Flowering log / Picture log

So since I gave up on my regular log I am going to at least do a flowering log. This will pretty much be a picture log only going into detail when asked. I'll post pictures 1-2 times a week but will take pictures every day so I can do a time lapse animated gif.

Here is the new cab I built. I tested it and with just the circulatory fan and the exhaust fan it stays about 82 degrees at the canopy.

Tomorrow is the real test as this will be their first time in a decent sized grow space with some real lighting (400 watt hps vs 320watt CFL).

I watered them with bloom ferts tonight in the dark. I'm hoping the additional light will have noticable effects in the first week.

The plant in the 3 gallon pot is the Beast. I'm hoping she'll be a big yielder.

The 2 plants standing higher in the back are ones that have yet to sex.

The 3 up front are all females also. Well they just sprouted their first hairs the yesterday/this morning.

Groovey..
I like the box.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BobBong

Groovey..
I like the box.

---

thanks.. it's the first time I've built anything.

I meant to buy alot more studs for the frame but somehow miscalculated big time at the hardware store/forgot and I wanted to get it together asap as my plants were getting squished from their current grow space. So I made due with what I had.

Cost me $40 to put together, not including the cost of a jigsaw and a drill (another $60). I don't count them because they're reusable items.

I may build another better box after this grow now that I have a little more expierence.

current box measures 6'x3'x3'

temps with the plants in the room are about 82 degrees and 48% humidity if I keep the ambient temp in my house about 72-75 degrees.

That's with the light 19-20" away. I am going to see about installing a second box fan tonight to help bring in cooler air from the outside.

Hoping to get the temps sub 80's so I can lower the light to say.. 16" away.

so far though the plants seem to be loving the new grow area. I retied down my big plant now that she has space to spread out a bit.

I may have to do a scrog because she's getting so unruly. However being that this is my first grow I'd rather stick to one technique that I feel I've learned fairly well.

Transplants for the smaller plants into their final container will probably happen tomorrow evening right before the lights go out. Give them all evening to try to recover from the shock of being transplanted.

forgot to add, I got 1 male today. I moved him to the quarantine closet to see if he'll change his mind.

I also chopped up one male who decided he was definitely a boy with his grandiose balls for all to see. He was in quarantine.

I cut him up and ran him through the food processor. No boys are going to bust a nut over my girls!

update:

The last plant finally showed her pistils. 5 out of 7 plants I had in veg have turned female. Pretty good ratio I'd say.

They seem to be loving the hps light. I think I'm going to hold back on cutting the intake hole. They seem to be enjoying life at 82 degrees with only the circulation fan and exhaust.

I'm pretty excited to have had so many turn female.I may go ahead and transfer them into their final pots today now that I know they're all female.

good work:) keep us posted, know whacha mean bout scrogging ,just tie some limbs down myself. goodluck

Pistils on the big plant are starting to get nice and resin covered. Saw a few thick "drops" of resin hanging on most of the pistils.

I'll see if I can get a macro shot tomorrow morning before I go to work.

Transplanted 2 of the plants last night and did the other 2 this morning. Retied everything down since they're now in their final pots. I don't suspect I'll be tying them down anymore after this. 2 months till harvest probably.

The big plant I'm contemplating going from it's existing 3 gallon one to a 5 gallon pot. I'd have to add about a week onto it's flower time.

Would it be worth it from a quality standpoint? Or should I keep her in her 3 gallon pot so she puts more energy into making some potent buds instead of more foliage.

Any input will be appreciated.

Thanks

:thumbsup:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by daihashi

Would it be worth it from a quality standpoint? Or should I keep her in her 3 gallon pot so she puts more energy into making some potent buds instead of more foliage.

Any input will be appreciated.

Thanks

:thumbsup:

---

foliage should read roots.. Making more potent buds instead of roots.

Any input anyone?

it's hard to believe that my plants have only been in there about 3 days (3 days with light).

Plants are growing pretty rapidly now. I've only got my 5 females as I was able to find the males pretty quickly.

