I've been out of commission for quite some time now for security reasons, but even though I've called it quits on the larger-scale gardens, I still need a head stash...right? Growing's in my blood and I find it difficult to imagine imagine a life without this plant, so better for me to mitigate the risks and stick to something real small instead of trying to go "cold turkey," as it were. In any case, here's the important stuff: -Strain is a local cross of the Afghani #1 (male, smells just like the "coffee pheno" we have around...I have pics of that particular strain in its final form on this forum somewhere, as an fyi) and the local rendition of NL#5...from what I have seen, it is perhaps the largest yielding strain I have ever personally put eyes on in my entire life. The person who gifted me the cut told me that knowing what I know and given my growing style, I should be "flabbergasted" (yes, they used that word) with anything less than a quap per plant with this strain. He's not the type to use hyperbole, so I'm excited to see what I can pull off with this tiny little space. As for next run, I haven't quite decided...however, Mosca's C-99 BX1 is looking like a solid choice for my purposes. I typically like to mono-crop (that is, run one particular strain/phenotype in a given area in order to maximize uniformity and therefore yield and overall quality), but I will likely be expanding the space to include an additional 400w so I can run some of my favorite longer-flowering sativa-dom stuff...more on that later. -400w Hortilux for flower, bare bulb, hanging straight down the middle of the plants vertically. It's cold enough for the bulb to operate without a fan pointing up at it as I typically would for a vertical setup, but come spring/summertime I will need to throw that back in there. Plants are vegged for 3 weeks from rooted clone before flip...for most varieties, I almost always wait until I see pre-flowers indicating sexual maturity regardless of whether that takes 3 weeks or 5 weeks. Obviously this takes considerably longer than normal from seed rather than clone. -Medium is Sunshine Pro Just Coir, fed with nothing but tap water and Canna A + B at 15ml/gal. I also hit nearly everything with a moderate to heavy dose of Rhizotonic (20ml/gal - 50ml/gal) up to two or three times between feedings until the 3rd week, but that's all. -The grow is located in a ~3' x 3' master shower in one of my homes with the exhaust plumbed into the dryer exhaust located nearby. -The goal here is maximum yield with respect to quality and the ability to tear everything down and dispose of it within 10 to 15 minutes. Doing so required a bit of jury-rigging (seen in the pictures later), but as they say...better safe than sorry. -As the title states, I am looking to get at least a pound per cycle with 4 plants in 3 gallon pots. Veg will be 3 weeks from rooted clone (as mentioned above), up to 4 weeks depending on whatever strain I choose to throw in there in the future. In the interest of full disclosure, the plants currently in the space vegged for about 5 weeks before going to the 12/12 cycle on 12/12/2011 (clever, I know ), so I would expect to reach my mark even easier this first go-round. -As this is a "torture chamber" grow (and if you know me at all, you know I'm fond of those ) I have subjected most of these plants to some rough shit in order to test the stability of the genetics and satisfy my morbid curiosity. Every plant was FIMed, and each one was trained and/or supercropped in a slightly different way so that I could observe the minute differences in the end result. Additionally, I defoliate very heavily, especially after they were nearing the end of the stretch...but more on that here in a little while. I will add more to this as I go, and I will upload some photos in just a couple of hours when the lights come on. As of today (12/24), plants have been flipped for 12 days. I expect to flower for another 7 to 8 weeks, perhaps more, although my friend claims they can be taken far earlier...we'll see. To be clear, my goal for yield here is no less than 100 grams per plant, although I am hoping for up to 150g+ if all goes to spec. Although I only have 3 plants flowering in the space currently, it really requires 4 plants to maximize efficiency, so I recently threw a highland mexi cross in there that I had running from seed to sex it. If it's female, it'll stay, and if it's male and I think it's worth a shit, I'll segregate it to another room until I can take the pollen. More to come...very soon.
