Well, last thursday my ballast blew the internal fuse. The fuse blew on a thursday night. Not thinking it was too big of a deal I went to the store friday to get a fuse. Turns out the fuses that my ballast requires are incredibly hard to find. I came home and looked online but still couldn't find the 16 amp 250 v fuse. The company was closed and wouldn't open until monday. So, I went into panic mode and set up 4 CFLs in a pinch. My hope was just to keep them in their light/dark cycle properly. In the meantime I managed to find a 15 amp fuse. Since the ballast runs on a 15 amp circuit I was pretty sure this would solve my problem. Nope. Blew it instantly. Monday came and I called Apollo and explained. The guy answering my call was nice enough but had clearly run into this problem many times before. They said that it would be 3 days to get a new ballast, even with a rush and that they would take a look at mine to see if it was indeed malfunctioning. I'm pretty pissed with them. I called them early in the morning and they wouldn't even ship a replacement for at least another day even if I paid for it. That would put me at 8 days without a legit light source. Instead of risking it I bought replacement for 2x the money at a local shop to get the girls back on track. They ended up dark for 1 night and under CFLs for 3 nights. The ballast seems like a better product all the way around. for the same wattage it's 2x the size with more dimming options and heavier construction. In hindsight, going with apollo was a shortcut that cost me about $100 and 4 crappy light cycles. We'll see how the lumatek holds up.
Time for an update. Since I rigged the CFLs I figured I would just leave them up. The offer a different spectrum of light and they are much better for photos. So, I just wait until the light cycle is over or just about to start and pop them on so I can check things out and share some photos with you guys. Since the girls went without real light for a few nights I added a week to my projected harvest time and decided to give them another feeding before going to just water. I expect i'm about 20 days from harvest at this point. It's impossible to tell if the bud growth has slowed on it's own or as a result of lack of light so I'm going to see what happens over the next week and then go from there. I've seen these girls develop enough now that I'm seeing a huge difference in bud formation on one of the girls. She is yielding much larger buds but they are lumpy and misshapen compared to the others. You'll see in the photos below that she is forming baseballs at her tops instead of cones. Anyone have any thoughts or input about this?
Seems light one of the girls has decided to start foxtailing. Or at least that's what another member suggested it was.
Here at the start of week 8 the girls have been under 12/12 for a full 7 weeks and some are starting to show signed of being ready. I sure could use some help if anyone has an opinion on harvest readiness for sativas. I'm seeing a little amber creep in with little to no cloudiness on the dancehall girls. I'm gunning for cloudy trichs with as little amber as possible but I don't want to cut too early. The dance hall girls are all showing mostly clear trichs with a couple of ambers while the ak is showing mostly cloudy with about 5% amber. I'll post each girl's current photos in separate posts.
The dance hall runt is showing a far bit of amber on the leaves but seems mostly clear elsewhere. The amber is not really visible in the cropped image below.
The Dancehall girls that is foxtailing is also very clear and based on what I've read the foxtailing could delay harvest for quite a while.
Well, here we are at week 8. Under the scope they are showing 50% cloudy, 50% clear. The girls are fattening up quite a bit since just a week ago. All of the tops started leaning heavily and needed support. I'm planning on letting them go until next week and then I expect it will be chop time. Here are some pics.
For the past several weeks I have been using binoculars reversed to inspect trichome development. This has been frustrating for a variety of reasons. I remembered having a clip-on macro lens for my iPhone and thought it was worth a try. Yeah, it was worth try. Pretty amazing results and if i turn off the fans in the room I can easily get trich survey from anywhere on the plants. This is the olloclip macro. looks like they have a new version that would be way better for this. Mine is old and outdated but still works fairly well.
Over the last couple of days one of my girls has devoured her fan leaves. She's looking pretty sad and is losing her ability to stand upright. I definitly think she's entered the harvest window but there is a great deal of variance from top to bottom. All of the main colas and major bud sites on the top half of the plant look pretty good considering she foxtailed on me. However, the lower portion still sport clear trichs. I am considering a staggered harvest with her. If I do so I plan tot cut the main stalks to the last mature bud and leave the rest to finish up. However, the lower branches won't hold themselved up very well without the rest of the plant so this will be a challenge. At this point, I think the best bet is consider anything below the mature buds as bonus. If they finish up, great. If not, oh well. Here are shots of the girl and her trichs on the upper buds.
Chopped the foxtail girl and dried for 6 days. The lighter, airier buds were in danger of drying too much so I jarred her before snapping stems to make sure there was moisture left in the buds. Put her in jars with hygrometers that all read 62% so i think she went into jars at the perfect time. She did take on a hay smell but is regaining nice odor after just a couple days in the jars. I'm very happy with her high but I've decided that i do not like the look of foxtail buds. They look and feel cheap and shitty and they take up a lot more space than regular nugs. It also takes a bigger nug to fill a bowl. It does roll excellent joints though. Strain: Dance Hall Yield from this plant: 4.7 oz dried final product in mason jars with boveda packs curing now. Smoke report: Strong heady high that makes me wanna do stuff. Very productive high that doesn't inhibit conversation or social situations but somewhat short. Interestingly there is a hint of the effect i get from shrooms as this herb gets me out doing stuff and has that adventurous "trip" feel. This suprised me and I have never had this from weed before. Full effect form one hit lasts an hour and then steps down over the next 2. A bit of paranoia creeps in on the down side but by then it's pretty manageable.
The best looking girl has now been dried and is heading into to jars for cure. She produced much denser nugs although since she is sativa dominate her buds just a tad airy compared to an indica. The bud were VERY frosty Since she didnt' fox tail there was a lot less trim to work with so I doubt I'll bother making hash until the other two plants are trimmed up. She smells very fruity and maintained a great smell throughout drying. This plant yeilded 4.2 oz dried and trimmed final product. Smoke report will come at a later date. Total yield so far is 8.8 oz from 2 plants with another dance hall girl and an AK girl on the drying rack.