Pistils are shooting out of everywhere and I think there's bud formation, but honestly I've never grown before so I don't know what the beginnings of bud formation looks like.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

edit: the close ups are not of any of the main stems.. it's of one of the smaller side branches. My bigger cola's/main stem are even more impressive. Lights went out as I was taking pictures so I had to stop with just those 3.

Plants have been in 12/12 for 11 days so far. Really it's only in the last 3 days (since I built the bigger cabinet with HPS) that they really exploded in growth. I guess HID is a huge step up from CFL's.

Enjoy.

cut an intake hole in the grow cabinet today. I wasn't comfortable anymore with the temps sitting at 82 degrees. Mostly because one of the taller stems had the edges curling upwards, a sign of heat stress. I think it can stay at it's current position with the new intake in place.

It's a 20" box fan just like my exhaust. It was on clearance today at target for 10 bucks!!! couldn't pass it up.

I posted this in basic grow also but here are some pics of my big plant.

I'm having problems getting direct light to the main stem/the side shoots. It's been LST'd to hell and back and am wondering what else can I do aside from pruning some of the leaves.

I don't want to prune but I don't see any other options. If anyone looks here and has some ideas please let me know.

Pic 1: Side view of the plant entirely
pic 2: overhead view of the plant.
Pic 3: Me parting open the plant from the side.
Pic 4: Me parting open the plant from the top (sort've).
Pic 5: Bonus Macro shot of one of the tops of one of my smaller/medium stems. 12-13 days in 12/12 now.

Just an update. With the new intake I put in yesterday my temps at the tallest stray branch/cola is 80.3 degrees, about 2-3 inches down it's staying at a nice breezy 75.

Very pleased with the results. I went ahead and raised the other smaller plants to just below the height of the stray cola on my big plant now that I know it's safe temperature wise.

I watered my plant last night. Before i only had to water about once a week in my tiny cardboard box setup but it looks like here with the bigger room and HPS beaming down on the plants it looks like the evaporation rate is higher.

This morning I woke up to check on my plants and they look like they just exploded in growth over night and perked up. They were definitely rootbound. I'm going to be transplanting my biggest plant from a 3 gallon to a 5 gallon pot. I'm hoping this will help the branches stuck under the top foliage to stretch a bit.

I'll probably have another picture update Saturday or Sunday Evening.

Moved big bertha from a 3 gallon pot to a 5 gallon pot this evening shortly before lights went out.

The 3 gallon pot was just about as deep as the 5 gallon one (due to it being a square pot). Because of this I wasn't able to put any soil beneath the plant when I repotted; only on the sides was fresh soil put in. Hopefully this still helps. I only used promix. I chose not to use any fox farms ocean forest on recommendation of psteve since it's loaded up with lots of Nitrogen.

I know this will add a couple of weeks onto my flowering time (1-2 weeks) but a few other members said she needed to be repotted and I had already been contemplating doing it.

Hopefully this will allow the plant to stretch a little more so the cola's beneath the canopy can get some light.

The bigger pot did not really give me any additional LST room.

Bummer :(

The other plants are really growing fast though. I just transplanted them recently (2-3 days ago) and they look like they're already back in full force. This seems to have been the case with all my transplants so far with this grow. Perhaps something to do with allowing the plant to get a little rootbound before transplanting. Who knows.

Pictures coming saturday/sunday evening.

Going to start using molasses and sweet at the next watering. I will have 1 plant that I will use neither on just for comparison/test results.

Also don't know if anyone counted the visible flowering tops in the overhead picture but there's 26-27 cola's (you can't see the rest of the budsites beneath the top sites but trust me they're there.) in that picture.

Overall there's probably about 35-40 colas total on this plant. Hopefully it all comes together like I'm hoping and I get killer yield. I can't wait to see what the dry weight yield is on this plant come harvest.

Not sure if I'm going to post pictures this evening. I just spent yesterday and today flushing my plants.

They were having some odd issues that were coming off as heat stress but the temperature 8" away from the bulb was 80 degrees. Most of my canopy is about 16-18" away right now.

