Jack Herer First Grow. Nervous to lollipop?

Hey guys,

I'm currently on my first grow. I have 7 Jack Herer plants currently now on day 3 of flowering or almost four weeks into full grow. I've got a 400w light, a m squared x 6' grow tent. I've read tons of good stuff through forums and I believe i'm on the right path. I've heard many things about cutting the under brush to give more light and fatten buds. I've been a little hesitant to do this because it seems like a bad idea to just go and cut perfectly healthy leaves off the plant. I know it can be good for the buds and make em' more juicy and powerful. Again, i'm a little nervous to just start cutting and lop off a good branch that might have the possibility to make a nice bud in a few weeks. I've noticed some of the leaves at the bottom of the plant starting to wither away and die. I think it's because of the light exposure. I'll take this first grow as a learning experience, and hopefully have some pretty decent buds to go along with it. I'll update on the grow as it moves along.. Patience kills me, but i know that's what it takes. All my set up instructions and nutrients i use are in another language due to living in europe now, so it's fun to add my own mixtures through what i've learned. Attachment 287439Attachment 287440Attachment 287441Attachment 287442Attachment 287443

A few other things i didn't mention was i'm using Hesi nutrients(a company out of nl), now that it's in flowering the light is 12/12(not changing the dawn time of the plants). I'm usually watering 2-3 times per week.. more like once every 2-3 days depending on soil wetness. It takes around 10 liters to water all of the plants equally, and at this moment 50ml/10l Bloom Complex, 50ml/10 root complex(which i will stop next week), Power zyme(20ml/10l and 3 small drops of super vit. Temp sits at about 20 at night and 25-28C during the day, humidity stays around 50-65%.





5

I decided against topping the plants. I've been having alot of the bottom leaves fall off. I think due to the lack of light at the bottom. I'm now on day 10 of flowering. The pics aren't so great due to me using my camera phone. Best i've got at the time. This would be my newest pics at day 7 of flower. As you can see it's getting pretty congested in there. Attachment 287580Attachment 287581
Another problem i've been having is when watering or touching the plants. I'm getting a rash sometimes from handling the plants. Some plants are drinking more then the others so my water schedule has changed a little.

Hey dude.

Nice grow show.

I too grow in a small space, 90cm x 90cm x 150cm. I found a few things out the hard way when I first started growing. The biggest issue was space for the 7 - 8 plants I expected to grow in there.

As the plants get bigger they will fill out. The strongest plants are the ones which begin to take over the tent. This in turn reduces the light the weaker plants get and stunts them.

It would be a good idea to lollypop the plants as you will reduce the diameter of each plant. Just take the smaller branches on the lowest part of the plant.

These branches produce very little bud, mainly what they call, popcorn buds. These buds are of no real value and most of the plants energy is better spent at the top and the tops of the stronger branches.

I had to cut my tent down from 8 plants to just 2 in my first grow because of over-crowding. The plants I cut down did give me some bud but not much. What I did notice was the explosion in the remaining two strongest plants. It was quite obvious that when the plants were fighting for the light they didn't start a full effort into bud production.

As soon as the plants were removed the last two packed on bud like crazy. So I guess what I'm saying is, sometimes less is more. I can only fit 4 normal plants in my tent. I can fit 6 autos, even though I have 7 at the moment.

Perhaps some Low Stress Training might be a good idea so you can manage your canopy better. This should give a more even distribution of light. Just tie the plant down slowly with some twine attached to the bucket. be sure not to choke the ladies though. Keep the twine loose around the trunk.

Personally I wouldn't top the plants when they are already in bloom. This could stress them out too much and they could hermie on you. LST is much more comfortable for the ladies.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Take Care

S.L.

Great help man. I'll wait until I feed with nutes again and cut off some of the new growth on the bottom. LST was something i was thinking about also. I'll hopefully have some new pics up with the new haircut in a few days. Thanks for the reply.

