AK-47 in E&F - rockwool/clay medium (First Grow Log)

@subzero - Thanks alot first of all for all the help and sticking around to help me out along the way....your assistance has been priceless. I do believe now that I'm starting to get on the right track of things and I believe my next grow will have much better results due to all your help.

I think I've made my mind up to a degree so far. I'm going to continue growing out these two females for sure...I'm just going to swap the reservoir and flood table with my 20gal. reservoir and 2x2 table....no use using a 40gal. reservoir and 2x4' flood table for 2 plants..plus its alot easier to manage.

The only rub about the clones...I may have some Red Diesel clones headed my way not to long from now that I'm confindent are from good genetics. I would prefer to grow these over what I'm working with now but....I really like your idea about cloning my existing plants. I should find out in the next couple of weeks what the time line for those Diesel clones will be but I think in the mean time I'm going to try my hand at taking some clones off my existing females here and see what I can come up with. It would be good practice at the very least for when I do either get a good solid clone like I believe these Red Diesel's will be or otherwise I'll be doing a continous grow and not have to worry about seeds for the immediate (all considering they don't turn hermie on me).

I will say this, it has been stressful, exhausting, and down right frustrating. I think alot of it was due to the toxic tents...but I'm really happy all the hard work that I poored into this particular grow because I have learned so much...enouph that I think I can pull off a successful grow the next time around. Now, everything is in place with the exception of me rebuilding that other tent for a clone mother.

I'm going to wait till I get news about these Red Diesel clones before I make my final decision on the clones though I think...it would just be better if I used those over what I'm working with now. Plus it will give me more time to get that tent set up and thats going to put more pressure on me dropping some more cash on lights and its still pretty tight right now. That x4 ballast I have in my main tent was going to used for my clone mother tent.

Well, alot of things for me to decide lol. I hadn't thought about getting into the whole cloning buisness so soon but it really makes the most sense. I do have cloning hormones already so I'm at least partially prepared..and I've seen a cloning process in person that is at the bare minimum 70% affective period. I'd say more like 90% honestly. If that piques your curiosity, if and when I get around to taking clones I can take pictures to show you the method. I have yet to see any grow video/online tutorial/etc. show it this way. They always tell you take like 40+ clones are something rediculous like that. Well you said two clones per plant so it sounds like you know what your doing. so Nevermind, lol....now I'm rambling. Well, I'm going to see if I can get some info on these RD clones maybe this weekend to kind of speed the process up here. I'll take some photo's this weekend up my tent after I swap the reservoir and flood table out. By that time the other two questionable plants should have shown there sex so I can either keep or pull them for sure. Have a good one! :trooper:

Forgot to mention in subzero but, femaleseeds.nl only delivers to European countries with the exception of Germany.

Gypsy Nirvana's Seed Boutique

They sell them here bert, not much variety here but they do post to the usa, so if you are actually in canada i can't see a problem either.

Red diesel sounds like a great option.

Subzero.

Bert, you want to take clones asap before they get too far into flower, otherwise you will have to wait until they switch back into veg mode.

heres what you do until you get your clone tent up and running.

soak 4 small cubes in ph 5.5 water leave overnight

next day make new smaller holes in the rw cubes with a toothpick at an angle about 1/2 inch deep. I find the existing holes dont hold the stems tight enough.

shake the excess water out of the cubes.

take a clone, cut at the longest angle as you can just below the 3rd node.

you should have a top then 2 leaves then a cut, about 3" long yes?

dip the cutting in the hormone and blow off the excess.

put the cutting into the toothpick hole at an angle, tight.

now get 4x 10 oz white styrofoam cups (disposable coffee cups) place the clone in the rockwool in a ring of damp white paper towel inside the cup, the ring of pt simply holds the cube from falling around, got me so far?

now get an elastic band and some saran wrap, spray the clone with water and cover the top of the cup with the plastic wrap and seal it over with the e/b, airtight.

go to the hardware store and get a couple of cool white (blue spectrum0, flourescent screw in bulbs, do you know the ones, the 3 loop energy saver ones? Equivelant to 100w (ish), get some lampholders that you can screw to a wooden frame that you need to also make about 1ft square. mount 1 at one end and the other opposite. got me? you could put some legs on too so the lamps are about 12in above the floor. also a piece of cardboard over the top and 4 sides if you want.

put the cups with clones and airtight lid under the lights 18/6 for 10-14 days, dont move them or open the tops for at least 10 days, they should have condensation on the top throughout, after 10 days put some (3 or 4)holes with a sharp pencil throught the saran wrap, leave for 4 more days.
remove the plastic and....

Presto, rooted clones with little expense and low energy.

Put them in soil and keep em as moms.


They might wilt for 24 hours but should perk up if all is well.
After 72 hours of cloning, if they arent looking dead, they WILL root if you are patient, dont move them and dont look at them every 5 minutes!