After flushing one of the pots I found the initial run off to be at 5.7!!!! :wtf:

I flushed the 3 gallon pots with 3 gallons of water where the ph stabilized at 6.5 (they had just been transplanted 4-5 days earliear from 1 gallon pots so I figured this was good enough).

My big plant, it's initial run off was at 5.2!! YIKES!! I don't know how this plant was even growing.

I've flushed it with 15 gallons of water but the ph is still at 6.1. I will probably run 3 more gallons through it and hope to hit 6.3-6.5.

I should've flushed long ago and this was my mistake. The plants were just showing such good growth I decided to go as long as I could without flushing.

I'm going to give them a few days and then do another mini flush (going to water half of their pot size) then I'm going to immediatley follow the flush with a heavy watering with 1/4 dose nutes.

I've drilled holes into the sides of the pot to help them dry out faster so I can get back to my normal watering schedule.

Sorry, hope to have pictures wednesday or as soon as they show improvement; whichever comes first.

It's odd though, despite the fact that my PH was so low my plants were still growing pretty fast. These plants are pretty hardy and seem to be able to take alot of abuse.

Makes it great for learning on your first grow.

:jointsmile:

PH of my main plant is up to 6.4 now. Going to start watering all my plants with distilled water ph'd at 6.8.

Hopefully that will enable me to get to the end of flowering before I need to do another flush.

ahh.. I love the smell of dank when I walk into my apartment. It's just strong enough to be a faint smell in the air that you only notice initially upon walking in.

Luckily for me I live in a very small complex and we don't have regular maintenance men or visits from people doing work on the apartments.

However I will have to do something about the smell soon. I just don't know what. I don't think my box fan would work very well with a carbon filter on top of it.

I may try to see if I can get away with air ionizers of some sort.

On an actual plant note; my plants are looking great. The smallers ones that were flushed 2 days ago have most of the leaf curl out of the leaves. I suspect another 1-2 days and they'll all be completely flat again.

The main plant in the 5 gallon pot still has some curl in the leaves. It's hard for me to say if they've gone down or not yet but I believe they have. Another 1-2 days should tell me if the plant is good to go.

I plan on giving a 1/4 dose of nutes/bloom booster next feeding and give it a serving of molasses + sweet ph'd at 6.8.



ps: does anyone use any air ionizers (like ionic breeze and the like)? I'm curious how well they grow. I thought about buying two. One by my bedroom close to the door that leads to the living room and another one by the door in the living room that leads to the bedroom. that way I have two ionic breezes back to back to filter what the other doesn't catch. Really I'm only concerned with the smell getting to the living room.

I wish this wasn't shunned upon by our society. I think the smell is fantastic.

looks great man , those last pics are one healthy looking mama!!!
dont know about ionizers mate sorry

man what a craptastic week this has been.

1. Had to flush all the plants.. pain in the ass and time consuming.
2. HPS bulb goes bad after only 2 weeks!!!! Had to buy a cheap replacement ASAP.
3. Burned my hand on ballast. You really don't know those things are hot until your hand is right next to them. I accidentally smacked my hand against it while installing my carbon filter I made.
4.Went to check room Temps about 1-2 hours after I installed said Carbon filter on the exhaust Axial Fan (box fan) and an A/C filter on the intake fan (also an axial box fan)to help reduce light leak and the temps jumped only from 78 degrees 8" away from the canopy to 82 degrees 8" away from the canopy.

Oh that's not the crap part. Upon backing away from the cabinet I manage to spill 3/4 of a brand new bottle of sweet. I haven't even gotten to use it yet let alone open it. I have no idea how it just spilled open.

5. Girlfriend doesn't seem to understand the meaning of "please do not turn on the lights in the bedroom" and now it looks like 2 of my plants are having problems flowering from what I'm guessing is light leaks. They have a few pistils here and there but overall they just aren't progressing like the other 3 plants. Now that I've sort've remedied the light leaks I'm going to give them about 2 weeks to see if they start kicking out some pistils and swell a little bit.

