White Crack - Mephisto Genetics

It's been a busy week, the girls are starting to get very demanding and needy of attention. Constant battles with ties and leaves. The girls are strong, too - I tie down branches by looping one end of garden tie around the branch, and then pinning the other end of the tie against the pot with a stake. But they are literally pulling the stakes up. Had only done some light defoliating up until now, but with all the training, too much foliage was choking them up. Cleaned out the lower and inner parts of the plant as per the Mephisto strain guide. Been pushing the nutes a little harder this week. Up to around 1.7, which is about as high as I'll go as I think they will start flowering any day now. When that happens, I will back off the A + B and bring in some Canna Boost. Can maybe increase a little once we get to mid-flower, but we will see. I still haven't tried switching the auto pots back on yet. I'll be moving the grow downstairs once flowering starts proper, to a room with a built in dehumidifier - much better ambient environment for flowering. I will switch the auto pots on then I think. For now, I've been maintaining a 4 x a day fertigation schedule, starting around 7am, then every 5 hours through until 10pm. They then have a 9 hour overnight period, with a 2 hour lights-off period in the early hours. My other 2 hours of" lights off" is made up of 4 x 30 min periods in the day when I am watering / draining run-off, which gives a total daily light schedule of 20 hours. I tend to increase the amount of run-off in relation to the EC. At low EC, I will usually water to around 10%, increasing up to around about 30-40% at the current feeding level. This equates to around about 3 liters of nutrient solution per plant being poured through the pots on a daily basis. Despite the severe haircuts, the girls have been thriving and seem to be entering their pre-flower stretch. Plant on the right is slightly larger, with some better node spacing, but I'm happy with both plants. No definite pistils yet, but they will arrive any day I think. I've lowered the light to 15", although I'll probably be swapping it out this week and bring in the bigger flowering lights. Happy days!