Rawtton By Ethos

It’s time for Fall Grow 2020! I’ve taken a small break from the grow, but medicine is growing in small supply. This grow I’ve chosen Rawtton by Ethos. Five fem seeds were germinated in wet paper towel and then placed into small 4” pots and dusted with Bigfoot Gold Dust. The ladies have emerged. The ladies have been put into the clone tent for now until they’re ready for transplant. Only four of the five will make it to the main tent. From there it’s the same ‘ol song and dance; the ladies will be topped, manifolded, and scrogged. Ethos claims this strain to have a high morphology, so I will be taking clones in case I come across the terpene profile I’ve been searching for. Edited to say: I messed up adding the second week of Veg to the diary and deleted the first week photos. I think I got them all back.

Week 2 Veg This week has gone as expected. The one seeding that was flopped over did not make it. We germinated 5 seeds for this very reason. We knew only 4 of the girls would have made it to the Tent. No nutrients have been introduced. Either this week or the next for sure. That goes the same for transplanting. They are still too weak at this point to transplant, but next week they should be ready. One of the pics is an unknown strain. I’m babysitting it for a friend, but she was worth a pic as she is about the same age as our Rawtton seedlings. UPDATE: Nearing the end of week 2, and I was able to transplant the girls into the Tent. I also made up the scrog screen. The HLG550 has been dialed to 50% power and held above the tops at 25”. I watered the girls in with a light feeding and a boost of microbes (Bigfoot Gold Dust, EZ Veg, SLF-100, Photosynthesis Plus, and Mammoth P). I even transplanted the girl we are babysitting temporarily and gave her the same treatment.

Week 3 Veg This week we can see one of our babies is a little spotty. This is most likely caused from the shock of transplant. She was the smallest of the bunch and probably wasn’t quite ready for transplant like the others. I will be doing some PPM checks later.

Week 4 Veg Okay this last week we had a problem. There was some obvious deficiency going on with the two girls on the right side of the tent. I did some slurry tests and got ppm readings for all of them. The two on the right were literally starving. They were given a heavy feeding. This makes sense because the soil in those two pots were just used growing green beans and all the nutrients were probably used up from the soil. I didn’t have time to recharge or recycle. They should be on the right track now. I will continue monitoring ppm levels until it is corrected. UPDATE - today the girls were topped just past the 6th node. I removed all other branches and leaves, leaving only the top two nodes of growth. This will make it a “4-way” style of growth.

I’ve decided to update the week at the end instead of the beginning. That way I won’t have to edit and add pictures. Anyway, the girls look awesome. They seemed to had a growth spurt right after the defoliation last week. Hopefully they keep it up. Nutes are in full effect and I’ll be adding and taking away as needed. Also, our guest female (pictured in the smaller pot in the center) is no longer a guest. The guy it belonged to decided to pop some autos instead of getting it back 😂. That’s okay except I don’t know what strain it is and neither does he. But I was the one who gave him all the beans he’s been poppin, so I will know exactly what it is when it starts flowering. I will continue to keep it in mind but it will be separate from this grow journal.

Where to begin? This week has been stressful, but only due to my part. I’ve been far too rough with my babies. So far I have managed to break 6 of the main branches at the knuckle, as well as 1 side branch. I mended them all. They were all saved except for one main branch. The side branch was immediately put into a clone solution. I was waiting on plugs to arrive to take a lot of clones, but I had a couple rock wool cubes left. So the one broken side branch was put into a cube and into the mother tent ahead of time. This upcoming week I plan to take a couple cutting from each plant to see if there will be any phenos I really want to keep. I was also asked to do “before and after” pics the next time I defoliate. Since this next week will be the last week of Veg, I will do a mini defoliation tutorial for this journal. So look for that next week if it’s something you’d enjoy!

It’s the middle of week 7 of Veg. On Thursday the girls were given a heavy defoliation. This will give them a few days to recover right before the flip to 12/12. I’m posting for the final week of Veg a few days early. Tomorrow is our big turkey day and I probably won’t have time to post for the rest of the week. I put together some before and after photos to showcase the importance of heavy defoliation in scrog style grows. Fan leaves are a important part of growth but also a hindrance for anything trying to grow beneath them. Removing all the fan leaves before flowering will expose every possible bud site to light for maximum yield and little to no popcorn buds. It also improves airflow to decrease the chance of mold. In Pic 1, Pic 2, and Pic 3 you can see your average vegetative growth. It’s healthy and bushy and won’t hurt anything to leave it alone. I choose to do heavy leaf removal to increase yields. You will see the dramatic difference it makes. I will usually do 2 of these defoliations during vegetation, one of these during the last week of Veg growth. I will do it a third time in the third week of flower as well. In Pic 4 - Pic 11 you can see before and after pics of each plant. In the before pics you can really only see a few different flower sites. In the after pics you can see how many bud sites were hiding under the leaves. They would have still flowered, but the flowers growing under shadow would be stunted and small. Now that they are exposed to full light, they will develop into full fat buds. The [EXAMPLE A] pic shows exactly what kind of growth happens when there is no light. These will grow into large bud sites now that the fan leaves have been removed. Pic 12 and Pic 13 show the entire tent as before and after. For those who don’t do heavy leaf removal like I do, it can be shocking to see. It’s true there are some strains that don’t respond well to this kind of stress. That’s something every grower must gauge on the first fan leaf removal. In my case with this strain, the responded very well showed no sign of slowed growth. It looks like I’ve done something horrible because it looks so bare. In 3 days they should be healed and ready for 12/12, and after 3 weeks there will be so much more growth that I will have to do this all over again so that the flowers can keep receiving the light they need. This takes some time and careful effort, as you can see in the last pic. A grocery bag stuffed full of leaves. These will go into the compost pile and used later. I hope I did a good job of showing my style of defoliation and explaining why it’s done. If you follow the grow you’ll see why too. I’ve been growing like this for a long time and I enjoy seeing the fruits of my labor.

