Been so damn busy this week, sorry about the lack of updates. Things are moving along well in the flower room, today is officially the end of week 3 and the ladies are looking great. Luckily I have had a few spare moments to shoot some pics so theres some nice underage bud porn for yall
A lot has happened over the last week so I’ll break it down:
EDIT: Forgot I shot this video today, I'll post it at the top here for those of you who'd rather watch something real quick than read the essay that follows, cause I know I'm that guy.
[video=dailymotion;xvq9qi]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvq9qi_mvi-0400_lifestyle[/video]
12/2 - Gave everyone a good watering in both rooms and sprayed with neem oil to control the few remaining adult fungus gnats. Mommas are starting to turn a bit yellow, not sure if they have used up all the nutes in the soil or if I have a deficiency of sorts (I’m thinking cal/mg because of my RO water). Some of the ladies in flower are showing the same symptoms, will water with the compost tea in a few days once they are thirsty again. Picked up some Roots Elemental, which is a good Cal/mg supplement – will start to use it ASAP. Regardless of the yellowing everyone is jamming out, especially the ones in flower that are starting to form tiny bud sites all over. New growth looks amazing.
Yellowing of the vortex momma before trimming
12/3 - Trimmed yellowing leaves off mommas today, bought paperclips to tie down my mainlined Qush and Plushberry. Accidentally broke the stem of the Qush a little bit on one side from tying it down too hard, hoping she is going to be alright. Compost teas are getting foamy on top – this is a sign that the beneficial bacteria are getting it on
the key to a healthy tea
Snapped some pics today, just couldn't resist.
a few shots of Plushberry #1 starting to show purple after 14 days of flower
somehow the ladybugs know shes my favorite one (they only congregate like this on her)
far away shot of Plushberry #1
Some perspective on the tent
poppin pistils
this cola doesnt want to be tied down!
if you look close you can see the few plants that have bent colas
above shot of mainlined Plushberry #1
side shot
above shot of mainlined Qush #1
side shot (the one on the right is the one i broke a little)
shot of both mainlined clones
ladies in veg closet
shot of veg tent
teas starting to foam up (eventually it will form a layer of foam that nears the brim)
the many-headed jillybeast
12/4 - Pots feel light again so they’re getting a feeding. Took the bloom tea, which was pH 4.8 and 1340ppm and cut it with RO water until I got something that was about 420ppm
The only problem is this is still around pH 5.4, and if I add pH UP I have to add about 3 TBS for 4 gallons of nutrient solution in order to get around 6.5. This subsequently brings my ppm to around 550 or 600, which is very annoying, and I feel like ¼ of my ppm shouldn’t be composed of pH UP, because that is probably not a good chemical (maybe a salt of sorts?). I do not want to cause lockout in my soil from salt buildup, but I also don’t want to water with nutrient solution that has a pH of 5.4….
what should I do? Is it okay to add this much pH UP? I just don’t want to give my ladies anything that will hurt them, and pH up is about the least organic thing I use in my garden…
Well regardless of whether its good or not they got a feeding lol, I measured the pH of the runoff and its around 6.1 or 6.2, fine by me
Usually I let them sit in their saucers with the runoff for 24 hours, then I use a turkey baster and feed them what’s left. 12 hours later all the saucers get collected, emptied, cleaned, dried, and set-aside until the next watering. If I leave them in place the entire time they collect moisture underneath and the underside will NEVER dry completely. I am not trying to fucks with powdery mildew at ALL, so I have to use the saucers sparingly. This keeps my RH below 50% at all times, and usually it hovers around 35% or 40%. Gotta love the desert for cold dry nights
Bud sites are starting to fill out nicely…damn yellowing leaves are progressing though, especially with the Mommas. I’m considering chopping them and using their clones as new moms… Not gonna need cuts from them for a while anyway and right now they are just taking up space. Not worried about genetic conservation since these are already clones of a clone I bought from a place that got all their genetics from clone in the first place...
