I had started this thread in another hydroponics section of this site, but I've noticed that section is kind of dead so I'll be switching over to this thread moving forward with this grow. I hope you guys enjoy The Road So Far: This is my second grow, I tried many times before that and always killed my plants so I'm really excited to have finally got this working! For this grow I decided I wanted to really try to get some really nice buds so I've put a lot more work into getting the proper environment. I choose Mega Jackpot Feminized seeds from AMS which I started on May 26th. I vegged for 6 weeks before flipping to 12/12 two weeks ago. I have topped each plant once and pruned a lot of the lower leafs to focus the growth up top, aside from topping and pruning I haven't done any training. Early into the growth I had a bad case of root rot which nearly killed the entire crop, seriously I almost dumped them in the trash. This was caused by the light putting out way more heat than I expected. I figured the central a.c. in my house would be enough but I ended up having to add a window a.c. unit into the room and pumping the cold air from that into the tent using the intake. Room Specs: 48 x 48 x 78 inch tent (108 cubic ft) Diamond Series XML 650 LED light 4 five gallon buckets with 5 inch net pots filled with hydroton, each filled with 3 gallons of water Eco Air 3 pump providing over 1000 GPH of air 160 CFM exhaust fan (passive intake) Canopy temp: 66-75 degrees Water temp: 66-67 degrees Humidity: 45-55% Nutrients: I choose the Advanced Nutrients line because of the PH perfect and my frustrations with chasing PH. After having used it I'm not sure how well that works, as I was chasing PH the entire time before I nailed down my PPM. Sensi Bloom A + B B-52 Big Bud Overdrive Voodoo Juice Hydroguard If you'd like to see the grow thus far check it out here: http://forum.grasscity.com/hydroponic-grow-journal... Now for the weekly update! Flower - Week 2 Week two is done and it's time for an update. It's been a great week, I started focusing on getting my PPM adjusted to where the plant wanted it instead where I thought that plant wanted it. It took a little fine turning but I've gotten my PPM to stay steady on all of the plants and since I did that the PH swings I have been dealing with (0.2, to 1.0 every 24 hours) have stopped. As a result I've decided to stop dumping and cleaning my reservoirs out every 7-14 days and will just be topping off water and nutes daily since I'm now getting the same PPM, PH and temp every day and the plants are showing how happy they are! We're up to 30 inches on the tallest tops which is interesting because the seed bank and leafly both list this plant as having a 27.5 inch height. I'm a bit worried as these are getting very close to my light, more on this later. View attachment 159732 It's only been two weeks and they already have visible buds developing! Considering I only topped these plants once each I'm amazed at the number of tops I've ended up with. I guess my pruning has been successful! View attachment 159733 I'm blown away, I'm currently in week 9 of another grow using the same strain but in a crap environment and under only 180w UFO. That plant didn't have buds this size until week 5 of flower! View attachment 159734 I am a bit worried though, despite how healthy the plants look the buds have less noticeable pistols than my other grow and they are really pale or white in color. I'm thinking my light is bleaching my buds!! What do you guys think, are the being bleached or is it just they're young and growing fast so they're a little pale still. I'm thinking I'll give it another 3 or 4 days and see if they fill in green or not. The light is less than a foot from the highest tops and I can't raise it any higher so I'd have to turn the lights down if it's bleaching which I'd rather not do. Let me know if I should be worried if you've seen this before. View attachment 159735 View attachment 159736 As you might have noticed from the above pictures I discovered today how amazing the zoom on my phone is, so expect some awesome close ups of these buds as they grow!
I really didn't like how close the plants were getting to my light. They are up to 32 inches today! So I decided I was going to re hang the light now instead of after the grow. It was fun, The S hooks I got were too small to fit over the supports in the tent so I got to practice my blacksmithing skills View attachment 159806 I needed to raise my exhust out of the way of the higher light so I had to shorten the straps I had, so I also got to practice my tailoring skills as well View attachment 159807 The light is so much higher! Here it is at maximum height, I lowered it about 5 inches below this point since it was 20-23 inches from the plants at full height. View attachment 159808
Flower Week 3 Well two of the ladies sativa genes have really kicked in. They are now 12 inches above the max height listed by the seed bank coming in at 37.5 inches today, nearly triple the height they were when I flipped to 12/12 three weeks ago! I really hope they stop growing soon, I'm running out of space again... Plus it's getting hard to get pictures! View attachment 159929 Here you can clearly see how much taller the right half of the tent is than the left half. I've been forced to run my light on an angle to keep it closer to the left side. View attachment 159930 The node spacing looks great on the left plants View attachment 159934 However on the right it's not such nice spacing... :/ View attachment 159935 Since I moved the lights up the weird white spots have gotten much better and pistils have started growing like crazy so it looks like it was definitely bleaching. I'm glad I moved the light up but I'm worried still because they just keep growing. View attachment 159931 View attachment 159932 View attachment 159933 Here's a couple close-ups, you can still see the damage from the bleaching but all of the new growth is looking great, there's even trichomes forming already! View attachment 159936 View attachment 159937 One plant is still having some weird issues, I track my PPM every day and try to get it so that the water level drops at the same rate as the PPM. So when I top up today and check on it before adding more water tomorrow the PPM should have remained constant. This is fine on three plants, they're all sitting around 560 PPM, which seems a bit low but they are super healthy so I'm not complaining. The fourth plant though, it's PPM keeps dropping, it's now at 430 and saying that's too high. I have no idea why it want's so much less nutes than it's sisters but it otherwise looks healthy. I'm thinking maybe I got nute lockout in this bucket somehow so I flushed that bucket tonight, hopefully this helps.
