Bob Weaver's Bonsai Cheese named Ariel

Greetings!

So I says to myself, "Bob, (my name really isn't Bob) Bob... everybody's doing it. It really can't be all THAT hard... Why not just have a whack at it!"
So here it is.

My grow journal.

First one ever.

Ariel is a cheese clone I received in trade for a phish ticket. The ticket was for a show last summer (Great Woods) and the clone was delivered at another show (also phish) at the Centrum last December.
She was delivered to me inside the show, swaddled in a hard-shell eyeglass case. Sorry, no baby pictures. She was firmly rooted into a moist rapid rooter plug, about six inches above the plug and three nodes tall. Big leafs trimmed and healthy.

I brought her home to Boston and wasn't sure what to do with her. So I stuck her in a coffee mug and put her on a sunny windowsill for about two weeks, watering when the plug went dry.

Finally got my act together, stuffed her in my own spin-off of Ed's coco combo. It's about 80% coco coir, 15% perlite 5% worm castings. A little Epsoma Garden Lime mixed in for Ca. Put the whole thing in a 1 liter Air-Pot for the duration.

Stuck it in my ghetto CPU/server box from last spring. Basically a big tower CPU case. Lined in a cheap army/navy mylar emergency blanket. Lit with 3-26 watt CFl's. Ventilation by 4" target brand desktop fan.

She took off like out of a cannon, but showed Mg def. pretty quick. Dosed her heavy with epsom salts and her explosiveness redoubled. LST'ed/pruned her into a fairly flat canopy @ a height of about 6" above top of coco and threw her into flower.

That was about twenty days ago. It took her 4-5 days to show sex and she started to flower with vigor to match her veg state.

That's about where we're at now. Here's the pictures. Tell me what you think.

Edited by Bob Weaver, 05 March 2011 - 11:09 PM.
clarification

Damn, nice looking grow man! Can you get like an undershot of the canopy, trying to figure out what ya did there.

looks really good man

i had a question though, you put epson salt in the water or how did you feed it to the plant?

Damn, nice looking grow man! Can you get like an undershot of the canopy, trying to figure out what ya did there.

Hey TT! lurked the start of your grow, but haven't checked it out lately (until ten minutes ago). Good Stuff!

My first pic shows beneath the canopy, but I haven't figured out how to edit photos yet, so the whole image needs to be rotated ninety degrees clockwise. Hopefully I'll figure out how to do this pretty soon.

That's probably not what you're looking for though. The "splayed legs" shot. If you can get up under her skirt you can see what's going on.

A look at the branching will tell you how she's been bent and pruned, the tortures I've put her through to get her sitting pretty...

I'll give you "splayed legs." I was trying to be coy, but hey, this is a "scientific" journal. We'll all learn from it. Tomorrow when lights come on.

I'll feel dirty and cheap...

Its more for curiosity than to leech, you make it sound so raunchy lol.

Oh, and thanks!

looks really good man

i had a question though, you put epson salt in the water or how did you feed it to the plant?

Hey Felt!

I bought 2 lbs of epsom salts in a cardboard carton the size of a quart of milk @ Family Dollar for $0.98. Crushed 1 Tb of it in a mortar/pestle. Dissolved 1 tsp of crushed salt in 5 ml of warm water, and added it to the water/nute mix. I water her about every three days.

Ariel's upskirt

Well TT, I said I'd give it to you, but I thought I'd try to make it a "bit" more artsy. Gonna try and keep it a bit more Hef than Flynt.

I came home from work this afternoon and she was D R Y ! ! ! ! Three days is her limit. She didn't like three and a half one bit. Should've taken pics of that too, but I was pressed for time before lights out. So I gave her maybe 600 ml of aged tap with 4ml CNS17 Bloom & 1.25ml cal-mag+ per liter. Ph adjusted to 5.68.