Pictures will come this Saturday. Despite the holes I drilled in all the pots my soil is still moist. I'm hoping they are dry enough to water again by this weekend.


Update I'm sure most people will enjoy. I have about 10-12 colas right now that are about 1-1.5ft long (these are side shoots that turned into main colas.) and has budding all the way from the top down to the main stem!

Then I have about another 15 colas or so that have budding going down for 8 inches or so. This is just on one plant.

My other 2 plants that are looking healthy look like they're going to have about 8-12 colas each that will probably have at least 1 ft of buds on them each by the end of harvest.

I'll take pics. They haven't progressed much since I flushed them but I'll take a pic or two of the foot longers. Looks like it's going to be pretty decent yield my first time out.

From 6 plants I'm hoping for 10-12 oz. For 3 plants I'm hoping for 8oz or a little less.

My big plant that has 30+ colas. I've calculated it and let's say that each cola only yields about 1/4 oz dry weight. That would still be about 7.5 oz dry. I'm being conservative and will be happy to get 3-4 oz off that one plant.

However this is my first grow so I'm not really expecting much. Mostly because I don't know what to expect at all as far as yield goes.

despite what alot of people have said I went ahead and trimmed about 10-11 *KEY* leaves on the plant.

Key being that they were blocking ALOT of light to the middle area where I could be getting some stronger budding/pistil growth.

I don't think people truly understand when I tell them that there is literally no place for me to tuck or LST to anymore.

I'll be doing minor pruning occassionally. Maybe 1-2 leaves once a week or so just to get more growth to the lower portions. However I don't want to get too carried away as I do know that the leaves are the plants storage area for food basically. However my plant has so many damn leaves on don't think the 10 I cut off + 1-2 weekly will harm it at all.

ok.. so I couldn't hold back.

Here's a pic of my monster plant. Well one of the colas (side shoots) I talked about anyway.

Pic 1: Showing the actual length of the cola from the main stem to the top.

Pic 2: A shot away from the cola. Trying to show as much of it as possible while seperating the rest of the plant.

Pic 3: Another shot, similar to pic 2. A little sharper image though.

Pic 4: Lower into the canopy where you can't see.

Pic 5: even FURTHER down into the canopy where you can't see.

Keeping in mind the problems I've had this past week or so what do you guys think? I'm hoping they fully recover and start to swell soon.

Forgot to add. This is day 19 of flowering.

with the light leak issue addressed it seems that one of my late bloomers has started sprouting out alot more pistils.

Before it was like 1-2 per node.. this morning I woke up and there was like 8-12 per node. Was afraid I'd have to chop her.

Soil is still pretty moist. I like for it to get pretty dry I was hoping for it to be dry by saturday but I may have to wait till sunday or monday to feed them.

Here's my first feeding schedule for them:

1/2 Dose of Age old bloom (Full dose is 5-10-5)
5ml Botanicare Bloom Booster (0-12-8)
1tbsp Black Strap Unsulphered Molasses
1 serving of Sweet (don't know the exact dosage off the top of my head).
PH water to 6.8

I've thought about throwing in a scrog to go on top of my LST right now but honestly it would be too difficult to water the plants at this point. I don't know how I would reach the back plants with a screen in the way.

keep it up man!!
youll be toking on some nice buds in no time!!!!:D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rottenfork

keep it up man!!
youll be toking on some nice buds in no time!!!!:D

---

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Despite the plants growth I've felt like I've been moving backwards in progress instead of forward.

It's good to hear some positive every once in a while to keep yourself motivated.

Fed the plants today, the soil felt slightly moist but the pot weight suggested to me that it was time to just go ahead and water.

I fed them the following:

1 Tbsp Molasses
5ml Botanicare Bloom Booster
1 Tbsp Age Old Bloom
15ml Sweet
Water PH'd to 6.8

The 3 gallon pots drank just under 1 gallon and the 5 gallon pot drank slightly over 1 gallon. Not bad I'd say.

