Butters' 400w SCROG Perpetual w/ Coco Hempy Style - Various Strains

Score!

Thanks a ton for those instructions Kat! And I didn't even think of using the zzzz smilies... and they were more than appropriate.



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Well. I'm all rested and got my lazy butt up to take some pics.

Pics 1-3) All of the young lady. Clearly in need of a watering in these shots

With all my work yesterday, I guess I forgot to feed her. Just took care of that though. I'm pushing her up to 920 ppm. She appeared to handle the 763ppm just fine. God I miss hydro when it comes to knowing how they're reacting to ppm.

As you can see, only about 3 of the branches are above the screen. As I mentioned yesterday, this is because my screen is too far off from the top of my bucket. Just like LST, the sooner I can get those main branches completely horizontal, the sooner the growth will be forced through the other shoots to come up and meet the screen.

Lesson learned I guess. Next time, I'm gonna have to cut the base of the screen down a few inches. I will say, the scrog technique IS really easy. Pulling the branches to the side of each hole is very quick and simple.

Pics 4-5) Well folks...this is it. This is my ventillation system.

It may not look pretty. It may not look like ventillation. But it's working goddammit!

And if ET can use a speak-and-spell to communicate to outerspace...well...dammit I can use a coffee can and an easter basket as ventillation. Now if I can only learn that secret of making plants come back to life again like he did...hmmmm.

If you missed yesterday's post...Basically the coffee can has some activated carbon in it---which is attached to the 4" ducting---which is then attached to a plastic easter basketlol: )(through a 4" hole that I had to cut and duct tape to the ducting)---which in turn is completely covering the bottom of that fan that I was using---which is blowing outside of the tent.

Was there a simpler way of doing this...probably. But why just multiple 2 times 3 in order to get 6 when you can just add 8 to 45 then subtract by 4 then take the square root of that and subtract by 1...right?!

Why can't I just be rich so I can buy all this shit and not have to do this.

But, with a little hard work, sweat, and easter cheer...I was able to get this done.

This is only temporary luckily. After doing a decent amount of research, I think I'm gonna get one of those Stanley blowers and use that as the fan/ventillation system. I don't have 100% of it figured out just yet, but'll at least look much nicer along with pulling more air.

That being said, as you can see from pic1, the temp remains at 90f. And the humidity is just perfect (part of the reason I'm not in the habit of watering as often as I probably should).

Thanks for checking in all. Comments, suggestion, and folks who just want to laugh at this are more than welcome.

-Butters

I'm gonna have to start flowering this lady tomorrow.

She is just too huge now. I'm mean freakin huge. This has mostly happened in the last couple of days. Those nutes are working wonders on the growth rate. Maybe that is what Barry Bonds was using the hole time...just the Canna Coco A+B.

The screen is easily 1/2 way full and then some.

I plan on doing the 24 hour dark period before flower but I have to plan this out correctly. I'll probably run the lights on during the day for flower. This also means that I gotta get ready to add that 400w HPS real soon. She's just too big for the 150w.

The 150watter can safely handle a 1' x 1' area. She's considerably bigger than that now and will get about 2-3 times her size during stretch (depending on the strain). Given this, I'm gonna have a hard time fitting any more plants in there anytime towards the end of flower. I'll have to figure out how to manage the space late in flower to make more room.

The ghetto filter is still working good too.

And, I think I'll try taking a clone sometime tomorrow before I go lights out with her. This will be more for the sake of practice. I have my old bubblers ready to go and they will easily step into the role of a bubble-cloner. I'll need to have some practice with this before trying to do it with a strain that I want to continue on a more regular basis.

Pics coming tomorrow. Get ready to see alot of green. And thick stalks too. I could build a friggin tree house in this thing if I wanted to.

Peace.

-Butters

Well...here she is.

That screen is a little under 3'x3'. And shoulder to shoulder she covers a little over half the screen. That screen will fill out nicely come flower time.

Interestingly enough, I backtracked in my journal and realized that she's really only been vegging for about a week over 1 month. I figured I was close to the 2 month mark at this point. A 5 week veg at that size is more than I expected given my limited veg lighting.


So this is it. The last shot before she goes dark and begins her journey through pot-womanhood.

Now watch...all this and it'll turn out to be a dude!

