Shov Winter 2013-2014 Sativa Grow

Outstanding Shovelhandle, those are beauties! Man, they look huge to me, my little "stumpies" wouldn't reach those girl's knee's. Lol
Cuttings....My cuttings the first time vegged about 5 weeks. The second one's vegged about 4 weeks and are almost done now. The next ones had 4 weeks Veg, and the ones after that will have gone 12 weeks. That will be interesting, I may have to rethink that one.
Anyway, for what I'm trying to accomplish with "little" girls it would seem a 4 week Veg is great, but I may try going 12/12 right after I pot up from cuttings just to see.
Mama plant is going 12/12 too....She is a freakin' outta control bush! She is 28 inches wide and only 16 inches tall. She is pretty well tied and topped for height, but I will have to thin her first or the middle and lower will never get light.
She is my new HPS/CFL test Girl. :smokin:

man this looks like art! the bottom one kind of looks like a hawk or an eagle with its wings spread out.

Plants are all doing well. Some seem very close to harvest but the harvest will be staggered as some plants are still putting out pistils like mad and one is a long way off yet. One plant will still be getting nutrients and the rest just water or molasses water.

After the cold weather we are having a thaw and rain causing flooding. And we're going away for a week this Tuesday. So I had moved all the plants onto the floor for more headroom, now I have to put them back up on 12" blocks of Styrofoam and set up the sump pump. It's not automatically controlled so you have to babysit it. We have a house sitter who will be around a bit as he took vacation time from work. This morning the water has yet to reach the level to need pumping. I'm hoping this continues for the week. I would bet that some plants will be harvested as soon as we get back. I left (2) two gallon watering cans full for the sitter to water one time in the middle of the week. That will have to do it as I don't want to rely on him to determine when and how much to water or feed.

Sounds like you got it covered, awaiting smoke report, have fun this week.

Headin'... 6:00am flight to Newark and then four hour flight to Punta Cana. See you all in a week.

Saw you back on, home now, look ok. Keep pump running? Have fun on trip, hope so. Smoke any good bud, besides yours?

back home. got in 12 am. been busy as hell catching up with everything. I am exhausted. I'm going to burn a joint in a minute. First smoke in over one week.
I checked out the plants, they are doing great! big, dense buds. I can't fit my hand around most of them. This is a least sativa phenotype.
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Bottom most buds are extremely frosty. I checked trics of the couple of plants that look the most ready, not many new pistils but the trics are growing long and filling up, clear with some clear/ambers. but not ready. This haze is a very long flowering strain. The slowest one I'd guess is an 18-20 week finisher.
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They are in week 15 since germination. To update, the first batch of seeds to germinate were topped, the second, about a week later I just supercropped them. They are a perfect height for my grow spot and the 5 gallon pails. I can't imagine if I had just let them grow or if I had vegged them for a month or two. Not to mention, I'd still be at least a couple of months from harvest.

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You're back! Hope you didn't have to dig your way in. Hope you were lucky enough to have this artic blast miss you, or maybe it hasn't made its way up yet, as we're just now getting the tail end.
-- Plants look great! You've got a good house sitter. Thank god he/she didn't over water! Now its time to rest up from the vacation! :)

Thank you, Cat!

I frequently check my grow area at night to make sure the lights are out. Tuesday night I saw that some of the lights were on! I don't know how long the plants were getting 24 hours of light instead of 10.5 hours I was away for a week. I didn't give the house-sitter any other instructions but to water once with four gallons of pHed water. He did say that he noticed that the lights were on at night, which they should not have been. So Wednesday morning I changed out the bad timer (I use two timers). I hope the plants do not react to the extra lighting for a few days.

I also watered with molasses water and changed the (4) grow spectrum T5HOs for (4) bloom spectrum tubes. Also since the cold spell has been in effect, -10ºf this am, I put a heater on a timer in the grow area to go on an hour after lights out until lights on. Then I realized that the electric heater elements do put out visible light (they glow orange/red in the near infrared spectrum) so I arranged the heater as to not shed light on the plants. The temperature this am was a bit warmer, 60-65º for a low temp. I'll increase the thermostat to run a bit warmer next night. This will only be as needed until things warm up from this deep freeze.

