Okay, i fianlly got around to taking some pics. A bit o history: Bag seed started in tupperware shoebox with 6 other plants in peat and vermiculite i had laying around. First 60 days were under 24/0 23 watt CF, i sexed by cutting to 12/12 at approx 60 days. 1 male, 6 females, but i had room for only one plant. I cut a good root ball out of my keeper and transplanted into 8" pot and put under same 23 watt CF for 2 more weeks of 24/0. I then picked up 4-48" flouro tubes, 3000 and 5500 nm wavelength, soft white and warm tubes, 2 of each, and i put 'em in for sidelighting, hung the CF from the top, and also a week later after adding the flouros i FIM'ed and got 6 healthy looking tips. I tied down te 6 radial branches so they would stay low and spread, and now i got this little, almost 5 month old bonsai lookin bush. It's got a thick main stem and radials, and only narrows towards the tips. I pinch and twist the tips branches right below the newest node as they grow out and it seems to help the branches get strong. I think i'm doing pretty good considering i halfassed everything, deprived the plant of light for a better part of it's life, and i started feeding with 20/20/20 when i went to the 4 tubes. I feed full strength about every 4-5 waterings and it seems to like it. The big leaves spot up and i pull 'em off but all the top leaves look pretty green and healthy, no drooping, but no stretching for light either. I rotate the plant every 12 hours on weekends and every 4-6 hours during the week So, what do you think? Is this a healthy plant under flouros or am i screwing up? If i get any bud out of it i'll be happy cause it'll be more bud than i have now so i'm not really babying this plant. I'm expirimrnting with stuff like tying, training, and growing in general under a couple of flouros.
She's really thick and bushy under the canpy, internode distance is small, and stems are healthy looking. New stems grow bright purple and red and turn green when they harden. the main stem looks like a tree trunk, brownish grayish and hard
So do you experienced growers think i'm doing okay with what i have to work with or am i screwing up? I want to try and keep this plant small, harvest, and if the bud is good (which i think it will be, regs are danky here) i want to try and bonsai her and keep her vegging asd keep cloning her. I've heard of people having little bonsai weedpalants that are like 15-20 years old.
15 year old marijuana plants? Heh, every birthday it's you that gets the gifts, not the plant Maybe that's what I'll do instead of having kids.......
That's one plant. I FIM'd anf got 6 tips, tied her down and i got more underbranch and internode tips comin out, she's really bushy and git leaves growin outta everywhere, i have to move branches out of the way to see stem. Yeah i use a bag, it helps with moisture retention, i've got some good drainage and with the plastic i can water every few days and it's enough, also i use the plastic to reflect light, i figure it's better than having black soil sucking light in, so why not bounce some of it back up at the plant? it's liek a few free lumens.
Well im no expert but Ive fathered a few girls, That plant looks great, good color, good internodal spacing and bushy. Good luck
Next month i'm buying some more flouros to use for a veg chamber, i'll take a couple of cuttings and then go 12/12 in the vertical chamber. I'm thinking about building a small self contained veg chamber inside a tupperware bin. 2' tubes, a fan, and some lightproofing and i can have it so it's got a cord running out and all i have to do is plug it in and put it anywhere i want with no additional setup. I'm gonna get a bookshelf type cabinet from Staples and set up a flowering chamber for 2 plants in 5 gallon bubbling buckets. I also need to build a filter/desmellifier before i start flowering cause i think she's gonna be smelly. She's already got a strong scent. It looks like now i got 6 main tips and i got 3 more underbranches that grew up in between the top growtips and joined the canopy. Where i tied it down ther are a few more tips coming out in the top center of the plant, and she just seems really healthy. I should get some good bud outta this one, it came from a sack o regs, and the regs around here have bomb genetics. From what i hear back in the day someone bred some afghan and skunk and then shared the seeds and they've ben growin the resulting strain locally for the past 20 years.
can u post a small guide on how u get it soo bushy and healthy looking without making it grow up cuz this wouldbe perfect for my set up and it looks great!