It was a fem'd seed so I'm not too worried. But...it was a FREE fem'd seed so I'm a little worried.

And, given that I'm am turning to flower...it's time to germ another seed for it's month+1 week veg period. Now....white rhino...or white widow.

Decisions, decisions.

-Butters

(Butters) said:

Well...here she is.

That screen is a little under 3'x3'. And shoulder to shoulder she covers a little over half the screen. That screen will fill out nicely come flower time.

Interestingly enough, I backtracked in my journal and realized that she's really only been vegging for about a week over 1 month. I figured I was close to the 2 month mark at this point. A 5 week veg at that size is more than I expected given my limited veg lighting.


So this is it. The last shot before she goes dark and begins her journey through pot-womanhood.

Now watch...all this and it'll turn out to be a dude!

It was a fem'd seed so I'm not too worried. But...it was a FREE fem'd seed so I'm a little worried.

And, given that I'm am turning to flower...it's time to germ another seed for it's month+1 week veg period. Now....white rhino...or white widow.

Decisions, decisions.

-Butters

Click to expand...

LOOKIN DAMN GOOD BUTTERS !!!!!ITS GETTIN BIG KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK HOPE ITS A FEMALE!!!

hey what up Butters. wow, man i really didn't realize the size until you said the screen was 3x3. but hey man dont worry about the damn plant. the seed you got is probably from the same stock i got, and ima tell you something it has turned out to be some of the best smoke i've had in a long time, so hey dude enjoy the show. hell if it does turn herm at least you got some valuable experience in using your hempy style bucket, now all you have is some fine tuning to do. question though, how long before you topped it? looks like it only has like 4-6 branches. i'm asking because i'm thinking about turning to using a screen. because the way my current run is going it looks like if i had topped them and put a screen up, it would have worked out nice. but hey it always the next time. good job though. btw if you knew what i knew you'd make sure you got a cutting off of that.



PEACE!!!
-ZEN-

ZEN MASTER said:

hey what up Butters. wow, man i really didn't realize the size until you said the screen was 3x3. but hey man dont worry about the damn plant. the seed you got is probably from the same stock i got, and ima tell you something it has turned out to be some of the best smoke i've had in a long time, so hey dude enjoy the show. hell if it does turn herm at least you got some valuable experience in using your hempy style bucket, now all you have is some fine tuning to do. question though, how long before you topped it? looks like it only has like 4-6 branches. i'm asking because i'm thinking about turning to using a screen. because the way my current run is going it looks like if i had topped them and put a screen up, it would have worked out nice. but hey it always the next time. good job though. btw if you knew what i knew you'd make sure you got a cutting off of that.



PEACE!!!
-ZEN-

Click to expand...

Hey Zen,

I actually never topped or fim'd her. I was thinking of it but figured that I should just try the straight up screen method 1st to see what happens before adding the other methods in.

She basically only started touching the screen about 1.5 to 2 weeks ago. I put it a bit higher than most scroggers do. Like I said earlier though, it sure is easy. Just tough to stop from knocking the screen around when I'm moving stuff around in there.

Oh yeah. I'm taking a cutting or 2 from her tonight. Way I figure, this strain appears to be finishing in a little under 60 days from other journals and smoke reports I've read. So I can keep a mother for future reference if I like the smoke. The smoke reports I've seen on the BV are surprisingly good. Couchlocky and stuff. People sayin that the wish they'd cloned cuz they only got 1 free seed. I can learn from the mistakes from others.

Gonna be using my aerogarden (previously retired) for the cloning. It basically runs itself and I can easily transplant into another medium (dwc or coco) when it's rooted well enough.

Gotta do some reading on the process and conditions needed before I do this though. Probably will need to make some form of poor-mans humidity dome for the cuttings...and I'm all outta easter baskets.

Well, sadly, my lazy forgetful ass forgot to put it dark this morning for the 24 hour period. I need to do this in the morning if I want lights on during the day and out at night. So, tomorrow morning I've got 2 alarms set. One to wake me up for work, and the other to remind me to kill the light before heading out for work.

I'll get pics up of the cuttings I take tomorrow and hopefully get some feedback.

-Butters

Well, it's done. Not sure if it's done well...but it's done.

I took 2 cuttings tonight. Felt like I was chopping off my best friend's arms! What an awful process.