Let me know what you think

Subzero :)

I like your recommendation sub. Only problem I'm running into here is when the clones are ready to trasplant into a tent, I'm still using the 4 slot ballast for my flowering females in there right now. So basically I won't have a light for the clones once they are big enouph to transplant right now unless somehow those two females are ready to harvest by that point. Btw, I like that website, seems like a big enouph selection to me. I think when I do decided to go from seed again thats where I'll start. I need to look at prices on ballast and other lights but I'm not seeing me having the money for it right now. What you think I should do?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bertoxxulous

I like your recommendation sub. Only problem I'm running into here is when the clones are ready to trasplant into a tent, I'm still using the 4 slot ballast for my flowering females in there right now. So basically I won't have a light for the clones once they are big enouph to transplant right now unless somehow those two females are ready to harvest by that point. Btw, I like that website, seems like a big enouph selection to me. I think when I do decided to go from seed again thats where I'll start. I need to look at prices on ballast and other lights but I'm not seeing me having the money for it right now. What you think I should do?

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you could always just get some fluro tubes for your clones and just shelve them somewheres....

But if money is an issue, then just work with what you got and try the cloning next time...After the harvest you can then purchase need-bees for your cloning section. Take it a step at a time and always remember that PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

yo bert,
sucks about the males! sorry.
i just did sour diesel and its a great producer and knocks you on your ass. it took about 10/11 weeks to finish and the strech phase was at least 4 weeks so dont over veg. i vegged like 5-6days and finished about 4ft tall.
if you know the clones are quality i would clone off of those and try seeds when your ready for something else to smoke. but i would do what sub said and take a few cuttings now for practice even if you dont use them.
i normally top as early as i can. once i start vegging the clones its about 5-7 days. i just wait until theres 4 nice new nodes and strip off the 2 bottom nodes that made up the clone before, then pinch off what would have been the 5th node. you dont get any cuttings doing it this way so with this blue cheese i left more like 6-7 nodes and then topped. tonight i just took cuttings from the extra bottom 2-3 branches.
i think i snapped a few pics with my phone while i was topping...i'll check.
i also took a pic of the door/vent idea i had a while back if you want to try and vent the future 600 hoods.
if that tray is the size of the lights i would keep it in there and try to spread those 2-4 ladies out. it might be too late for one of those scrog net things but you can still bend them with twist ties and maybe supercrop later. i would drill 1/4in holes in the lip around the edge of the tray and get a roll of twist ties, tie one end to the part of the plant you want to bend then pull it in the direction you want it to bend, figure out which hole to tie it off to cut just a little extra. thread the twist tie through the hole and tie it off. it may look funny at first laying sideways but the top of the branch will turn toward the light before you know it.
i just did this 2 nights ago at a buddys place.
well back to work for me.

Hi Bert,

I was thinking that the clones you take would be your new mothers, IE you are going to take clones off them not flower them. I have a mother JTR that is 2 years old and is only 10 inches tall (through low light,light feeding and pruning). If you took clones now, in about 5 weeks these new mothers would be ready to take clones from, those new clones will take 10-14 days to root properly.That is about 7 weeks of time from now that you would be ready to put them in a tent. Correct? you have been flowering the ones you have now for a week already and ak47 is about an 8 week strain so now is the time to take your moms if you want ak 47 clones for your next grow. Is this a bit clearer?

The site ain't bad, the lack of selection i pointed out was specificly for the femaleseeds.nl selection they have. Your best bet on there would be ww/bb,IMO. I have read good things about that strain. Stay away from GHS.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Subzero :thumbsup:

Icbh, good to hear from you again!

I was thinking the same about dropping the tray size but I thought it best not to complicate things any more! Tieing them down as you said is a good idea, so bert if you are going to do this keep the big tray in there otherwise you wont have tying points in the right place.

I like your door Icbh, let us know what you think of the cheese.

Subzero :thumbsup:

the cheese has been a bit of a challenge so far. the clone guy it turns out took them post flower and about 4 of them had buds starting to set. :mad: that stunted them a few days under the 400mh. then i think i got some bad superthrive trying to bring them out of their shock. it turned the mix all cloudy and f-ed up the ph. flushed and another stunt for a few days. they look great now under the 1000hps. about 12in tall going into pots tomorrow and flip in a few days.
i did the cuttings in 1in plastic lined rockwool cubes soaked only for a few hours in aprox 5.5ph (i normally soak for at least 12hrs but...). i stuffed those in a tray insert and put that in a solid tray. the insert is not made for those cubes and i soaked the cubes before putting them so they are a tight fit and they sit way up in the insert. the tray sits on a heat mat in a cabinet in the laundry room. a dome covers the tray and the vents are half open. they look great after 24hrs.

hey sub, when you take cuttings from your moms how many nodes do you want to leave on the moms branch after you take the cutting. like if theres a branch that you want to clone with like 6 nodes and your clone will take up the three at the top 3-4in that would leave 3 nodes that will take over as the main branch. is that too many or not enough? i just dont want my mom to be too much of a bush. not that i dont like a nice bush.

heres a homemade 3m heppa filter for intake