CBD Blue Shark mainline

I was using an 80w reptile bulb for the first bit of grow so veg growth was slow and didn't really take off for a while.

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These were finally starting to look ok, but I was also seeing strange lines in the leaves and the beginning of some bleaching or striping in the veins and in between the veins in the leaves. Usually symmetrical, but in various places of the plants. At this point a couple plants were already starting to look like the strong ones. At this point I had my old 1000w HPS my exhaust fan and carbon filter set up and I'd cut a passive exhaust hole so I had negative pressure in the grow tent, which I like. I got a little turbo fan and was pretty happy about the humidity which was consistently staying around 50%. I was noticing that there were light colored bands or stripes between a lot of the veins of the leaves and some of the lower leaves were turning yellow. It reminded me of leaves going yellow during harvest. I started keeping a closer eye on my runoff pH and used apple cider vinegar as a natural way to adjust it before getting pH up and pH down from the store.

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I was still seeing strange things happen in the leaves but runoff pH was staying at around 6.5. One plant toppled over and started growing up from a bent stalk like an herb. I started looking for a new reflector so that I could mount my light horizontally instead of vertically to save space and ideally find a way to get the plants closer to the light without burning them. I started looking into MH bulbs as well as I figured at this point I clearly hadn't provided the light they needed. If I wanted them to thrive I needed to set them up properly for the last few weeks of veg. I transplanted this week into slightly bigger coco pots but in retrospect I feel I should have gone up to 3 gallon pots at this point. Topped this week as soon as they hit the third node.

At this point, I gave away one CBD blue shark and one wedding cake seedling, leaving me with 2 each. Once the plants started to bounce back from being topped, I put them into 3 gallon bags. At this point I think they had finally gotten their bearings and were starting to grow steadily. I tried to make up for some of their initial stretch by removing some of the lower leaves and burying them deeper when I transplanted. I had my old 1000w HPS bulb in a UFO fixture that I had taken the reflectors off of to make it fit in the tent I built. I had the exhaust fan and carbon filter sitting on some cupboards outside the tent.

This week I got a cool tube reflector and 1000w Metal Halide bulb. I had to run the new bulb at 100% for the first 100 hours so I raised it all the way to the top of my space. I hooked up a small 6" booster fan to one end of the cool tube and hooked the other end to my exhaust fan so that I could have air pushed over the bulb and pulled out of the tent into the filter. Sadly, I lost my negative pressure. Temperature was also a serious problem and I had to leave the tent open at times which was a heat score. I enlarged my intake hole and opened a nearby window a bit wider to bring the heat down until I could turn down the bulb. 1000w is way overkill for my space but even though I have a dimmable balast, I wasn't comfortable getting a 600w bulb and running it at 50% or 75% on my 1000w balast. Once the plants started growing vigorously again, I started training the new main branches down. My original plan was for ScrOG and I drilled some eye hooks into my frame and layered some trellis I got from the hydroponics store to make the squares smaller. Around this time, I found out about mainlining as well.

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This was a big week. I topped the plants for the second time and clipped off all the branches below the mainline node. I thought about leaving these and going for more of a manifold technique since they were pretty robust by this point given the lack of apical dominance, but in the end, I wanted to see how properly mainlining would work. I think mainline / ScrOG will make the best use of my space, it's just too bad I wasted so much growth. It was a hard decision to make. I saved some of the cuttings to try to make clones to make myself feel better but it really felt like as soon as things were going well, I put myself back to square one. After about 3 days, they had recovered and I topped them a final time for 8 main colas per plant. I also bought a window fan to pump more cold air in, and while I was setting it up I realized that I had previously had my cool tube fan installed backwards. So both my fans were blowing in opposite directions. I disconnected the cool tube from the exhaust and now I'm running the intake fan pushing direct into the tent, the cool tube pushing from around the intake fan over the bulb to the exhaust hole. I took out all the extra ducting and it seems to be working well. My main problem now is that it's so cold at night with the intake fan running. I've been turning it off at night and back on in the morning manually. 12/12 next week will be a relief.