The clones are about 6" long. I followed Al B's instructions as best I could. Water is ph'd. Holding medium is ph'd (they're these jiffy sponge things). Got a bubbler in the aerogarden as well for oxygenation.

I made sure everything was sterile, between cuttings too. Took the cuts. The stalks are massive so it wasn't easy. I immediately scraped a bit off of the bottom and dipped in rootech rooting hormone (gel). Then put that through the jiffy sponge medium (cut it length wise so it would hold the cutting).

The water doesn't have anything added to it. Just ph'd to 5.8.

And so much for the starting to flower plan! She's bare. Gonna let her veg and see if any new growth starts.

So, now that I cut 6" stalks off, what do I do with the bottom 3" of the stalk that is still attached to the plant? Keep it there? Cut it out to the main stalk? Anyone?

The other problem with the cuttings I took had to do with the scrog technique. These cuttings are basically like the leaning tower of marijuana plants due to the lst of the scrog. Not sure how this will effect the cloning process.

The cloning environment is pretty good. Temp in mid 70s, humidity at 60%. Not too bad...right?

Anyway, enjoy the pics and please suggest away a storm. I'll get pics up every few days to see if it's rooting.

-Butters

P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention..she is most definately a girl. Preflowers are clear...and big.

what up kid. dude i am so glad you took clones man because it is some really good smoke. my god its been so long since i have had an completely enjoyable experience. definitely stone material, the taste is ok. not as good as it smells, but not bad at all.my personal experience went like this," i was toking away, toking away, toking away when i realized a buzzing sensation in my face, just a light tingle. and as i tried to concentrate on this buzzing feeling i noticed my eyes were blinking on a constant basis, but when i took focus off of my face i noticed that my eyes were not blinking it was my eyeballs were kinda bouncing up and down, or at least what ever i was looking at was bouncing up and down. excellent for sleep with the right amount, no excuse me EXCELLENT for my sleep issues, with a good, sound, solid sleep. definitely pleased, and the buds get long(avg. 4-5inches) and hard, and about an inch and a half wide. i don't know if it was because it was topped, but that's what it was. i cut half of the branches at 8 weeks, gonna cut the rest at 60 days which will be today. i did the same with my NL plants but the other half of those will get 9 weeks which will be this weekend, btw the NL is tight. but anyway back to the BLUE VENOM i can say that 8 weeks(56 days) is good. no amber trichs yet, that's why i'm giving her a little more time. no more than 9wks. only cause i dont want anything i have to go longer than that. oh yea i just wanted to show you this since i was in a rush to try out my freshly cut buds, but i didn't want to microwave 'em, or put them in the toaster oven(too much heat, too fast)so i took a box, you can use a shoe box or whatever cardboard box you have with a top. first i sectioned the inside off and cut some long holes in the box top to be positioned directly over the sections, then i took some buds(that were cut off the branch) that had been drying on a screen for one day and put them in the box and covered it. then i just sat it in my car/trunk sunday morning and let it sit till about five o'clock. mind you this was only an experiment, but it worked. the heat from the inside of the car, the cardboard helping absorb the moisture, and the holes letting the air flow all worked to give me some quick dry buds, in two days(depending on your outside temps) that didn't taste green at all. i'm out though, awesome job dude. gonna put up some new pics on my thread, btw i'm really leanig towards trying a ScroG, so i might be bugging you about that. when you see my girls you'll understand why i'm leaning that way. but anyway be easy dude!


PEACE!!!
-ZEN-

Katatawnic said:

YAY, gender confirmed!



For future reference....

Click to expand...

Why oh why can't I find this very useful information BEFORE I go chopping off 8" tall appendages to my girl. Makes perfect sense though...tall clones for sog and whatever sized clones for plants that will veg awhile. I think I'll keep these 2 clones as mothers for a while.

