Grand daddy purple and vanilla frosting

You may have noticed I made a change this week. I was able to get my hands on this strain called royal cookies but when I was researching that strain I couldn’t find much information. What information I could find made it sound like unless I knew the genetics It might not be what I was looking for. So I started making some calls to some people and a friend that grows very nice product had me come over this weekend. He allowed me to test and see his plant 5 weeks into flower and he allowed me to choose what I wanted. I decided on a strain called vanilla frosting and grand daddy purple. I grabbed 2 of each.

Last week all 4 plant were transplanted from their red plastic cups into these 2 gallon pots. I just started to notice new growth and they are looking healthy. I decided to switch soils and I’m now using a brand called M3 Michigan mix. It’s one of those water only mixes. I wasn’t happy with the soil mix I had been using so this new soil was recommended by my favorite hippy at my local grow store. I will have to be careful with this soil, it really retains water and I’ve been told to be very careful if I add any nutrients. Before I flip these into flower I’m suppose to add an organic mix called pa pa’s perfect poo. In my veg closet I have 4 super silver have and 6 royal cookies. I really want to flower out one of these royal cookies. I may pull a grand daddy purple and swap it with a royal cookie but I may just put them in my buddies greenhouse. I also made a new SCROG screen as well. I’ve been able to free up some more floor space so my new screen is 32” x 38”. I plan on putting 4 girls under my new screen. I also have a cloud line T6 and carbon filter arriving this week. I will make the T6 my new exhaust fan and put my current 4” inline fan down on the floor. My 4” fan will become my new intake fan. This should help me control my tents temps. a little better as the weather begins to warm up. After my last garden dying due to a faulty auto watering system I’m so excited about this new garden. Stay tuned!

How’s it going grow diary? Well this week has been interesting but the girls have settled in and are looking like they like their new home. I redid my floor layout in my shed this week. I also pulled the tent off the walls in my shed. I was to move my a/c behind the tent in the corner. I was able to shorten the hoses to the window and make everything look cleaner from the outside. I also installed a new Infinity T6 inline fan with carbon filter. Then I took the 4” fan I was using my exhaust fan and made it my intake fan. I had been using a 6” booster fan for the intake but no matter what I tried i couldn’t keep things stable. As soon as the temperature would get above 40 degrees outside My temperature in the tent would start floating up above 85. I’ve had these new fans installed for a few days and the outside temperatures have ranged from 25 to 50 degrees and my temperature inside my tent has ranged from 74 to 77. I’m very happy with the T6! Last week I mentioned I was thinking about replacing one of my Grand daddy purples for a royal cookie that’s in my veg room but after reading a bunch of fellow growers diaries about Royal Cookie I’ve decided to not to make that swap. A lot of guys mentioned they ran into issues about hermies. I don’t feel like taking the risk. I’m 100% certain of the genetics that are in my tent and I’m not certain about the genetics of the royal cookie. I’m jut going to play it safe. Have a good week everyone and I’ll update my gardens progress next weekend.

Dear grow diary, Things are going so much better then previous grows. I grew from 1998 to 2006 and had many successful gardens but my last garden failed and really bummed me out. I’m really feeling better about things, and I’m excited to about these 4 plants. This week I transfered 3 plants to 5 gallon fabric pots and 1 to a 3 gallon pot. I want to see the difference in yield between a 3 gallon and 5 gallon. I also installed my new SCROG net and positioned it 8” over the mediums. The plan is to let these ladies grow for another 2 weeks. I will flip the lights to 12/12 on the first Sunday of April. This will put my harvest around June 10th and I will have some good smoke for the 4th of July. I also will be taking cuttings from the vanilla frosting for my buddies green house and in my little closest I have 4 super silver haze that are growing for the soul purpose of outdoor. Have a great week and happy st. Patrick’s day!

Hello diary, This week and been an easy one, on Tuesday I watered and cleaned up the bases of each plant. My buddy clones these in flower and the bases of all 4 girls needed a trim. On Sunday I took 30 vanilla frosting cutting and 18 grand daddy purple cuttings. I also cleaned up a lot of larger fan leaves. The plants didn’t seem to even notice and just keep growing. Next week I will do 1 more clean up and take up to another 48 cuttings. I also have 4 super silver haze ladies that I was going to take cuttings from but I’m out of room and there just not big enough. I have like 70 feminized SSH seeds left from the 100 pack I bought so I’m not worried about it. I’m keeping the PH at 6.2 and that seems to be what was causing my issues on my last two grows. I’ve also cut back on the nutrients and instead followed my old soil mix that I used back in the day. The plants just seem to be happy, which makes me happy.

Hello grow diary, Things are about to get fun, I’m flipping these ladies into flower over the weekend or next watering. What ever comes first. This week I took 65 cutting off these 4 ladies over 2 sessions, cleaned all the undergrowth and flushed them out. Within an hour of being back under the NET they looked like they were smiling. I also made a water system with some hose and fittings. I can screw my funnel and hose to 1 of 4 fittings and water each pot with out moving or touching anything. I decided to do the second and last defoliation and remove all undergrowth. I put everything back together and watered. I then tucked everything and close the tent up. I want to flip the lights to 12/12 as soon as everything has recovered from all the pruning I did today.

