First grow (flowering stage only) with pics

[Chromophore]

I have a background in scientific research with monoterpene production in citrus and mint, but I throw most of that out the window with this stuff. Despite many years as an avid gardener and green thumb, growing these plants has been a challenging and unique experience. I have 4 female plants (I was able to sex them via pre-flowers) which I switched over to 12/12 today. I'm very nervous about the next 8-10 weeks. I will admit to becoming somewhat emotionally bonded to these 4 plants, as weird as that may sound. Here are the specs on this grow:

Plants: I grew these from seed given to me by a breeder/friend. He has named the line "Hail Bop". It's lineage is a male Lemon Skunk crossed with various AfGooey female phenotypes. Of 12 germinants, 6 survived and 4 showed female pre-flowers. The plants have been in soil for 10 weeks, transplanted 4 times into bigger pots. They now reside in 5 gallon containers. All plants were super-cropped starting week 4. I stopped SC in week 9. Over the last several days I have pruned lower material up to 24" from the base of each plant. Plants are approx. 4' in height (inc. pot) with a combined canopy of 6' diameter.

Nutrients: All plants grown in FoxFarm Ocean Forest soil. No additional nutes used until week 9, at which point I started adding FF Open Sesame. Molasses added to H2O every other watering at 1 tsp/gallon. I plan to follow the FF schedule during budding but I am open to suggestions.

Setup: room 6'x7'. Built stud-walls and enclosed in B/W plastic. Space is ventilated with 6" 410 cfm fan through an iPower 6" carbon filter. Two oscillating tower fans for circulation. Humidifier during light cycle. Ambient humidity in our area is very low so this is crucial.

Lighting: For growth I used a 400w MH. For budding I switched over to a 600w HPS. I plan to add 2x 24w UVB cfls at some point during bud stage, probably at the same distance from the plants as the main HPS.

Water: Our water is hard here, and heavily chlorinated. I tried using 50/50 DH2O/tap, but lately with their heavy consumption this has become difficult to keep up with. I do try to set buckets out for a 24 hr. de-chlorination. Out of the tap our water has a pH of 6.2 or so. After nutes it's usually around 6.5. Soil tests at pretty much the same range. Molasses acidifies the water significantly (4.5-5.5) and I have not found a safe way to neutralize it, nor do I know if I should even try.

Well, that's all I can think of. Questions/suggestions/advice is very welcome!296325296326

[thenewgrow]

hello Chromophore your plants are looking great :) they are looking very strong and rdy to pack some big buds :D

[Chromophore]

This makes me happy to hear! Thanks bro!

[Chromophore]

So, my main questions and concerns at this point...

1. Will these plants stretch too much during flowering? As of day 1 of 12/12, they are 21" from the glass panel of the HPS. I can buy another 4" by raising the light, then I'm out of options.

2. Do the plants need to be further thinned/spread apart? I'm in a quandry over whether to spread them out to give more light access to lower growth, or keep things bunched under the light to increase exposure at the tops.

3. Has anyone here used supplemental UVB lighting during flowering? If so, what are your thoughts/recommendations on that?

[thenewgrow]

hey man when you turn them in to flower they will stretch to be double the size or triple size :) you can make a scrog net and eaven the cannabis out :) that's what im gona do this time i grow :) for more bud's :D scrog is great if what i have heard :D

[Chromophore]

Yeah in just one day at 12/12 they have noticeably grown,. The canopy is 1-2 inches higher than a day ago! I will definitely have to set up a scrog at this rate.

[OMB]

You can still tie branches down. Modified LST at this point, but I bet you can open them up and pull them down at the same time even now.

[thenewgrow]

nice man i would like to see how this goes :) you will have to make a big scrog net man ^^ but would be sick man :thumbsup: plz take some pic of it when you are finish man :D let me know how it goes with the scrog

[catbuds]

So, my main questions and concerns at this point...

1. Will these plants stretch too much during flowering? As of day 1 of 12/12, they are 21" from the glass panel of the HPS. I can buy another 4" by raising the light, then I'm out of options.

2. Do the plants need to be further thinned/spread apart? I'm in a quandry over whether to spread them out to give more light access to lower growth, or keep things bunched under the light to increase exposure at the tops.

3. Has anyone here used supplemental UVB lighting during flowering? If so, what are your thoughts/recommendations on that?

I use cfl's for side & underlighting because of the higher uv's, but I'm not sure if its uva or uvb. It helps pack on the trichromes & aids ripening.
-- I am so fortunate to have good water, but not everybody can have their own spring. City water is vile. You almost need a reverse osmosis system to make it drinkable. Do you have the space to set up a few 5 gallon buckets? If you do, get a decent sized air pump & some of the old fashioned fish tank filters (the ones using loose charcoal & floss) & run them for a couple days before using. Not only will it be better for your plants, but it will be much better for drinking too. I really hate municipal water.
-- Relax & enjoy your plants. Sounds like you're trying too hard. :) :) :)

[Chromophore]

Thanks man will do. I'm going to start work on tying/scrog tonight. I'll post pics. Another odd thing is that the plants seemed to really jump in growth after I flushed and then turned the light cycle down. While this new growth was vigorous, the small new leaves seemed pale green to yellow, though they looked fine otherwise. Like N deficiency. Odd that the plants would jump in growth when all the N was flushed out. I'm wondering if maybe I had more salt built-up than I realized. I didn't expect flushing to have such a dramatic effect. Or maybe it was a response to the sudden increase in darkness?? Wierd.

[Chromophore]

Yeah, I tend to overthink everything and I dote on the plants constantly (During the summer my wife complains cause I spend almost every waking minute in my vegetable and flower gardens fiddling with stuff). You're right I think I need to relax and let the plants do their thing. Your suggestion about the water is doable and I will set that up today. The water here is from an aquifer in volcanic rock and it has a lot of calcium and magnesium sulfate in it. I'm not sure if these are useable sources of Ca and Mg, but the levels in the water are very high and mineral deposits on everything are a constant problem. I may look into a simple RO system.

As for UV lighting, I have read that it is specifically UVB that enhances trichome/cannabinoid production, but lighting with it seems controversial. Many of the testimonials I have read from people who had problems with it also indicated that people were placing the UV lights way to close to the plants and scorching them. I may experiment by placing them a good distance away and maybe only for a few hours per light-cycle.:cool:

[catbuds]

The cfl's I use the most often are REVEAL 75 watt replacement (20watt actual usage). 1200 lumens, warm white (2500k). I'm using a 4' 6tube T5 set up in a cabinet 2 1/2X 5', 5' high, forgot the total lumens, but 6500K, which is cool white. I haven't been able to find the info on which type of uv rays are produced by the cfls I use, but going by the results I get, I'm assuming uvb. While they're still sm, the t5's penetrate all the foliage. I don't use the cfls untill they're tall enough for the cfls to be UNDER them, in veg or flowering, dosent matter, its the size I go by for this & I want to make sure the entire plant gets good light. Now for why I do my color (K) balance the way I do. Ok, cool light tends to keep growth more compact, warm light causes stretching....Cool light, growth... warm light, flowering. So the cool light overhead keeps plants from stretching much in flower, the warmer light coming from below cause a little stretch, which is good in this case, as lower buds are usually smaller. I double harvest. Top buds ripen faster, so I harvest them first, leaving the lower, slower buds a week or more. All this combined gives me bigger, plumper lower buds, & with the tops removed they get an equal portion of both lights, increasing potency. I try to keep them around 2 1/2' at finish. Keep in mind my main (overheads) are t5 flourescents, less penetration. You could do something similar while still using HID's & bigger plants, you would probably hang you cfls to have them higher. How you work your hardware & do your construction varies from one grow room to another, & personal preferance plays a big roll here too, but here's what I do with my smaller area/smaller plants. Walmart has a bottle lamp kit (electrical section of hardware). Its only around $3.00. Instead of a bottle, I use an inverted clay pot, using the central drainage hole to attach the lamp. (I use the BOTTLE lamp kit because the wire comes out the side of the light fixture instead of out from under the pot rim making it unstable). Clay pots being heavy, & wider bottom when inverted makes a lamp that is tip proof, AND its cute as hell & appropriate too! (Ahh.. guess that last part is a girl thing!) I have an extra 'flower pot lamp' & use a green party light cfl in it incase I have to turn a light on once they're in the dark phase when flowering, as plants don't 'see' green light & it won't disrupt the photoperiod.
-- Plant/grow room size is a personal choice, as is lighting. As I said, regardless of main lighting, you can always use the cfls as fill lighting or just to add the uv light. I choose sm space/ plants because not only is it much faster (some people actually start their seedlings off under 12/12 to keep them sm at finish), but much more cost effective..... kilowatt hrs/harvest wt. I have an advantage over some people, I usually have an outdoor crop that large enough to last me untill the following years harvest, providing it doesn't get ripped like this year. I haven't had smoke since spring & I'm dying to rush this grow to harvest! (Ha! They're only 2wks old & its driving me nuts)!
-- I know this got a little long, but I wanted you to see some options. Keep in mind nothings set in stone. No matter how you choose to go for now, you can change it up at any time. I've been doing this for over 40years & I'm always changing things. At one time, all my indoor grows were under HID's! For now, I prefer smaller, quicker, cheaper. BIG plans for grow room going along with house renovations. Hurricane Sandy trashed my green house & house roof & I had no insurance, so waiting on grants. For now, I'm living in a (large) camper, but I refuse to stop growing, even for a little while. I like to share my experience to show people anything is possible because so many people think they can't have a grow due to finances or space. Ingenuity..... :)

[catbuds]

I have to comment on your water again. Plants utilise minerals, & if you could get your plant water straight from the aquifer, they'd be pretty happy. But, all those chems added during processing, you know the whole thing about molecular bonding, really harder to de-chlorinate. You might want to think about doing some research on your local water processing. Hell, you may not even want to bathe in that slurry, much less drink or used it on your plants! You'll probably need a lot of pre-filtering on that water before it hits the fine membranes of a RO. That mess would clog those membranes & shut it down quick! Resin & charcoal filtration before hitting something like a #3 micron, maybe even more than just that. You won't know exactly how much pre-filtering you'll need untill you research your local water. But... if you have your RO system professionally installed, the co will do that for you, since they need that info to customize your system to function properly. Yeah, that was part of my job over 20yrs ago for a co called Water Resources International. We manufactured & sold... you guessed it, RO systems (& all the possibly needed pre-filter systems to go along with it). So I'm concerned about more than just your plants, I'm concerned about your health. NOT because of the minerals, but all those added chemicals. Some are actually carcinogens! (Yeah damned it, I'm an 'over thinker' too. Takes one to know one, huh?) :) :) :)

[Chromophore]

Catbud you really got me thinking about some things here. Next summer I will dismantle my grow rooms in order to install flooring, paint, etc. to that part of my basement, and so that will give me the opportunity to rebuild the grow operation with a different setup. I like your thinking about color balance, though every source I've read hammers the point that red light is best for flowering, so that's why I stuck the HPS above. I grew the veg under MH. But combining wavelengths during flowering to maximize development is an interesting approach.