Thanks for the tips Kat! (Alias: Encyclopedia Marijuanica)

ZEN MASTER said:

what up kid. dude i am so glad you took clones man because it is some really good smoke. my god its been so long since i have had an completely enjoyable experience. definitely stone material, the taste is ok. not as good as it smells, but not bad at all.my personal experience went like this," i was toking away, toking away, toking away when i realized a buzzing sensation in my face, just a light tingle. and as i tried to concentrate on this buzzing feeling i noticed my eyes were blinking on a constant basis, but when i took focus off of my face i noticed that my eyes were not blinking it was my eyeballs were kinda bouncing up and down, or at least what ever i was looking at was bouncing up and down. excellent for sleep with the right amount, no excuse me EXCELLENT for my sleep issues, with a good, sound, solid sleep. definitely pleased, and the buds get long(avg. 4-5inches) and hard, and about an inch and a half wide. i don't know if it was because it was topped, but that's what it was. i cut half of the branches at 8 weeks, gonna cut the rest at 60 days which will be today. i did the same with my NL plants but the other half of those will get 9 weeks which will be this weekend, btw the NL is tight. but anyway back to the BLUE VENOM i can say that 8 weeks(56 days) is good. no amber trichs yet, that's why i'm giving her a little more time. no more than 9wks. only cause i dont want anything i have to go longer than that. oh yea i just wanted to show you this since i was in a rush to try out my freshly cut buds, but i didn't want to microwave 'em, or put them in the toaster oven(too much heat, too fast)so i took a box, you can use a shoe box or whatever cardboard box you have with a top. first i sectioned the inside off and cut some long holes in the box top to be positioned directly over the sections, then i took some buds(that were cut off the branch) that had been drying on a screen for one day and put them in the box and covered it. then i just sat it in my car/trunk sunday morning and let it sit till about five o'clock. mind you this was only an experiment, but it worked. the heat from the inside of the car, the cardboard helping absorb the moisture, and the holes letting the air flow all worked to give me some quick dry buds, in two days(depending on your outside temps) that didn't taste green at all. i'm out though, awesome job dude. gonna put up some new pics on my thread, btw i'm really leanig towards trying a ScroG, so i might be bugging you about that. when you see my girls you'll understand why i'm leaning that way. but anyway be easy dude!


PEACE!!!
-ZEN-

Click to expand...

Bravo on the quickdrying box Zen .

I got real lucky moving into the place that I did. Fortunately, it came with a built in heated fan in the wall of the basement. Dries all my buds in about 4 hours flat and doesn't cook'm at all. Thank God for that heated fan too. Could you imagine trying to dry those buds in the 70% humidity that I have everywhere right now (minus the dehumidified grow room of course).

I'm definitely excited to try this stuff out. Now, just gotta be patient and wait a coupla months

-Butters

Okay. My original girl is clearly recovering quite nicely and is back to trying to fill that screen up again. Her recovery time was pretty minimal fortunately. I'm beginning to really like this strain.

I am now in the process of testing out the air-cooled 400w HPS. Only thing is...I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS GODDAMN REFLECTOR IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!!! ;

Let me elaborate. I got myself the 400w htg supply HPS with the Supernova Relflector (seen in the pic below). Most air cooled reflectors that I have seen have an opening at both ends of the reflector, one for intake and one for outtake (sound reasonable?).

This clusterfuck of a reflector has one at the opposite end from where the bulb screws in...and one at the very top of the reflector...and to top it off, the one at the top of the reflector is basically covered by the aluminum-like insert to create the needed reflectivity on the inside of the reflector. It's not an airtight seal there by any means, but it looks as if it'll restrict airflow significantly.

Sadly, I forgot to take a pic of it to show how silly the design seems. And the instructions don't bother to tell ya which end should be using as intake and which will be the exhaust. I was going to email HTGsupply about it when I noticed.....they don't even sell that damn reflector anymore! That can't be good.

I basically just used the top hole as the exhaust. So I duct taped some 4" ducting to the hole, and ran it into my easter basket ventillation portal in the tent. Which, yes, means that I'm temporarily doing away with the coffee can carbon filter for the time being. I need to make sure that I can still pull enough air to adequately pull the heat outta that reflector.

As for intake...now before I start, I know this is wrong...I'm just using the tent air as the intake air. Basically, I have no cool air to pull from at the moment. I will eventually have plenty of it. But for now, I'm a little screwed. This means that I'm essentially air cooling that reflector with 80f air. Not exactly the best use of an air cooled reflector I know. But it'll have to do for now.

It's been about a half hour and it's running 84f. If it stays there, it'll do and I'll live being 8 degrees above my idea temp for the time being. But....that temp has to go up I think. As I'm only really venting back into the room that my tent is in, the temp should steadily climb (little by little) until it acheives a temperature stasis with the outside-tent environment. Which means that I have to put a cap on how high I will allow my temps to go before coming up with a new idea. I'm thinking no higher than 89 for the meantime.

