1st Grow - Client / Server model, perpetual, Top44 & Citral

ElephantRider said:

Side note.. I added soil to the Citral and transplanted the Top44 to a new cup. THAT was a nightmare. When I tipped the cup upside down, a whole mess of the dirt just crumbled out and fell all over the place leaving me with a pile of dirt and exposed roots in my hand. I managed to get it all set and watered, but the plant is stressed. Yellowed leaves. Hoping it pops back fast. The citral seems a little stressed from the added dirt up its stem, too. It's SO much smaller in stature than the Top44. FUN!

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Hey dude shame to hear you had a nightmare transplanting, I always water before i do as i find it helps bind the soil together .. Dont worry if its a little stressed it should perk right up within a day or two
gonna be an update soon? hows the bud experiment going? im rele interested in how it works out! lol

Sorry for slim updates. I've been really busy at work. No pics today, but here's what's going on in my PC..

1. The bud.. it's teetering. For anyone just joining in today, YES, I AM TRYING TO CLONE A BUD AND YES, I KNOW HOW DUMB THAT SOUNDS. It was not dried long enough, in my opinion, so I gave it a shot, since I'd heard of one other person having success with it. I was skeptical, so I tried to crumble some nugget off and wound up finding that the stem was completely moist again - WAY beyond the water line - and I ended up ripping a string all the way down to the bottom of it. THERE ARE LITTLE ROOTS AT THE BOTTOM. 100% certain. So last night, I popped her in some soil, as there's some waterlogging in the stem just above the waterline. The remaining nug on there is on fairly well. It is fully exposed to the air, now, so we'll see if it all crumbles apart or if it hangs on. The good thing about crumbling some off is that I exposed some small leaves. 2 of these leaves are moist-ish. They do not crumble when touched. I will be adding some water to the bud part (kinda foliar) to keep it moist this evening and I'll try to take some snaps. It looks totally ridiculous, at this point, but it just might work. There are some good signs still.

2. I changed water to a spring water that I have in my house without checking a ph reading on it. My plants both turned yellow quickly on the blades. The Top44 has also completely yellowed and shriveled its first fan leaves due to the transplant mishap, but it is growing fast. It's easily twice the size of the Citral and it's been more stressed! 3rd set of fan leaves are beginning to poke up!

3. The Citral has just been sitting there doing nothing, seemingly. I think the time it spent close to the lights must have really stunned it. Anyone have thoughts on that one? It looks really healthy. It even seems more resistant to the water change than the Top44, but it's just not growing fast. Are some just slower than others in veg.? 2" tall at 2 weeks is a little smaller than I'd imagined. I'm wondering if the roots maybe explore the surrounding first before major vertical growth happens. Anyone else know? The Top44 roots were all the way to the bottom of the cup.

4. I found a seed in my second most recent bag! One solitary seed showed itself to me before I pulverized it in my grinder last night. This was, literally, 2 minutes after I told my wife, "You know, for an unknown strain, this stuff's great.. I wish I could get more." Honest to god, this sativa has a wonderful taste to it and a fabulous mild high that lasts forever. No giggles.. 100% competence.. just euphoric as hell! In fact, I like it better than my most recent Sour Diesel, which, I think, was improperly cured or something. That familiar 'lemon gasoline' taste just isn't there as much as it should be.

I'm trying to figure my timeline for growing this year. I have some vacations coming up that will really get in the way of things. Mid April, I'll be gona a week and Early July, I'll be gone 2 weeks! There is no clear time to flower in there, really. I think I will hope for a clone to pop up by my April trip for, at least, the Top44 and I'll shove it direct from clone to flower tower to see if it shows sex fast. I want to know fast so I don't fuck around with males too much. Depending on that timeline, I may even be able to harvest it before my July trip. For the July trip, I hope to know the sex of my Citral plant (don't care if a first clone lives or not) and I will probably do a whole mess of 12/12 from seed - both varieties - before I go. 2 weeks later, I'll come back and hopefully have some flowering progress on seedlings and maybe a couple clones, if possible. I'll go SOG in there, I guess. Maybe SCROG, but with a mess of plants, I think plain SOG, LST, SuperCropping.. those are the tools I'd use there. This project, if nothing else, makes time go by soooo much slower. It's a good thing, since time seems to speed up as you get older.