I hear you about the water. The building where my lab is located has a huge RO/DI facility to supply the labs with pure water, but they are in constant need of repair due to the immense load put on them by the chemical soup which passes as tap water here. Even out of the RO, I have found the EC and pH of the water unsuitable for lab procedures, and we typically repeat the process at least once on a smaller scale. I know a very successful grower here who has had good success with bubbling the water as you say, and he has given up on RO as his systems kept breaking. One thing I may do is set up a rainwater collection system and try to augment that way. I suppose bugs would be my only concern with that (and acid rain).:(

[Chromophore]

Day 3 of flowering. I spread the plants a bit and gently tied a few of the outer branches down/out to open up the middle. Looks to me like growth is fastest around the perimeter of the canopy, maybe stretching (?). The plants give of a very happy and healthy vibe at the moment, and I enjoy just being in the room with them. Can't wait to see actual flower formation.:cool:296345296344

[thenewgrow]

hey man if i wear you i would build 1 of thees :) DIY SCROG OR SOG NET HOW TO - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfc6xJZdlSw)

[thenewgrow]

I live near Ballinasloe, Galway. My brother is dying from cancer and desperately needs cannabis oil with THC. the doctors misdiagnosed and now he's running out of time. I will have a go at making it if i can get the buds. I will be so discreet you won't believe it. I will meet any time anywhere with cash under any conditions that you care to mention. Please contact on this made-up email address. [email protected].

i feel for you man :'( have tried and lose very close family to cancer: '(2 times., and it is probably the worst and lose another one. cancer is probably one of the worst disease and getting to know you have

peace i hope the bedst for your brother man om crossing my finger's for you'r brother. you'r brother need what is called Rick Simpson Oil

or just simpson oil

here is a post about simpson oil you need to look at this http://boards.cannabis.com/concentrates/200017-my-experience-rick-simpson-oil.html

[Chromophore]

Very simple and clever. I will be constructing one of these by this weekend. Thanks for the tip bro.

[thenewgrow]

anytime bro :) i will try as hard as i can to help you out :) all you have to do is ask :D


ps. wile you are on HygrowHybrid cheek him out man he's a great grower :) he has some great video's

[Chromophore]

Noticed two fungus gnats this morning. First bugs I have seen since I sprouted the seeds. :( The leaves look a bit heavy as well so I think I am overwatering. I think I'll give then a day to dry out, and try to stop fussing over them so much.

[OMB]

Those plants look awesome! Nice job man, and very sanitary too. Fungus Gnats? Some sticky yellow paper and a 1/2" to an 1" of sterile sand on top of the soil will take care of their asses. The sticky paper for the adults and the sand to choke the larvae in the soil.
Wish I could have heard 'em choke.

[Chromophore]

Yeah OMB those damn gnats really irritate me. Though I guess they're better than spider mites (shudder). I have noticed with potted plants in general that fungus gnats almost always get going when the soil is kept constantly wet, and/or there is not good drainage/aeration to the roots. I've been watering them fairly heavily since I switched to 12/12 so I may need to ease up a bit.

[OMB]

I know what you mean! Didn't think much of them at first, then I found out the damage they can do and nuked 'em. Frankly, unless it's a LadyBug I'm going to kill it with whatever means is necessary.
I am very protective of my little buddies....Lol. I keep an Army of ladybugs to do the dirty work, but they had almost all died and Bam! Spider mites...But Mighty wash took care of that immediately. :thumbsup:
Check out my little stumpy's in the grow section Chromophore, they about done.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Hey chromophore,
Looking great! Gonna be some lg ladies! Ill follow along looks like a great grow!

One idea, someone said earlier, is tying your girls down. I think you will have great results tying them down without a screen. What I've learned, from doing it, is your going to want to train your plants for a scrog from the start. If you do the screen with your plants you will end up blocking way more light to way more bud sites than if they were simply tied down to open them up. As they stretch you can tie them more ( keeping it a little more open for light penetration) then if you pack the screen above full of the stretching plants.

My 2 cents
If you do scrog, it will still be very interesting to watch, looks like you're off to a super start!

[Chromophore]

Thanks Captain and all good thoughts. I probably will forgo scrog, for the reason you stated as well as the difficulty of harvesting without losing material and trichomes with all the handling required to detangle from the screen. Right now I have the outer branches of each plant tied out and down (difficult to see in my pics but I'm posting more tonight). This has resulted in some new branches in the central region literally shooting up from below. This weekend I will rotate the plants and tie down again. I agree that this is probably the most effective strategy at this point.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Sounds like you got a good grasp on things

[tlranger]

Those are looking so nice

[catbuds]

Chromophore, we know you're really dreaming of a big assed outdoor grow! Your next grow is going to be so much easier on you now that you see how they EXPLODE in flower. You decide how big you want them to be at finish & put them in 12/12 when they're about 1/3 that size. Easier on your back & your ceiling! Check out as many grow room pics as you can find. There's almost as many techniques & growroom styles as there are growers, so look around a while & take your time deciding on how you want to go. Then when you re-do that grow room, it will all fall into place. We already know you you have a green thumb & can grow. Your biggest problem will be trying to keep your basement from growing into a jungle! I can see it now; one day your wife will have to take a search party into the basement to find you, you'll have a full beard with algae growing on your back muttering to yourself, 'I need to use less nutes' ! LOL! Have fun! :) :) :)

[catbuds]

Yeah, its me again! Was thinking about what you said concerning collecting rain water. A lot of the better gardening catalogs sell rain barrels having a screen/mesh top to filter out bugs & debris. I'd test the pH, working in a lab, I know you know the pH scale, so I'll go no further than to say about 6.8 works well for plants. I know you're growing in soil, but should you need to correct pH, use the pH ↑, pH↓ chems for hydroponics.
-- Have you considered setting up a cistern? Considering what comes out of your tap, it might be a lot easier to clean up captured rain water than that mess. (I'd stay conected to your municipal water supply in case of drought).
-- My spring has me so spoiled about water. Naturally soft, slightly acidic (par for the course with naturally soft water), pH ave 6.8. I remember when we first came here after having hard water. First time I brushed my teeth, thought I'd never stop foaming at the mouth! Over sudsed the washer, nearly broke my neck in the shower. The more I tried to rinse the suds down the drain, the more foam I had. Tangle free hair without conditioner. And get this... don't have to treat my water for fish tanks! How rare & special is that?!? (Except for cichlids, who like hard alkaline water). I really wish some of you guys could experience my water. (Not to mention my wonderfully rich organic soil. The organics are what makes my water slightly acidic). Now, fix my house & kill my neighbor & it would be paradise! LOL! (don't worry, not REALLY gonna kill the neighbor... its just a nice dream!) :) :) :) :) :)

[Chromophore]

Wow. The atmosphere in the grow room has definitely shifted. The air feels heavier and more intense. The growing tops seem like they're dancing in very slow motion. The stigma are clearly longer, brighter and more erect, and are now sprouting from nodes that were previously empty. After a 36hr drying out, I fed them tonight, rotated pot positions, and tied down additional branches. The temp.s in my area right now range from -10-20F, and our relative humidity right now is around 8%! But I've been lucky enough to keep things stable in the bud room at 40-60% humidity with constant use of the humidifier. Overall, I have the sense that something cool is about to happen.
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[CaptainOrganicsCO]

This cold snap is definitely something else. Something cool is about to happen. Listen to your gardening background over your grow store guy and rash moves and you'll crush it.

[Chromophore]

296416

The girls seem to be getting an attitude and I'm just trying to deal. Staking down outer, taller growth has definitely spurred growth in starved areas, and the energetic centers are doing something. Not quite a hum, but a really quiet version of a hum. Really quiet. But its there.

[Chromophore]

Chromophore, we know you're really dreaming of a big assed outdoor grow! Your next grow is going to be so much easier on you now that you see how they EXPLODE in flower. You decide how big you want them to be at finish & put them in 12/12 when they're about 1/3 that size. Easier on your back & your ceiling! Check out as many grow room pics as you can find.

Catbuds, you know much. I do dream of an outdoor grow and I will do it eventually. For now I am stuck in a place where indoor is the only reasonable option. But I know I can learn a lot of important stuff growing indoors. So that is my focus right now.

[catbuds]

Outdoor is so much easier since Mother Nature does most of the work, but I wanted to remind you about plant transpiration. As the buds start to bulk, they will naturally raise the relative humidity, so keep your eye on that gauge & ditch the humidifier when they start raising it on their own or you could see bud rot, the bane of the pot grower!
-- Well, its raining here. So no lack of humidity for me! :) :) :)

[OMB]

Wow....Those plants are stellar! Nice job Chromophore, my little "stumpy's" pale in comparison. :(

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

They will get huge! Get ready to keep tying and bending them around. A thought I had in regards to that is: if u plan on continuing to rotate the plants it is gonna get really hard real soon. U might forget rotating them altogether and start tying them to the walls and bending them around as they continue to stretch. Just leave your self a path to get in, water, and keep an eye on things. I just looked at your pic again, lol, u have a jungle on your hands my friend. A good problem to have though is... What the heck do I do with all this weed??? :)

[Chromophore]

I can only wonder how big these would get if I hadn't supercropped. The breeder who gave me the seeds thought that they would follow their Afghan parent in growth habit, and when they were very young, they did have a thick, bushy look to them, but as they've matured they've really started becoming vertical plants. Now that he has seen my grow, he's changed his mind and feels the Lemon Skunk parent is dominating growth. One of the seeds from this batch gave rise to a plant that I can only describe as a dwarf. I'll post some pics later today. It has a slow growth pattern, smaller, almost gnarled leaves, and female pre-flowers completely lacking a visible stigma. I put it in the dark for a few days to force flowering, and it does have obvious vase-shaped pre-flowers at the nodes, but no hairs. I'm tempted to just throw it in with the budding plants (it's still in veg with another younger group) to see what happens, but I'm worried that it may be a hermaphrodite or something.

[Hotshot123]

Really nice looking plants, Keep up the good work. I am so excited over your grils, I almost can smell them from here. Good luck, and happy growing.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

I apologize if u stated previously but how long did you veg these plants?

[Chromophore]

Captain they vegged officially 10 weeks. But they spent 4 weeks in peat pots as tiny seedlings, shocked (and killed) by my blunder of putting the seedling tray in my outdoor greenhouse. The temp in the greenhouse read 120F when I checked on them in the afternoon. Most of them died. Eight survived. Of those eight, five were female. Four of them are in the group budding, the other is a mutant that I don't know what to do with. Anyway, the answer si that their early lives were stunted, but their main veg stage was 9-10 weeks.

[Chromophore]

This is the little Afgooey X Lemon Skunk phenotype that has me puzzled. It is now in week 12 of veg, but it is dwarfish and weak looking. The leaves seem contorted , more like nutrient imbalance than pest. I put in in darkness for 48 hrs to force pre-flowers and I got pale, vase-shaped calyxes with no stigma. Could it be a diamond in the rough? Or is it a disease vector and possible hermaphrodite?



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[CaptainOrganicsCO]

When my veg room got cold for an extended period my mother plants looked very similar to that. Was that plant in a different environ then your other plants?