Mid week update - week 1 of flower and the screen is getting filled in and things are of to a good start. Well week one is in the books, I cleaned up things as best I could, there’s little to no growth under the net but whatever’s left will be staying. I also defoliate do some of the big fan leaves to allow light to get to all the buds sites. I’m also running out of space in my Net so I will be more pulling the buds up through the net this week and then I’m going to watch these plants flower. I’ll just keep loving them and if all goes well I’ll be very happy at the end of may.

This was the last week of tucking and cutting anything off the plants. I took some of the larger fans leaves off and a few scrap buds that hadn’t made it above the screen. Michigan is in that weird time of year where it’s 82 one day and 55 the next. The day it was 82 I had some issue keep the temperatures at 75 but as long as it’s 79 or below my day temps range from 73 to 78. Day time temps have dipped down to 67 a couple nights but I’m not worried about it. This SCROG method Is the shit and I don’t see myself growing any other way my current set up. I have the light 20 inches above the canopy and it’s looking awesome.

SCROGING is an amazing technique that I will get better at but this being my first real attempt I clearly see how important it is to get everything cleaned up under the net. I’m not touching anything now and I’ll just do better next time. Anyways my garden looks really good, and the buds look real good and my canopy is pretty even. I mean it’s 4 or 5 inches off and if I would have tucked one more time I could have got things a bit more even. The Grand daddy purples buds are definitely going to be lighter. The vanilla frostings buds are going to dense and thick. If I take what I’ve seen from the past couple harvests my light will really turn these buds into little dense monsters. The viperspectra PAR1200 is a good light and makes heavy dense buds. I highly recommend the PAR1200 for a 3 x 3 space. Happy 420! Update - I think I missed 1 week in my grow. Today’s the last day of week 4 and I gave the girls a little trim today and cleaned those big fan leaves off. What a difference a little trim makes! I took these new photos about 8 hours after their trim. All those buds sites that were being covered reached out and here’s a few pictures of what was underneath. Have a great weekend!

Hello grow diaries, Well my garden is doing great! A few days ago I gave my ladies a trim and removed a few large fan leaves. The next day all those bud sites that had been covered popped up and are saying hi. This garden is looking beautiful! This may sounds weird but I kind of spaced on a week. I’m a week off on my feeding schedule. I think I just counted the wrong amount of days. Anyways hopefully I get in a couple good feedings in this week. Update - Morning of day 35 I was able to open my tent up about 5 minutes before the lights came on. I took these photos and I used a flashlight to do a quick health check on the 4 plants. It’s hard to get a solid look at the health of everything under the LED. Sometimes it seems like everything is good until it’s not under the LED light. I’m basically at the halfway point and everything looks good. This week the temp outside has been over 80. I’ve made a decision that I will harvest this garden in early June, used the tent until mid June drying the flower out and then I’m shutting things down until Labor Day. My shed has insulated walls, heat, AC but I also use it as my office and work shop. I have another small business, I build guitar electric harness’s and hand made bridges for a couple guitar manufacturers. In the summer my shed gets way to hot and I need my AC for me. It’s just a pain in the ass fighting the heat. I’m also going to Europe for a few weeks, and Vail for a couple weeks. My June and July is just busy. I will just keep my two mothers vegging and turn things back on Labor Day 2021. I’m just going to do 2 grows every year. One in Fall and 1 in Spring. Avoid the cold dry winter months and the hot as fuck summer months. Update: today I started moving my 45 outdoor plants to their forever home and I was able to free up a couple of my 2’ 27 watt led lights. I installed them into my tent and plan on adding 2 more of these 2’ 27 watt LEDs sometime next week. I figure an extra 108 watts of light is not going to hurt these girls while they finish up there last 4 or 5 Weeks.