I gotta feeling I'm gonna have to create some type of icebox contraption that can carry cool air. That means more venting needed and probably the use of copper tubing, which sadly is rather expensive these days. Here's to hoping that I stay at 84f.

Pics of the girl, the set up, and the 2 clones (which are looking all kindsa healthy) coming soon.

-Butters

cant wait to see them girls butters !!!

Hi All.

I got lazy but here's the pics I took from 2 days ago. The 24-hour dark period will start tomorrow morning. Then...it's flower time. Risky as I haven't seen roots yet from the clones...but they look healthy so far.

Pic 1 is the remained scrog plant. Looks healthy and got big again. Should be a good yielder at this point.

Pic 2 is of the 2 clones I took on 9/1. I was hoping to see all out roots by now but I don't see any. I do see some bumps which could be the start of roots at least. My cheapo-old ass camera is terrible at close-ups so I didn't take pics of the area with the bumps. I will definately have to do some research into finding ways to shorten the rooting time. I don't have the patience for a 2 week rooting process.

The humidity is 50% in their area. Temp is around 80f. No idea about the water rez temp though. Probably not as warm as it should be. The aerogarden rez never gets too warm naturally and I don't have anything to warm it with. A ruglar heating pad wouldn't do much. Any idea on ideal rez temps for clones rooting in hydro/aeroponics set up?

Pic 3 is the goofy 400w hps set up I have. I disconnected it from the exhaust. When the unit is attached to the exhaust, the tent runs 84f. When it's just the exhaust running and not attached to the cooltube unit, the tent runs 83f. I'll be curious to see how these temps change in the next month with the progression to fall weather. We're down to 70f outside already. Managing heat will be no problem come frost time.

See how there's the 2 vents on that light set up. One on the side and one up top. Any thoughts about which I'm supposed to be using to pull in "cool" air and which is supposed to be exhaust?

That's all for now folks. I'll get off of my lazy butt to get and post more pics sometime soon.

-Butters

Ladies and gentlemen...we have a root!

Only on one of the clones, and just one root so far...but I'm happy damnit.

The mom is in her 24 dark period now. That will end tomorrow at around 6:30am, when she officially goes into flower.

Pics coming tomorrow.

-Butters

Alrighty all.

We have a root in both the clones.

The clones themselves look very good above the water level as well.

Man, I forgot how much work the hydro can be. I'm ph'ing that AG rez like twice per day. Thing just shoots right back up to ph7 if I leave it alone too long.

I also had to take down the ppm a bit with the now-flowering mother on the screen. I think I may have been overfeeding her a bit. I was basically taking 15ml of both the Canna Coco A and the B and mixing it into a 1 gallon container of water. That's significantly higher than what the instructions say to do. Through my hydro experience, I'm very used to feeding schedules based on ppm alone. Never really had to follow directions before.

I was pushing her up around the 900ppm mark in late veg. Figuring that her growth was so explosive that she could take it easily. And she did. But I'm sure I was probably wasting a good amount of nutes in doing this.

Now, I'm basically following the instructions from Canna about the feeding schedule. Just using 10ml per gallon of both A and B at this point. I do plan on adding in some of the Fox Farm Tiger Bloom and Big Bloom sometime in the near future. I was really impressed with what these nutrients have done on my previous grows and definitely think that the plant could benefit from their use in this go around. Just have to be careful with the amounts that I use so I don't cook her.

I'll also need to evaluate the use of the Humboldt Gravity as well. Given the current tent conditions (temps in low 80s), I probably couldn't even think of using it. Temps need to be close to 10 degrees lower for me to use the gravity safely. This stuff has a reputation for cooking plants in high temp conditions. Even the 83f temp that I consistently run around is probably too high. Fortunately, you don't use Gravity until the final 3 weeks of flower. And 5 weeks from now, I'll have temps outside in the 40's, and hopefully temps in the tent around mid-70s.

Sorry about the lack of pics. But...well....it's college football season and I get REAL lazy about stuff come college football season. Likewise, it's pro football today too and I plan on speding the bulk of day at a sports bar catching all the games.

-Butters