[catbuds]

I'd try her out. She may just be a dwarf pheno type. I've flowered my males for pollen right along side my girls by putting him in a large plastic bag. Got the bag from a pet shop. Its what their fish shipments come in. Only place I know to get those huge clear plastic bags, & FREE! My favorite price! So if you fear she may be hermie, call a near by pet shop & ask them to save you a bag. Otherwise, they will CUT it open to release the fish. You'll need one that's been opened from the top. :) :) :)

P.S. That looks like shock, not disease. Sometimes they're slow to come out of it, & the older leaves will probably never go back to normal. Its ok as long as they stay green & can go through photosynthesis. The new growth will tell you when its over the shock. Could be the shock stunted it though, but I'm hoping for a dwarf pheno to give you some genetic diversity.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

All this discussion of the little plant.... And where would u flower her anyhow... Your flower room's pretty full last I saw... :)

[Chromophore]

I'm leaning towards letting her flower, perhaps in isolation. I agree it looks like some kind of environmental shock, but to my knowledge she has experienced the same conditions as all the others. Keep in mind though that this generation of plants were shocked by 120F temperatures as tiny seedlings. The fact that they survived, and most of them are healthy, is truly amazing. Maybe this one just never fully recovered from that. I notice also that it's leaves curl upwards at the edges. I may give it a flush and/or re-pot and see how it responds.

[catbuds]

I'd go ahead with the flush, but she might be more susceptible to transplant shock at this stage, & that could kill her. So be careful you don't kill her with kindness! :) :) :)

[Chromophore]

Good point. One thing at a time is probably the wisest course.

[Chromophore]

Bad news first. One plant is showing what looks like clawing on it's new growth (1st pic). Its hard to believe that it could be N toxicity because I'm only on scheduled FF nutes at half-strength. My guess is overwatering, which the recent appearance of fungus gnats would seem to support. I'm interested in what you folks think.

Then the good news. Flower stigma are suddenly much more apparent and reaching (pic 2). I notice them especially in the tops, where the pre-flowers were absent during veg. This budding business is really going to try my patience, I can tell already. Modern, short attention-span Human that I am. But my fascination with this plant increases daily.


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[Chromophore]

Did quite a bit of thinning in the mid-sections and re-worked my tethers and weights to get a more uniform pulling on the branches. The canopy top is now shoulder height (5') and the canopy spread is now 6"x6". I raised my HPS 4" but that's all the more I can do. Boy I sure hope they slow down.296542

But the cool thing is that the plants changed overnight. Today they have a distinctly different look and feel. The tops are suddenly drawing the eye, denser. I also notice differences in each plant's habit that I did not notice before. And the smell, is distinctly stronger. :smokin:

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[OMB]

Wow! Really nice job on those Girls Chromophore. They are looking just outstanding. I don't envy your "size" problems though....Lol .....but the production will be amazing.
:thumbsup:

[thenewgrow]

your girls look's great man :D is it MH you are flowering under ? i can see that blue light on some of the leaf's from the light :)

[Chromophore]

Thanks people. No I'm flowering under HPS. The blue is coming from a couple of UVB cfl lamps I have up high. I corrected the color a bit before uploading since the HPS makes everything dark orange.

[Chromophore]

To be clear, the 600w HPS is just out of the picture. One of the UVB cfls can be seen in the upper right. The other one is out of the picture on the left. I run these for about 3 hrs per light cycle. I haven't noticed any leaf damage from them, but it remains to be seen if they will really enhance trichome production or not.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Chromophore, the plants look good. Your grow room looks very clean and tidy also. Good job.

[thenewgrow]

ah ok :)

i do not wona use UVB light's - because large amounts of UV light can lead to cancer.

it's just a personal opinion :)

but your grow look's great that's forsure :D

--peace--

[Chromophore]

Yeah I don't go in there when the UV lamps are on. They are low enough output that it would take a fair bit of exposure before there would be much risk of cancer. But even a few seconds of looking directly at them can hurt your eyes. I'm on the fence about using them to be honest.

[thenewgrow]

good to hear you are aware of it.
it can be dangerous :)

but your plants are super nice :D

[catbuds]

What type of uv cfl are you using? All cfls produce a little more uv than other fluorescents, but it sounds like you're using special uv ones, which is really over kill, since the regular ones produce enough. The ones called reveal come the closest to reproducing sunlight & are recomended by drs for their patients with seasonal effective disorder. Point being, they don't produce enough uv to be harmful, & you could keep them on for the whole light cycle. :) :) :)

Glad you found your way out of the mighty jungle! :) So will you be posting bud pics once a week? :)

[d00g]

Glad you found your way out of the mighty jungle! :) So will you be posting bud pics once a week? :)

Uh oh we may never find out the answer to your question and see some juicy pics, catbuds - it looks like thenewgrow has a little "Banned" sign under his or her name! That is very unfortunate :( I always wonder what leads to that for people...

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Blue will increase resin production. But u won't know cause u won't be able to compare. :)

[catbuds]

Uh oh we may never find out the answer to your question and see some juicy pics, catbuds - it looks like thenewgrow has a little "Banned" sign under his or her name! That is very unfortunate :( I always wonder what leads to that for people...

See indoor growing, thread 'help with the cold'....... read the whole thing.

[Chromophore]

The UVB question is a tricky one. There is some evidence that ultraviolet B (280-315 nm or "medium" wave) increases potency via increased THC and terpene production. How carefully these studies have been done is a real concern, and I have yet to see anyone clearly show the mechanism behind this. In Rosenthal's Grower's Handbook he notes a PhD thesis by a guy named John Lydon (I'm assuming this person isn't also the lead singer of the Sex Pistols) who found that the potency of the final product increased in direct proportion to the amount of UVB that was used during flowering. Since UVB is more intense at lower latitudes and in the earlier part of the summer, it was concluded that plants grown outdoors should be forced to flower in early summer (June-July), when UVB is naturally most intense.

How this carries over into an indoor grow is less clear. I have read many testimonials from people who have done (IMHO) fairly dumb things with UVB lamps and ended up cooking their plants and/or themselves. Rosenthal recommends using a cfl based UVB with a total wattage no greater than 10% of your total lighting system. I use two 25w UVB cfl bulbs in reflectors along with a 600w HPS. These are bulbs usually used for reptiles and are not expensive, but you need to make sure they are B. While other blue and violet wavelengths may help, Lydon's work showed that UVB specifically was related to increased potency. I turn mine on when I'm done working in the room, then turn them off after a couple of hours. I have them placed about 24 inches from the canopy and after 14 days I do not see any signs of leaf damage. But as Captain points out, I won't have anything to compare to in the end. In the future I may try to set up a system where I can directly compare with and without UVB.

New pics of the girls tonight. Exciting stuff happening!

[Chromophore]

Girls are vibrant and proud. Flowering is now finally indisputable. Aroma in the room is heavenly. Pulled back some branches and rotated slightly, otherwise, just letting them be.296724296725296726296727296728296729

[catbuds]

How's the little pheno dwarf coming along? You haven't mentioned her lately. I'm anxious for your harvest. Bet it will be comparable to an outdoor grow. I've had friends who would drive miles to their crop. It was a good location, full sun, rich soil right next to a stream, but they were only able to do that because their place of empolyment had shut down. Now that they're back to work they're ' in the closet' again. I wish there was a way you could do a big outdoor grow in 2014. No height/size restrictions, you'd be in your glory. My friends were in awe at the size of their plants & buds. Dried harvest wt, a little over 60 lbs. They never said how many plants they had, but they weren't expecting that much weight. Just wishing you could enjoy that same experience! (As I've been sitting here watching it snow its ass off!!!!) :) :) :)

[catbuds]

Just saw the pics! Not just tall, but nice & beefy! They ARE going to be comparable to outdoor buds! That's an experience I can't wait for you to have! Maybe legalization will happen in the not TOO distant future. We can only hope, sign petitions, & vote for candidates in favor. Removing ourselves from the U.N. might help :( I'm really upset with them. Read the thread about Uruguay's legalization. Yea for Uruguay! Boo on the U.N.! OK, I'll jump off my soapbox (for now!) :) :) :)

[Chromophore]

Catbuds presently I'm doing a legal grow for a patient. Fortunately I live in a state that is at least trying to peek it's head out of the Dark Ages. I do dream of an outdoor grow, and I am convinced someday it will happen. There are some options I have down the road. I can apply for a license to grow "commercially", but it's expensive and the competition is fierce. In my neck of the woods, growing anything except grain is very difficult. We have the unfortunate combination of extremely dry air, clay-rich soil and seasons which change suddenly, especially autumn. Night temps in the summer still routinely drop into the 40's even in August. Average last frost is late May, average first frost is Sept15th. That's a very short effective growing season. Gardeners here really pride themselves because it is a very challenging climate to grow most anything well (tomato growing is so difficult it's like an Olympic event amongst the gardening crowd). But there is a high probability that I will be moving to the desert Southwest or SoCal within the next 5 years. Depending on where I go I might have better opportunity for an outdoor grow.

[Chromophore]

As for the pheno dwarf, it also suffered the indignity of being knocked off of it's stand by two of my cats who were chasing each other around and somehow got into my veg. room. Lost two branches.:( Cats lost 1 or 2 lives.;) A long-time grower who has been guiding me here looked at it and thought I should throw it in with the flowering girls and see what happens. I believe Catbuds that you gave me the same advice. Well, that's good enough for me. Into the flowering room it goes. It's actually flushing with new growth, but even that looks odd. I'll post a pic and if people have comments/warnings/suggestions I'll mull that over before actually moving them into the budroom.296767 Keep in mind this plant is the same age as the girls currently flowering. Under a loupe it does display what appears to be female pre-flowers, but no stigma.

[catbuds]

Ahhh, putter tats! Just can't keep their little fuzzy butts outa trouble! My two are the reason I didn't just build my own tent. Have all I need to do that, but they would go right through it! they seem to know when they can get away with murder & once they're spoiled rotten, they're into EVERYTHING! But the badder they are , the more I lover them! LOL!
-- Sometimes mutants are sterile. That could have been her issue from the start, made her more susceptible to heat/cold stress. Time will tell. Worth watching though.
-- Damned! Sam seems to have known we were talking about them! Just chased him off the fridge, trying to knock the lamp in the floor. But that's alright, I have a spray bottle & I'm not afraid to use it! :) :) :)

P.S. Almost forgot to say, I love your avatar! Nice trichromes!

[Chromophore]

Plants starting to shed leaves. I've been warned that this will happen as flowering progresses, but it's alarming nonetheless. Otherwise they look fine and the flowers are starting to explode. The aroma is getting noticeably stronger. Not as sweet; darker and spicier. Tonight I'm going to put my good macro lens on my camera and see if I can get some close-up shots of the flowers and trichomes.296895

[Chromophore]

Close-up of bud formation. Capitate trichomes becoming much more noticeable. The stigma of the pistils are Medusa-like. Good times.:smokin:296896

[OMB]

Great pic Chromophore, looking good! Give us another shot of the group, you and I are at about the same point in 12/12.

[Chromophore]

New pics coming tonight. I'm going to get a group shot and hopefully a close-up that is more properly illuminated. The trichomes have just suddenly exploded in number over the last day. OMB do you have a good camera? Can you do super close-up stuff?

[OMB]

New pics coming tonight. I'm going to get a group shot and hopefully a close-up that is more properly illuminated. The trichomes have just suddenly exploded in number over the last day. OMB do you have a good camera? Can you do super close-up stuff?

