Passive Intake 600w 6 Plant LST Critical Kush

Greetings. Making this thread to share a little bit about my grow setup which was largely designed using bits and pieces of information on this site 4 or 5 years ago. As well as get any information or tips from people on what they might change or how specifically different people might handle the LST as the plants get bigger.

I started out my first grow with 2 DWC bubble buckets and Dyna Grow Nutrients. It worked amazing and I got 2-3 ounces per plant. Pretty nice for a first grow in my opinion. Second grow was in a strait peat and perlite mix using all Dynagrow nutes. This didn't go quite as well and the plant looked pretty rough by the end but I still got 1-2 ounces of good bud. I'm sure it was user error somewhere that sent the plant down hill.

This time for the sake of making a 6 plant grow as easy and low maintenance as possible I am doing a soil grow. 4 buckets are Barney's Farm Critical Kush with Fox Farms Ocean Forest + 15% perlite. 1 Bucket is Critical Kush in Coast of Main + 15% perlite. 1 bucket is Kiwi Skunk(freebie) in Coast of Maine + 15% perlite.

Seeds were planted 12/20/2016 into 12oz plastic party cups in Fox Farm's Ocean Forest soil. All were transplanted into their respective buckets on 1/9/2017. Veg lighting is 24/7, flower will be 12/12.

I plan to add nothing but Pro-teKt unless the plants tell me they need otherwise. At which point I may consider trying a worm casting tea.

It does appear that the Coast of Maine was a little hot for the Kiwi Skunk as very early in transplant the bottom leaves on that plant turned redish in color. The Kush that was in Coast of Maine faired much better with only very slight discoloration. I will get some picture up shortly after this post to show the discoloration, feel free to let me know what you think.

Thanks for any input you may have and please feel free to link me to any of your favorite grows that have a similar setup to mine; so that I may learn from it and make my own as healthy a grow as possible.

As far as the setup which can't be seen in the pictures:

I have a 6" inline fan pulling air through first the filter, then the light. This exhausts through a vent in the bathroom which points directly at a skylight. In the winter it heats the bathroom and much more of the 3rd floor. In the summer the skylight stays open and all heat exhausts directly outside. The fan stays on 24/7 which gives the flowering room constant fresh air and keeps it exactly the same temperature as the bedroom. On really cold days/nights I can lower the fan speed and easily raise the temperature of the grow room. Very happy with the way this turned out and thankful for the information this site provided me to make it happen.

Looking good.
1. Keep all electrical off the floor.

2. I would put some mylar/ reflecting material on the available walls

3. Protect those wooden floors. Mylar floor too.

Thanks for the info MediheaLed. I was considering if it was worth it to Mylar in an open space like this, so I'll take your word for it and pick some up.I'll get a small shelf or maybe mount the electrical to the wall.

[QUOTE="sponge, post: 13306460, member: ]Thanks for the info MediheaLed. I was considering if it was worth it to Mylar in an open space like this, so I'll take your word for it and pick some up.I'll get a small shelf or maybe mount the electrical to the wall.[/QUOTE]

No matter the space, keep it safe by keeping electricity above, water below.
Also, you're paying for every lumen, by the hour, might as well bounce it back off every surface you can to the plant.

Very true on the mylar. A couple picture updates here. I'd say 2 more days and I will be dealing with just vertical growth. A couple branches haven't reached the side of the bucket yet.

Should I top any more? My interpretation of this method is to let it grow to 1/3 of use able canopy height then trim from the base of the stem up and around to maybe 6" up from where they are tied down.

Picture update tomarrow. They won't upload from my phone for some reason.

Here are the pictures.

Anyone want to take a stab at what ales this plant? It's been vigorous from the get-go compared to the rest. Probably the fastest growing and bushiest of them all. But for some reason the leaves on this one seem sort of dry, deformed with a little bit of that clawing.

What has me perplexed is that this seems to be the only plant doing it and it's one of the Critical Kush plants so there are 4 others with the same strain. It's also in Ocean Forest so there are two other identical plants(different seed of course).