The girls are showing hairs and have already filled the tent with new growth from their heavy defoliation last week. The two phenotypes in the front are much shorter than the other two, so there is a lot more empty space to fill while the longer phenos have already run out of room on their side of the tent. I helped fill the space in the front by putting a mother of a different strain that I sexed. I won’t be able to do a whole lot more with tucking branches with most of the girls. I’ll just have to wait until week 3 when I will do one last defoliation session. After that, they are on auto pilot. I also finally dialed the lights to 100% from their 50% Veg strength. I honestly thought I did this already but all is good now.

Week 2 Flower Preflowers are set and ready to go. This coming week I will be doing a final defoliation and any branch or bud site removal if needed. Im hoping the stretch comes to halt very soon. I only have a couple inches left for the light to go up. After that, I’ll just have to dim the power if needed. I won’t do it unless the girls tell me they need it tho.

Week 3 Flower The girls have definitely benefited from the defoliation from early on this week. They are stacking nicely. Lots of tall gorgeous colas with minimum side branching. Still can’t get a grasp of the terpene profiles, but may be very gassy. Lots of frost already. I can’t wait to see them start to fatten up. The stretch seemed to have slowed up so we should see some serious flower growth in the coming weeks.

Week 4 Flower It’s the end of week 4 and things are progressing as they should. The trichomes are building nicely, although two of the phenos are better than the others. Closer to the chop I will go into detail what I have been observing in each of the girls. We managed to take cutting and now have clones of each. We will keep what truly stands out. On a couple of the tops closest to the light I can see a teeny bit of light bleaching. The light is maxed on height now, so if it continues this week I will dial back the light intensity. I was afraid of that. These girls did go thru an impressive stretch. I think we will see some great colas in time.

Week 5 Flower The frost is getting thicker. Also, we have definitely decided that the terpene profile is dirty socks. It literally smells like my gym bag at the end of the week. It took us awhile to realize that we were smelling the grow and not my dirty laundry basket. But the crazy thing is, you honestly can’t tell the difference between the two. Rawtton, indeed. True stank but in a good way. If you need a strain to grow that is low profile then this is one to consider. You’ll smell it alright but you won’t realize it’s not dirty gym socks unless somebody tells you it’s not. Can’t wait to taste it.

Week 6 Flower The girls are fattening up. At the beginning of the week I noticed some bronzing in the fan leaves of one of the girls. I decided it could have been one of two things causing the problem: a nutrient deficiency or nutrient burn. After some readings with the PPM pen I quickly found that the girl had plenty of food to eat, but she just isn’t eating. This can only mean a nutrient lockout. I’ve been pretty strict with pH levels so I’m not sure what could have caused it. I did a good corrective flush and now almost a week later and numbers are looking better, as well as the leaves. So, that was fun. This was an actual problem for me simply for the fact that I haven’t run into a nutrient problem since I started growing around 6 years ago. Definitely kept me on my toes. Let’s hope for another 6 years of problem free growing.

Week 7 Flower The girls are starting week 8 in flower, so I scoped on the trichomes. Still no amber, but they look nice and cloudy. I’m gonna let them go a whole week and check again before I decide to flush. It’s very well these girls will go a whole 10-weeks. They are starting to show their fade, so I will be pushing them as far as I can while still waiting for the perfect time to chop. I personally like at least 20% amber before the harvest.

Week 8 Flower I gave microbes and tea the first day of the week and decided to switch to flush mode after that. There is amber showing itself and with my schedule, there will be only a couple days free for the chop. They are in the harvest window, tho if I had a choice they wood go for another couple of weeks. I will be able to give her one more week! Next weeks update will be the last of flower, then probably won’t be another until after the yield is dried and weighed. I’ll sneak in some fresh chop pics for ya tho 😁

I: 6.00 oz. (170.0 g) II: 6.63 oz. (187.9 g) III: 5.46 oz. (154.7 g) IV: 7.03 oz. (199.3 g) Tent Total: 25.12 oz. (712.1 g) {1.57 lb} 1.5oz (44.5g)/sq ft 1.48g/w I had my hopes a little high. I really thought this harvest would be much better than my last harvest. It really looked like it would. The scrog screen was filled out more and buds looked fat and plump. It just wasn’t the case. The buds didn’t get as dense as the Early Lemon Berry did, but what they lacked in weight they made up for in frost. This harvest was a challenge just because everything is so sticky now lol. The lower buds that looked like decent buds dried into little more than larf, but that’s okay, because even the lower nugs were stupid sticky. I took 14 g of larf and pressed it into rosin and got a 1.9g return. Not bad. I will determine if this strain will be grown again based on what kind of return I will get with my bubble hash. Although super frosty, the buds lost a lot of structure in the drying process. Another thing that I noticed is the terpene profile completely changed in the last weeks of flower. From a dirty sock (rotten) smell to a average sweet and almost cookie profile. I was looking forward to something stanky. The search my long lost terpene profile continues...