Photo Blog

[sneakers]

This will take the place of my current grow journal located at http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-jour...ster-bomb.html

Use the link to refer to it if you wish. There will be a link at the end of it to this thread as well. The reason I am doing this is because I just figured out how to upload pictures to GC where there is unlimited space. In time I will go through the old thread and remove those links to free up some space elsewhere. A thread with a bunch of dead picture links is never a good thing.

Overview:

A quick overview of my grow. I am currently growing HGS Purple Cindy, White Widow and Skunk #1. A HGS Cluster Bomb seed was started germinating today. My grow is in a 2' X 6' closet using CFLs and a drip system. Nothing fancy at all, just enough to supply my own needs.

My grow is a SOG or "perpetual grow". All of the plants are clones from moms in another place and put under 12/12 light with little veg time. This produces mainly a top cola without much side growth or lower (popcorn) buds. With my limited space and limited lighting, this type of grow suits my needs perfect in that no room is wasted growing much of the bushy stuff, just the cola and this enables the CFL lighting to reach the lower part of the cola much easier.

Last weekend they were all taken from the closet, inspected and given fresh nutrients. Here are pictures of them.

On the left is a Skunk #1 that will be ready before too long. About 2 or 3eeks. On the right is another skunk that the top has toppled over. I was away part of this grow and didnt pay the attention I should have. A fan would have made the difference.



Next are White Widow plants. There are 3 plants in this bucket. Most of the buckets have 2 plants in each. This usually isn't a good idea but they have been finishing in about 2 months and all of that time during flower. It isn't enough time for the roots to get entangled to a point that it kills any of them. These 3 plants were put in this same bucket before the sex was known. The middle pic is a Purple Cindy and a White Widow in the same bucket and next is a Purple Cindy in a bucket to herself.



I am finally getting everything dialed in so that all plants of each strain are growing to the same height and the same strains are being placed in the same buckets.
Two White Widows all dialed in. These are 2 seperate buckets (4 plants). See how low the growth starts?

The plant on the right in the bucket on the left is where I got the new picture for my signature.



Here are a couple of young Purple Cindys on the left. I accidentally chopped off the top in the picture. These barely have any flowers but have stretched nicely. On the right is the first Purple Cindy clone and the first White Widow clone put into 12/12 light for sexing. Hopefully they wont be too much longer.



Last but not least is the next Skunk to be harvested. This is the same pic that was used to make that pic called snakeweed. It is the pot on the right and has toppled over.



Here is a better picture of that last skunk plant

She looks like the lockness monster or something. Here is an even closer image.


Here is the seed that was started germinating today.


Hopefully this can be a perpetual thread as is this grow. In time the other thread will probably be phased out.

[AugustWest]

sneakers, that's a kick ass setup and some really nice looking buds. How many plants do you do at once, and what's the harvest weight usually run?

[sneakers]

Right now they average 2 plants per bucket and there are oops, were 12 buckets. I tink 11 now, will recount when the lights come on. There is room for a maximum of 16 buckets. The most I have had before now was probably 6 or 8 buckets and was having to scrounge around some waiting. Thats when I just had the skunk #1. Now with these others I will be at a maximum before long.

With this I hope to be able to harvest 2 buckets a week and the harvest weight of each bucket is probably about 1/2 ounce. Some of the first ones that seemed to get bigger probably weighed more. If you don't let them veg a little first then the roots don't grow very big and the plant suffers. I am heading back in the right direction with them and with the Purple Cindy and the White Widow maybe I wont tend to rush them any.

There is no telling what the weight will be with the Purple Cindy. I may even need to wait longer than 2 months but 3 months is fine if I get twice the weight.

After having read Earl talking about the taste and smoove showing us the quality in his (and your) thread early Sunday morning, I couldn't resist. There were a couple of branches on the very bottom of the first Purple Cindy clone that were only a couple of inches long and had just a small bud on each. They were at the bottom and not getting the light they needed to get much bigger so I cut them off last night. This morning I removed all of the leaf from that little bit of bud and let it dry all day long. And then...