Agree with "SL"

Less is More & "LST" is the way to go but don't believe what we say, gotta learn on your own (no disrespect).... Your trees look nice & they will get way too crowded & will witness this in a couple weeks!

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

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Originally Posted by picklesrskankin

Great help man. I'll wait until I feed with nutes again and cut off some of the new growth on the bottom. LST was something i was thinking about also. I'll hopefully have some new pics up with the new haircut in a few days. Thanks for the reply.

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I would like to highly discourage you from chopping on your girls during flower. You are risking severe stress and may cause them to hermaphodite on you. Plants in veg can be whacked on and trimmed up very nicely and they will simply adjust to it. Clean up all the lower branches and get rid of everything that won't be in the upper canopy BEFORE you go to flower.

Lollipopping is something you would do in the last 2-3 weeks of the grow. By this time all the lower fan leaves are dying anyway and the plants are concentrating on the upper bud growth. Removing all the extra growth at this point is indeed stressful, but there is not enough time at this point to change sex, and the removal allows additional airflow into the tender buds that are susceptible to bud rot and mildew, as well as allowing plenty of fresh air to get to the buds so that they can do that final swelling that they do at this time.

I read up alot on this, but maybe i didn't do so well with the cut job. I didn't see these last few posts before i went cutting. Fortunately I only decided to take maybe 3-4" off, and only the bottom few branches. Most of the branches i took off were breaking when I was feeding them. I didn't touch any of the canopy up top. I didn't want to start the LST because after i read the posts i thought maybe that would be too much stress. I'll keep an eye out for hermie's. The plants are about 22-25". Live and learn either way. Attachment 287591Attachment 287592Attachment 287593Attachment 287594

Nothing bad happened with the cuts. It worked out well and gave me a little more confidence. Here is day 15. It looks like some goodies are finally starting to show face.
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Because of all the stress, note down somewhere that you are not really on day 15 of flower now. Looking at your pictures you are now at least a week behind that schedule, maybe more. It looks from this last picture like you are just about a week into flower and the stretch is about to start now that the plants are getting over their multiple shocks. Keep us posted.

Filahbidah

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Originally Posted by emilya

Because of all the stress, note down somewhere that you are not really on day 15 of flower now. Looking at your pictures you are now at least a week behind that schedule, maybe more. It looks from this last picture like you are just about a week into flower and the stretch is about to start now that the plants are getting over their multiple shocks. Keep us posted.

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I'll mark it down in today's log. I honestly didn't realise they would stretch so high. Lookin forward to how it's supposed to look within the next few days. Either way, I'm learning. I'll have some more pics up in a few days. Thanks for the reminder on that.

This would be the start of day 20, or 13.. Still a little confused now. Only about the time I need to start adding my fosfor+ to the nute mix. I'm happy with the way they are turning out.
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Originally Posted by picklesrskankin

This would be the start of day 20, or 13.. Still a little confused now. Only about the time I need to start adding my fosfor+ to the nute mix. I'm happy with the way they are turning out.

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Well, I've grown JH a couple times. Looking at the pics, if I had to guess, I'd say they look about 2-weeks in. You may have stunted the stretch right out of them. You probably did yourself a favor, looks pretty busy in there. :)

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Originally Posted by EvilCartman

Well, I've grown JH a couple times. Looking at the pics, if I had to guess, I'd say they look about 2-weeks in. You may have stunted the stretch right out of them. You probably did yourself a favor, looks pretty busy in there. :)

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I concur... looks like the 2nd week of flower to me. As soon as the vertical growth stops, call it the 18th day and go with it. At the end it doesnt matter so much the actual age anyway, you will be looking at the trichomes to see when it is done.

The proper time to lollypop is the subject of this message.

I have been thinking about this a lot since making this series of posts with you and wanted to share something that I have recently learned in my tent. Prior to this, if you has asked me if you should trim fan leaves and clean up under the canopy after flower has started, I would have said no. I would have based my answer on needing to keep from stressing the girls and probably would have been quite adamant in my answer.