12/5 - Got some more genetics from a friend today
Sourband, Blue Cheese, Deadhead OG, and another Agent Orange
happy because I only got 1 Agent female from the 4 surviving seeds, so it'll be nice to have another pheno around. Really pumped for all of these genetics, wish I had more room in the flower tent! Oh well, for now they are all going into the bathroom quarantine, along with all of the other cuts I got (Sweet Tooth, Sour D, Woody Harrelson OG, Cindy 99, Fire OG, God's Gift, and Kush Wreck) which are starting to root now, both in the aero cloner and rockwool. Aero cloner has been a bit slower this time around, I think it is because they are under a tiny CFL instead of the 4 bulb T5. Bought a product called NO POWDERY MILDEW as a preventative. It contains geranium oil I think as the active ingredient, it was recommended to me by the guy at the hydro store over PM wash or anything else like that. Sprayed everything in quarantine, along with the veg room.
Going to spray it in the flower room tomorrow I think….it smells good and the buds are still tiny. Approaching the end of week three and everything is looking great except the yellowing leaves on some…I applied the Roots Elemental to all of the pots as a top dressing, as well as watered them with a mixture (although it is pretty damn hard to dissolve properly in water). For top dressing, it said to use 3TBS per pot, so I did roughly that and mixed it in with the first inch or so of topsoil. Some of the pots were seeming a bit low on soil, so I topped them off with fresh Roots 707 from the hydro store, the only problem is that shit has fungus gnats for sure (why else would it always be on sale $20 for 3 cubic feet lol that’s like half price). Hoping that the mosquito dunks that are also mixed in that top inch of soil will do the trick, and I will spray some more neem soon (last spraying) to try and off the adults. Might hang a few sticky traps as well just cause I have em sitting around. I saw a fungus gnat hovering around the bag in the store, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of adults lurking around now. Can't believe they still sell that shit and don't even mention it
but then again it is so-cal...I'm considering bringing it up to them next time just to see what they say...
I’m hoping the Elemental works relatively fast, because I want these ladies to be pumping out trichs at maximum level and with a cal/mg deficiency that wont happen… Also I’m hoping it works soon because currently it smells like old gnarly sea ass sitting on top of my pots and I would love my tent to smell like something else haha namely DANK.
12/6 - After looking at the buds forming on these ladies it appears the bottom branches are still going to be totally blocked out for light, so I decided to do a bit more thinning while I still can – turning most of them into lollipops somewhat. I don’t want to risk any PM issues at all, and since I already know the spores are in my house (in quarantine from the contaminated cuts I picked up) its about creating conditions where it won’t show up. I thinned out all of the ladies pretty intensely underneath – trying to remove anything that won’t get light, and any leaves that are touching continuously (mold risk). On one of the plants (the Space Bomb), there was a tiny patch of what appears to be PM on a small inner leaf that was touching another continuously. I am hoping it is just some Elemental I spilled (stuff is white powder and when I spilled it on the ground it looked like PM spots) but that is just what I’m telling myself haha to try and cope with the fact that I am already dealing with this bullshit. Cut off a bunch of leaves on the Space Bomb to thin it out and then I sprayed all the plants with NO POWDERY MILDEW. I have a tiny bit of Green Cure that I will use ASAP in the next day or so because after that it’s definitely too late into flower. I just don’t want to take any chances with PM that shit is the devil, and I need to catch it soon before it becomes systemic. I am going to mix up a c02 homebrew soon (sugar, water, yeast) so that I can run my dehumidifier, which brings the temps up to 82 or so if it’s running (but also brings the humidity down to 30%). Without the dehumidifier running my RH can sometimes reach 50% during the night cycle, which is definitely too risky. I am hoping to get another fan soon so I can improve airflow in general, although I already have 2 16’’ oscillating fans in there and most of the leaves are fluttering constantly. God damn this is annoying – guess I’ll just have to count my blessings that I caught it early and at least I know how to control it. If I decide it’s too late in flower to spray green cure I’ll just give them a spraying with whole milk diluted 1:10 in water – as weird as it seems it actually kills the PM
12/7 - Gave the ladies in the veg room a watering today because they were startin to droop. Foliar fed with Extreme Serene 15ml/gal, needless to say they were quite happy a few hours later, no more droop
Also noticed a tiny bit of PM in the veg room (one tiny spot on one tiny leaf lol) but still, son of a bitch!!!!
removed the infected leaf and flushed that shit down the toilet, I need to do a milk spray soon! Too many sprays not enough time for the leaves to chill out!! Sorry ladies, I’ll give you a break and just turn up the fans to try and lower the humidity. It’s no coincidence that these 2 spots of PM have showed up during a week of rain and high humidity outside….