Everything seems to be moving very fast now. 8 colas to train per plant keeps me on my toes. I started by bending wire and sticking it into the soil. Then I was punching the wire through the sides of the pot. Now I have some clips to attach wire to, which is far easier. Of the 4 plants, there is a clear "big one" and "small one" of each strain. They're just getting tall enough for the ScrOG net to start to be useful. Next week they will go into their final pots and the week after that they'll be going into flower. I think it was also this week that I realized my nutrients were supposed to be given "per week", not every time the plants needed water. I've probably been overfeeding this entire time.

Transplanted into final bags. The big 2 plants are in 7 gallon bags and the small 2 are in 5 gallon. Everything should just fit in the tent. I used coco coir from canna with the rest of my perlite as my additional soil. They took about 6 gallons of water between the four of them. I added a full nutrient solution, same as I've been using for weeks. I watered and fed them a day after transplanting as they were looking really dry and droopy and I was a day later than expected due to delays getting new bags. By the end of the day they had perked up, but the following day I noticed a bunch of leaf damage on the big two plants. I cut the power back to 50% and raised the light by a few inches. I'm noticing a claw shape happening at the tips. I think I overfed them.

I wanted to flower this week but the plants in the 7g pots are burnt so I'm going to wait. The answer to my grow question in the main grow diary suggested I transplanted too soon after topping but I also think I should have stuck with all soil instead of adding coco instead.

I gave them all nothing but water this week and made sure all the runoff pH was around 6-6.25. They're all in 3 gallons of soil and perlite wrapped in an additional 2 or 4 gallons of coco and perlite. They are looking really happy now. They just hit 1 foot. They look like they're stretching. They're ready to go. I've been keeping the 1000w MH at 75% but they might be ready for 100% now. I took off some of the most damaged leaves off the bigger plants. Ironically, after their burn last week and the stunted growth that followed, the plants in the 5 gallon pots are now bigger than the ones in the 7s. I found a way to move my oscillating fan to get more floor space. I moved the plants into their final positions. Now I'll try to fill out the SCROG screen through the stretch and hopefully have a full, even canopy when the buds start to form. I found out that I broke a growth tip off one of the CBD blue shark plants. Its 2 growth tips are already taking off as though I topped it. It was beyond saving so I sterilized my scissors and cut it off. From seed, they've had light from 6am to 12am. Starting tomorrow, they will have light from 10am to 10pm. I switched to a 1000w plantmax HPS day 2 of flower and raised the lights to 27" above the canopy

They've been in flower for about 5 days now. I put the new 1000w HPS bulb in and it's definitely too much at 100%. I'm supposed to run it at 100% for 100hrs before dimming it so I have 4 more days to go. I think the plants will be ok. There is a little bit of bleaching which isn't great. I'm going to turn down my bulb to 75% as soon as I can and probably run it like that for the rest of the grow. In retrospect I probably should have gotten a 600 w bulb but I felt weird about running my 1000w ballast at 75% with a 600w bulb or at 50% with a 400w bulb. I know dimming isn't ideal but once my bulb is burned in properly ill have a dimmable 1000w mh and dimmable 1000w hps which should be pretty versatile for a couple more projects. I'm not really having any issues with the heat. I have a window fan pumping cold air into the room and while the new bulb is at 100% I'm running the fan on medium. It's been a steady 9c out lately so it's keeping it pretty cool. I just have to make sure I turn it off when the light goes off, and turn it back on when they come on. Now that they're in 12/12 it's not that hard to keep track of. They are growing very vigorously. I have wires tied to binder clips clipped to the fabric pots for LST and I'm having to move them up every few days because they're growing so much. That's helping to keep colas moving in the right directions and between that and the SCRoG net, they're really starting to fill out the space. Even the secondary bud sites are shooting up and I'm starting to be able to train those into the net too. I have 2 overlapping sections of like 4" squares, and it's kind of a pain. I would prefer smaller squares in the grid for right now. Layering them works but I still have some areas that could be better covered. I'm trying to train the 7g wedding cake to take over the back of the growing space, then the 7g cbd blue shark and the 5g wedding cake are kind of splitting the middle so I'm getting them to expand outward now, and the 5g blue shark is coming up in the right corner where the adjustable intake vent flap and oscillating fan and some dangling cords are. Because one of the cola snapped, it has more than the others. I'm going to let it grow straighter up than the others as it's a bit more cramped. They're finally starting to look a little thirsty. I'll try to feed them tomorrow. This will be the first feeding of the season. I guess I'm going to do half strength of grow nutrients and maybe a quarter strength of bloom nutes. I don't want to overload them since they got burned pretty recently. I took off some dying leaves near the bottom too. One of them had even started pushing out a whole new branch from the bottom and I took that off too. I fed them for the first time. I'm using 3ml/g grow and 5ml/g bloom instead of 8ml bloom and no grow in an effort to transition them gradually. I gave the plants in 7 gallon bags 18+ cups and the 5 gallon bags 15+ cups. I Ph'd the solution to 6. 3 based on my data from the last watering to aim for a runoff pH of 6. There was no runoff on 3 of them but the runoff on the 5g wedding cake was 6.5. The pH reading changed after the first bit of watering was done and I had to add some pH down. They grew a good couple inches overnight after their first feeding. They're putting out pistils and looking really happy. They're still just flexible enough to train. I don't know how I managed without a SCRoG net for so long. I'm going to add another layer soon.

