Flower 41 (Day 91)(51 days from flip) Buds are really coming along now, but trichs are still almost all clear. Tallest buds have taken some burn/bleaching but that hasn't stopped them fattening up. Under the canopy the buds have remained ghostly pale, but have as much crystal as the colas (bit harder to see against the near-white background). Plants aren't very interested in nutes anymore, sucking up mostly water. Minor amounts of leaf drop, I cleared away a lot of undergrowth leaves to allow air penetration yesterday.
Flower 42 (Day 92)(52 days from flip) Got a good dose of light bleach/burn on some of the tallest colas. ah well, at least I know the plants are using as much of their space as possible! Undergrowth of left plant looks better than the right. Both are quite pale, but the right plant was much more choked by vegetation. Both are quite frosty though.
Flower 49 (Day 99)(59 days from flip) \nNearly 50 days of flower. This strain advertised as 50day flowering. Trichs still mainly clear. Plants don't seem to be growing much anymore. They drink a lot but eat hardly any nutes, I've reduced ppm's to 600 levels. Leaves starting to turn.
Flower 59 (Day 109)(69 days from flip) Harvest Day All in all I'm a little disappointed with this grow. The 2 plants had very different phenos, one indi the other sativa. My space management was abit screwed up due to these differences. The largest of the sativa's colas got too tall and their tips burned/bleached. While the undergrowth budded up as I'd envisioned, they remained very pale and did not fill out. They smell nice and are covered in trichs, but those trichs have not matured as far as the colas. Their hairs turned orange as natural. I expect the stone from these to be quite heady, having such high thc/cbd ratio. The lacking chlorophyll suggests they should taste really clean too. I'll see what they're like once they've dried. The calyxes range from decent sized to enormous things the length of my forearm. However they have a lot of sugar leaf. That seems to be a strain trait, one which I personally don't fancy. Can't complain about the frosting though, trichs so dense the nugs seem almost white. Roots showed no sign of contamination. They stained the colour of Canna's nutes, not a trace of sliminess. *​I should have sprouted several seeds and selected 2 that showed desirable traits. I've already begun my next run, so this is a gamble I will have to take one more time unfortunately. *I should have used larger reservoirs. Despite this being DWC, I believe the roots felt a bit restricted. They tightly filled the bucket up to the average waterline. It would also be more convenient. These plants drank a gallon of water a day, these are 4gallon buckets. Missing even one day's reservoir top up would be dangerous. I'm hoping to replace with 10gallon tanks before my new run sprouts go in. *I should have just removed any late forming flowers. The plants did not have the time or resources to mke anything useful with them. They went in the cuttings. This is simple enough to adopt next flowering cycle. *I should have trimmed back fan leaves. They formed a lightproof ceiling preventing any light from reaching the undergrowth. There was no room to tuck them down, but I could have trimmed back the fingers of the leaves so the colas were shaped like silos, allowing the lower buds to fill out better. This is an option I will have to weigh as the screen fills out next time. *Maybe I should have added a light underneath the plants. I've heard arguments for/against it. I think a 125watt CFL or a string of LEDs underneath the screen may have added some volume to my harvest. Without significantly effecting the temp. I have a 125w flowering CFL laying around. I will employ it if the situation warrants next time.
It sounds like you learnt a lot though man. I agree with all your "should haves" except the bit about cutting leaves off. It's true that cutting leaves off will allow more light to get to the lower leaves, but the top most bud will suffer due to you cutting off their leaves. The lower leaves will have to then support the top bud as well as the bottom. Stripping out all the lower growing shoots is a must imo because trimming those is a total nightmare. The pale, almost white buds are really smooth to smoke though. If you get leaders towering over the canopy again tie them to the side early on before it gets out of hand. I often get one or two leaders and they are usually right under the bulb so they get tied down and pulled to the side away from the hot spot and it evens things out