The only thing I can think of is that the soils are a little hot to start out in and this seed in particular is more susceptible than the others to the excess nutrients. It does seem to still be growing at the same pace as the others.

So, I'm still trying to decide when to flip this grow and how much to prune off. I've never had this much greenery under the 600 before so it's very hard to tell how far I can let them go before light spread and penetration is going to be an issue.

It's a 600 watt digital ballast in a 6" cooltube. 6 plants are just over 1 month into veg with a 4'x4' footprint and 14" tall. I have 3' from the top pf the plants to touching the cooltube at it's highest position, so basically about another 12 to 18" of usable vertical space.

P.S. For what it's worth, in person it looks much more cramped for space than in the picture.

eek, I guess pictures don't work at all now not even linked off site. Here is a direct link to the album:

http://imgur.com/a/gemOZ

I see pics are working again. Glad to see the site is back up. Thought I'd post some update pictures. A couple now and a few more when the lights some on.

Glad to see you flipped, you'll need that 12-18" for stretch.

I dont buy into trimming X ammount from the bottom as a rule, so in my opinion asking how many inches up to trim is a bad move. Its a plant by plant issue. Some strains even the bottom most branches can be really heavy yielders. This is not true on every plant. Since i do little to no trimming on the bottom, several of my plants bottom most brances (that were little more than nubs on flip) are now equal hight to the main cola, and look to be around 1/2 the size of the main cola in mass. Meaning, if i had trimmed the bottom 4 nodes, i may have tossed 25-50% of my yield.

I always prefer to add more light or train the plant to expose bud sites if possible before cutting. Sometime it is needed to remove larf, sure, but not always.

Absolutly get some reflection going, those blue walls are not helping you. Youll find that if you "fence it in a little" with panda or mylar your plants will be visibaly brighter. I also think its important to put a layer of perlite on top of the soil, it may seem trivial, however it does reflect up a lot of light to the plant. Makes a big differance in my opinion.

Its also a good idea to move the plants around each day, that way no plant gets light starved on the edge of the grow or burned in the middle.


Im a really big fan of scrog, however it can make moving the plants around a real pain in the ass. It takes some trial an error to find what works best for you. You can get rolling platforms to set the plants on pretty cheap at around 10 bucks to help moving scrogged plants

Thanks fellas. 2 weeks in.

Medi, I was pretty worried there at first but I think they are starting to slow down stretching fast so plenty of room left over for the odd branch that wants to keep stretching out a little. I think you are right about on target there by the time they are done. 12-18".

Growingforfun, I started out with the intention of trimming significantly. As I kept reading I noticed that there is a pretty much 50/50% split on pruning/not pruning. I decided I might as well go with not pruning first and checking the results before experimenting with heavy pruning. So you will see in the next picture set that I have pretty well let them go. I still have an option to prune the last week or something to ripen the lower buds if it seems necessary.

Mylar is on the horizon and I still need to mount the electrical on the wall too. Do you currently run a SCROG?

I'll do another update in a week or so with progress.

Picture update 14 days:

Picture update 14 days(cont..):

Day 15:

Day 15, I took this leaf from the very bottom of a plant. Does it look like a deficiency? All I have added so far is one dose of GH FloraNova Bloom, 1 tsp/gallon.

I'm thinking they are going to start getting really hungry soon.

sponge said:

Day 15, I took this leaf from the very bottom of a plant. Does it look like a deficiency? All I have added so far is one dose of GH FloraNova Bloom, 1 tsp/gallon.

I'm thinking they are going to start getting really hungry soon.

Click to expand...

I just finished some critical kush and my leaves did the same about mid way through flower. Trichomes take forever to turn amber, i harvested at ten weeks and still had clear trichomes

Thanks for the input shack. The closest information i can find to that specific picture seems to indicate it could actually be a slight burn. Surprising since I only did 1 tsp per gallon. I'll forego the nutes until I see some visible lightening of the leaves.

Do you have any pictures through your flowering from that grow or final bud pics?