Pleb_Seeks_Guidance_From_Grow_Gods!

TL : DR version- Anyone have a guess-timation on finishing time? So I can time a flush with harvest on unknown genetics? Any tips for End-of-Flowering?

Hey stoners! I came here to ask for a little guidance. Now keep in mind i'm pretty much a noob. This is my second grow. My first was in a crawlspace, and I was forced to move across state mid-flower. They ended up being re-vegging and flowered a second time in an outdoor setting and on top of that, had to be pulled early due to hurricane. They were taller then me when harvested, but were very unfinished they made great edibles and hash but the actual buds were something to be desired due to not being completely ready. Because of that I haven't seen a completely finished plant in person yet.

Fast forward a couple of years to the present. A friend of mine went on tour of Peru and Ecuador. She brought me back a bag of seeds from the trip. I ended up planting about 30 of them in beer cups, and ended up culling the males, and the weak females down to about 14 plants. The strains are unknown, all that is known is that they are peruvian bag seed. They were vegged for about 6 weeks from seed.

Space/Lighting: My space is in a spare room that already had ventilation. My grow space was reduced to about a 3 foot by 3 foot area that I sectioned off with reflectives. Ambient temperatures were in the low 70's F, today the ambient temperature was 68F (not under the lights). Underneath the lights it usually read to be in the high 70's to low 80's, and I had experimented with positioning the lights until I saw them stop folding upwards from the heat. I have 2, 250W LEDs, a T5 between them, and 4 T8s for supplemental side lighting pointed diagonally towards the center of the grow at a 45 degree angle because the LEDs I have are designed to focus the light straight down underneath.

Now I know lumen readings are a little bit different with LEDs, but according to my phone app the lumens underneath the main LEDs at the canopy read about 70,000-90,000 lumens, and around 15,000-20,000 under neath the side lighting. About 40,000-50,000 mid canopy. Back in late September I did a reading with the app underneath sunlight, and it was reading about 56,000 lumens on the app. The plants were put outside everyday in the morning and brought inside every day at about 5pm to get lots of natural light while vegging until the natural camouflage outside started dying off and was too risky to leave them outside unseen.

Soil: Everyone says not to use MG, but this was an experiment so I didn't really care about the perfect conditions. I used 1 part MG potting soil: 2 parts fresh soil from the compost pile in the backyard : 1 part perlite. I feel like mixing the compost soil help dilute the MG nute balls. I will use better soil next time. 10 of the Girls are in 3 Gallon pots, and 4 of weaker ones are in 1 Gallon pots.

Water/Feeding: I have well water, with no pH checker (I will be getting one for the next run as I took a few clones of the 2 strongest/fastest developing females) but I don't seem to be having any sign of pH problems yet. After about 4 weeks of veg and plain water I gave them a saturation of 8-0-0, week 5 veg plain water, week 6 veg 24-8-16 saturation. No sign of burns they seemed to love it. As I switched to Flowering my most developed plant started turning purple around the budlets, I researched and this suggested a phosphorus deficiency but it didn't look like anything I saw online. I started giving them a 15-30-15 and the purple-ness around the budlets disappeared after a few days. Since then I've been giving them a 15-30-15 saturation every time the soil was dry, and they seemed super happy! My last watering was probably about 9-10 days ago (LEDs don't cause much heat or soil drying), and since they were forming budlets and having no sign of nute burn I gave them all a double dose strength at day 30! BIG MISTAKE. well not too bad, but they did show their first signs of nitrogen burn at the tips, and the purpling around the budlets started to come back. Which after researching suggested nute lock-out, and over feeding. I monitored very closely over the next 3 days but didn't do anything, and the purpling went away on it's own, but the tips of the nitrogen burn didn't, so I seemed to have learned this nute limits.

I defoliated at day 21 because my space is very crowded, basically what I did is gently pulled the fan leaves down around the areas that had developed buds. Some of the fan leaves popped off with a gently tug, if the bud sites ( like the lower ones) were unformed or didn't pop off with a gentle tug I left them alone. I also left small fan leaves around the top of the buds. I probably won't defoliate again unless they really fill up the space heavily again. I noticed that they are really pointing up towards the light so they want to get that energy in them! Instead of continuing with this controversial defoliating technique I've since decided to do a staggered harvest as I don't really have time limit issues.
As of writing this i am on Day 40 of flowering, and was reading a lot about molasses and other tips and was wondering if its too late to start feeding small amounts at this point of development or if anyone could give me some pointers or tips. I was planning on cutting the 15-30-15 in solution in half for the next feeding down to 7.5-15-7.5 and then switching to half of that strength for the end or just plain water for the end of blooming. I haven't found a really solid answer on flushing or not, it seemed very subjective. I made a bunch of butter from the pulled males and the fan leaves defoliated and got super stoned!

Now I was wondering if anyone experienced could give me an estimation of when the buds will be finished. It seems like they are all ripening at slightly different speeds due to their genetics, and I'm trying to get an guess-timation of when to switch to plain water for the last 2 week flush/leeching period. It seems like they may take more than 8 weeks based on bud comparisons online. They seem to be developing slightly slower than photos i've seen online. Most of the crystals still look clear even from eyeballing them without a microscope. If anyone can give me some pointers or an educated guess that would be super great, or any other finishing tips and tricks I may have missed! My most developed plant is in the 2nd photo and started showing brown pistols today but only on the very top, and the mini-colas orange! I think the buds look pretty good so far besides a little nitrogen burn and signs of overwatering, but open to criticism. Thanks for reading my wall of text. Blaze on

P.S. - I noticed some Amber trichomes on the very edges of some of the top leaf is this something to be concerned about?