The plants are doing very well, heavy buds and lots of long trichomes. Both the topped plants and the super-cropped plants are from 24' to 36' in height, perfect! I arranged them in stadium formation (two shortest plants in front row, then thee taller then the four tallest) with the reflectors on the appropriate angle. I found a couple of little bud pieces yesterday when I was cleaning up and put them on the hood to dry. I have a low tolerance so it's hard to tell much of anything, but I got a good buzz from the first 2 hits.

The plants are maturing at various rates from a plant with no new pistils to plants still packing on layers of pistils. I'm considering harvesting the first plant in a few days to a week from now. Although I've had a number of comments on growing this haze strain on 12 hours of light right from germination (now 10.5 hours), I'm convinced that the grow is going better than it would have If I had tried to veg them for any period of time. I'm way ahead of the time schedule to harvest, the electrical demand is much less and the height of the grow is manageable. I will do this again for sativa heavy strains.

Very nice shovelhandle, those are some BIG buds! You are running 10.5 in flower? There was some mention of that from Weezard awhile back, Indica strains and equatorial balance with light and time. I may have to try that, looks like it's working for you! :thumbsup:
I found with my stumpy Indica strain that going to 12/12 right from works just fine....and like you said, cuts about 2 weeks to a month off the turn.
You and Mama having timer trouble reminds me to keep a close watch on mine.

shovelhandle I also had a light stay on for 24 hrs at about day 21 and luckily I noticed no ill effects. I read a story recently about a guy who discovered his timer was broken and was turning the lights on and off randomly for varying amounts of time. He had no idea how long it had been that way. He noticed that the small flowers had stopped developing and indications that male flowers were forming. He ended up tossing the entire crop as he could not get them to resume normal flowering. All because of a dumb cheapo timer. I guess the lesson is we shouldn't scrimp on quality when it comes to timers. I routinely check my flower room during dark cycle to make sure nothing's on. I admit to having a fair amount of anxiety about it.

OMB, maybe you meant to say sativa dominant strains and equatorial light time? Mango Haze is mostly sativa and most of my phenotypes are sativa dominant. I don't know what you are referring to as far as 12/12 cutting 2 weeks to a month off the turn. The total time for the grow, start to finish will be somewhat less, the difference between running lights for 12 hours vs 18 hours for the early part of the grow saves a bit of energy. But you would expect a decrease in yield, all things being equal. But when one has height restrictions and growing haze strains one needs to do things a little differently. I usually veg for eight weeks but this strain would have been difficult to train, even with topping and LST. These strains can flower for an unbelievable long time too. Some phenotypes (with the real good sativa traits) can go 16, 20 weeks. So I'm now finishing week 15 from germination and I have a couple of phenotypes looking to finish soon. And there is one that will be the last bush standing, It should be the largest by height and weight and hopefully have the goods I'm after.

This cold snap, sub zero Fahrenheit temps for days at a time, is creating some serious challenges. With the strong wind last night the house temperature dipped below 60º! This is a well insulated home, thermal pane windows etc. The hot water circulator runs non-stop. The grow area gets up to temperature easily with lights on but at night it needs more heat so I'm using a space heater during lights out. I also warm up the plant's water to >80º.

Some odd plants... sorry for my poor photos. too busy to move out from under the HPS.

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shovel what kind of camera are you using? I might be able to explain to you how to correct for that awful HPS color cast.

that's ok chromo. neither of my digital cameras have a light setting that will overcome that yellow. I've been through all that. sorry again

You have hot water base board heat? That's the best! I grew up with it. But fridgid temps & driving winds can defeat the best insulation. I think we should all move to Weezes house! I HATE WINTER! LOL1. :)

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Originally Posted by Shovelhandle

that's ok chromo. neither of my digital cameras have a light setting that will overcome that yellow. I've been through all that. sorry again

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No auto white ballance? Most digital SLRs have that feature in the menu.

