ProfessorSkiSlopes

@TheSweetScience, Yep, pretty much my thoughts exactly. The Blackberry definitely needed way, way less nutrient strength than any other fastbuds strain I've grown, the run-offs were high for the first month and I only used 25% strength. I think this probably was a big factor in the large number of low yielding plants. But that said, the buds were absolutely first class. I had several people say these were simply the best buds they had ever smoked and that's with over ten years of experience. I personally found the Kush indica stone to be the nicest, low anxiety, happy stone and I would happily smoke it always, excepting for its troublesome growing requirements. I am planning to do an WestCoast OG tent next, that has the same Kush lineage as blackberry, and sounds like hopefully a similar stone with more consistent genetics/yield. I see fastbuds just released a new purple strain (purple lemonade), looks like they knew Blackberry was inferior and have been working for awhile to create a replacement. I also saw on another seedbank site that they are expecting a strain called Purple Punch from fastbuds this year as well.

@@GreenHeart420, Heh, yeah you are right, I was having a bit of a brain-sizzle that night. I guess I'm still quite new to this, and I'm pretty fixated on mastering the art of growing the highest yield and so I can easily overthink small things. To be honest, over the last several grows I'd sort of come to the conclusion that in general, the plant is going to produce a fairly predictable yield, and that unless there were major screw ups, most folks were probably getting fairly similar results regardless of technique or any specifics of the growing method. But then I noticed the correlation with the look of the GSC, and it struck me that maybe it was the opposite, and perhaps the treatment of the plant, especially in the seedling stage, could have dramatic impact on final yield. I guess the only real answer is going to be found by doing some comparative grows with clones, and measuring final yields after varying nutrient levels for different sets of plants. Not sure that I'm going to ever get around to doing that, but given how much it is bugging me, maybe I will. I generally haven't had any major struggles with my grows so far (except the first time, when I drowned 14 seeds), and I had a pretty spectacular yield with my Zkittles grow (just under 1 kilo in 12 weeks from a 4by4 tent) so I'll keep on trying to get my coco technique perfected. Although I am keen to automate the watering with a pump fed halo system, and also automate the collection of run-off with some full 4x4 sized trays I've found online. That would cut my workload by a massive amount. Speaking of which, I guess I better go hand-water the tents now... Thanks for the feedback, it's good to be reminded not to take it quite so insanely seriously LOL, I tend to get a bit over-focused on things I think I'm seeing. In the end, the harvests are pretty sweet, and it's actually supposed to be an enjoyable hobby (which in large part it really is).