DAY 40 (WEEK 6) OF 12/12 PHOTOS
One of the lesser developed plants

Browning/Oranging Pistils/ Faster Genetic plant


Top view of colas

You might have to chop them a week or so apart.

The easiest way to tell if a plant is ready by eye. Is simply to look for white hairs. If there's still a handful of white in amongst the brown ones. They need another week or two before they're ready.

I can't give specifics to when they'll be ready. That's the thing about mystery genetics. The whole grow is a guessing game. But, maybe a month from now. They'll be really close. If not ready to chop.

Get a han held plant microscope they are about 20 bucks on Amazon or the hydro store. If you have a nice camera that will work too, take a pic of the bud and zoom in so you can see the trichomes. When the trichomes start looking like the second pic in the chart I have provided, so mostly milky, start your flush and you should be good to go. Since you have several strains you will have to check all the plants and may have to harvest them at different times. Start checking week 7 or so.

Nice chart! I have a nikon that ill just take some high rez shots w a tripod starting in week 7 to inspect the trichomes. I suppose I'll keep feeding at half strength for about a week or two? I read that a week a flushing hard is all that's really needed. Maybe a cup of water each time they dry out? I was completely saturating the soil with nutes til I started to see something drip out the bottom. These are just some quick photos I snapped on my phone. Ill get some close ups in a few weeks I guess.

WeedZebra said:

Nice chart! I have a nikon that ill just take some high rez shots w a tripod starting in week 7 to inspect the trichomes. I suppose I'll keep feeding at half strength for about a week or two? I read that a week a flushing hard is all that's really needed. Maybe a cup of water each time they dry out? I was completely saturating the soil with nutes til I started to see something drip out the bottom. These are just some quick photos I snapped on my phone. Ill get some close ups in a few weeks I guess.

Click to expand...

Everyone disagrees on how to flush, some people don’t flush at all. I will lay out a few ways in which to flush and you choose, as I don’t think it matters much which way you do it. I personally do a flush but I have smoked plenty of weed that isn’t flushed and it smoked and tasted just fine. A lot of people say it is unhealthy not to flush I don’t know that there is any science behind their claims, as there is not a lot of good research done on weed in general. The folks that don’t flush usually argue that farmers don’t flush fruit crops such as strawberries and oranges before sending them to market.

Some people flush two weeks some do one as you are thinking of doing. If you do a one week flush I say do straight water. Flush option number one is to decrease the amount of nutes cutting them in half each watering with the last watering being just PH corrected water. I personally switch to PH corrected water for the last two weeks when top watering and one week of just water when I do hydro. There is also products out there that claim to help the flush process, I don’t really buy into a lot of the supplement crap as I am a minimalist when it comes to growing. Option three fuck it don’t flush.

I will say this don’t cup water them for the last two weeks. Feed them the same quantity of water as you would normally, if you don’t do so you will dry them out and fuck up all of your hard work. Good luck man let me know if you have any other questions.

I generally don't flush but feed just water the last couple weeks. With the types of fertilizers you are using a flush may be a good idea tho. 15-30-15 is too high P and not enough K and you should cut way back on the N now if you can. A small pack of Big Bud would do nicely right about now tho should have been used throughout the flowering from the start. It's 0-15-35 and I've used it since they invented it.

WeedZebraNew Member
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Thanks for the great advice guys! The flush never really made sense to me because i don't flush out my vegetable garden before i pick the tomatoes and cucumbers so i assumed it couldn't be too bad. I was going to order some K heavy nutes tomorrow and was considering maybe some cal-mag because i see tiny spots on some of the leaves wasn't sure if it's worth it this late but maybe for the next crop. I was researching but just wasn't exactly sure what to get for soil nutes because it seems like there are a thousand choices of nutes on the market. I'll look into getting a bottle of Big Bud though. You guys answered my question thank you again so much! I have a pic of the trichomes, they are obviously not ready. To me looks to be a majority clear and maybe 1-2% amber so far! I wish i could give you guys likes but I think I'm too new. Posted photo below taken at day 42 flowering

Getting some cloudy ones in there too. I'd be chopping that one in a week or so. I like to pick at the peak of THC when the trichs are 50/50, clear/cloudy and 90% of the hairs are red like Jorge Cervantes says in his grow bibles. an take me 4 more weeks to gt many amber and amber means the THC is degrading to CBN and that does not float my boat. Trichs age and go amber after the plants are cut down so why wait and waste electricity.

I generally crop in stages too. Take about the top third off first then let the lower buds ripen up further for 10 days or so then finish them off. Got a nice trimmer too so that's going to make things a lot easier for my arthritic hands.

I buy the powder version of Big Bud as it has a much longer shelf life. You can get small jars of it for around $20 that are enough to use for a dozen medium sized plants. I just bought a 500g jar for $90 in August.

You did a pretty decent job on those plants of yours for a 2nd grow. Much better than my second grow about 1978. lol