Hopefully pics real soon.

That's a really informative update ER. Thanks.
I bet half of RIU are praying for the bud to root

Sounds like your mineral water comes from the Springfield Nuclear plant pond! Hope the girls recover.

Those lids on my pots have meant I can feed once a week without any fear of losing a plant. I'll try to find the maximum I can leave them without a drink if you think it may help you.

Id also like to say great informative update dude

Think i may myself try this bud thing as my local dealer has some real good bud at the moment (its also still damp).

Looking forward to a picture update aswell, as soon as you can

And my plants usually last 3 days before they start drooping on me for some good ole h20

My moisture gauge indicates I'm OK with water. I think something didn't jive with that water, though. Maybe it's just still suffering from the bad experience of transplanting.

So updates..

1. I got the charcoal filters that v12 suggested. EASY!!
2. My Top44 looks horrendous. I think the cup is maybe just a bad idea. This plant is growing fast and I'm wondering if maybe it's just super-thirsty. Any ideas are appreciated on that. It is a rapid growing strain.
3. The Citral looks really great. I'm praying this gem is a female. Reading more on the strain makes me believe this one will be TRULY great if I can just keep it alive. Lemony Hindu Kush, essentially.
4. The nug.. its foliage is still hanging on tight, leading me to believe that somehow, water is making its way up there. It had a root structure, so it's really not that far-fetched. Stay tuned!
5. Also.. put additives in the water for the first time.. a drip of apple cider vinegar and a drip of molasses.

Great stuff. I'm loving that nug. And the filter!
Wanna make something like that for my 1jz-gte
For the top44 check out my last posts on Pandora. The plant can grow an inch a day. If it's spread out over 10 tops then that's just 1/10th of an inch on each top. Way easier to handle.

cool man.... i really hope the citral makes it that is an insane strain.

and the SD bud, that will blow my mind if it grows.

I had a GREAT growth spurt in both plants today. I'm guessing they both liked the molasses and vinegar! The Citral put out tips of its third node and a bit of 2nd node fan leaf growth. The Top44 put out 4th node tips (1st node is well crisped) today and some of the yellowing on node3 fans backed off. This plant is THIRSTY! I may need to tear down the nug. I'm losing faith.

the nug is gone. It stinks hard core in there (and in my house) and I will be having rather inconvenient company over, so I decided to kill the threat. For what it's worth, it was a good experiment and I think it would have worked if I'd not skinned it the one day by yanking a piece off. It had molded by the scar while it was in the dirt, so it was time to call it. My bud's in the freezer already, so I'm not willing to try that.

Got an ozone generator today. WOW!! That shit WORKED. I also decided to try to germ the bagseeds I have, too. I should be doing something from seed in the flower tower right now, while I wait. I'll be getting a table to complete my stealth look. These will look perfect if they're actually under something, I think. I also figured a way to keep my lights less visible from the side, so I will try to employ that. As soon as something germs, it's 12/12 time!

RIP little nug
Good to hear you're getting the flower tower into action though.
Does the ozone generator clear all the smell? Does it make any noise? How much heat does it kick out?

It's 200 mg/hr and is less noisy than my "workstation", which has server class AC fans in it. It absolutely obliterated all odor in my basement.. cat litter, nugsmell, Top44 veg smell (it really does smell in veg. I sniffed it up close!) and also the smell of me bustin' up a couple z's o' diesel (which, if you've had it, you know REEKS). Note.. I'm psyched this thing has an on/off button right on it because it dries your head out big time. My sinuses feel awful right now, actually.

Also, grabbed a magnetic thermometer / humidity sensor and a magnetic LED (more for grins than anything else) for directly above the cups in the flower tower!