I do have the camera to do the super macro shots, but it has a dead battery and uses a funky one. I have been using my phone...pretty bad quality indeed.
I have another Camera, let me try that one and I will post pics in my thread later. The girls are about to "wakeup". :cool:

[Chromophore]

I am entranced by the plants now.296975

[OMB]

I am entranced by the plants now.296975

Hahaha....I know exactly what you mean. :smokin: I can just stare at them for 20-30 minutes at a time. Fussing, folding, checking...Never ending. Pretty funny actually, all this fuss for a couple plants. ;)
Looking good Chromophore, I will try and get some better Macro pics up of mine.

[Chromophore]

The jungle has established itself. Four plants have managed to form an actual sea of deliciously fragrant rustling greenery. I can't even imagine what this is going to be like in a couple of weeks.

296994 into the sea...296995

[OMB]

Wow...That is impressive. Your credentials are showing, nice work Chromophore. :thumbsup: We are just at opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to the plants themselves.
I grow short, stumpy Indica's ...your's are giants! Lol....I meaure inches, you measure feet! Damn nice chromophore, I have gotten a lot of great info from you and mama catbuds!
Shovelhandle has been a great help as well, happy growing.

[crazypimpmx]

looks like things are coming along quite nicely

[Chromophore]

I think I probably let these get a bit oversized before I went to 12/12. I supercropped them throughout veg, but looking at them now they probably needed a bit more training, and many of my super-cropping attempts are barely noticeable in the mature plant. It's cool to have them so big, but some of the flower tops are 6" from the light, and I'm afraid I'm going to see damage eventually. The batch I have in veg right now are a different strain (Lemon Skunk X Purple Wreck) and they have a wider, bushier, though somewhat airy and open habit. Their stems are thin and delicate and I really have to be careful training or supercropping, as they snap easily, and they don't recover from the bend the way these flowering plants do. These flowering girls are Afgooey X Lemon Skunk.

[Chromophore]

I'm noticing a fair amount of leaf drop in the room lately. Mostly old spent fan leaves but some smaller leaves as well. Typically from the mid and lower canopy area, and as many as 10 per plant per day. Many of the newer (or smaller) leaves in this zone are uniformly pale green to greenish yellow. It makes sense to me that the plant would shed leaves as the flowering process occurs, but since this is my first time with this I'm really nervous. I'm sticking religiously to the Foxfarm feeding schedule (nutes every other watering), and the buds seems to be coming along nicely. At what point should I worry about this? I will post pics tonight of the mid and lower zones.

[OMB]

I have the same issue Chromophore. Interestingly enough, only the T5 light girls have the yellowing of leaves. The rooted clones were having the same type issue as well.
I repotted them in....Gasp!...GOOD SOIL! Hahaha...finally stepped up to Happy Frog and bought some FF's "Grow Big" too.
They are looking better today. The point of this is Nitrogen....(at least I think that was the issue) which they got with the new soil and Grow Big. The color is improving from the very light Green already. Do your leaves exhibiting the Yellowing have red main "Veins?" You are way ahead of me in regards to horticulture, and it's just a thought, but maybe it's a Nitrogen issue.
Doesn't seem like they should be dropping leaves due to using up the N already...and the part that clues me into a potential issue there (in my case) is the fact the HPS plants don't have the same problem and the T5 plants are more developed.
Stands to reason the T5 lights have used all the N in the soil, (or something) that the HPS light plants have not expended due to development at this stage.
Beats me...ramblings of a Newbie.

[catbuds]

OMB, you are quite right. Once in flowering, the plants work on using the stored energies in the sunleaves, they yellow & fall off. Dont worry guys. Just part of the natural process. Just keep feeding the bloom nutes. If you start re-introducing nitrogen once half way through flowering, you'll taste it in your buds. :)

[d00g]

Their stems are thin and delicate and I really have to be careful training or supercropping, as they snap easily, and they don't recover from the bend the way these flowering plants do. These flowering girls are Afgooey X Lemon Skunk.

Nice job Chromo! Your skunky jungle is looking so big, green, and gorgeous. While I have no experience yet with final stages prior to harvest, I surely have read many posts asking the same question - is this yellowing/dropping of leaves normal? And all the responses have been the same that mama catbuds says - it is the plant using the remaining N and it's normal. I hope that is the natural process that is occurring in your ladies.

My question for you: In the quote above, you mention that the flowering plants "recover from the bend" or training easier than these plants do (which I assume are still veg'ing without reading back through the page 1 posts because I'm lazy) - are the plants better off training during early flower? I am learning about pruning/LST/size-controlling right now via reading books and posts. I believe, because I just switched to flowering stage a couple days ago because of fears that I will run out of room in my limited wooden cabinet, that I'm probably getting into the size-control of my plants late. I know I also started pruning my bushier, indica-dominant ladies late too because I was hesitant to start cutting them up. So, I don't mind being late on these things because I am learning and I will learn some consequences on not staying "ahead of the game" if it turns out that way. What has worked out for you for size-control measures thus far in this grow or in your experience with your lab grows?

[OMB]

Just to jump in with my .02, I don't even start LST'ing mine until they go to 12/12. They are a short and bushy Indica strain with close internodes so I need the growth spurt in the beginning of 12/12 to train. At that point my stems are soft and take readily to bending. Within a few hours the bent over tops will turn and head for the "sun" again, it's fast.
There is a window in the first 2 weeks of 12/12 that seems to be just right for this, though I will continue all the way until the end if required for space.
Bear in mind my plants are typically about 10-12"s when they go 12/12. At 1 month they range from 4"s to 8"s..... 2 month's about 8"s to 12"s from dirt. With a sativa strain
I would guess you would need to start in veg so the branches get trained before they get too tall and "stick" like. Either way, your girls look frickin' awesome!

[Chromophore]

Thanks Catbuds that is reassuring. OMB the dropping leaves don't show any unusual coloring out side if paleness. Often they have hints of light damage and I think they're really old fan leaves that used to be on top weeks and weeks ago. I also thin stuff out from that zone routinely because I do have a few small tops that are trying to get up through the canopy. I watch these close for herms but so far they look normal. But often the leaves that fall are completely dried up and curled. It's weird because I never see one on its way to such a state, they just suddenly appear. I'm leaning on what Catbuds and others on the forum have stated that this is all fairly normal at this stage (4 weeks flower). Some of it could be fallout from my mishap last week when I left the UVB lights on for 24 hrs. But curiously, the leaves and buds closest to the UV bulbs show absolutely no signs of distress. So, I think I'm over-reacting to a normal process.

d00g I am of the belief that training/pruning/shaping in all horticultural contexts is an art more than a science. It takes a lot of practice, patience and careful observation. I expect this is true with Cannabis. Maybe even more so. With my AfgooeyXLemon Skunk plants, the stems were tough even at an early age, and supercropping was hard simply because the fibers were so dense. I actually had to use pliers and a soft cloth at times. I supercropped from the time the produced their first mature leaves. At the time I had no good reason to do this other than I wanted to practice. I have heard everything under the sun about the "right" time to start doing this, and I have waded into several contentious arguments (in other forums) about the dos and don't s of SC during flower ( some say no way because it saps energy from the plant, others say yes way because as OMB points out the first two weeks can have rapid vertical growth). But what I see now is that most of the SC scars are like solid wood and the direction of the stem ultimately didn't change much. That's what I mean by "recovering". This batch in veg (the Purple Wreck X Lemon Skunk) have more delicate stem at the same age, and "take well" to the SC in the sense that the stem direction clearly becomes horizontal-ish and stays that way. But I have broke a few and bent a couple so severely that they can't seem to hold their own weight. This may be a varietal issue, or it may be conditions because I vegged the AF X LS batch under 420W T5 in a warm room (74F-84F), and the PW X LS batch is vegging under 400W MH in a relatively cool room (64F-72F). Most likely it is a combination of factors. In the lab, I top and prune to train my plants. With Cannabis I avoided this because I couldn't deal with the thought of losing what might end up being a huge cola in the end. But topping does seem to be a more direct and controllable way to train.

[Chromophore]

I'll have to take some pics of the Purple Wreck X Lemon Skunk plants in veg. They are really quite beautiful in appearance. They are short and "bushy", but very open and delicate, almost like a Japanese maple. The leaves are rich lime green shading into blues and purples.

[growdemon]

OMB, ive done what you are suggesting and my results were poor, light & leafy buds, they looked fat and thick, but it wasn't. I did it as an experiment and from what I can tell, is it stunned the flower cycle tremendously because the plant had to heal it self then revert back in to a flower stage all at the same time. so as its healing its also producing buds,, which in turn created leafy buds, aka swag

but it could have been the strain who knows, every plant & grow is different

I also have purple wreck! this shit smells killer!

[Chromophore]

growdemon the plants from that cross are not only pretty the smell just from the vegetation is heavenly. Super citrus with spice. I can't wait to bud those plants.

[Chromophore]

This is one of the Purple Wreck X Lemon Skunk females currently in veg, at about 6 weeks. She measures 34 inches tall by 37 inches wide. Note the squat but open and airy habit, and the thin branches. I suspect that without supercropping it would have more of a squat "Christmas Tree" appearance.297022

Close-up of the growth. Complex, but actually quite open. 297023 Close-up of some of the supercropped laterals. You can see the bend scars in the mid/lower right area. Note how the branch has now assumed a nearly horizontal habit. I was never able to achieve this with the Afgooey X Lemon Skunk plants ( the ones currently flowering). 297024

[growdemon]

yup!!
I FIM;d one of my purple wrecks and it just Loved the crap out of that

[OMB]

OMB, ive done what you are suggesting and my results were poor, light & leafy buds, they looked fat and thick, but it wasn't. I did it as an experiment and from what I can tell, is it stunned the flower cycle tremendously because the plant had to heal it self then revert back in to a flower stage all at the same time. so as its healing its also producing buds,, which in turn created leafy buds, aka swag

but it could have been the strain who knows, every plant & grow is different

I also have purple wreck! this shit smells killer!

"Heal?" ...I'm not breaking stems, I'm just bending. They have never shown any "Ill effects" from it, heck, they don't even seem to care! I would never pinch/break a stem in Flower as it would react as you mentioned.
Here's a pic from my first grow, the branches were almost 90 degree's to the Trunk at times...No problems at all. Then again, maybe it has more to do with my strain as far as the size and stem structure.

297027297028297029

[growdemon]

cool, looks great
yea those look leafy to me, but anyhow mine were way way more leafy, prob the strains

here are a few pics of non super-cropped, very thick & dense. unfortunately I don't have any super crop pics, (it was a few years back)

[Chromophore]

Calyxes starting to fill and merge. Aroma really starting to deepen. Tonight I'm going to try and get good shots of flowers from each plant because one of them is clearly different from the others.

297239

[OMB]

Wow!.....Just frickin' WOW! That is a great shot and one hairy bud! Very impressive Sir. :greenthumb:

[Chromophore]

Suddenly it's become noticeable that one of the four girls has a distinctly different flowering pattern than the other three. Three of them have flowers which more or less look like this 297266

But one has denser, more "pagoda" shaped buds 297267 The differences don't come out in the pictures very well, but just standing looking at the plants its very obvious. Now these are from seed from an Afgooey X Lemon Skunk cross. No back-crossing; this is f1. So is this type of phenotypic variation common? Sorry for the noob question, but um, I'm a noob. Just want to make sure seeds or pots weren't mislabeled.