They look like they're doing really well this week. I'm drastically running out of space so I've started training the plants in tetris shapes to make everything fit. I took off my SCROG net and added new eyelets to my grow structure to add a new net about 8" above the previous one. The trellis I have is 6" mesh which is totally useless. I'll probably have to put 2 layers again to make it worthwhile. The Wedding Cake has broader leaves than the CBD Blue Shark. The plants in the 7 gallon bags are also definitely going to grow bigger than the ones in the 5 gallon bags too. Thursday I pruned everything way back. Now there's much more airflow and the buds won't be overcrowding each other once they start fattening up.

Growing well. Just fed 12 cups Ph'd water (6.3). Lots of cold humid air coming in from outside, plus with the half soil half coco mix I think they're holding water a long time. They're only needing water once a week right now. They were not impressed with the water-only feeding. Some leaves got burnt tips, some got small yellow dots that look like spores or insects but I don't think are either. I think it's some kind of nutrient or pH unhappiness. I only gave 2/3 of the amount of water I normally would, hoping that they will dry out soon and I can give a proper feeding and check runoff pH. I left them alone for a couple days and boosted the 1000w back up to 100% to dry things out a bit more. The buds loved it but I think it's damaging the leaves a bit. I put it back down to 75% just now. I forgot to adjust the intake fan from outside down to low overnight from medium during the day and leaf temp was down to 13.3c when I woke up. Can't be doing that either.

I had been feeding with a diluted solution and now after flushing with water last week I'm moving up to full strength. The pistils of the plants on the ends seem healthier. The smaller plants in the middle seem a little more scraggly. I'm making full use of the SCROG net. I also raised the light an inch or so and put it back to 100% from 75%. I'm going to see if I can keep it closer to 100 if I can balance the intake air temp. Some of the leaves are damaged. I have a feeling it's from the cold nighttime air coming in the intake. I'm going to keep the intake fan off at night while it's this cold and damp outside. Hopefully not too much smell escapes. Maybe I should seal it at night. Getting sticky now!

Fed nutes at 6.3 pH. Runoff was close to 7 pH. Other than that they look like they're doing well. Very sticky and very fragrant. The leaves of the CBD Blue Shark are a nice dark shiny green. The Wedding Cake is lighter. The profiles of both are starting to come out in the flowers. The CBD Blue Shark has these long, dramatic white pistils. The Wedding Cake is starting to show its creamy colouration with red hairs mixing in with the white and looking very delicious. The smell is incredible in there now. Fruity and creamy and delicious.

