19, except for the one I broke a piece off of last week. Thanks for stopping by!

Easy week this week with lots of baked training 💨 😈, it is becoming evident these ladies are heavy feeders, EC is dropping 0.1 over a couple days even with fairly rich top ups. I think I may skip forward a week on my schedule for my top up tank. The plant that lost a node is starting to catch up (picture) thankfully. All have been topped for the final time except for the plant that lost a node. I think I’m gonna veg these for another 2 weeks or so as I wanna make sure I fill the room again this time around.

Another good week, fast growth and kinda healthy. I have introduced a foliage feed of Fish-Mix and Alg-A-Mic from Biobizz for trialling as of D33 so am looking forward to seeing the results of that. I have been away for a few days so EC dropped as low as 0.63 which isn’t ideal, but hopefully the new growth will be nice and healthy! Final bit of major LST and super cropping was completed today, flip to 12/12 is still on for D42 🤞

So this entry concludes the final week of 18/6 lighting, they’re now on a 12/12 schedule - following @stunflower I am not gonna start the flowering week from flip this time, will be from sign of first flower clusters as outdoor growers do🤞 I was on holiday for 5 days this week, but luckily my friend did a good job of looking after them, apparently a lot of ph swings in the last day or two which I hope won’t scar them and I noticed the EC went down to 0.6 which will explain why the plants look a bit sickly, but overall I think they’re my best vegged plants since I first started growing. Thanks for reading 😊

Day 7 since flip. Quiet before the stretch storm this week, in the last couple days they’re starting to kick it up a notch, this pheno grows up to 130cm so I will be trying my best to manage the canopy and keep the colas even. Overall they look much healthier, I think I may incorporate bloom nutrients in various proportions from seed to harvest next grow, every grow so far has done really well with Botanicare during the flowering stage, but not so well during veg. Stay tuned, thanks!

Day 14 from flip, today marks the first day of flowering. I think I undershot the amount of veg time they needed by a week, I overestimated the stretch this time, probably because I’m used to growing sativa leaning hybrids and the breeders height advice was 130cm. I am pretty sure I’m not going to manage to fill the grow space this time which is a shame, but I will try my best to train out the side branches over the next week once I get some yo-yo supports in. I have also raised the lights to lower the PAR values, am hoping this might stop the girls from feeling so comfortable and maybe that might gain me an extra couple inches height to play with... Time will tell 🙃 These plants are very robust, the branches barely have any flex in them which is another new experience for me.

Quite a lot of vertical growth this week, some of the smaller plants seem like they’ve settled on the size they’re at now. Quite strange how different each plant is considering they share the same environment and water bath. The big difference in growth has inspired me to have a go at taking clones on the next grow of Mimosa EVO I am about to start, I will take 5 cuttings from each plant just before flip, sustain them for a couple weeks and keep the best performer. I have done some LST and super cropping today as well as cutting a half bin bag full of growth tips and dead lower leaves, so they all look a little stressed and misshaped, should look fine in a few days time 😊

Another straight forward week. Front right plant is still struggling, I kind of have a theory about why she’s yellowing so badly: I think maybe the plant at the back right has slowed the water flow going into the struggling girls pot which is restricting nutrients, I’m only 50/50 about that though, they are getting their first complete nutrient change today, since 2 weeks ago. I hope that will do something to rectify the issues I’m getting with the plant in question. Moving onto the plant at the back right, man, I wish I took some cuttings as she’s really outperforming the rest by quite a margin. It’s a dark (photo), but her trunk is very wide, bearing in mind they’re in 6 inch net pots and she’s coughing out a lot of the hydroton to make space for her trunk! Anyways, let’s hope the sickly plant gets better soon!

Steady week again, plant at the front is still struggling despite a water change, stable PH and good conditions. Tomorrow, I think I’m going to pull her out and inspect her roots inside a bin liner, maybe there is some unchecked pythium. If her roots look healthy I am at a loss as to why she’s slowly dying 😕 Thanks guys 😎

So, it was root rot, I cut away about 1/8th of the root mass from the plant at the front right, I have also switched from Hydroguard to Silver Bullet, she seems a bit greener so hopefully she will continue to improve. A couple photos I have put 3 question marks on them, the front two plants are developing a white hue, I’ve compared to white powdery mildew online and it doesn’t really fit the description, does anyone have any ideas? Or is this a natural leaf progression in some pheno types?