Got a few decent trichome pics. In the first the capitates are water clear 297268 But are my eyes deceiving me or do the trichomes on this bud seem to be getting cloudy? 297269

Man is it getting stink in this room. Funky, heavy sweet odor, almost dank. Not what I was expecting!

[growdemon]

yea, ive seen that before with hybrid seeds. I've had perfect blends of 2 crosses, then others that leaned more to one side or the other, all from the same strain. But not the same plant! (male or Female) The ones from the same plant were 100% consistent.
so I guess if you had the same male, crossed with 2 different plants of the same strain. they wouldn't be exactly the same or vise versa. But all the seeds from each plant should be near identical

I would imagine breeders, grow so much how seriously do they know every seed will be exactly the same. I think that's impossible, they may be close but unlikely to make it 100% the same. Probably why there are clone only strains too!

Maybe, there is a way now a days, with all the hi tech stuff out there.
HA, buy some seeds, w8 a while then buy the same seeds again and compare.

[tlranger]

My, they look young but tasty. Very nice job. F1 expect some variance, but you get hybrid vigor.

[OMB]

Chromophore, you take some great pics!...and your girl's are looking awesome. :thumbsup: I would love to see what you could do with my stumpy strain, that would be spectacular I'm sure.
Then again, all that bending down to look at 'em might strain your back! Hahaha
Your girl's have some really cool formations, the pistol's are very impressive. Got them all "tied up" huh? Some girl's just need to be restrained....Uh-oh, where's mama catbud's?
I'm gonna get it now!

[Chromophore]

Added a 4x4' T5 HO rack to to the grow room. I scavenged it out of my seedling tent, which is currently idle. Running 2x54w 3000k and 2x54w 6500k in the unit for a total of 216w. Despite the color imbalance introduced by doing this, I am now able to spread my plants out and let them breathe in light. Under just the 600w HPS they were confined to a light cone that was simply too small for plants of this size. The tallest bud is now 6'2":D. Anyway these T5s are rated at 5k lumens per bulb, so I added 20k lumens. My HPS runs an Ushio Ultra HD bulb that "on paper" is rated at 96k lumens. So assuming this is accurate, I have 116k lumens over a grow space of 30 ft2. So that's about 3.7k lumens per ft2. I can now let the canopies open up and get much needed light to the interior. The buds are literally exploding at this point.

297441 One girl seems to be following her mother's Afghan traits in flowering: 297442 This plant's buds are very dense and really sticky already (Afgooey!). The other three girls have stretchier buds, perhaps reflective of their Lemon Skunk father: 297443

Despite being lankier, these flowers are striking in ways my camera can't capture. The pistils are long and brilliant white, against deep green, frosted foliage. They are truly gorgeous. It's amazing to me how beautiful the flowers are when they don't have the same color and contrast-rich appearance that flowers from most other plants have. Such a simple color palette, yet such a striking appearance. I honestly find it hard to stop looking at them.:stoned:

[tlranger]

6-2 quite the grow

[Chromophore]

yah ranger I think maybe a bit much. Next group I have going into 12/12 will be about a foot shorter and with a "bushier" habit.

[tlranger]

I added Cfl plus flur to my last hps grow. Just wondering how you arranged your lights for Max eff..

[OMB]

Simply beautiful Chromophore! That first pic bud?...wow! I just bet those T5HO's will payoff for you too, Very nicely done indeed. :thumbsup:

[Chromophore]

ranger at this point I just mounted them on the ceiling at about the same level as my HPS. Fairly crude and not optimal I'm certain. Once the plants are out of there and I have room and time to work I'll re-arrange things more thoughtfully. I have another 4X4' T5 ballast/hood as well. What I'm thinking is position the HPS directly overhead and mount the long T5s along either side, but closer to the walls, lower, and at a 45 degree angle. That will give the outer edges of the canopies some nice, direct light. I could even splurge and put in 4 racks, one along each wall for the most complete coverage. But that would take my total wattage to 600+(4x216)=1,464! Output would then be about 166,000 lumens or 5,533 lumens/ft2 . That seems like it might be a bit more than I need for this scale of grow. And my electricity bill...:(

[Chromophore]

OMB the thick buds on that plant are almost scary. Still a few weeks from harvest and they are becoming simply massive. A friend was over last night who has extensive experience growing. He looked at that Afghan-looking plant and his jaw literally dropped. He looked at me and said, "dude, you see this shit right here (pointing to Afghan bud) these buds are going to be fucking phenomenal".:cool:

[tlranger]

Does sound good even if it does cost a shade more

[Chromophore]

So, I'm nearing the end of week 6 and am noticing some things that are a bit puzzling. For maybe the last few days, I'd say, days 37-41, my impression is that the buds are not enlarging, or at least not as noticeably. :wtf: The plants look really goo, maybe too good. Not a yellow leaf for days. The buds are noticeably whitening with trichomes, but the just aren't exploding anymore. Under my 14X hand-lens, I first noticed cloudy trichomes about the same time the bud explosion slowed,. Right now I'd guesstimate 60-70% clear, the rest cloudy, especially on the larger bud leaf surfaces. Edges and calyxes, they're still clear. No ambers. Pistils are still quite long, but starting to brown on the tips. My guess is that I'm at the magical "2 weeks before harvest" point, and need to start flushing. I fear the plants are a little over-nuted. My concern is that the buds still have some spaces to fill in, but now things seem to be slowing down. I'm hoping my elders here are going to tell me that I need to take a chill pill and everything is on course. I'll post pics later tonight.

[catbuds]

Yep Chromophore! Take that that chill pill! Things are exactly as they should be! Since you're organic, don't use a manufactured flush product; instead, use 1 Tbs epsom salts per gal of water, fill pots to top & let run through 3X's; then, 1Tbs molasses per gal of water, fill pot to top & let drain. The epsom salts add magnesium (as a deficiency in this give you buds that won't burn), & of course the molasses are taken up by plants, converted to plants sugars, helps plump up those trichromes. Then nothing but plain water from then on out! Then.....sit back & smile & use that little hand lense 5 or 6 X's a day, cause we know you'll want to!!!! Damned! How is it I get so excited about other peoples grow? Ahh. Who knows? BUT ITS FUN!!!! ;) ;) ;)

[Chromophore]

Thanks catbuds. So I do the Epsom salt treatment once, then pure water/molasses after that? Or do I do your treatment each time I water? I have read that the buds will "swell" again toward the end of the flowering cycle. I hope so.

[catbuds]

The 3 flushes with the epsom salts, then the molasses water at the same time. If they start swelling again (some strains do, some don't), you can do the molasses again, but not TOO close to harvest, about a week is as close as I go. But your HARD work (play?) is over. Basically sit back & watch (with a big ole grin!). Just keep your eyes peeled for things like spider mites & mold, because this is the time that would be the most devastating. Maybe increase your air flow, more direct fan power pointed toward the buds. This is your 'happy hour'! You're about to reap the harvest (rewards) of your efforts! RELAX..... ;) ;) ;)

[catbuds]

I just re-read your question & realised I didn't give you a very clear answer. The three run throughs are your flush, done at one watering + the molasses water. All at the same time, just giving them a little time, few minutes, to drain between each run through. Then plain water as need till the end. Maybe using molasses one more time if they start to visibly swell again, no closer than a week before harvest (or as close as you can estimate). You actually have a better handle on this than you seem to think, so don't panic (you're not prone to anxiety, are you)? LOL!
-- Now you can sit back & contemplate your next grow. They were BIG, but is that how you like them (some people do), or would they be more manageable smaller? Now that you've seen how much they stretch in bud, you can time going into 12/12 at the right time to get the finish size you want.
-- (d00g, I hope you're reading this), I want you to google 'grow pot easy/mainlining'. What you get with this method is nice colas without the light fluffy sm popcorn buds. When done right, its doesn't cut down on yield, but concentrates the plants energies to the big solid colas. You can pinch as many times as you want to increase the number of solid buds, or as little (4 ) for fewer bigger buds. From there, you can go straight to 12/12, keeping them sm, or let them get as big as you want. D00g, this is what I wanted to point out to you. My flowering space is 5' X 2'. Not big at all. I'm still keeping my plants sm, going with only 4 branches/colas, but because this variety is a dense plant by nature, I wanted them open headed for light & air, which helps with bud health once they swell & start getting dense. This will work perfect in a small space without the room for a bigger fan (I'll only have space for a sm clip on fan, but good exhaust & intake). But check it out. Nugbuckets does a great tutorial & the pics are great. Very interesting even if your not into trying this technique. Have fun! Its almost party time!!!! ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)

[Chromophore]

Wow. This is really great stuff and thank you. I really wish I could load you up a karma bowl. We'd have fun. But I need to think about what you're saying here and research it as you say (with your links). When these girls are done another batch moves in. They are a different strain and I have veg'd them with super cropping and some LST. They shouldn't be as big as this first crop. They're bushy. I'd really like to go smaller, as OMB and some others around here have done with great results. Thanks cat. :pimp:

[OMB]

You and I are basically at the same point Chromophore, glad I'm not the only one that was getting nervous over the "standard" stuff. Lol
...and I'm glad I read this too! I thought you just flushed with water, I didn't know about the Epsom salts. (Thanks Mama!)
So flush 3x's with the Epsom salt water solution, then straight water, or Molasses and water....Got it.
They are looking goooood!...and smelling even better. Yep, wish we could all sit down together and smoke a bowl while we ooh and aaah over each other's plants.
Almost there chromophore! I have the next round rolled in already too. :thumbsup:

[Chromophore]

It's amazing the passion this topic elicits in various threads aroung the internet. I mean down and dirty nastiness. Not sure why people get so worked up about it. There are some that say flushing is the worst thing you can do. There are some that say Not flushing is the worst thing you can do. There are some who say flush with pure water is the only thing you should do. There are some who say flushing with very dilute nutes/epsom salts/molasses is the only thing you should do. For various reasons I'm going to follow your advice catbuds, unless someone can come in here and convince (us) otherwise. The idea of flushing with pure water bothers me because it's going to be very stressful on the plant. Root hairs can be damages by stripping the ionic strength around the root zone. So flushing with a certain level of tonicity, which catbud's method would do, makes more sense to me. I'm also bothered by the whole "nutrient starvation" aspect of this. I realize that heavy nutes can adversely affect taste, but stripping all the nutes away from the plant stresses it greatly, and that causes chemical changes as well, which very well could affect terpenoid chemistry in the trichomes as well. I guess I just need to follow advice and maybe experiment on my own and find out the hard way. It just seems to me it would be better to gradually reduce nute concentration than to do something so drastic. On the other hand Ocean Forest is a pretty hot mix anyway, so there are probably plenty of nutes around to keep the plant from stressing too much.

[Chromophore]

And I forgot to mention, there are some people who believe flushing for taste is a myth and that taste and burn is controlled entirely in the dry/cure process.

[tlranger]

And I forgot to mention, there are some people who believe flushing for taste is a myth and that taste and burn is controlled entirely in the dry/cure process.