During the Astro's game I smoked it in my bong. I smoked just a taste earlier and was quite surprised. AW, the Purple Cindy needs to be your next stuff to try. It does have a chocolate taste as Earl was talking about. It seemed to sensitize all of the senses in my nose, face, front of throat and chest with a warm feeling of just having eaten choclate or something with a vanilla aftertaste or something. I never tasted anything like this before and the high is awesome, especially for the bottom bud that was immature.

I betcha the tops will be at least twice as good and twice as tasty.

I have a feeling this will either surpass or tie the "best stuff I ever smoked" top of the list. The current top of the list has been the leader since 1969. It was some stuff called Vietnamese Black. Just imagine topping a 39 year old record. Seriously this reminded me of that stuff from the early 70s that has been long gone and was only a fond memory. Now I have some to smoke again.

I have pics of that little bit of bottom bud and of the top bud. There is a huge difference when looking at them up close. I will post them side by side afterwhile to see the difference between bottom bud and the top of the cola.

[AugustWest]

man you have a really nice system that's working well for you!
the purp cindy does look really nice.. i've seen a few grows of it and they all loook dank as hell.
I'm beginning to realize that smaller plants are the way to go, they just seem easier to keep control of.

are those buckets all separate or do they feed off of a single res?

[sneakers]

They are all separate. Maybe one day I will get something with them all together and a central reservoir.

[sneakers]

Thanks for the compliment on my setup August. It was late last night when I was responding to your questions and wasn't quite all here.

It is a poor man's setup, getto equipment. I probably don't have over about $400-$500 dollars in it for lighting and everything else.

I was thinking today how much easier and better this would be if I had a central reservoir and flooded them every so often instead of this drip system. The drip works ok but is more prone to problems I think. I'm not sure how well a hole can be drilled in those hard plastic buckets. Someone said (maybe SmoknVtech) that you could put holes in plastic like that using a soldering iron then clean it up with a dremel tool. I have a cracked bucket here that could be used for practice or testing.

I live in a townhouse and it is a multi family building. I have a next door neighbor and there is a party wall between us. Im not sure how thick it is. I tend to get paranoid of someone hearing the low constant humm of the air pump I use. It isn't very loud unless youre stoned then you can hear it from anywhere LOL

Here is what I did to "ease my mind"

My neighbors wake up each morning at 5am, leave for work by 9am, gets home from work at 5pm and go to bed vy 8:30 or 9 each night. I hooked the air pumps for the drip system to a timer and it runs from 10am - 4pm then again from 10pm to 4am, times when my neighbors are either sleeping or at work. Flooding them might be even better. I know it would be much easier. Those buckets get kinda nasty inside just after a week or 2. Guess I could test a couple of them.

It looks like my Cluster Bomb is about to sprout, will have a pic of it in the morning.

[sneakers]

These are my 3 big girls without the tops being chopped off in the picture.



They aren't very tall. Notice the doorknob in the upper right corner. They are actually about the same height as the doorknob.

My Cluster Bomb seed popped good today

and was placed into a rapid rooter plug.
Look how fat that tail is.
It's hard to imagine it getting that big in only about 36 hours from the time it was first put into the shot glass of distilled water to start.

[sneakers]

Harvest Today

1 bucket (2 plants) of Skunk #1.



My goal is for 2 of these a week and never ending. This was 42 grams of green bud on the stem. Leaf was all stripped. The leaf that you see is all of the leaf from those 2 plants and most of it is finger leaf covered with trichomes. The leaf on the right is the fan leaf from this plant. Not much waste.

It will probably be close to 1/2 oz of good clean dry bud.


There were 3 White Widow girls ready to take it's place.


You can see some leaf curl on one of the plants. Probably from bumping a CFL while still on the mom in the little cabinet. They never look real good right after rooting. All 3 of these look to be ready to take off growing and in just a couple of months will provide me with about a weeks worth of good smoke.

With my closet full I max out at 16 buckets which would be 2 buckets a week harvest X 1/2 oz. each bucket would be 1 oz a week. With using HGS that will probably go up. If more patience and perfectionism were practiced, these plants would yield more also.

To the best I can tell, that first Purple Cindy was put into 12/12 light on April 1. My journal shows the clone was cut on 3-22 and sex was shown on 4-14. Considering it usually takes 10 days to root and 10 days to show sex, April 1 sounds about right. That will make harvest on about June 9, 3 weeks away.