Today I realized that I had found an exception to what I thought was a rule. My room was getting a bit crowded. Although trimmed before they went into the flowering tent 4 weeks ago, massive side growth had occurred under the canopy and was dying off due to a lack of light. Some of this, especially in the back of the room was getting out of hand, being hard to reach, and I had been relying on my 2 oscillating fans in the room to keep mold issues down. Things were remaining dry underneath, but I started to notice that one of the girls was yelling at me... fan leaves were curling up and dying at the canopy level! This was not good, and I suspected that I may have a mold problem, so I went to work.

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Luckily, this was not mold, it was just the plants trying as hard as they could to get rid of these now inefficient and unneeded fan leaves. My general rule is that if something is in the way and the plants want it gone, it will turn brown and fall off. This works pretty well in nature, but not in our tents. hmmm.

The problem here is that inside of our tents, we are missing out on a very vital component that in nature, allows the plants to cast off these larger leaves, and essentially lollypop themselves as we near the middle of the flowering period. That vital component is random and sometimes violent wind. The larger fan leaves naturally collect much more of that violent wind when it happens, and they are removed as needed.


In our tents we create breezes, but it is a regular and repetitive movement, and not nearly as violent as sometimes happens in nature. Sometimes we have to help our plants out when things get overcrowded. So today I did just that. I cleaned out under the canopy quite thoroughly and removed all of the largest fan leaves, especially any that were beginning to turn. I have always thought it better to not shock the girls when in flower, but today I drastically broke my pattern and went crazy with the scissors. All that is left now are the buds that I expect to make it to harvest with a decent size. Airflow and light penetration is better than I have ever achieved at this point, and I pray that the girls will forgive me for this one morning of a thousand cuts and will now concentrate all of their energy right where I want it. I do believe that something important has just made it's way into my head here, but of course I could have just killed them all too. I will keep you posted and here are the pictures:

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Originally Posted by emilya

The proper time to lollypop is the subject of this message.

I drastically broke my pattern and went crazy with the scissors.
will forgive me for this one morning of a thousand cuts and
will now concentrate all of their energy right where I want it. I do believe that something important has just made it's way into my head here, but of course I could have just killed them all too. I will keep you posted and here are the pictures:

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;)Holy Edward scissorhands... experiment with the whole crop? Looks like lollipop'd. Next time, cut smoke cut...crop? Looks like lollipop'd. Next time, cut smoke cut...
lol, should be interesting.:jointsmile: along for the show!

One word......Inspirational!

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

Seeing you lop off all that on some really nice looking plants makes me have a little more faith in my decision to cut off just a little a week ago. I hope yours turns out to be a good decision, because that will answer my question with proven results. It would be great to get a few updates. I'm heading into the end of week 3 now(day 18 ;) ), and finally starting to see some great results. Alot of the lower branches with popcorn buds on them are starting to die off. So if this works as well as we all hope, I'll jump on that idea and get rid of a few more branches/fan leaves.

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Originally Posted by picklesrskankin

Seeing you lop off all that on some really nice looking plants makes me have a little more faith in my decision to cut off just a little a week ago. I hope yours turns out to be a good decision, because that will answer my question with proven results. It would be great to get a few updates. I'm heading into the end of week 3 now(day 18 ;) ), and finally starting to see some great results. Alot of the lower branches with popcorn buds on them are starting to die off. So if this works as well as we all hope, I'll jump on that idea and get rid of a few more branches/fan leaves.

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Let me throw in a word of caution, along the lines of what PR was getting at above. It is very dangerous to do something like this to your entire crop. I took a big chance that I might loose an entire 3 months of work with what I did yesterday, although I was fairly confident that I could get away with it. Upon checking this morning, all is OK and everyone is reaching up to the lights.

Let me further explain what justified my actions, because as a general rule it is NOT a good idea to stress your girls like this.