Heading into week 12 and things are going OK. Last week we had 35 to 40 degree swings in the outside temperatures. High of 82-85 with evening temperatures dropping below 50. My lights are running from 8am to 8pm. Trying to keep my high temperature at 75 but I had some issues this week. My buds started to swell this week and I have around 16 really nice colas. Then I have an additional 100 or so smaller buds. There not undergrowth but there not main colas. Yesterday I tried to count how many bud sites there are in my garden and I roughly counted 120ish. If I can get a 2 or 3 gram average I’ll be very happy with this garden. The buds look healthy and are starting to smell. The grand daddy purple has a very grapes smell and the vanilla frosting is starting to smell fruity. I haven’t gotten that vanilla smell yet but the buds are frosty. We’re heading into week 6 of flower and I have one more feeding with the Fox farms beastie bloom and by the end of the week I will do a flush and start the fox farm’s cha ching. I’ll keep updating during the week. I also was able to add 2 27 watt LED FULL SPECTRUM lights to go along with my PAR1200. I was able to free up 2 lights that were taking care of my little girls that are going outside. By the end of next week I’ll be able to free up 2 more of these 27 watt led tubes. I basically wanted to get a little extra light on the edges of my 30” x 36” screen frame. My PAR1200 draw 525 watts, so adding an additional 100 watts can’t hurt. I added a few photos today, the buds keep swelling and they are so sticky! I started growing when I was 18. From 18 to 30 I grew many different size indoor and outdoor gardens. For me the last month before harvest is so hard. I’m like a fat kid at a candy store. I just want to smoke these beautiful flowers!! It’s even worse after I harvest. Lol these ladies smell and look so good. I’m so excited to smoke these ladies this summer. Have a great week everyone! End of the week update, so I started to notice that my SCROG net was way over crowded in one area. The grand daddy purple and the two vanilla frosting plants in the front were tangled and the buds were on top of each other. I had to cut the net and reposition a bunch of the buds so they could breathe. I also had to remove a good deal of fan leaves in this area. I also had to use some sticks to support the buds when I reposition them. We’ll see how things work out. Some of the buds were damaged but they have space now so we’ll see what happens.

Had a rough week. In the middle of my net my GDP and my front 2 vanilla frostings basically got tangled up. I knew I had some over crowding going on but I thought it’d be fine. Basically it looked like 1 of the main colas from each plant was strangling each other. I noticed the tops looked great the bottom sides of these 3 stalks were changing color. I had to cut my NET and untangle the buds. Everything else looks great but those 3 colas definitely have some damage. So like I was saying I had to reposition things this past weekend and today I was getting ready to water. The GDP stretched probably close to 200%. My floor space is basically 3' x 3' and the GDP is in the back right corner. One of it main colas had been tuck all the way to the front and all the way to the left. I don't know what I was thinking but it was tangled up with the other three plants. It basically was causing the other three plants from being able to grow correctly. So I removed the NET and Frame and then used bamboo sticks to support all the heavy colas. I repositioned everything and removed a couple branches on the GDP. I'll post some pictures tomorrow but it looks a lot better and I think this change is what was needed for these ladies during the last few weeks. The other areas that were not damaged look great. Good color and good growth. I checked my PH and PPM to just make sure I wasn't maybe having some other kind of issue and my PH was between 5.9 and 6.1 and PPM was ranging between 1200-1400. I performed a flush last week and my PH was in the same range and my PPM came down to the 400 range. The plants are sucking up water and seem very healthy except the 3 area's that I laid out in my pictures. If anyone see's something that I'm missing or has some advise please comment. Less is more and its a lesson I seem to never learn. I knew I should of either used 3 gallon pots or only put two plants in my space with the 5 gallon pots. Now I know so I'll apply this lesson on the next grow.

Hello GD family, This week has been a much better week. My plants are all doing well now. It took a good 5 days after I removed the net and frame. Early this week I removed everything from my tent and cleaned and vacuumed. Then placed everything back in to tent. The damaged plants have rebounded well. All 4 plants sucked up the water this week. Each plant took 3 gallons of water. Normally they had been taking 2 gallons but I watered 3 times this week. Today is day 52 and the GDP Is getting some darker colors and the vanilla frosting plants have gotten very frosty. Checked the Tricomes today and everything is clear and bright. This Friday will be the start of week 9. The guy I got both of these strains from told me to harvest in week 9 but i won’t be harvesting until my tricomes are about 20% amber. Quick update - last day of week 8. I’m seeing amber on the GDP more than the 3 VF’s but the VF’s are starting to get some color in their tricomes. Today I flushed all four plants today, while they were out of the tent I also rearranged everything and prepared the tent so when I chop on Tuesday of next week I can cut, trim and hang. I moved the AC back into the tent, redid my wood frame so I can move my 16” oscillating fan from the corner to the side easily. Cleaned, vacuumed and wiped all the walls down and hung 6 strings that I will use to hang the plants. Basically I can chop Tuesday morning, pull my light and box if, remove the trays on my floor and my tent should work very well for the drying portion on this harvest. I’m going to maintain 65-68 degrees inside the tent with the RH in the 60% range. If anyone reads this and has any advise from personal experiences when it comes to the drying and curing process I’d love to hear what has and has not worked for you. I’ll update on Tuesday and then I’ll update when things are finished and ready to be smoked. I’m really excited to try these two strains out. A couple weeks ago I had to cut a couple branches off the GDP and 1 branch from the 3 gallon VF. I just threw them in my closet and let them dry. I smoked a little today and the GDP is strong. Two hits from my little bong and I found myself listening to 11-19-97 wolfmans stoned as hell running errands! Can’t wait to try some that taste great with that punch.

This was my first scrog and I learned a lot. I’m very happy with the vanilla frosting and will be growing it again in the fall. I overcrowded my scrog which affected my overall harvest numbers by at least 2 ounces. I love the taste and the high is wonderful and it hasn’t cured. I found myself blew out this morning in a very good way.

The 1 gdp plant gave me 80 grams and the herb is strong.