Happy Halloween! Buds are developing well and starting to show some character, I did spot a little bit of rot on the sickly plant, it was close to where I had been treating the leaves with vinegar, and I am not sure if I caused it. Have looked around and can’t see any other sickly buds, but will keep eyes peeled. Thanks!

Posted a day later than usual 🌝 Nice and easy week again, some early signs of senescence showing on a few leaves. Quite dry in there this week so a few leaves are looking a bit crispy but all in all they’re looking good with no signs at this stage that bud rot appeared on other bud sites other than the one I cut off two weeks ago. The 18w Migro UVB will be installed next week, ready to be turned on two hours per day for the final three weeks. 🌱

Senescence is really starting to set in, some nice purple hues in the flowers now which are quite hard to show with my camera 📷 These girls are meant to flower for 60-70 days, based on the maturity of the larger lady, maybe they will finish a bit earlier, but this time even if the trichomes get very amber, I’m going to try and push them through for the full 70 days. I will start checking trichomes next week, I don’t want to give myself any excuse to cut them down. I have chopped too early in the past, either because of botrytis or lack of patience. The flowers on the larger plant aren’t quite as full and symmetrical as the other plants, but she has a lot of colas to support and I’m sure the taste and flavours will be great! Migro UVB got installed today, 3 hours per day at ‘noon’ from now until harvest ✂️ P.s the pictures are a little darker this week, because I wasn’t lazy and dimmed the lights down this time 🙃

Marching on to harvest, I have had a change of plan. After checking trichomes, it is clear that the top colas are fully ripened while the mid to low level buds are not, instead of harvesting the whole lot in a week or twos time, I am going to do a slow and steady harvest using the brown paper bag method. My aim is to check each cola with the scope and pick away cola tops, much like picking ripe fruit 🍌 I would prefer to do the whole harvest in one go, however I think it will bump the average quality of buds overall if I can get light down to the lower half of the plant to finish off those buds in shaded areas. For the few plants that didn’t stretch much, this is more of a problem and a lot of the buds below the canopy are big, but slightly pale looking. Today marks the start of week 9, this strain is supposed to be harvested week 8-10 but I am happy to push the plant on for 11 weeks if it means I can get those lower buds fully ripened. I just hope the stress I put them under won’t force them to herm on me. The pictures after this week are going to look bad, as the plants will be partly butchered by the time I post next weeks entry!

I started picking for forbidden fruits the day after last week’s post, checking the colas with the scope and only picking tops that were approx 10-20% amber. As I snipped colas I also removed a lot of upper fan leaves, this is to allow light to reach lower buds for a final ripening. Once picked, I placed approx 100g in each brown paper bag, folded the top and sat on a rack. I slowly rolled the bags around once or twice a day just so the buds didn’t stick together. Seems to have worked well, no dreaded hay smell to note and nicely dried. I think I’ll be taking some more colas tops off in a few days time and I’ll keep the plants alive for another week or two, depending on how fast they come along. I have 4 Mimosa EVO (no diary) about 7 weeks into veg at the moment and I think it would be nice to give them another 2 weeks as I need big plants to make clones from them, ready for the next diary coming soon... hopefully with successfully taken clones 😊

So, she is fully coming down today/tomorrow. Front left has already been decapitated since these photos were taken. We will harvest the rest tomorrow hopefully if the time allows. It has been 2 weeks since I first started taking away large and ripened top cola tips; I can confidently say this is the way I will harvest from now on, all the mid level buds are a lovely deep purple and the trichomes have clouded up ten fold in the last week or so, also some of the lower buds I considered larf bulked up enough for them not to go in the hash bag. After harvesting twice in the last 2 weeks, both batches have dried and weigh approx 450g in total so far - so it’s looking like a decent haul with very dense buds compared to last time. 🌱

So, with the harvest complete and the dry finished, the rest is now going into jars for the final cure and storage. Overall I enjoyed this grow, it needed minimal interventions and had a smaller work load compared to the other grows. The amount of dried flowers is 752g (1.11gpw) so a decent haul, I threw a lot of B grade buds in the hash bag due to the large number of low level flowering sites (I need to rethink my canopy management) and also with the lack of stretch after flipping made the internodal spacing a bit too tight. Managed to extract 215g of grade a hash from her as well which I have pressed into a slab (pictures). I learned many things along the way, namely root health and the importance of keeping organic additions as low as possible. I also decided to try out clones for my next run, just to get a little more canopy and growth consistency - those of which are in an aeroponics tub at the moment waiting to root (picture). Thanks for those of you who followed along most of the way, good luck with all your grows!