Some people do this in stages too, thinking that a few small things now and then is not as stressful. They will take off leaves here and there, a few each day when necessary. I decided to do it all at once, on one day only and then totally leave them alone from that point on. I am betting that they will recover from this assault because of where I am in the grow.

I am at that point in flower (around the 5 week point) where the buds are fairly well developed and we are about to go to the home stretch and add weight to these buds. This is the point where all of us see the lower fan leaves yellowing or even turning brown and falling off. The plant is shifting its resources up to the buds at this point and shutting down the processes that are no longer necessary for vegetative type growth. Before now, those large fan leaves were serving a purpose, supporting new bud growth, but now they are just blocking light and air flow. I became the big storm that removed them.

Some of my plants may react negatively to this and believing that it is now the end of their world, will attempt to hermaphrodite in order to continue the species. I will be watching for this and will pick off nanners if I see them, but at this point in the grow I am not too worried about it. There are roughly 4 weeks left in this grow. By the time a nanner was able to develop enough to produce pollen at this point, there would not be enough time to pollinate a bud and develop seeds before harvest. Also, since the girls are now very bare underneath the active buds, it will be an easy matter to see any hermaphroditic growth before it becomes an issue.

I will stress here however, that what I did with this experiment may not be suited to a novice or casual grower who does not have the time or experience to get in there and spend some extra time knowing their plants. I will NOT recommend this technique to the typical medial grower... your meds are simply too important to risk.

All very interesting posts, keep up the awesome work! I do have a question kinda unrelated to anything here so here it goes....... Using a vapezilla & the glass whip is "jammed" into the vape! How may I remove it w/o breaking or cracking it? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Do not wanna "burn". Oh, "Emilya", looks like your hook up is pretty deep. Tons of cfl's going on. Do ya find this lighting better overall?

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

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Originally Posted by Esteban1

All very interesting posts, keep up the awesome work! I do have a question kinda unrelated to anything here so here it goes....... Using a vapezilla & the glass whip is "jammed" into the vape! How may I remove it w/o breaking or cracking it? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Do not wanna "burn". Oh, "Emilya", looks like your hook up is pretty deep. Tons of cfl's going on. Do ya find this lighting better overall?

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no ideas on the vape... don't have one here. Regarding the lights, I went with T5HO lights after considering the costs of removing heat here in the midwest during the summer time, as well as the total lumens in my grow area.

I have found the lights to be adequate, and I originally designed my area for small SCRog operations (see my first grow log), but as soon as I went away from the SCRog method to more of a SOG operation, I widened out the light's footprint to fill my 4x4 tent by angling it, and because of this, I needed some additional lights around the front. Right now I am using the Sunblaze 48-8 array and 2 125w CFL's in the front where the angled array is furthest from the plants, to suppliment the outer front edge of the garden. Very soon I will be adding about 500w of LED light to this room also, attempting to bring the effective light up to the realms of HID displays, without all the heat.

All in all, I have been very satisfied with the fluorescents. Their heat output is very manageable and the TCO (total cost of operation) is better than if I had gone with HID. The buds that I produce are very satisfactory, but I know that there is still room for improvement that could be realized adding more light. My DIY LED Project is the answer to this because as an economist, my major concern is TCO. My dollar per watt costs as well as light bulb replacement rates and heat management costs makes me very happy.

FYI, you are probably aware of this but since in flower energy companies usually charge less $$'s during off peak hours. I'm paying 7.5c/kwh

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

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Originally Posted by Esteban1

FYI, you are probably aware of this but since in flower energy companies usually charge less $$'s during off peak hours. I'm paying 7.5c/kwh

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

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one of the reasons that my lights run from 10pm to 10am. :)

[quote=Esteban1]All very interesting posts, keep up the awesome work! I do have a question kinda unrelated to anything here so here it goes....... Using a vapezilla & the glass whip is "jammed" into the vape! How may I remove it w/o breaking or cracking it? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Do not wanna "burn"

I bet it pulled right off, after it cooled down. I am not a scientist and lately, short on explanations...I think glass expands as it heats, or cools, well it does something.