I'll have to label these later...been a long day...happy holidays everybody... First up, a few pics of the girls in their natural habitat. See what I mean about jury rigging? Ignore the cheap hygrometer/thermometer, thing hasn't worked for the better part of a month and I'm too lazy to replace it. The temp, however, actually is accurate...getting a bit cold in there for the ladies, may have to throw a small space heater in there with 'em to play it safe. Here's the first lady...as you can see, this one has only been moderately defoliated and then supercropped quite aggressively throughout its life up until the first week of flower or so, but I have done very little training as I wanted to wait until stretch was totally over to tie everything down. This can be an issue at times (doing it so late in the game, that is), but thankfully the structure of this plant should make that easy this go-round. #2...this one was defoliated the heaviest, way up the main branches. I will also aggressively defoliate the flowers on this one, as I'm curious to see what that will do especially with this strain. Notice that this one and the preceding plant have considerably more developed budsites compared to the third one (below), which has not been defoliated since the flip at all and has a ton of bud sites being blocked by the light on account of all of the big fans that are still attached...as these are all the same pheno (obviously, as they're from clone), that may be food for thought... And here is girl #3...this one has not been defoliated since a couple of weeks before they were flipped, and is suffering a bit as a result of it. As you can see from a couple of the pics, this one loses a few large fans to bulb burns every time she is rotated simply because of how unruly the plant is with all of the fans attached and no training as of yet. This current grow doubles as a layman's experiment to test the benefits of defoliation with this new strain, this plant being the "control" so to speak. I have not decided whether I should defoliate it after the stretch or continue the "experiment" and allow it to flower without being messed with. I think it is very clear that yield will suffer because of the structure of the plant and how large the main fans are, and it would be an awful big waste to let this one go without at least a bit of cleaning up and tying down. Decisions, decisions...
Looks good, I take it the dead leaves are the ones tha got a bit close to your light. So is fido your wach dog or is he just waiting to get high! Merry Christmas!
Yup, you got it, that really bushy one that is clearly the only 1 of the 3 plants pictured which has not been heavily trimmed as per my usual style. (Well, it was a couple of weeks ago, but nothing since.) I saved that one for tomorrow, as it's gonna take a lot of time and a lot of string to get that mess back in order. When it's done, it will look just like the other two... while I'm on the subject, this is my trimming style - There are certain plants I don't trim quite as much all at once for fear of stress-induced hermies...but I've yet to see a plant that didn't benefit from at least moderate trimming, especially after the stretch when you flip. I basically lollipop the shit out of 'em (typically a node or two higher than many people do depending on the strain) after they are well-established in veg, give them a solid trim of nearly all large fans and anything small enough for me not to care about turns into another clone right before the flip. A couple weeks after flipping, I trim (nearly) all of the large fan leaves, and if for some reason I still need clones, that is the latest I'll take em...assuming there is still a bit of larfy nonsense down on the lower nodes that could be removed without detriment to the plant. Wash, rinse, repeat as needed. Actual bud defoliation is something I have dabbled in but for the most part don't do unless the leaf-to-calyx ratio is particularly high for a given strain...this is not because I don't agree that the method can be beneficial, but simply because I don't have the time or energy to pay that much attention, and the yield increase if I did doesn't really justify the time expenditure. in my mind anyways...hope that helps at least somewhat. oh, edit- Fido thinks she's a guard dog, but the worst she would do is lick somebody to death. And if I catch her walking away with a fan leaf in her mouth one more time I'm going to ban her from the grow room.
Cool, so she likes her weed, I use to have a dog who would sit on my lap and beg to get high we nicknamed him doobie doo, had to give it to him shotgun method, he never got the hang of inhaling himself, afterwards he'd snort like hell, then he would do his best at chasing all the butterflies and birds, his favorite munchie food was potato chips when he was stoned. On to defoliating plants, I personally don't trim my leaves but then I provide additional lighting to the underside while flowering to promote more/larger growth of the popcorn buds so that with a little LSTing I end up with enough bud(1 oz per month) to last most of the year from one plant.
Yeah, my pup loves to mess with fans/other parts of the live plant, not a huge fan of the smoke though. I never really got her high on purpose (as she is still a puppy), every once in a while she'll wander into a cloud of smoke and catch a buzz though. I lollipop the shit out of my plants because I hate, hate, hate popcorn and larf...for this setup and my purposes, it's nothing but a waste of light and the plant's energy to grow it. If I were g rowing horizontally instead of vertically I would likely have some supplemental lighting from the bottom as well, but the great thing about a vert bare bulb setup is that very little light is wasted, far less than with even the best horizontal setup. on that note, interestingly enough the one that has been lollipopped and defoliated the heaviest is the one with the most developed budsites out of the three...nearly double the size of the one that has not been defoliated at all.
