Week 8 - Vegetation
At the beginning of this week, I have been fighting the gnats, which are less and less now. Just some watering and gradually lowering the light and going to full power. The Orange Hill Special has been filling out great and I must say, she is a pretty plant. With some manual bending and super cropping, I'm bending the longer stalks sideways and we are off. What I actually do is more of an intuitive hybrid between mainlining (where I bend the whole plant 90 degrees at the third week), LST (where I bend branches outward slightly, without tying), HST / Super crop (where I bend the stems 90 degrees with the clips or manually), after which I keep bending outward to SOG and, put the net over to end in SCROG.
This same method gave me the canopy in my prize-winning Gelato 33 grow. Check it out if you haven't seen it, it was my first experimental accident that led to beta test of Super Soil mixture 0.7, now we are at Alpha version 1.00 and testing great so far if I say so myself. I haven't seen such lush greens in my own grows, only outdoor. They seem uber-healthy and resilient, with very sturdy stems and leaves. Way more resilient than previous strains I tested in the beta soil.
The light is performing, the natural color of it makes everything pop. Mars Hydro has a winner with the SP-3000. Check out their site:
www.mars-hydro.com Thank you Mars for letting me test it, hook them up for a great deal or info on their products!
Halfway through this week, I took the clips out, AND...... we switched them to go into flowering. After a day the stretch is already visible. I had to bend them again after a couple of days. Now we have almost a tent filling foundation for a maximum result canopy of buds.
I was wanting to amend the soil with flowering additions (see recipe in yellow image), but I'm holding it off for two reasons. A/ The leaves are still so green and lush, I think there is an abundance of nutes. B/ another grower mentions his suspicions on his OHS grow that nutrition in this phase could have had an influence, after asking what happened to him. I would have loved to see that grow to full harvest. But it makes me a bit cautious. if this grower (whom I consider to be one of the star growers here) couldn't prevent this, what chance have I?
I'm waiting until the girls start asking for nutrients. They'll show me what they need in their own time. For now this soil is the shizzle (also quite literally) and Im happy with how everything is going. I remember much more hassle and steering in the last grow. This grow, even the Gorilla runt seems happy.
I now water them 3 liters of water / Perma tea mixture every 4 days, every 3rd watering I don't do the tea. This makes for fewer gnats and this soil seems to hold water nicely, also due to the hydro corn.
What I like is there is always some unforeseen circumstance, a tilt of the tables, some battle to be fought which delivers in big harvests or, in worst case, no harvest at all. It makes it more exciting, when your heart is at stake, we pour a lot of love and attention in the ladies.
So with hopes, but not too high, we go into flowering. Thank you all for joining me again in this Orange adventure! I hope you all had great weeks, germed seeds, extreme growth and buds bursting with trichomes!! See you next week!
Hug Bud
PS Sunshine made her first appearance, as she promised on the Gelato 33 grow. She is still a bit camera shy, so her digital alter makes an appearance first, if you all want to see more of her and my other helpers, let me know in the comments. Sunshine will make a real appearance if yall are real nice to her.