I'd try to get some iso in and around the cracks of the connections. Perhaps, start with a Q-tip. If it is resin...use a torch and vape! lol, joking. Alcohol removes the 'stickies.'

Hope you didn't break it. The vape part, is about the only part, I haven't broken! lol :stoned:

Oh and Em..thanks for the well written explanation..oughta be a sticky...

grrrh..use to be a day, when the mods were a very active part here and sticky posts, were taken care of. Grrrrh....now, Skywalker OG and faster than a vaping.... :stoned: pr

thank you PR, but alas, I don't think the mods do that here anymore either. I didn't even get a sticky at that other place that I hang out either. :)

Here is an update on my recent lollypop session:

Fear not good readers, all is well in Emmie's garden at day 31. Everyone appears healthy, strong and incredibly thirsty. Even after the trimming, in 3 days I can see noticeable increases in bud size that has to be attributed to the increased airflow and light penetration. Pictures of course are worth 10,000 of my words, so here we go:

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Sorry about the pictures being so bad, but my camera phone hasn't been agreeing with me lately. I added a pretty nice size fan to the mix, the airflow was getting pretty bad with my little side fan. This fan might be a little big, but at 8" i think it will cure some of the stale air i've been having. Lots of leaves are starting to fall off now.
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I'll keep a watch on my temp and humidity. I think the temps are getting a little low at night. During the day it stays between 21-25 C and at night 19-21ish.

Missed two pics.
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coming along very nicely! Good job! :)

Alright. I'ts been a while since i've updated due to some bluetooth problems on my phone and so on.. I haven't really been counting the weeks since it's been all fudged up with cutting and trimming. The hairs on the buds(about half)are starting to turn red. I'll be looking at the trichs with a magnifying glass to make my final decision on when to cut these girls down. I'm happy with the results. I've learned alot so far, and one thing i've learned is PH makes a HUGE difference. My leaves are turning up(curling up), and browning a little. I can't take pictures with my phone so well, so the problem is kinda hidden by the blur. Either way, I'm pretty happy.
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Not sure why that one didn't want to post, but the last picture I have for it.

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Originally Posted by picklesrskankin

Alright. I'ts been a while since i've updated due to some bluetooth problems on my phone and so on.. I haven't really been counting the weeks since it's been all fudged up with cutting and trimming. The hairs on the buds(about half)are starting to turn red. I'll be looking at the trichs with a magnifying glass to make my final decision on when to cut these girls down. I'm happy with the results. I've learned alot so far, and one thing i've learned is PH makes a HUGE difference. My leaves are turning up(curling up), and browning a little. I can't take pictures with my phone so well, so the problem is kinda hidden by the blur. Either way, I'm pretty happy.

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starting to look very nice in there. Now you just have to decide what you like best... the heady thinker's high that comes from cloudy trichs or the couchlock body high that comes from the amber trichs that come later. I like a mix, and love that point where I see 5-10% amber, the rest cloudy. For me, that is harvest time. :) Good luck!

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Originally Posted by emilya

starting to look very nice in there. Now you just have to decide what you like best... the heady thinker's high that comes from cloudy trichs or the couchlock body high that comes from the amber trichs that come later. I like a mix, and love that point where I see 5-10% amber, the rest cloudy. For me, that is harvest time. :) Good luck!

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Thanks :jointsmile:. I finally got the magnifying glass(nothing special). I think i'll go with the more thinkers high. It should be ready to cut down in a few days. Time to start reading up on that. A question I do have is with only one grow room, and where i'm living being so rainy and humid, should I cut them all down at once and use the grow space to dry them? It seems like the lower buds are alot more red and cloudy, but the main ones are still pretty juicy and white-haired. All the plants are about the same stage, but I don't want to cut one down and leave the other 6. I'm flushing with pure water right now. It's been about a week with no ferts.