At a little over a year into growing I am a Noob.
I have been growing the same strain For the whole year, flowering one at a time.
I now keep a Mom and Clones in my E/B veg under 216 watt T5HO.
So my Bagseed and clones that I am working are a Sativa dom Hybrid that flowers in nine weeks exactly.
During my first flower attempts I struggled not knowing why.
Every 9 weeks I flowered a plant each time getter a little smarter.
But I had drank the cool aid ;-/
(and I think it's Wearing off thanks to many Oldtimers here on RIU and my own experiments of food mixing to fulfill the needs of the plants responses in growth or weakness as I witnessed them.
Each time Flowered I dialed into making one food, I don't know the NPK values off hand.
My food, fox Farm hydro three part with three flowering additives for optimum out put.
(Yeah right....)
So I mix my Nutes my way not the way they tell me.
I always have my High N veg food in my mix, then my microbes and then a high P and K additive to run about 1000-1005 PPM for my flowering and the same ratio at 650 PPM for my veg.
I measure ppm with a meter and I use A syringe to measure foods
1/3 third N food, 1/3 microbes, 1/3, P/K to get to 1000 - 1005 PPM then PH up to 5.8by the gallon.
That is not how fox farm tells you to grow, that's for sure!
I always heavy a large dose of N in every feeding.
I TRY and keep my plants healthy till the end of flower I flower under a 400 watts HPS with T5 side lighting.
My highest weight was 10 ounces the 4 others were others 8, 6, 6, 7 ounces respectively all from flowering one plant at a time.
Proper LST, super cropping and selective topping in veg and then tying branches down to cause inner shoots to fill in the canopy. I vegged the 10 oz plant 7 months.
(I started a bunch of seeds from a bag of bud at the same time.
20 seeds, I had 16 males that I killed off and 4 females that I started to train early I waited 60 days before I flowered.
I let them all grow and kept training them as they waited in turn to be flowered.
I am know running clones from the last of the 4 original females.
At NO time did I defoliate, I tuck, I bend, I tie back but I don't remove the energy source of the plant.
Also when a plant has a health issue like a nute lockup (because I made a mistake)
It is the fan leaves that are canabilized by the plant to keep it getting the NPK ratio that the pheno needs to continue to grow.
The plant then can bounce back after lockup and gets fixed to allow green growth.
Not die off or grow smaller buds because fan leaves were removed.
Removal of a fan leaf stunts growth at that exact Node.
You might force more bud sites but they are smaller in general for the lights and foods everyone uses.
I run a pretty small simple deal, one 3x3 tent and a veg in a closet.
So far I am happy and I think I produce pretty good for one plant at a time , a plant that has 40-50 tops.
I will continue to try and balance my Nutes myself.
Good luck to you....
You Defoliate, damn how can it be good to take away the solar feeding source of the plant, take away the transpiration source of the plant and take away the "battery source". All things done by the fan leaves.
Why would defoliating work?
I ate some cookies and I am VERY high so I may have "ran at the fingers".
Bless,
DZ