Basically what I did is grow it under flouros, first 3 months with a fan on 12/12. They got a bit tall stretching for light because i was only using the CF. Then i added the vertical flouros, 2- 4' shoplights, each with one cool white and one warm tube. I've got 3000k and 5500k spectrum lights and whatever comes off the CF, it's more yellow, my warm ones are rosy coloerd. I'm growing in a peat/vermiculite storebought bag of potting soil I preflowered about 2.5 weeks and determined sex, and after about 2-3 weeks of veg recovery i fim'ed and got 6 new tips. When the branches hardened and got about 8" high i tied em all down even so the branches were horizontal and i moved the CF down so that the center of the plant got light and the tips were not shading it. I rotate my plant every 12 hours max and usually more like every 6-8 hours when i'm home. I just untied her and the tips are staying out of the way of the center, and new tips are growing uo from the center and joining the canopy, which looks liek is made up of 9 tips now. I've also pruned bottom leaves that started to wilt or spot immediately so the plant can put all it's energy into good leaves. This also helps keep the plant thin of big leaves that block light. The plant was started mid january from seed and is now about 8" tall total and about 10" round. I'm probably gonna go to 12/12 next month either at the beginning or the end, and see what she does.
is it possible like u said to get a plant to keep reproducing buds for a few seasons? i always thought u HAVE to start a new plant all the time
I'm gonna try, i hear other people reveg successfully. The bonsai weedplants i've seen pics of were like little trees, the stem was like 1/2" thick or more and the branches were thick and trained. They were used as moms, cloned regularly and they staued small, like less than a foot tall. I've seen a few articles on em but nothing with any real info on how to do it. I'm gonna expiriment tho, if it works i'll have a lil weed bonsai tree for my pad.
Lookin good man. A plastic bag huh? That's different! Seems to be working! You're right, there isn't much research I've seen on keeping plants alive other than keeping clone mothers. They don't usually last for years though, I thought. That would be a cool experiment to see. Peace
Since last time i posted she hasn't gotten much/any taller, maybe an inch or so, but she's gettin' bushier and the canopy is filling out. She's about 10"tall now and has over 10 tips. Looks like a miniature tree, with a thick branchless trunk and then all the branches cme straight out and form a "ball of green" There's 10 tips that i would actually call full fledged tips, and probably 10-20 more spots where new growth is happening, but i dont' think they'd join the canopy like the other ones are. As i said she's short, under 200watts of flouro, but if i took all the branches combined them to one main trunk lengthwise she'd prolly be like 4 feet tall. All the hard parts of the stems are really sturdy and there's so much growth under the canopy that there's just balls of green squasehd together all tight. Right now i got quite a few yellow leaves but these are just dead old bottom leaves so that's good, cause the plant is putting the energy into poppin' out as many tips as it can fit. I'm tempted to veg her up to like 3 feet tall and then flower, but i'd need some more lighting for that. I may put her on 12/12 areound mid june and see what happens. By that time i should have the filtration system built and also have a new growspace put together. (right now my "closet" is made out of posterboard an duct tape wrapped around a metal shelving unit i found. it has mad light leaks everywhere so i need to sort that out before flowering time. I'm gonna get a cabinet from staples, they got these units for $50 they'e 14" deep 28"wide and like 60" tall inside, i paln on putting in some more flouros and a vent system with carbon filter on top. Here's the future plan http://forum.grasscity.com/showthread.php?threadid=16665
Years ago when I started growing indoor my grow partner brought over a plant that he had been flowering continously for 3 years. The trick is, when you harvest a bud, leave the very base of the bud on the plant. She will re-grow the bud and you can just leave her under 12/12 and keep doing it. Eventually the buds will get smaller each time you do this. The one we did it to flowered for another 4 years in my garden. None of the buds were any bigger than a cats-eye marble, but there were literally hundreds of them. We smoked off this female while waiting for clones and seedlings to finish. I eventually re-vegged her and started over again. Good luck with your pretty girl.
Well, not much has changed with her excapt she got a bit taller and bushier, she's 10" now and has 12 growtips plus a lot more budsites under the canopy.
I think i burnt her slightly with overfert but i flushed her, but it also could be that she just has so many thivk leaves tht they're yellowing naturally and coming off. When they yellow and spot i pull 'em , before thsi pic i just took about 40 tellow leaves off
She's thick, she got a treetrunk and she looks like a little tree, all the branches at the top and basically a thick ball of green
Overall she seems to be doing pretty good, i'm gonna transplant her into a bigger pot soon, i just gotta get some more of the same soil i used initially, and she's going into a fiver. I wish i knew what strain she is, but i heard that the regs she comes from were a cross of skunk x afghan that was specifically bred for this region like 20 years ago by a bunch of hippie growers who came down with seeds and taught the local farmers how to get the bombdiggity. I'm sure the strain has gone hrou several mutations since then but i don't doubt it's still a skunk, because the bud i was gettin that this seed came from was really green, crystally, with lotsa red hairs and smelled like a pine tree fell on a skunk. If i was in florida it woulda been tha bomb kron and like $50 an 8th but here it's just regs, $50 an oz. Peace