Wonder if they have ever seen a plant that looks blue from all the miracle grow, they taste bad!!

[Chromophore]

ranger after sifting through the "literature" for weeks now I can conclude that most accomplished grower's as well as "experts" like Rosenthal firmly believe in flushing, so that's good enough for me. What I may do is test slightly different flushing methods on a couple of the plants and see how they differ in the end. Maybe one will flush with pure water and another I will do with epsom salts/molasses, etc.

[Chromophore]

The forest 297585 t5s add blue to the room so in combo with the HPS I get some odd coloration in my photos.

trichomes are definitely moving toward the cloudy stage. Looks to me like its about 50/50 297586 Another from same cola 297587


Flushing to commence today! :smokin:

[catbuds]

Nice young trichs! They're all looking good! Flushing isn't as important in organics as it is with chem nutes. Your right. Fox farms is pretty hot soil & you can't actually rid it of the organic nutes anyway. What you're doing is flushing out the disolved nutes that would be the most easily/rapidly absorbed by the root hairs. I don't like commercial flush products, because like you mentioned about 'striping' the roots, the chemical products do that in a big way. By doing away with the disolved nutes, your making the plant rely more on the stored energies for bud ripening. These stored nutes & energies don't taste good in your smoke. One of these products being chlorophyll. You want all this to slow down a week or two before harvest. The epsom salts doesn't assist the flush, what it does is insure the plant has adequate magnesium or you can't get the buds to burn. They become 'fire proof'. So if you flush one without the epsom, compare it to the one with epsom for burnability. If you've ever harvested a lb or two that won't burn (& I have), you'll be afraid to omit the epsom. Since I find I can't taste the epsom salts, I always use it with my flush. Molasses does have some magnesium, so your buds still may burn fine without the epsom, but after that experience in the 80's, I'm always leary. One of those 'better safe than sorry' things. Not sure on this, but I don't THINK big bloom has anything you can taste in the final product, so if you want to chance it, you could try a sm amount in your flush, or maybe the next watering after that @ 1/4 strength. By using only plain water therafter, shouldn't be anything left to taste.
-- But hey! The hard work is done & this is you relaxation time! So sit back & enjoy. Your need to save your energy for harvesting & bud trimming! Then if you've time & energy left, check out all the things you can do with the leaf, cannabutter, green dragon, RSO, etc (don't forget to check out recipes)! Waste not want not! ;)

[catbuds]

P.S. taste & burn are ENHANCED by proper drying/curing, but some nasty tastes won't be REMOVED that way. Especially that metalic taste of chemically produced nito nutes.
-- Once you've hung your buds to dry, go back & read your entire thread. That will give you a chance to 'digest' the things that were new to you that you've learned with this grow. With the stress over, you'll see you got it down & from here on out you can work on developing your own style/technique. That's the fun part where you get to experiment! :)

[OMB]

Awesome pics chromophore! They are looking great. Very soon both of us will reap the rewards of our "Helicopter" parenting. :thumbsup: Doesn't sound like I really need the Epsom salts with my soil grow then.I have been feeding Molasses with my bloom so I will flush with straight water just because it gives me something to do besides staring at them. ;)

[tlranger]

you can't get the buds to burn. They become 'fire proof'. So if you flush one without the epsom, compare it to the one with epsom for burnability. If you've ever harvested a lb or two that won't burn (& I have), ;) Meditate.

Are you sure they where not just to green still? I've had dank sticky stuff you couldn't smoke in a joint, but always found away to fire it up. Maybe it was just tooo goood?? :S5: But you I believe. :smokebong:

[tlranger]

After some reflection, maybe ex thought you were going through stash to fast, slipped you some real green. :joint1:

[Chromophore]

Completed flushing of the 4 girls using catbud's protocol. The girls are in 5 gallon pots so I was prepared to use 10 gallons. But by 5 gallons the ppm of the flow-through had stabilized, so I went with a 5 gallon flush. My ppm data for the flush was nearly identical for all four plants. For example:

water going in: 152 ppm, pH 6.6, temp 68F
1st gallon flow-through: 583 ppm, pH6.3, temp 64F
2nd gallon flow-through: 338 ppm, pH 6.1, temp 64F
3rd gallon flow-through: 316 ppm, pH 6.1, temp 65F
4th gallon flow-through: 212 ppm, pH 6.2, temp 65F
5th gallon flow-through: 190 ppm, pH 6.2, temp 64F
6th gallon flow-through: 188 ppm, pH 6.3, temp 66F
7th gallon flow-through: 192 ppm, pH 6.3, temp 65F
8th gallon flow-through: 180 ppm, pH 6.5, temp 65F
9th gallon flow-through: 188 ppm, pH 6.5, temp 64F
10th gallon flow-through: 202 ppm, pH 6.5, temp 65F

Despite the bump up in ppms in the 10th gallon, the flushing had clearly plateaued by the 5th or 6th gallon. Flow-through by the 5th gallon was nearly clear.

1st gallon flow-through: 297613 5th gallon flow-through: 297614


And finally, I sampled some tiny buds that I had collected and trimmed last weekend while thinning lower material from the plants. I figured it would be a good way to practice trimming and drying. I do realize that something harvested that early will probably have different effects from the ripe product, but I will say this: much to my surprise it tasted smooth and almost cool, sugary with just touch of spiciness. But very light flavor. The effects were delightful. really heady, talkative, euphoric. My anticipation for harvest is nearly unbearable.:pimp:

[OMB]

...."My anticipation for harvest is nearly unbearable."
I feel your pain. :stoned:

[Chromophore]

The two different flowering "styles" are still apparent, but the buds are starting to look "dense" for lack of a better word. I've been using a stereo-microscope to check trichomes. Wow what a treat to view them that way. Seeing them at this magnification (50-120X), I'm revising my earlier descriptions. I would say the majority are still clear, whit a sizable fraction which appear to be still forming (heads haven'e opened up completely). Cloudies only make up maybe 25%. I think I've got another two weeks for sure at this rate.




297743 297744

[growdemon]

cool, lemon skunk 9 weeks afggoey 8 weeks that should be an interesting cross. This will be a heavy indica with some sativa after tones. As lemon skunk is a 50/50 hydrid & afgooy I believe is 80/20 "indica dominant".

look at them little orange hairs! this guy will be loaded with those, You may want to consider going a bit longer given the size of the plants to allow the buds to fully mature

:thumbsup:

[catbuds]

I agree with growdemon. Think you have a little longer to go than just 2 wks. I enlarged the pics, & I think you will have more, & plumper trichromes. Just keep an eye on trich color with your 'scope, you'll be fine. I can't wait to hear dried bud weight! I bet you're already doing the happy dance! Boy, are you gonna be tired before harvest even gets here! Maybe you should sit down, burn a fattie & get some rest, Jungle Boy! LOL! ;)

[Chromophore]

Agree with you both. A grower friend of mine came over last night and looked things over carefully. He said the largest buds are at best 1-2 weeks away, probably 2-3. Then there is a ton of stuff below them. I just have to be patient. I'm going to stat logging trichome color, size and density for each plant.

[Chromophore]

Thanks Growdemon the lineage on those as best as I can tell:
seeds: Afgooey x Lemon Skunk, f1

Afgooey= Afghani#1 x Maui Haze Apparently Afgooey takes on most of her Indica parent's traits, though people really like the effect and consider it balanced for an Indica dom. The smell of these plants is like warm candy apple mixed with skunk. Weird but very pleasant.

Lemon Skunk= Skunk#1 x Citral (or "unknown" skunk, there are several varieties out there apparently) this one is Sativa dominant.

I'm really looking forward to testing this cross. I think it may be a very interesting combination of exotic flavor and electric effects.

[budbro28]

they look great my friend.

[OMB]

Wow....Just wow. That 2nd pic is amazing. How many megapixel? Great Shot, and amazingly frosted, that will be some potent medicine.
"Welcome to the Jungle..." :) comes to mind with your grow...awesome.

[Chromophore]

OMB I use a Canon 5D MkII which has a 22MP sensor, but most of theses type images have been cropped. I shot these with a 180mm Macro lens. I'm not entirely happy with my photographs so far because I can't get things to be completely still. This is important, because at such magnification you have to stop your aperture way down to get everything in focus. That means a long shutter speed, and the main air exchange fan creates just enough movement to make problems. I could shut it off but things heat up real fast when I do. I'll keep playing with it. Maybe I'll get some good ones tonight.

[Chromophore]

Managed to raise my HPS almost 5 inches and that really opened up the light. Did some more thinning because I have a ton of bud development in the low to mid canopy and it's just dense in there. I hate taking healthy fan leaves but I need to get some light in there, and because the big colas are so heavy now that they want to fall over, I'm forced to stake and tie things up, and that makes it even more crowded. But the bud production now is just jaw-dropping. I simply can't capture it properly in a photo. There are buds appearing in every nook and cranny of the canopies, even growing sideways out of other buds :jawdropper: My grower friend was over again last night and he was blown. He thinks I still have 2-4 weeks to go as some plants are ahead of others and the trichomes are still clear, and he says the production is still ramping up and the plants are still green and lush, making him constantly shake his head and giggle.

Here is a pic of two of the plants after staking 297795 The plant on the right is the one I am really excited about. The colas are still filling in (some stem still visible between buds) but the calyxes are plump and bright green. But what really intrigues me about this plant, is that the colas are up to 16 inches in length (one may end up 2 feet in length if it fills in completely), and the trichomes are incredibly dense. Almost all water clear. My friend was amazed that this plant is putting trichomes on stems, petioles, and even on the larger fan leaves! He just looked at me and said, "dude, this plant is a winner". I wasn't able to get good close-ups last night, but here is a couple of pics closer up on that plant:

297797 and cropped a bit more 297798

All four plants back in the room and really you can't even see most of the action. It is truly a jungle. 297799

The fragrance of these plants is intriguing. Really hard to describe. There is a definite musky, earthy dark tone, but also something heavy and sweet, like caramel and sour apple. One plant definitely has some skunk to it, but the other three are really dark and sweet. It just keeps getting better. Waiting for harvest is almost agonizing.

[OMB]

Best damn first grower I ever saw...:thumbsup: Chromo? I can see why your friend just giggles looking at your forest, but the anticipation is a killer, no?

[Chromophore]

A few more trichome pics. Wow, photographing under an HPS is a challenge. Really harsh, unforgiving light. Before I harvest I'm going to pull these out into normal light and see if I can get some decent macro shots. These plants deserve it.

Anyway, here are a couple shots of trichome development on pheno #4, which is the plant I'm most excited about 297811 and 297812






here's a shot showing the trichome production on the petioles and surfaces of the larger fan leaves on this plant 297813 I think the Afgooey mother's traits are really coming through in this plant. Sticky, stinky and still a ways to go. All I can say is, wow.:dance:

[OMB]

Love those Macro shots Chromo. That Pheno 4 is amazing. I sure understand why you would want to clone her! :jointsmile:

[Chromophore]

Current batch of clones. OMB you can see the two pheno 4 flowering twigs in the rear. After one day they look ok. I'm wondering if I should remove all of the flowers from them and just let the small fan leaves remain. Also note the offending rockwool cubes. I don't like the fact that there is a plastic wrap around each one because it seems like it would suffocate them, but nowhere have I found instructions on whether to remove them or not. :wtf: The heat mat is keeping things up towards 68F this time as opposed to 55, so hopefully that will stimulate growth a bit. The tray is being held away from direct contact with the heat mat by some wood blocks. I may remove them and see what my temp reaches. I'm in a basement office space and it's cold in these parts, so that may be the way to go.