I normally harvest in 2-3 stages, that way I get ripe bud from to to bottom. My first chop is for my head(take them when there mostly milky), my second for my body(have cronic back pain), and the last is the lower half of the plant, aka popcorn bud, if you can call buds that range from 3/4 to 3 inches long popcorn! And whats remains(buds to small to trim and leaves plus the trim), I make into hash.
yeah...I used to just dump everything smaller than my hand into the hash bin, but like I said, I've since moved on to different (and in my mind, improved) methods. I'm all about efficiency and squeezing the most out of a given space that I can, so it only makes sense to get rid of all that gangly larf in my case (especially with the low penetration power of a 400w, not to mention the marked lack of training in my cabinet at the moment)
Yelp, the training is necessary for good production on the lower section of the plant, I like to spread everything horizontal, when I get done she looks like a monster hand with the finger opened. Here's a pict of one I grew in 2010. I ended up with 12ozs after tossing out a qp or more of moldy bud...did I mention I hate growing out side, one day it was doing great and the next it turns cold and rains and fucks up the crop.
Glad you are back in the game and journaling. I'm sub'd and hoping to learn something from your style, which is radically different than what I'm doing tho in a similar space (my lazy ass style = horizontal, org soil/water only, minimal training/trimming, multi-strain for diversity in stash, yield = meh). I particularly like the quick breakdown design feature Good luck with it in the New Year, may you not need the quick breakdown.
glad to see ya in here man...thanks for the kind words...but judging by your pics and the times I've spoken with ya over the years I think you know exactly what you're doing happy (and safe) new year to you as well, and everybody else reading...going to take a night off and stay in this evening, so I'll have some updated photos (@19 days from the flip) sometime after the ball drops and the lights come on. Stay tuned
Hope everyone had a good (and safe) New Year's...here are some pics, too tired to label 'em right now. I'll edit this post tomorrow morning, I need sleep edit- okay, some text to go along with the photos... General notes: 2 of the 3 got a bit dry and were real close to locking out, but I caught 'em in time...still, they look a bit rough in these pics. Watered to ~20% runoff after the photos and they have sprung back already. I'm quite impressed with how frosty these already are at less than 2 weeks from the flip (and technically only about a week into "actual flowering")...not to mention the size of the flowers. I guess my buddy wasn't bullshitting about the yield...we'll find out soon enough.... Here are some updated shots of the one that I had done very little defoliation and training with and was thinking about leaving like that...well, I decided against it. Just couldn't justify the marked loss in yield that my inaction would have resulted in with this plant. Just don't have the wattage or the plant number currently to take any chances, I need to make sure I meet or exceed my goal. Look closely and you can see evidence of wrongdoing hanging out of my pup's mouth... Remember that bit about how this is a "torture chamber"? Well....I wasn't kidding. Sometimes I get a little heavy-handed, and since my training was a bit late this run, I nearly lost a couple of gnarly branches in the process. Interestingly enough, the branch in this photo is the largest and most developed out of every branch on every plant. Amazing how these bastards spring back... \ More to come soon...
No pics for today, figure I'll wait another day or two before I bore ya'll with a slew of photos again. However, came to the realization after a couple of days trying to place the scent that this plant absolutely reeks of watermelon. There are sharp, pungent, skunky undertones (no doubt from the Afghan) but the major smell when rubbing a flower is distinctly watermelon. Reminds me a lot of the smell you get from a lot of highland mexican varieties, especially the Oaxacan...the fresh minty/almost fruity smell. thought it was interesting anyways...more to come soon
Whatever happened in the end when you went toe to toe with those old sativa seeds from Mexico? Maybe I missed the end of the thread, or have just forgotten. .. that fresh minty thing is something I really crave and miss so far in my cannabis these days....
I ended up chopping all but a couple down for security reasons, gave those to a buddy as his first "real grow" plants to finish out and he pretty well destroyed em. Ended up with a pretty small yield of kinda lame, early nugs out of that batch. The one I kept and brought inside to my spot was fantastic, but I smoked it all up in a month's time, and it also brought along the borg, which started a year long battle with the spider mites... lol
Interesting thread. I like that you're intentionally heavy handed with your plants. Goes against the grain of everyone else baby-ing theirs. I have questions, picked up some info thru your posts but still not sure about some things. ok.... - When you say torture chamber, what else goes on besides heavy pruning? (ie. overfeeding?) - Are you saying that rough treatment somehow makes the bud better? - Whens the latest into flowering you'll trim the bigger leaves? - And you can trim the mini bud sites without negative repercussions? - Lastly, what does a vertical light get you, seems like the coverege would be the same or less then a light above the plants. Sorry for nagging with so many questions BTW, love the Blue Ridge mtns, Asheville especially