The colas keep filling out and getting longer and smell amazing. It's been warmer and more humid outside so RH in the tent has gone up. I added a mini air purifier I wasn't using (no ozone) as an extra precaution against mildew. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday and realized that the air purifier has a light on it so I got up and turned it off. I was worried that I'd messed with the dark cycle so I left them in darkness for an extra 2.5 hours. My cool tube fan fell off the next day, onto my plants. They look undamaged. I taped it up again and set up a safety wire like the filter and fan have. I need a better solution for next cycle. The buds are beautiful and having an even canopy is great. It's hard not thinking about the end result. The buds still look small compared to the big colas of a traditional grow shape but there's still a couple weeks left. There is some bud formation under the canopy but it's a little light. The tops of the colas are fat but short on the 7 gallon plants and taller and thinner on the 5 gallon plants. I did leave a couple offshoots on that developed in late veg/early flower. By the time I caught them, I felt they were too mature to chop and I thought they helped fill out certain areas. But those ones have fewer bud sites and tend to be just a cola on a branch that shoots straight up which is still good. I do wonder if less crowding would have given me bigger buds, but I think it has more to do with pot size. This is week 7 of flower. I switched to half strength nutes and started adding fancy molasses (18ml/gallon). I broke my pH tester and didn't replace my SCROG net until after I finally watered the next day so the canopy changed a bit. I took the opportunity to rearrange the plants a bit. Crystal formation increased a crazy amount the day after I started adding molasses. I think I'll keep adding molasses even during flush. The CBD Blue Shark has this really beautiful white glow. The pistils are very strong and white and the trichromes reflect back this silver light. The leaves are a nice semi-glossy dark green which gives great contrast. It's just a beautiful plant. The Wedding Cake has a lot more colour with lots of red hairs and some yellow tones in the pistils. The fan leaves are more prone to yellowing and death than the leaves on the CBD BS. The buds seem more structurally dense and are really working on these pyramid shapes that look like delicious orange and green snacks. The buds on the CBD Blue Shark are more symmetrical and kind of otherworldly like some kind of sea creature.

I realized there may have been a bit of a light leak in the late morning. I taped everything up more. In the future I want to maintain better reflective integrity on the inside of the tent. Everything looks good. The buds are still growing a little taller and filling out. The CBD Blue Shark is super frosty. It's actually absurd. Orange hairs are coming out in all plants. I was hoping to be able to keep the exhaust window open overnight to let the overnight temps drop 10 degrees to encourage the purples in the WC genetics, but it's too humid now to have the window open without the grow light on. Otherwise the rh goes up to 70% overnight and it's not worth the risk. Next year I'll flip earlier when it's still colder and drier out for the harvest window. This flowering period has been really cool. I've really been noticing the process of flowering. The calyxes open up and turn into pistils and sugar leaves, and more keep appearing and popping every day. It's awesome.

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March 08 I left the air purifier on by accident again last night so there was a blue light overnight. The buds look good though. I taped the window up so I'm no longer having a humidity issue at night. I alternate between having the light on at 100% and 75% and recently 50% as well. March 10 I just fed them Ph'd water with molasses. Runoff pH 6.2-6.5, ppm 200-600. I'm having trouble getting good shots of the trichromes but I'm starting to see more amber ones. Less than 5%.

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This is just a beautiful strain to grow. The leaves have a rich dark green appearance and the shape is a mix of fatter indica leaves and longer sativa leaves. It's tendency is a fairly manageable and predictable grow/stretch and it responds well to training and powerful lights. The leaves on one of them changed colour at the end of flush and went yellow with some purples and pinks but the buds themselves have almost a silver glow to them. The pistils come out in early flower in a very strong, spikey and symmetrical way that amplifies the cool glow given off by the trichomes. With the rich, dark, beautiful leaves, the whole appearance is really beautiful and otherworldly. One of the Wedding Cake plants self-pollenated and there are some seeds in the CBD Blue Shark, but they're few and far between. It's not a disaster like the Wedding Cake. Honestly I can't say enough good things about this strain. The plants were hardy, easy to work with and forgiving of mistakes and experiments. The flowers looked amazing through every stage of development, and the finished product smells great, tastes great, looks great, and makes you feel great. This is my favourite strain to grow so far.