I started flushing all 3 of the big girls with GH Flora Kleen yesterday. Tomorrow morning they will be getting fresh nutrients. Hopefully a good flush will help them to absorb more nutes and get bigger and better. One last good hard push at the end. Thanks for the tip earl.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me at this point?

I read that this is where she should start to fatten up and gain some weight. I'm not sure how much she will gain under these CFLs. It looks like there are a couple more right behind her that will be about a bucket a week for awhile. There are 3 more Purple Cindy clones that will be ready to go to the flower room in a week.

White Widows will start being ready when the Purple Cindy is, I think. I looked today and didn't see a flower time for widows. Surely 60-70 days should do it.

Might need a couple more cookie jars for these new strains.

Today the Cluster Bomb barely popped it's head out of the rapid rooter plug. Hope it's a girl.

[sneakers]

After a few months of far less than perfect clones it has come time for me to try and perfect that issue. I'm also not too excited about using Rapid Rooter plugs. They work but the couple of plants I grew without them seemed to be much more sturdy. One was a seed that I accidentally dropped into the hydroton one day and a week or so later it popped up as a surprise. The other was a seed that had germinated and was carefully placed into the hydroton and seemed to work fine. I tried others but they would either get lost or wouldn't grow right under that big hydroton like it would in nature.

As far as the clones having some yellowing and the high mortality rate of my cuttings, it has to be too much humidity caused by too much heat. I am pretty much caught up on cuttings for the moment so I decided to try something to see if these clones can't be made better.

A fresh Skunk cutting was placed under the humidity dome. The heat mat was turned on just long enough for water to start to collecting on the inside of the dome and then unplugged. The cutting was taken as usual, 45 degree cut, edges scraped, rooting powder etc. and was placed into a disposable plastic container of fine gravel placed under the dome. There was a very small amount of water on the bottom but I'm sure the heat at the beginning probably made it start evaporating. The gravel was slightly damp. If I can get her to grow roots in the gravel then I can get her to grow in the hydroton too.



I don't see why she wouldn't take roots in there. Hopefully this will be my next skunk mother.

Everyone got fresh nutes today and a bucket of Skunk (3 plants) and a bucket of White Widow (2 plants) were added to the flower room.

[sneakers]

Today I found that White Widows finish in 8 weeks (56 days). If my calculations are right, I am on day 54 right now. I can't believe how sticky she is.




She has a lot of trichs but none of them look amber to me. I don't think they will be amber in 2 more days. Does anyone know?

[sneakers]

Wrong picture. This is the White Widow that is supposed to be done tomorrow.



Maybe there is a hint more of amber in those trichs. Regardless, tomorrow will be her day. I have been anxious to try White Widow. There are about 8-10 more just like her that will be finishing over the next 2-6 weeks.

[AugustWest]

congrats on the harvest(s) man.. looks like your on a roll and have everything timed well.

very nice quality buds dude.. keep the pics coming!

[sneakers]

thanks

there are some burnt leaf tips. It's easy to say that happens with CFLs but with a lot more care it could be prevented. For now I'm still amazed at the fact that it is growing, smokable, taste good and gets me stoned for cheap and I don't get jerked around waiting and stuff. One of these days maybe it can be perfected.

This first widow was in the same bucket with a Purple Cindy when I was trying to find out the sex. It is much shorter and didn't get quite the light it should have. The ones not far behind this one are much nicer. The widow girs seem to be much stickier than the others.

[sneakers]

Waiting on this Purple Cindy is like waiting for Santa Clause at Christmas when I was a kid. She will be worth the wait though.


She looks like she has more trichs than last time and they are barely starting to turn amber. Over the last week she seems to have put on weight. The big bud on the top of the cola and the bud below it finally grew together and are getting fatter.

This weeks harvest. - 1 plant of each.

Skunk #1, this is a lower bud. I didn't have a good angle at the top and it was close to lights out.


And White Widow...

I will have fun waiting on that Purple Cindy. My harvest may not be a lot but it will sure be good.

[HATCH]

>>>>>>!!!!!!WOW!!!!!!<<<<<<<<


That is some Danky Looking Bud's

Great Grow!!!

Almost Forgot, Well I did Forget, But Anyway I'm Abit On The Burnt Side, HEHEHE<<<<<<<<<<Great Photography>>>>>>>>>>