First grow (flowering stage only) with pics

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!Attachment 296325Attachment 296326

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

This makes me happy to hear! Thanks bro!

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?

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

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.

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.

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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?

---

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. :) :) :)

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.

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:

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..... :)

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?) :) :) :)

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).:(

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:Attachment 296345Attachment 296344

hey man if i wear you i would build 1 of thees :) DIY SCROG OR SOG NET HOW TO - YouTube

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by smsm

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/concentra...mpson-oil.html

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Sounds like you got a good grasp on things

Those are looking so nice

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! :) :) :)

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!) :) :) :) :) :)

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.
Attachment 296415

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.

Attachment 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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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.

---

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.

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! :) :) :)

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

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??? :)

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.

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.

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

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.