Looks great! It's not uncommon for plants of the same strain to eat differently. Along with slight pheno variations. It pry just has a lean diet. Lockout would surely have shown some deficiencies. No harm in changing out the soup though. At 3 weeks, you're likely at the end of stretch. However, not all plants follow the rules...
Yeah, I wasn't too worried since it seemed overall healthy, just 400 seems so low for a plant this size, but I'm a noob so what do I know, so I figured I'd change it to be safe, no harm like you said. Man I hope they're done with the stretch. It's a good thing my next grow will be scrog so I won't have this issue.
Looking really good so far man! We got a similar setup, my HPS cab is about the same size and I rock the sensi a & b as well as all the amendments. From my limited experience in DWC, you don't need a very high PPM. I can run about 1500 in coco, but anything above 1000 usually results in some burn with dwc but it really depends on the strain, some are nutes hogs while others just need a bit to supplement and take in mostly water. If they are using more nutes you'll notice the PPM start to drop, they are using more nutes than water that is available, if it rises, they are drinking more water than nutes. The fine art of DWC is balancing this as you said, and trying to keep it steady so both the correct balance of water and nutrients is available to the root systems when they need it. Look like your ladies are loving the love you've been given, I think they will reward you greatly for your efforts
Sweet, do you run a scrog or anything like that in your garden? What kind of yield do you usually see outta the space. Also what wattage are you running on your HPS? I'm curious how this LED compares to the HID setups.
Week 4 update (Light switched to 12/12 on 7/18/2015) Another awesome week! It looks like the ladies have finally stopped growing. They have been sitting at 40 inches now for a couple days; I definitely need a SCROG next time! View attachment 160148 View attachment 160154 They are looking so nice though, I'm really stoked with the size of the buds after only 28 days of 12/12. I hope the buds grow as crazy as the rest of the plant did. View attachment 160150 View attachment 160149 The buds are really starting to fill in the stalks now. I was worried about the node spacing on the taller plants but it's looking like it may not be too big of an issue. View attachment 160151 View attachment 160152 View attachment 160153 One thing I find a bit odd is the pistils are already starting to turn amber. It seems early but I'm not too concerned at this point. View attachment 160155
Don't worry about the pistils. The older ones will mature fast, but the plant will produce new ones throughout the grow. Never go off of pistil colour, its very inaccurate and the last few weeks of the cycle is when the buds put on most of their weight The beat way to check when they are ready is by checking the trichomes. I find you need a week or two MORE than what breeder time suggests in most cases. As for my yields, I've only harvested once under the 400 HPS and that was a solo cup sea of green for the solo comp. I ended up pulling 7-21 grams per plant, I had 12 plants total. I'll get a better idea of what that cab can do this round with my DWC babies. I'll most likely be doing a SCROG Looking really good so far man! Keep KT up
Thanks man! I'm probably going to do an early harvest on these due to my trip. I may ether have to harvest early or let them sit unattended for 7 days. I leave on week 10 day 3 since 12/12 and the seed company says 9-11 weeks. I figure I can give them 10 weeks 2 days which isn't bad but I suspect will be early. I actually found some of this strain for sale from the dispensary here so I bought a sample. Unfortunately I'm a little bit disappointed by the smoke, don't get me wrong it's good just it's very mild and has more subtle effect than I prefer, but we'll see how mine smokes in October.