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I like the star filter effect. Not sure how it happened, it was unintentional. Also MAJOR thanks to Alatar for ALL his helpful advice. From growing to Grasscity navigation, he unfailingly does his damndest to answer all questions, and the answers are usually really good. Thanks Frankie!

Edited by Bob Weaver, 03 March 2011 - 12:35 PM.
added watering details

Yo lookin good bro...ill b lurkin!!!

The light makes it look all mystical lol, very nice lookin plant yo!

Hey Felt!

I bought 2 lbs of epsom salts in a cardboard carton the size of a quart of milk @ Family Dollar for $0.98. Crushed 1 Tb of it in a mortar/pestle. Dissolved 1 tsp of crushed salt in 5 ml of warm water, and added it to the water/nute mix. I water her about every three days.

thats cool, ill give it a try those look healthy ill be checkn back be easy!

Great looking grow fasho im tuned. Its funny! I am an LED grower and i struggle to water enough each week. Not like you struggle to water enough cuz it drys out fast, but like I mean I water once and it STAYs WET for like 6 days! trips me out. My lights dont produce as much heat hence not evaporating the moisture in my coco as fast.

Nice tip about the epsom salt.

Mixed up 5ml CNS17 Bloom and 2ml CalMag+ in 1L aged tap water. Gave her half, Ph adjusted to 6.04. Other half saved in a cobalt blue 1L nalgene bottle.

Buds are still growing vertically. Going to pick up 8 oz. of CNS-17 Ripe tomorrow. Probably won't start using it for another week or so... She's about four weeks into flower now. Other than my neverending bbq of leaf tips, I think she's looking pretty good!

Damn thats looking good, looking at buds never gets old lol!

Grow is looking really nice man. Got a nice little plant going there. How many full bud sites are there?

YIKES!!!

Came home from work today and my lil girl was a wreck! Dehydrated! Light as a feather! Not only were all of her leaves wilted over, but 75% of her colas had a fifteen or twenty degree bend in the middle of them.

Gave her the remaining 500 ml. of Saturday morning's nute mix, pH'ed to 5.89. That was about fifteen minutes ago and she's looking LOTS better now. She's got another 25 minutes of light left in her cycle, and I'm hoping she'll be looking pretty much back to normal by then.

Sorry no pics. I left the camera down in the truck, and it was a bit of a triage situation. Had to get her watered ASAP so the lights could help pull the fluids back up into the top before dark.
This brings up a more pressing problem. My coco was fully saturated Saturday morning, which has been good for three days up to this point. When I lifted the pot this morning before work it felt really light, but with a full 24 hours to go before the next scheduled watering and no heat waves predicted I let it go until I got home. In hindsight I should've watered her then.

So now am I on a two day watering schedule? I suppose I could live with that if I HAVE to, but I don't like it. My other alternatives are further pruning (lolipopping?) or finding a right sized saucer to catch runoff and let her soak that up as she needs it. Not sure I like either option. Anyone else got ideas?

Edited by Bob Weaver, 08 March 2011 - 12:32 AM.
eliminated redundancy

How many full bud sites are there?

Hey Munk! Sorry I didn't get a headcount on the buds tonight before lights out, things were pretty crazy there for a bit!

I'm going to take a guess for ya fer now, and then tomorrow after work I'll give you the actual count. From what I remember, I count about twelve tops, or full bud sites. I've whacked out a bunch of sparse undergrowth once, and could almost watch the tops shoot up after doing so. Since then, quite a bit more tiny little fluffy buds have appeared down below. I'm thinking that if I was smarter than I am, I would probably take the ax to these newer ones as well. But I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to do that.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

Lights out update: Everything was about 95% back to normal. I'm confident we'll be back at 100% tomorrow. WHEW!!!

coco holds less water than soil-esque mediums, so two days between watering at this stage in flower seems about right. you can always mist down the top inch or two of your medium in between feedings.

good thing you got back in time! i'm glad she perked right back up.