3 of my plants are looking pretty awesome. However 2 of my plants seem a bit lanky. Looks like they were stretching for the light as the nodes spacing are further apart.

The only thing I could think of was that these 2 plants were in the back of the room and maybe they were affected by light leak.

I've remedied the light leak and 1 of the plants really started to start shooting out some pistils. The other is still slow.

So today I've gone ahead and re-LST'd these plants to try to create some additional shoots to make it a little more dense and put them in the front of the room to get better light.

Here's a photo of the entire room:

pic 1: Picture of the entire room posted February 26th.
Pic 2: Picture as of 12pm today.
Pic 3: Overhead shot

Sorry it's really hard for me to get good pictures with the HPS on. The color makes the plants look smaller when they actually have a little bud on them and are pretty large but you should be able to see the growth that has occurred in the last week and a half.

The plants in the front have been LST'd one last time and raised to be even with the canopy. The plants in the back have not been re-lst'd and are sitting even on the ground with the big 5 gallon plant in the middle back. their canopy is as tall as the big plant now.

I've decided to show growth in pictures I should continue to 2 pictures. One overall shot of all the plants and then 1 shot of one of the colas.

These pictures will be the same angle each post (with the occassional bonus shot) and will compare with the previous week's posting.

So to get this log down that track here are my 2 shots this week

Pic 1: Shot of all Plants Feb 26th
Pic 2: Shot of all Plants March 8th
Pic 3: Detail shot of cola Feb 26th
Pic 4: Detail shot of cola March 8th

edit: Yes those cola shots are the same cola shot at pretty much the same angle.

I keep forgetting to add this to my picture posts.

This is day 22 of flowering.

Hoping to flower for about 50 more days or so.

Here are some bonus pics of the main plant. Something to look at until the weekly picture update on saturday/sunday.

Day 25 Flowering.

Pic 1: Overhead view of my plant.

Pic 2: Example of 2 cola's easy to spot from the front. Notice how budding goes all the way down. It continues most of the way to the main stem.

Pic 3: Sideview Overall picture of the plant. Mostly to show that there are MANY cola's that are like the previous picture (30 or so).

Pic 4: another sideview/overall pic from a different side/angle.

Pic 5: Side view of the cola from pic 2. Was only able to capture about 3/4 of it's length on camera.

I couldn't resist. 1 more before tomorrow.

pic 1: The Cola from last week March 8th
pic 2: The same cola today, March 14th

edit: Forgot to note. This is day 28 flowering. Hopefuly another 5-6 weeks and I'll be done.

well. Looks like I'm going to have to flush a couple of the smaller plants instead.

They are coming out at ph 5.9. One of them is acting like it has heat stress. This is likely due to ph issue.

While 5.9 isn't horrible (still out of range for soil though)it's far from ideal.

Since I fed them today, flushed them two weeks ago, and they are not stressing too bad I will wait a few days to flush them again. I am running low on sweet ( I spilled 3/4 of a brand new container 2 weeks ago or so) so I want them to try to uptake some of the stuff I fed them today.

I will probably run the flush on tuesday or at first signs that they are getting worse. Which ever comes first.

It was my own fault. The first time I flushed them with 3 gallons of water since I had just gone from 1 gallon containers to 3 gallon. I thought this was enough. I probably should've done at least 6 if not the entire 9 :(. It was really weird because the PH was stablilized 2 weeks ago at 6.5

Any one have any thoughts on that? I know no one is really participating in this thread but some input on the fluxuating ph after a flush would be helpful.

:stoned:

Nice grow box man..:thumbsup:

Plants are looking good, cant wait to see the finished product..
Good luck:thumbsup::jointsmile:

Day 29 Flowering

ok I went ahead and flushed 2 of the smaller plants. I will do the other two at the next watering.

Here are the weekly pics

Pic 1: Overall shot March 8th
Pic 2: Overall Shot March 15th
Pic 3: Shot of Cola March 8th
Pic 4: Shot of Cola March 14th

edit: Please use the oscillating fan as reference for plant growth. On the 8th the plants were standing on about 8 dvd cases each. Today they are standing on none or 1-2.

