G'day, well we weren't as lucky as last year which produced only 1 male from 8 plants, this year I've had to remove 5 males from the original 9 scrog plants. Here's 1 of the males pictured below.
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Here's what the screen looks like after removing all of the males.
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Seems like a lot of males but when you add in the outside back up 3 plants, which 2 of them were females, then that gives 6 females and 6 males out of the original 12 seeds.
Anyway is what it is, I've since been using one of the outside female back up plants to help fill in the scrog from the other end (plant on the left that hasn't been lollipoped).
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It was no hassle at all removing the males from the scrog and one positive that came out of it was seeing how healthy the males roots were when pulling them out of the soil.
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I'd say I'm just under halfway home at this point, the plants that are left are about 13-14wks old since planting the seeds. I picked up a few gadgets online for a bit of fun and also to get a rough idea of my growing conditions. Here is a PH tester and PPM tester checking the river water I use for feeding, PH = 6.4 and PPM = 43
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The soil probe was showing a PH of 6.5-6.8 and and the fertility was around 5.5-6.0 it appears all those numbers must be providing a pretty decent grow environment going by the plants overall health.
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I have added a layer of rice straw to invite spiders & good bacteria to take care of them throughout their long upcoming flowering cycle, which I feel they are pretty well primed for this year. I found a bigger praying mantis and her ootheca to add to the room a few weeks ago. I later seen her trying to chase one of the littler ones down but she ended up settling for a meal on a couple of my ladybugs.
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Although I think the lady bugs and praying mantises would have possibly helped to control the upcoming attacks from aphids, whiteflies & mites as I won't be spraying any more neem oil, I still decided to remove the mosquito net. I feel it was restricting too much airflow as well as sunlight and it was limiting the space the plants could potentially spread out into during flower. Plus it makes it much easier on my back and the plants did seem to look a little healthier after a few days of the net being removed.
After pulling so many males I went and planted another 4 seeds and took three cuttings from two of the females, they'll hopefully get a month of veg in before flowering, they may end up running a little long but with any luck all wrapped up before chrissy.
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I'll update again once I've got pistils and my training sessions start to cease. Cheers.