Week 5 update (Light switched to 12/12 on 7/18/2015) The buds are starting to put on some weight, although I think I might have stunted it a bit this week. I was trying to find the sweet spot on the PPM and it keep telling me to drop it lower and lower. I ended up going down to 300 before deciding this didn't make sense and that I was done chasing the PPM level. I also noticed some leaves are starting to yellow at the top which I assume is a result of this. I've been rising the PPM daily so hopefully this week we'll see more growth. View attachment 160371 View attachment 160372 Decided to give you guys some scale for the size of the buds so far. Nothing crazy but for 5 weeks I think they're a decent size. View attachment 160373 They're already starting to get frosty, I expect this is going to be some nice smoke when it's done. View attachment 160374
Week 6 update (Light switched to 12/12 on 7/18/2015) Well this week the nutrient deficiency really started to show themselves. A number of leaves turned a pale yellow and then turned brown along the edges this week. I also had others start showing grey dead spotting on the leaves. At this point I've gotten the PPM up to 1000 and the plants seem happy with this, it might be a bit high though, I'll continue to monitor it this week. View attachment 160607 It looks to me like most of the damage is from a potassium deficiency. This should be resolved now that I've raised my PPM back up. I wish these leaves would heal since it's kind of ugly but as long as it doesn't keep getting worse I'm okay with it. Lessons learned. View attachment 160608 On the right of this picture you can see some leaves that look to have a phosphorus deficiency in addition to the potassium. View attachment 160609 This has become my favorite bud of the bunch, it's huge compared to the rest. View attachment 160610 If you want an idea of where this grow is headed go check out my harvest from the test grow I just completed using this strain. Mega Jackpot under $70 LED
Week 7 update (Light switched to 12/12 on 7/18/2015) Well this has been an interesting week. One of the plants has really been bulking up the buds while the others haven't added a lot of size but seem to have put on more crystals than the plant that's been bulking up. Lastly one of the plants is starting to fox tail pretty badly which is disappointing. I'm debating turning my lights down a bit but I don't want to take away from the other 3 plants if they're okay. The tent is looking pretty good IMHO, very frosty. I wish there wasn't so much damage from the nute deficency a couple weeks back but such is life, lessons learned. View attachment 160829 The plants are getting super frosty, even the bottom of the stems for the water leafs are covered in trichomes. View attachment 160833 Couple nice buds, pretty average for this grow in both size and looks. View attachment 160830 View attachment 160831 This bud is a monster compared to the rest. I don't think this photo really captures it, but this beast is easily 2-3 times the size of the rest. This entire plant has much fatter buds than the other 3 in general though. View attachment 160832 A couple of the more severe cases of fox tailing. These just started to pop out the last couple days so we'll see how they progress. I'll have to read more on fox tails but if I recall it's from stress. View attachment 160834 View attachment 160835
After checking the plants out tonight under the microscope there are a lot more trichomes amber than I expected. I'm not sure if this is because of the stress or what but these buds are WAY smaller than they were on my first plant of this strain which was only half the size of these and under far inferior lighting. It's strange so we'll see how it goes but it looks like we'll be having a harvest here in the near future. I'm hoping to get some more weight on these buds first though.
Small frosty buds are the BEST! Onehitter your headchanged ready to put the smack down on some snacks!
Week 8 update (Light switched to 12/12 on 7/18/2015) Well this was a disappointing week, there was really no change at all. The buds all look pretty much the same as last week, with the exception of the one plant that had been putting on weight. Considering how the trichomes look and a trip I have coming up I've decided the harvest is going to happen on the 22nd and wrap up on the 23rd. The tent is a jungle, this light has clearly over grown the plants for their space which must be the cause of these tiny buds. I'm going to get a lot of great hash though! View attachment 160982 View attachment 160983 You can really see the damage from the nute shortage here. View attachment 160984 Here's my monster bud, still looking awesome! View attachment 160985 Tonight is where the weeks update gets interesting. After taking the above pictures and thinking I decided all these small buds were just pulling away from the tops I want big so I might as well cut them off, I figure better late than never. I only have a week and a half left and 4 days of that will be a flush so I'm not expecting much of a difference but maybe It'll get a little more weight on the buds. I'm a bit worried it will just stunt the plant in it's final week, but it wasn't putting on any weight anyways. Before View attachment 160986 After View attachment 160987 There is way more light hitting the floor and much less of a jungle in the room. I wish I had of done this 4 weeks ago, another lesson learned. Here's the trim bucket afterwards, I took a ton of tiny popcorn buds off the plant. I was surprised how much I ended up with, definitely should have done this a long time ago. This should make some pretty nice hash and butter View attachment 160988 View attachment 160989 I didn't expect to get so much scissor and finger hash off this little crap so low on the plant, but wow! View attachment 160990 I've been thinking of maybe doing some video updates, so here's a little one .
Well I just learned the term nanner and after looking it up realized I've had one since the nute shortage a few weeks ago. That means there's a chance these plants have become pollinated and that's why the buds aren't growing Man that nute shortage messed this grow up more than I thought. There is a ton of trichomes on the plant which makes me hope if didn't get pollinated but I'm a total noob so what do I know... I'll find out for sure in a week and a half.
Here's a couple pictures of the nanners I have. The first photo is the nanner I had noticed a few weeks back (not realizing what it was). The second photo is the only other nanner I could find looking through the tent tonight, which is good I suppose. However this one looks like it already opened Sad day, hopefully I'm harvesting before the plant has time to make many seeds, this plant has the smallest buds though, so I suspect that's a hint... View attachment 161003 View attachment 161004 I'm going to attempt to cut them off in case they haven't released their pollen yet.