Combine the fact that I've been lowering the plants with their vertical growth. Not bad. :thumbsup:

2 of these plants are very indica and 3 of the plants are very sativa. It's interesting because the seeds came from the same bag.

Just incase anyone is curious.... they do smell fairly strong. Reminds me of Sour/NY diesel.

Crystals are starting to form on the leaves and the buds have fattened up slightly. This is all from a bag of shwaggity. From what I can tell the genetics aren't bad the grower (probably mexigrown) just didn't do the optimal job harvesting it.

From what I can remember though this stuff was really good.

I save all my seeds and label them ranking them in 5 categories on a scale of 1 - 10.

Aroma, Density, Flavor, Quality of High, overall.

This one had an overall ranking of 6 and a High quality of 6.

At the time the aroma was not all that great. It was fairly dense though.

So hopefully I can bump this up to a 9 overall ranking after harvest.

I wish I had taken some clones off my big plant. She's so beautiful and I'm suspecting will be a decent yielder (3oz +, hoping for 7oz+ though based on 1/4 oz dry weight per cola.. there are about 30 main colas and 10-15 smaller ones.)

well no picture this week. The batteries are dead and don't feel like getting any because I'm a sick baby. heh

One thing interesting to note is that 2 of my smaller sativa dominant plants are starting to outgrow my very large sativa dominant plant.

Also the buds are completely different. On my 2 smaller sativa plants they seem to be producing fluffier buds and on my larger sativa it seems to be making really dense buds.

Crystals are forming but they're tiny tiny. Hopefully as the buds plump up so do the trichomes.

Forgot to mention. Today is day 36-37 of flowering.

looking great dai!!!
:Smokebong:
whiskeytango

man.. I went to check my plants this morning before I left for work. Everything looked as normal. Then I decided to enjoy the fragrance of each plant. I just gently touch a flower top on each plant and smell the scent on my fingers.

Well of interesting note 2 of my plants smell very unique.

The 3 sativa dominant plants all smell very similar however the two plants that are either a hybrid or indica dominant smell unique. One plant smells alot like lemon!!! The other plant smells alot like some kind of mango or papaya.. a type of meaty fruit like that.

I really wished I had taken clones now, oh well. I should have an interesting variety of smoke come harvest. :thumbsup:

Welp. watered 2 of the plants today with plain water.

3 of the other plants got a flush. I had two plants that were sativa dominant that have needed a flush probably for the last 2 weeks but I had been putting it off because they were still showing good bud growth. Well the leaves were starting to show eagle claw symptoms so I flushed them with 9 gallons of water today.

My big plant I didn't think needed a flush but I ran the runoff PH just incase. It was right at 6.0, it may have been lower as I didn't wait to find out if it was going to drop another 1 - 2 points.

I ended up having to flush it with 65 gallons of water!! YEESH!!! That's 13 times what is recommended. I finally got the ph stable at 6.6. I gave it a full dose 1 gallon serving of nutes.

Geez, peat is a pain in the ass. I think from now after I transplant them into their gallon containers I need to use 100% soil instead of my fox farms/Promix mixture I'm using. I was trying to save some cash but it's proving to be a pain in the ass toward the end here.

On another note I believe a number of my plants may be rootbound. I'm not sure if I should just go ahead and leave them be or go ahead and transplant them into new containers. I have up to 6 weeks to go since I'm halfway through week 6 of flower.

Going to post this in basic growing section and see what people suggest.

d....are you using fox farm ocean forrest? how big are the pots? gimme your specs, well....put your specs in so myself and the true experts, stinky, rhizome, wh..we can tell ya alot more if you give us all the info...few pics will be great too.....we use ALL fox farm for ours...in 3 gal pots....had a situation kinda similar...may just need to make more drainage holes....the fox farm nutes are made to be takin by their ocean forrest organic soil mix too....

:smokebong:
whiskeytango