297818


Also, I was careful this time to apply rooting hormone to the lower node area first. I then lowered the twig into a glass of water until the water level was just above where I wanted to make my final angled cut. I then made the angled cut under water. There are two reasons I wanted to try this. First because it keeps rooting hormone from coating the fresh angled cut and possibly blocking water uptake. And also to prevent an air embolism from forming at the cut site, which will prohibit capillary action and starve the cutting. An old florist's trick.

Onward and forward.

[OMB]

Looks good Chromo! Now comes the waiting game...I would try and get the temp to 75 degree's on those cuttings, but either way it's a big improvement over the 55 you had. Cutting of the flowers?...I don't know my friend. I would think that would actually be a good idea, but I would be concerned the twig would concentrate energy trying to repair the cut instead of rooting.
You might consider adding a drop of Big grow to a cup of water and spritzing/watering with that mix, anything to encourage root growth with those flowering cuts.
Biggest thing with the 3 I took in flower was being patient.
It took 3 weeks for them to root and "turn" back to Veg. Glad to see you have plenty of stem....worst comes to worst and they didn't "go", you can cut 'em again as Weezard
explained and get another shot with the same cuts.
Breathe on 'em, talk to 'em and keep them warm brother. Everyone likes encouragement! :)

[Chromophore]

From a few days ago. Such graceful, beautiful plants. I never really appreciated them until I grew them.

297858

[crystaliscious]

Good Job!!!

Once you appreciate them- they show you the real shit then….have fun!

[catbuds]

Chromo, do not remove the plastic from around the rockwool cubes! It helps with the capillary action, keeps the cube intact, & once the roots start growing, it keeps them from being exposed. Your buds are awesome! Anticipation is a killer! Makes it oh so tempting to harvest a tad too young, but DONT DO IT! Just follow the trichromes guys, no matter what the leaves, hairs or anything else is doing.... follow the trichromes.....
-- So Chromo, if these clones take off for you, do you think you'll be making a large part of your grow from them? (BTW, when you take cuttings from budding plants, or even veg plants, you can keep them under 12/12 & they will still do their thing, maybe even better. No stress from going from flower to veg & back again). Have you read up on re-vegging? GREAT thing to do. Gives you many, many branches to clone from, or a REALLY heavy producer the second time around. If you flower it out again, you will have to thin the hell out of it though, still almost forcing you to clone it. But you may want to give it a try with your favorite girl. She's worth it. :)

-remove the plastic only when you plant it into soil. :)

[Chromophore]

Thanks, catbuds. I left the rockwool condoms on, and I'm glad I did because I don't think it would be easy to get them back on once they're off! My plan for the cloned buds was to return them to veg, and use them as further cloning stock for my next growing cycle, which won't be until August or September. This timing is a problem because I have a number of young clones of varying ages hanging around now with nothing to do until next Fall. I cloned that budding plant based only on feel, because it feels like the mother is going to be killer. And I have a confession to make, of which I am not proud: when I took clones from these plants back in November, before they started flowering, I did not label them properly, and now I don't know which goes to which. Additionally, not all of the mothers produced successful clones, while others produced several. So until I flower them I won't know whether I even have one from that plant. Major brainfart.:mad: I also have clones from the batch of plants which are presently waiting to flower (different strain from what is flowering now). So I have to figure out how to babysit all these clones over the period when my basement and grow-room are getting torn down and remodeled this summer.

As for the flowering plants, I have been taking careful notes on the trichomes, and am lucky that I have a nice little stereo-microscope to view them with. As of last night, I see about equal amounts of clear and cloudy trichomes, and no ambers. Some plants are a little further ahead of others but that's the average at this point. Based on how they have developed up to this point, I'm guessing at least another week to 10 days. Though they are looking nice, they still have some swelling and filling to do. Hopefully.

[Chromophore]

Coming up on 8 weeks here in a day or two, and some changes are occurring. Trichomes are definitely moving along in development, probably 20/70/10 clear/cloudy/amber. Odor is intense. The plants are slowing their water intake and fan leaves are starting to yellow. Some buds are still not as filled in as I would like, but I think I got some stretch in early flowering, and many of my upper nodes are fairly far apart. Lots of big chunky nuggets though. I feel like some of the top buds may be close to harvest, but I'm going to wait a couple days and see how fast trichome ripening is taking place. It seems like it has accelerated, while the plants themselves are slowing. Pictures tonight.

[Chromophore]

Well, 8 weeks of 12/12 complete, and the urge to harvest is almost unbearable. But I know they need more time. I'm still getting swelling, the process is moving up the buds, and the in the lower portions the calyxes look like the have seeds in them they're so plump. But the upper parts still need some swelling. Trichomes are on average at a nice distribution of maybe 25/65/10 (clear/cloudy/amber), si that could take a little more ripening as well. But I'm guess by next weekend the clippers and scissors are going to be in action. Some pics:

the widest angle I can get. They've pretty much filled the room with a Sea of buds. 297958 another pano 297959

my favorite bud, she is a long, continuous spiral of egg-sized buds. She looks like she's dancing 297960


this is a shot of my "favorite" plant. I call her "Sativa" because she has a longer, taller habit with long, narrow colas. But her buds are deeply aromatic and coated with sticky, gooey trichomes.

The long bud on the right measures 27 inches in length. So far:smokin: 297961
This is a shot of (part of) my second favorite plant, I call her "Indica" because she has a relatively compact, bushy habit and fat, pagoda-shaped buds. She is a beauty 297962 Amazing the variation in this f1 batch of seeds.

[tlranger]

Pretty aren't they

[Chromophore]

ranger they are amazing. I never really thought much about the aesthetics of these plants until I grew them. I always thought of them as simple, kind of boring even in flower. Seeing them develop and getting to see them in person has totally changed my mind. Datura is still my favorite plant in terms of elegance and blossom beauty, but Cannabis is making up ground quickly.

[GrowBitch2013]

@ranger - This is pure art ! Nature and the gardener are the artists :-D
I love the pics of your plants - seeing such great buds make the GrowBitch horny like always ;-)

@Chromophore - I can feel exactly what you are saying about the feeling seeing them developing.
I do this the first time and it's so exciting like the first love in teenager age. Damn this is crazy....

Hugs to u guys...

By the way.. anybody seen catbuds ? I miss her... Hope you're fine sister..

[Chromophore]

I think she's hanging out over at MNS forum.

[catbuds]

Still here. Been forum hopping trying round everybody up. Almost there. I'm a member of several forums & I'm trying to round up those of us who wander 'off topic' a lot & get us all over to MNS where they have PMs (private messages). There are also topics that are taboo here & MNS actually has a sub-forum for. This will always be our 'home forum', we're just broadening our horizons. Come on over! ;)

DATURA!!!! Guess we all know about the wild variety; grows rampant in corn fields here, but the cultivar, Angel Trumpet! OMG! Prettiest thing I've EVER seen! Every garden should have a few! I am so enraptured by the beauty of this flowering wonder that I nearly have an orgasm just looking at it! Now if we want to discuss the wild native, we'll have to do so on the other fourm (& WE CAN!!!!). This flower is so beautiful & HUGE, the one companion that can do it justice is the big beautiful blue clematis, Jackimani (sp). Takes my breath away just visualizing that! There's one new hybrid of Angel Trumpet that I don't care for. Forgot the name, but its purple & the flowers are upright. A huge plant with HUGE blossoms should have pendulus, hanging flowers. On the upright purple one, you only get to see the backsides of the flowers. If I want to see backsides, I'll go to a strip club! Ok, off topic! Got some forum hopping to do! ;)

[Chromophore]

I grow 5 or 6 varieties in my flower garden, depending on what re-seeds and what other types of seeds I can find. Buy them mostly from JL Husdon, Seedsman. My very favorite is a variety of D. Wrightii. It has a strong but graceful habit with huge, silvery-green leaves, and the flowers...hard to describe how awesome they are. Huge crystal white trumpets with subtle band of electric blue/violet at the very edges. The throat turns to a creamy butter color as it gets down to the anthers. They open at dusk and release an aroma that comes straight from Heaven. People on walks always stop at my house and marvel at them when they're heavily in bloom, usually in September. In the morning I find bees and other flyers down inside, rolling around totally intoxicated and coated in pollen. :cool:

[catbuds]

Yeah..... Angel Trumpets have a way of making even roses seem drab. ;) I want to grow a bunch this year & get some new clematis to go with them. :

[Chromophore]

Ok, ok, I admit it...I'm weak. I gave in to my primal urges, yet again. Yes, that's right, I harvested a cola last night, even though I knew it probably wasn't ready and everyone has warned OMB and I to be patient. I swear the bud was telling me to do it. I hadn't smoked any so I know what I heard was real:weedpoke: Aside from that, my reasoning was that the buds seemed uniformly swollen from their bases to their tips, hairs completely brown, and the trichomes were mostly amber and cloudy. However, once I got the branch all trimmed up and hung, I took a nuggety little bud off of it and popped it under my scope. Down inside the calyxes the trichomes were dense and swollen, but evenly mixed clear and cloudy. No ambers. So the trichomes on the sugar leaves were more developed than those inside the bud. I guess the lesson here is that I need to stop using the sugar leaves to gauge ripeness. Oh well, it's just one cola, and not really a huge one anyway. I'll go back to twiddling my thumbs and checking my watch constantly....

Here's the workbench, patiently waiting for action...297974 Some little nugs I've been sampling...297975




Current batch of clones after 8 days...297976 The front and middle are clones taken from my current batch in veg (Purple Wreck X Lemon Skunk). The front two are taken from the most vigorous plant and the clones reflect that. The rear portion of the tray contains my experiment. These are cuttings taken from my two "favorite" plants currently in flower (Afgooey X Lemon Skunk) from which I did not previously have successful clones. So far they look like they're doing ok. I'm following the advice given to me by several people and am watering them with oxygen-saturated water at least once a day. Keeping temp.s between 69-75F. What I would like to do if possible, is get those flowering clones to root, then try to continue flowering, but try to force one of them to produce male flowers. If I can, I'll take pollen and fertilize the flowering clone from the sister plant. Assuming I can even do this, is it a good idea? Are sibling crosses considered a wise move, or does that usually give unpredictable/poor results?

[Shovelhandle]

personally, I look for the majority of the trics to turn cloudy. My friends and I like like ti that way. All cloudy and amber is way late and too narcotic for us, usually. With some sativa strong strains you'll wait FOR EVER for cloudy to change to amber and it may never happen at all. So you probably have some excellent smoke from that bud when it's dried and cured.

[Chromophore]

Yes I know catbuds likes lots of ambers for her pm meds. I'm looking for something a bit more social and talkative. My patient does have pain issues, but she has made it clear that she doesn't want chronic that will render her inoperable. So maybe clear/cloudy is the way to go.

