250w HPS in an entertainment center - Multi strain grow

mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
Here's my white castle plant at about day 63.



White Castle on the left, Urban Poison on the right at about day 20. I forgot to mark when she started flowering :( I'm going to start using calendars and marking when I water, when flowering starts, and whatever else.



At lower middle is "Muñeka Rusa" (Russian Doll) from Kannabia seeds - it's a couple weeks old, and I have a bag seed germinating on the left. I picked the biggest seed that I had, and it popped through in 2 days. I'm hoping that some of my bag seed comes from decent genetics - I want to see if I have the skills yet to grow one to it's potential without fucking it up. I might be wasting time and end up with no trichomes and a shitload of foxtails like before, but we'll see. I'm looking at all of this as learning experience, and not taking it too seriously. That said - I'm a little annoyed with how short my latest plant is. Probably because I pinched the top so it had to recover, along with being germinated right in to 12/12 light. I think the two seedlings that I have going now are going to stay natural, no pinching or topping.

I ordered a few autoflowering seeds. If I can grow one or two auto plants under 15-18 hours of light I could also veg a couple of regular seeds for a month or so under the same light before flipping to flower. That would let me have some auto bud ready in a couple of months, with some well-vegged plants following a month or so behind. Might be a good way to increase my yields without having to add a new space for vegging.
 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
The Urban Poison plant is tart and tiny. Not a ton of trichomes yet but she's still young.


What do you guys think about the White Castle? It's definitely close, but I don't know when I should harvest it. I dropped my scope and it smashed, I saw a little bit of amber before the scope broke but not a lot. Maybe a couple more days? Anyone have a scope they'd recommend?



 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
I chopped down the White Castle plant last night at day 70 - I probably should've waited a few days or cut it down over a few days, piece by piece, but I saw some amber and figured 'close enough'.







172 grams wet, or about 6 oz. I'm hoping for 1.5 ounces dry :P It's going to be hard to cure it all before trying it. Probably impossible actually...
 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
As I look at the photos and the buds, it looks like I should wait until more of the buds are sharing the sort of 'over-all-amber' color. It's crazy the color difference between the main colas (light brown/amber) and the rest of the buds lower down the stalk. They're all pretty well covered in trichomes, but they still show as mostly light green, instead of the fuzzy light brown. Maybe I need to chop the colas and let the rest go another few weeks when I get a plant that develops like this one.

I now have the one Urban Poison plant that's about 27 days into flower, one "Muneka Rusa" that's a few weeks old, and one bag seed that's a week behind that. After these guys are done in a few months I'll be growing an auto flower or two while vegging another 3-5 regular seeds. I'll be able to get some flower while vegging, which is pretty cool.
 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
Here's the Urban Poison at ~day 36 of flowering, she's 70 days old from seed.





Muneka Rusa is about to start flowering! She's an all natural beauty, no topping or FIMing or slapping or beating. I planted the seed 34 days ago.





This bag seed is 16 days old and I think I topped her(?) a little too hard. Take it, bitch!



 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
The two main colas on the Urban Poison are short but super dense and wide. This is the too-fat-to-walk-wheelchair-lady-at-walmart of my grow cabinet. Some of the lower buds that are completely obscured from the light are super covered in trichomes, which leads me to believe that the bud sites don't need much direct exposure to light, and the leaves are doing all the heavy lifting.



Muneka Rusa is happy, she started showing her lady hairs a few days ago. Calling today day 3.



I murdered the bag seed baby, don't tell anybody. I wanted to make the Muneka Rusa the final plant before I change my lighting over to all LED and go nuclear on the lingering thrip problem. I didn't want to add another two months to the process with a potentially shitty plant. I still felt bad throwing it in the trash though.
 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
It's looking a lot purple-er in my cabinet - I made a new bracket to combine three LED panels and replace my 250w HPS light. I used two lengths of angle iron with holes in it, and I attached them together with 3/8" threaded rod. I was surprised how much heat the new LED panel puts off. Hopefully it's less heat and power used overall than the 250w.



The center light is one of these: "Grozon High PAR 300W (170W True Watt Panel, 400W HPS Equivalent) Full Spectrum LED Grow Light - Dual VEG/BLOOM Switch, 90° Secondary Focusing Optical Lens." It uses 5w chips vs the 3w in the other panels, and has reflectors/lenses over each diode. The light seems about twice as bright as the other two panels, based on the blast pattern below the light. The panels on the left and right are "Swiftrans 300w Full Spectrum Greenhouse Indoor Hydroponic Grow 10 Band Lighting for Indoor Plant Veg Flowering." I had one apart yesterday and there are two drivers inside each unit, rated at 70w max, which I assume means that these cannot be putting out more than 140w, and are possibly less than that. I have a kill-a-watt meter coming in the mail today so I'll be able to tell how much power they're all actually pulling.

hopefully switching from an HPS & LED to all-LED while in the middle of a grow doesn't make my plants herm out on me - I'm still working on the 'patience' part of growing.
 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
Urban Poison at day 59 of flowering, 90 days from seed - not sure what's up with the coloring on the older fan leaves. Genetics, or deficiencies I wonder?






Muñeka Rusa at day 20 of flowering, 57 days from seed.





 
mattman998

mattman998

Active Member
Moldencore said:
Hey man great buds, they must taste great, I'm wondering if you can help me guessing how much I'll yield. This has been under 250 watts HM - HPS for 2months 14/10 - and 3 weeks 12/12. Had a lot of troubles controlling heat and pH
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This plant looks like it'll get you a shit load more than I've been getting! I'm a bad judge of yield, you'd probably be better of asking in one of the other forum categories, maybe general. I think I see at least 15 bud sites in there right? How many times have you topped it?
 
Moldencore

Moldencore

Member
mattman998 said:
This plant looks like it'll get you a shit load more than I've been getting! I'm a bad judge of yield, you'd probably be better of asking in one of the other forum categories, maybe general. I think I see at least 15 bud sites in there right? How many times have you topped it?
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Maybe more but is just one plant, and for a long veg time, I bet you yield more overall :-), I topped it just once and by accident
 
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