I know it's a pain to put these images through a software editor, but even the free ones like Picasa will allow you to correct the white balance. I use Lightroom, but that's because I do a lot of photography so I just routinely process everything through it. Digital SLRs have WB correction, but phone cameras and pocket digicams sometimes don't, esp older ones. The images I take in my flower room are really hard to correct because I have a combo of HPS and T5s, and the color casts are different as well as powerful. Goofing around with color balance I've achieved some fairly psychedelic images.:hippy:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shovelhandle

that's ok chromo. neither of my digital cameras have a light setting that will overcome that yellow. I've been through all that. sorry again

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Since some of us have been though the same, and the fact you almost always go to the trouble of taken them to natural light has always impressed me.

They look killer in whatever light, betting they will smoke that way too, even in the dark, and that's the real goal, right?

Back to topic.

Just photos of the plant closest to harvest.

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and one of the cat's, Moxie

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...twice, two different lighting. And when I tried to upload the file, the disk was corrupted, I had to format the disk. So I lost all those pics and I'm not going to pull them out for a photo, here's a quick test to see if the disk format worked. Now I'm freeked that the disk might get used for work and fuck up, big time. So that one's marked as NFG now.

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Plants are doing good, growing good, solid bud. Trics everywhere fillin' up.

Definitely some swell there, how exciting! I can't believe how much patience you have. I would really like to grow some Sativa strains but I don't think I could wait it out. At just 8 weeks I'm sweating bullets.

well I'm not to 16 weeks from seed yet so that's about normal for me with the usual 8 week veg. Only the lighting period was six hours less per day. I can pull one of them at any time. It getting closer... But I have a little double golf ball sections of branch drying out next to the modum. Once I find the kinds I like and I can find the seeds or cuts I need, the time to grow doesn't matter to me so much.

I agree with Chromo on the patience! That's too bad about the corrupted disk. Technology. ... it always seems to break when you depend on it most. Frustrating. Buds are looking kick ass! Hoping what's drying on your modem eases that frustration some! :)

Moxie's cute! Needs cuddles!

I not frustrated Cat. I'm pleased that it acted up at home with only a few minutes work lost. no sweat. Not so bad as a whole day or week's worth of work lost. YIKES!

Thanks, the buds are big and sticky. Maybe next week's photos will come out betterer.

Betterer? Ha ha ha! Think your spell check just broke too! But this is the 21st century! Technology should be unbreakable by now! Oh wait. I'm dreaming again! At least it was only a little bit lost. I'm used to shit like that happening when your whole life is riding on that disk! I once lost a whole semesters worth of work to a bad floppy, early 90's. Managed to recover & save that perfect GPA.
-- So what's next? More sativas? I was contemplating doing the 12/12 from seed thing with some indica, but then I thought with them being short & fast anyway, that would probably just sacrifice yield..?.. What do you think (the blueberry bubblegum)?

I have always vegged my grows until this one here so I can't guess about indica seed under 12/12 right off. I wouldn't try it myself. But I have no reason to believe it could not work out reasonably well.

yield : space : time : cost

I will be comparing this grow's metrics compared with previous successful grows. My feeling, looking at the colas and the calendar is that this grow will be above average cost/time/yield.

Looking at the colas, I'd say its gonna kick some ass! Looks like 12/12 from seed will be THE way to go with sativas. Well maybe go to 10/14 as soon as they preflower, but this has saved you some time & money on your electric bill. I'm planning on putting my clones under 12/12 from the beginning, since they will still be in preflower when I cut them. Still debating about the seeds though. Maybe just cut veg time in half. Maybe the Afghani Dream next...?...

Really really nice!!!

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a nugget from a bottom branch of one of the early finishing plants. I"ll give it a ride later, after my cold pizza and beer brunch.

Nice!! ^^^ little off road, but I bet it makes cold pizza more enjoyable. Might try it first

Most of the plants have stopped producing pistils but I've yet to see ripe, opaque trichomes. Most of the leaves are dried up and yellowing. The earlier plants to start ripening are on water only. The other plants got a feeding recently but that may be the last feeding for any of them unless the one plant still flowering continues to do so.
I've taken a lower bud that was broken from the stem and it is very potent! When I broke it open it was shimmering white crystals. I do want to harvest one plant early (mostly clear) and the rest a couple at a time. Just waiting to see some trics cloud up.

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Truly mouth watering Shovelhandle....That one bud even has a little blue bow on it....for me? ;)
Those are some beauties! My little stumpy plants have size "envy".

Looking very very nice, staggered harvest - your always thinking!!