The idea to attempt to germ every bagseed I have (possible ak-47, white widow, hindu-kush and champagne kush) and maybe even some of my decent stuff is looking better and better. Even if something goes long-ish, I have 3 months+ until my big vaca in the summer, where the flower box WILL be off and the veg. box will be cut way down, possibly working clones.

nice grow so far man! I recently started growing top44 as well, in a closet, eventually an LED + cfl suppliment grow (once the UFO gets here).

You said your top 44 grew quite a bit more than the citral, I was wondering if maybe you could check out my grow, let me know if they are stretching too much from the light being really far? The tallest seedling is 6" above the soil, on the 3rd day since popping out! I mean i would be stoked about this growth, but with such long slender stems, even the lowest setting on my fan gives these guys insane shakes, and being so young and tender, i want to be cautious... anyhoo, here is my grow so anyone with advice or just general interest can help!

I'll answer you over in your grow.

I figured I'd start keeping track of the day in my titles.

Tonight is the true to life stealth test. We're having a cop over for dinner. True. Chances are slim he'll go to the basement for any reason, but.. I'm nervous, still. That's what prompted my ozone generator purchase yesterday. On ozone generators.. I'm not a fan. It will be used as a CYO (Cover Your Ass) mechanism for me, since its effects are IMMEDIATE. The fact that it makes you feel like you caught a cold in a matter of minutes makes it a non-plausible full-time anti-scent mechanism.

Things to do after the fuzz goes home.. gotta put the rest of my shitty bagseed in another germer. Also, I'm going to try to pop up 4 of my Top44 seeds, as well as 2 Citral in yet another germer if none of my 'decent' bagseeds have popped. See.. the bagseeds I tried to germ yesterday are 3-6 years old, kept in my basement. There were only about 10 of them, but all from very nice bags. The remainder of my bagseed is all about 10+ years old. I'm doubting that any of my bagseeds sprout at all. NEED TO LOAD MY FLOWER TOWER ASAP so I can get at least one harvest in before my summer vaca forces me to close shop.

you still have 3 months man, should be plenty of time no? i mean even 2 months flowering, couple weeks drying/curing... should be right on target!

Oh, and I'm interested to hear how the cop thing goes! Word on the street is that ozone generators leave a hospital smell that cops can easily identify as a cover-up odor.... haha then again I would imagine those are trained drug unit cops rather than everyday fuzz...

Yep.. which is why I'm going to put my Top44 in flower tomorrow. I will try to sprout a couple other seeds, too. I'm leaving that citral, though. It's gorgeous! So.. thoughts on flowering.. I'd like to try to use stretch to my advantage in LST. I may start the plants lower and move them up gradually so that I can lay them down around my cup lips a little easier. How quickly do plants stretch when they first flower?

Yes, as I'm typing this, I survived cop dinner with no handcuffs! None of my bagseeds popped, either. Damn.

OK.. I decided to bite the bullet today and pop the Top44 into flowering. The intention is to stretch a bit and wrap around the cup as quickly as possible. None of my other seeds has popped yet. The plates in the pictures are the mass germination happening. I'll be truly surprised if even one of my bagseeds pops. I started a Top44 and a Citral, as well. If no other seed pops in the next few days, I'll be adding 2 more Top44's and another Citral to the mix.

Without further adieu..

Hey ER
Glad you are still at liberty
They will stretch like mad and you need to look in on them every day until you have it under control, but you can use it to shape them how you want. It's hard to make a full circle with an even canopy. I use the lst to give me 3 or 5 tops and then stretch these to N,S,E & W. Keep the smallest going up from the centre. If there is still plenty of growth when they get to the edges then bend them a bit more to go around the rim.

I am SO jacked for LST, man. And what a great night! 2 of my GOOD bagseeds popped. I am going to need help with strain identify if they're fems. MAN! Could be a couple of Kush's, ak's, ww seeds in there. Bubblegum.. Cotton Candy.. couple diesels. I'm pumped! They go 12/12 tomorrow! Kids looked marvelous, too! The Top44 just woke up from its first darkness in life, though. I decided on dark from 10am to 10pm so that it's off during 'normal visiting hours.' Anyways.. jazzed. Heading to bed.