[catbuds]

You're going in the right direction with backcrossing siblings. I'm not even gonna try to spell this one, just give you an abrev. Gib. acid. Hormone to induce male flowers on fem plant. :)

[Chromophore]

Gibberellic acid. When I tried to type it the auto-correct gave me "Barbarella". LOL. Great advice catbuds, I have access to GA.

[catbuds]

Ok. I found the spelling....Gibberillic acid. You do however know you will be making feminized seeds, right? You can let her pollenate herself in addition to her sister. Google, cannabis & the use of gibberillic acid. :)

[Chromophore]

297984gibberellic acid. She's a beauty..

[catbuds]

Ugh!!! I misspelled gibberellic! Hand wrote it & I made the 'e' too skinny! LOL! BTW.... why does your basement look like a lab? Hummm.... Are you re-creating Frankenstein's little buddy down there or something? Guess that would be appropriate since he's green! :)

[Chromophore]

My basement is part lab, part grow op, and part studio. I do all of my own printing, matting and framing of my photography, which is a little side-vocation. At times I have a pretty dense lab setup down here. I have a distillation and extraction setup for purifying essential oils and terpenoid fractions. All for fun, of course.

[catbuds]

Have you ever used it in a way to try to breed/seed the 'unmentionable plant'? Just a thought. I'm thinking some plant growth hormone should be able to induce flowering/ reproduction? Maybe you & Crystal could get together on that as a project? She has lots of the plant.... you have access to various hormones/ chemicals? But then again, I have food poisoning, so I could be delirious. :)

[catbuds]

I do all my own stuff too. Most photogs take their work to a mat/frame shop, but I'm too picky. And then again too, I do know photogs who can't cut a mat to save their lives!
-- For fun? Chromo, .. are you trying to tell us you're a.... a GEEK!?!? (Of course you are! That's why we love you!) :)

[Chromophore]

No, but if I can get them healthy I'm going to try flowering. I will have access to a controlled enviro growth chamber, so I can probably pull it off. Food poisoning? From what?

[Chromophore]

Matting is a bit of an art, that's for sure. I have piles of screwed-up mats that I don't want to throw away, but I don't know what to do with them. I do mostly B&W prints with an Epson Stylus 4880. Phenomenal printer. With good quality paper it makes stunning prints.

[catbuds]

I'm iced in here. I can't get out, nobody can get in. Not knowing when I'll be able to get to the store, I decided to make a bologna sandwich with mayo. Both old & should have went in the trash can. Now its my head that is in the trash can!
-- Damned! I hate winter!

-- I love b&w film! Tray printing on kodak fiber based paper! Rich, deep blacks & awesome silvery grey tones! As soon as I got my digital camera, my house mate ran down in the basement & gives my enlarger to her boyfriend for scrap metal without even asking. But then again, as soon as the glamor photgraphy studio I worked at closed down, she gave him my camera, that's why I got the digital to begin with. She did a lot of shit like that. I kicked her out minus one front tooth! But anyway. Miss my old slr & my dark room. :(

[Chromophore]

Boy I'm going to raked over the coals for this I have a feeling...last night I went crazy in my bud room and did some heavy thinning. What finally got to me was how much the buds seemed to be drowning in an ocean of fan leaves, most of which are yellow or yellowing rapidly. It was just so dense that large areas of branches, pretty much only the tops, are really receiving good strong light. And all these damned dying leaves blow around in the fan stream and abrade the buds and trichomes. I know many of you are proponents of leaving the fan leaves alone, but in this case I realized I was only a few days from harvesting at least the top stuff, and I want the buds and sugar leaves to get a full dose of light while they swell. I didn't cut much that was green, but I did thin out a lot of overlapping greens. Anyway what's done is done.:error: Feel free to explain to me why what I have done is stupid and I will add it to my "learning the hard way" folder which is fairly well stuffed.

The one thing this DID do was show me in no uncertain terms just how much material I have. If the calyxes keep swelling at the rate they are now, in a few days I'm going to be a very happy farmer (unless removal of leaves causes catastrophic failure in which case, um, well I'm not sure what kind of farmer I'll be).

And finally, while in there with my scythe, I accidentally hit the "off" button on the timer which controls the lights. Flipped on the green light and carefully turned everything back on and checked connections. Nothing seemed worse for it. The next morning I check it at 8:30 am just to make sure everything's as it should be, as I do every morning. The light is supposed to go off at 6 am. IT WAS STILL ON :mad::wtf:. Somehow turning it off the night before had caused the program to become altered so that the "off" setting changed to "on". :mad: :wtf: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE IDENTICAL TIMER WHICH RUNS THE LIGHTS IN MY SALVIA ROOM, AND WENT UNNOTICED FOR 2 MONTHS CAUSING THE PLANTS TO GO HAYWIRE. Stupid digital timers. I'm going back to my old clunky analog timers. I may not be able to tell to the exact minute what I am setting it to, but at least off is off and on is on. Sheesh. Pics tonight!

[Chromophore]

BTW, I have read some interesting debates about the issue of removing fan leaves and when. Also their is a fair bit of scientific literature on the subject. What I have gleaned is that it all depends on when you do it, what you do it to, strain, and scale of removal. Some say the old leaves suck energy from the plant. There is no evidence that I know of to support this. However, there is at best conflicting evidence of the benefits of a yellowing/dying leaf. While some carbohydrate can be gleaned from these, it seems to me that green calyxes and sugar leaves are fully capable of producing what they need at this stage. These buds are swollen to the point of popping. There is a lot of photosynthetic surface area there. What I am most concerned about is stressing the plant by removing too much at once. It wil be interesting to see if swelling markedly slows now or if the plants seem to not notice. Pretty sure I'm going to get a spanking from Weezard for this.

[catbuds]

When your this far along & leaves are yellowing, its okay. Plenty of bud leaf for photosynthesis. I swear there is something in the air! Everybody is suddenly having some sort of equipment failure all within 3 days! Today the ballast died in my veg closet.... :( I'm in the middle of installing my T5's in there (I'm on break right now. Crampy tight spot making my back h u r t !). Going to 12/12. Too many plants! Had to change all my grow plans, & no clones. No room for them.... Guess it Crystal & Rangers turn for some kind of glitch. Oh no wait, Ranger already had his. My damned lights were only 2 months old. Lights of America S U C K!
-- I hope you're right about what caused the issues with your other plants & they come out of the slump ok. They should. Keeping my fingers crossed! :)

[Chromophore]

A two month old ballast is dead? What crap. Most of the electronics coming out of China (which is about 99% of what we have) seems to be getting crappier and crappier all the time. Stuff just breaks, almost immediately. I try anymore to stick with German or American made, but that really jacks the price, if you can even find it. Can you get a replacement right away?

I spoke with my Major Professor about the 24 hr light thing. It's curious because obviously people have success growing cannabis under continuous light. But the Circadian clocks in plants do more than simply time-keep for the flowering process, they also regulate hormone pathways and gene expression/suppression, which changes with the plant's development. I'm not sure how Cannabis gets around this problem, but studies have shown that C3 plants (which is most plants other than desert plants, which are C4) will not develop properly without a dark cycle to set their clocks by. In some cases the plant cannot reach maturity if given continuous light.

[tlranger]

What comes in threes?

[OMB]

No worries Chromo, it will be fine. They are tough plants. On the edge of my seat waiting for those pics buddy!

[Chromophore]

OMB my pics didn't turn out. Forgot to turn the fans off and everything is blurry. That's what happens when your stoned at 2 am and trying to do something which requires thought and attention. I'll get some more tonight. The de-forestation wasn't as bad as I thought. I left most of the green fan leaves at the top but really cleared a lot of junk out of the mid canopy. The swell is in full gear now. The calyxes in some areas look like they're turning inside out! Also found a banana-shaped male flower poking out of the top of one of the big buds. Looks just like the picture in Rosenthal's Guide. Another sign I'm getting to the end.

[OMB]

OMB my pics didn't turn out. Forgot to turn the fans off and everything is blurry. That's what happens when your stoned at 2 am and trying to do something which requires thought and attention. I'll get some more tonight. The de-forestation wasn't as bad as I thought. I left most of the green fan leaves at the top but really cleared a lot of junk out of the mid canopy. The swell is in full gear now. The calyxes in some areas look like they're turning inside out! Also found a banana-shaped male flower poking out of the top of one of the big buds. Looks just like the picture in Rosenthal's Guide. Another sign I'm getting to the end.

Oustanding Chromo! Our "Patience" is paying off finally. :thumbsup: I yanked the T5 girl's Monday night, off with their heads tomorrow night. Looking forward to the pics buddy.

[crystaliscious]

A two month old ballast is dead? What crap. Most of the electronics coming out of China (which is about 99% of what we have) seems to be getting crappier and crappier all the time. Stuff just breaks, almost immediately. I try anymore to stick with German or American made, but that really jacks the price, if you can even find it. Can you get a replacement right away?

I spoke with my Major Professor about the 24 hr light thing. It's curious because obviously people have success growing cannabis under continuous light. But the Circadian clocks in plants do more than simply time-keep for the flowering process, they also regulate hormone pathways and gene expression/suppression, which changes with the plant's development. I'm not sure how Cannabis gets around this problem, but studies have shown that C3 plants (which is most plants other than desert plants, which are C4) will not develop properly without a dark cycle to set their clocks by. In some cases the plant cannot reach maturity if given continuous light.

I know African Violets won't….it was a simple oops- it never made it to the uh oh stage with them…..;)

[Chromophore]

Still can't seem to get good representative photos, but I'll try shooting from a ladder tonight.

298088 298089 298090

Some of the stretchier, nuggety colas are still slowly filling, but there's probably no chance they will completely fill in. Still a lot of material as some of these colas are approaching 3 feet in length! 298091

I decided last night that they simply aren't ready. I see additional swelling every day, and a lot of new, white pistils forming. Trichomes uniformly cloudy with smaller clears. I'm betting another week, though a couple of the bigger upper buds may go by this weekend.

[tlranger]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it still can't beat being there, many be its the smell!!

Looks like that one on the right should feed your hunger for a day or two.

[crystaliscious]

Still can't seem to get good representative photos, but I'll try shooting from a ladder tonight.

298088 298089 298090

Some of the stretchier, nuggety colas are still slowly filling, but there's probably no chance they will completely fill in. Still a lot of material as some of these colas are approaching 3 feet in length! 298091

I decided last night that they simply aren't ready. I see additional swelling every day, and a lot of new, white pistils forming. Trichomes uniformly cloudy with smaller clears. I'm betting another week, though a couple of the bigger upper buds may go by this weekend.

The hardest part of the whole process- holding off til you know it's time….. hang tight - it's almost here! ( sample one for me! ;) )

[OMB]

Wow chromo! 3 FEET of bud!?! Amazing....all hail the new guy! Great pics, great grow buddy, more please. :)
Let's go find mama catbuds and celebrate!

[Chromophore]

3 feet, but a lot of gaps. The nuggets are starting to get dense and are really sugary, so despite the stretch and gaps, it should still add up to a decent harvest. Some of this is due to the variance in these f1 seeds. A couple of the plants have a distinctly tall, lanky habit, maybe reflecting the Sativa in their father's genes. But I also think heat stress caused some of this and that is something I must work on when rebuilding the grow rooms.