Years of growing medical mmj in Seattle/Tacoma, experimenting, and spending over $5k in professional setup and supplies!
I finally figured out how to grow low cost with success.
I'm going to toss all my plants back to veg, when they finished flowering from 12/12 to 18/6, and grow them 2 weeks in 18/6 before cropping them. I want to let keep them reveg for 4-6wks before flowering them again. I saw more immature buds growing from the bottom during the first week and after the 2nd week is when new small leave starts shooting out of the buds. I plan to crop almost everything off the plants, before new leaves starts shooting out of the buds, and just leaving the last node on a bud from each branch that I want to keep. New shoots will start growing from that tiny piece of bud left on there. I've already tried cropping after reveg for 2 weeks with some top shelf buds left on there. It made the nodes on the buds spread a little bit more and made the bud fluffier instead of being dense. The plant kept growing with no more thc production after a week, when new leaves shoots out there is no crystals on it. I didn't taste any difference in the quality of the bud except it was fluffier and you can smell it better after drying it.
Oh one important thing, I am growing "vegan organic" with Growers Gold indoor mix from Home Depot and homemade vegetable tea 7-1-4 that I make daily with my homemade 1605w LED lights setup. I have cut my cost down to $350 for building the 3 x 535w led lights, 3x3x3 & 3x3x5 panda film tent on 3/4" pvc frame, and 30 cents to make 6 gallons of veggie tea to feed them every other day. That's $4.5 a month on fertilizer and I get to drink the tea that I make for them but more concentrated lol. I turn 1 quart into 6 gallons. I don't need to flush my plants, there is no nutes in it. No snap, crackle, and pop when blazing up the buds at all. This is how I got away from flushing and killing my plants like before. I've only started growing vegan organic about 2 months ago, the bud taste sweeter, and the plant grew way better. I didn't even need to switch fertilizer from veg to flower. It's the same veggie tea I make for them daily, just more concentrated during flowering.
I will never use nutes again. It beats making more clones and killing my flowering plants. It takes 3-7 days to make clones and another 7-10 days to baby it. That's at least 2-3 weeks wasted to make a 6-10" baby plants and another 6-8wks for the stems and roots to get big. The way I'm growing now will save money and make my plant bigger each time I reveg, meaning more buds each time I crop. I've already made seeds, so my next mission is to see how many times I can reveg my plants before the quality goes down by growing vegan organic. Normally growers will switch mother plants after 1.5-2 years when they decrease in potency, I am hoping it's the same with F1 clones, and forget the mother plant lol. I will be able to reveg and crop each plant 3-5 times per year depending on the strains.
Also I did tried breeding a fully flowered plant just before putting them back into vegging. I was hoping to create seeds in veg but no success, the hairs stayed white. Next time I will try breeding 2-3 weeks before revegging.
The photo of the Indica is GSC male x Cannatonic = Girl Scout Tonic
The Sativa is Kali Mist male x Harlequin growing too tall, had to super crop it first 3 weeks into flowering.
The photo of the 3 nugs is GSC x Cannatonic cropped after flowering.
The photo with 2 nugs is GSC x Cannatonic cropped after 2 weeks into revegging.
The photo of reveg is GSC x Cannatonic is about 17-20 days into revegging a few days after I cropped it.
The LED's are 8020 ,7020 in the center and 5630, 5730 on the sides.