12/8 - Leaf yellowing is still progressing, decided enough is enough and dissolved 1TBS of Epsom Salt in a gallon of water, sprayed everybody down in both rooms. Hoping this does the trick, not sure if it has any calcium in it but at least there is immediately usable Mg. Bought some black plastic and put it over the windows to help with light leaks in/out. I was getting a strange orange glow coming out my front window most of the night – that’s no good. Also I noticed that my A/C unit LED display throws a bunch of light onto the flowering ladies at night, so I put a few layers of duct tape over the display to prevent light stress. I also put some duct tape over the lights on my atmospheric controller, even though they are green lights (I’ve still heard of green lights messing up photoperiod, no need to risk it). Decided to rotate the veg tent within it’s room for various reasons, so I had to take everything out, move it, and then put everything back in. In this process I decided that the Mommas were taking up an unnecessary amount of space in the veg tent, and they were also getting too much light and growing too fast for my needs, so I relocated them to various places within the room under CFLs. Hopefully this will keep them happy yet not growing too fast. With the extra space in the tent I was able to move all of the remaining plants out of the closet, which freed up a 4’ 4 bulb T5 fixture. I decided to move this into the closet in the flowering room (3x4x6), which I was only using for storage of ducting and such. This allowed me to take a few of the 15 plants I had brought in on December 1 and move them out of the flower tent into the closet – freeing up space for the big ladies to breathe a bit and get more light penetration. These closet ladies will be flowered under 6400k T5’s which will definitely be an interesting experiment. I just don’t want to have to deal with the ventilation of another HID light if I don’t have to…
12/9 - Week three is over! All of the little bud sites are getting me excited for the next month! The fact that two of my phenos have already started turning purple is even more exciting!!! Everyone is looking great for the most part, I’m hoping the yellowish ones will react to the Epsom Salt spray soon and start to green up again…
In the veg room everything is looking great, mainlined ladies are jamming along, need to chop them back again soon..
In quarantine all is well, no sign of PM, cuts are rooting more vigorously now both in rockwool and aero. Only issue is the aerocloner is leaking a bit, but hopefully a bit of duct tape will fix that. If not its off to home depot to pick up a tube of silicon. But I’ll have to wait unitl they open cause its 5 in the morning!!! God damn garden and life got me caught up, the only free time I have to post is at crazy hours of the night. Oh well, I guess that’s how it is sometimes. Waiting for the holidays to arrive and things to settle down…until then I’ll just pack another bowl of sweet tooth and try to forget about all the BS. Now its off to sleep
I promise I’ll be back soon with more
Oh yeah and pics - snapped these a few hours ago
shot of the rearranged veg tent/room
mommas in the veg closet under a CFL
and on the outside of the tent under CFLs
Mainlined Plush #1
up close of branching
Mainlined Qush #1
side shot
inside the veg tent
bathroom quarantine
up close of Deadhead OG
Agent Orange, Sourband x2 and Blue Cheese
A bunch of cuts (some are Gods Gift x OG Kush from the same friend)
Plush #1 lookin nice
top shot
Ace of Spades #1 (definitely BCS pheno
)
top shot
trichs
lower growth still purple
cheese quake looking super happy
brought these ladies in Dec 1 (Lavender, GDP, MILF, Qleaner, Vortex)
Agent Orange
just some room shots
jilly lookin so sexy
Roots Elemental top dressing
More ladies from Dec 1st under a 4' 4 bulb 6400k T5 in the flowering room closet
That's all for now - I've been up for wayyyyy too long. Time to crash out, sleep in, and then make some supersoil
its going to be a mission. I'll keep y'all posted on that as well. Peace and lemme know what you think