Second grow - same ILGM seeds, hopefully better results - all comments welcome

Over the weekend I had a bit more time to get in and clean up. I stripped the bottoms of each plant this time and also cleaned up the inside along the stems a bit better. I also redid some of my LST ties and removed a few that weren't needed. There was a bit of new growth on some of the taller stems so I did some supercropping to bend them over a bit. I also did more rearranging to fill in the canopy. They all seem pretty happy.

Temperatures jumped up into the 50s for the weekend so I actually turned on tent exhaust fan on the lowest setting to remove extra humidity that was building up inside.

Canopy on 12-29-22

Canopy 2 days later 12-31-22

Other shots feature the recovering stems.

And a shot showing the general level of stripping done on the plants.

The humidity has been staying pretty consistent with the better watering practice so I have pulled out the humidifier. It will be going in with seeds for my next grow which I will be starting soon. They should be fine with a humidity dome, CFL light, and warming mat but I want the humidifier there for later because it will both warm the air and humidify it a bit for when I take the dome off.

I put out some more rat poison as I found another tiny gnaw on one of the stems. It's probably a mouse, but could still kill it. I'll also put out some mouse traps as well.

I haven't really seen any other pests, which is good. I'll get some more photos tonight.

I finally found some time to clean up more leaves. They were starting to look a bit jungly inside. These ones are really starting to smell. The bucket with my trimmings could be smelled from the other room. I may have to look at hooking up my carbon filter.

The plants seem to be doing fine. The tops aren't stretching a whole lot, it's mostly the tiny branches inside that are all reaching up towards the light.

Photos below are all from the 10th and 11th rather than 4th.


I also started my third grow and first breeding project which I will be creating another thread for.

Today marks day 29 since switching to 12/12 lights. The plants seem to be doing pretty good.

I have been slowly cleaning out the insides of the plants as there was a ton of stretching of small buds on the lower side of the plant. They are all a bit scraggy looking from being poorly trained before flipping, but that's okay. I expect I will have more larf and popcorn bud this time due to the amount of small stems growing below the canopy.

All 4 plants are showing purple/red stems which I understand is from the cool temperatures. I have been letting the tent swing down over night with just the radiator running. Lights on temps have been 70 to 72 while RH has been sitting around 60% with some fluctuation up and down, depending on outside weather.

I think running the lights during the night helps even out temperature swings but also has the downside of limiting when I get to tend to the plants.

Here's some photos showing the canopy changes between 2023-01-14 and 2023-01-24 and a few closeups of the buds.


The last grow I ended up chopping them all at 61 days into 12/12 lights. Though I would have liked to have some of them take longer, the temp and humidity were hard to keep in check which caused issues along with lots of foxtailing.

I expect these ones will probably take longer than that due to the lower grow temps. They seem to be healthy but I don't know if they are quite as vigorous this time around.

I replaced the batteries in my hygrometers and hooked them up to my phone to pull data off.

I want to increase the temp temperatures a bit so am debating about dropping my plants down and turning my light to 100% instead of 80%. I'm concerned that that could be way to much light still.

I'm also thinking about just turning my dehumidifier on since that will increase the temperature whenever it runs and my basement stays pretty damp.

My basement temp has been in the 50s during the day and it has been pretty mild this winter.

I'm going to do some more data gathering once lights kick on tonight to come up with a game plan.

I'll use one of those crappy phone apps to check the current PPFD for the canopy. Then I will turn it 100% and check what level it is and figure out how far I need to drop it down to get the PPFD into a safe range without supplementing CO2.

This should warm up the tent and I will be able to see how it is going. If the temp can click up a few more degrees, I think I will be okay to keep things as is.

If not, then I will hook up the dehumidifier and work on getting that running and dumping into a bucket again. That raised the temp a lot and lowered my humidity.

If that raises my temp to high, I will go back to 80% on my light and try out the dehumidifier.

Getting to the last week or so of this grow. The plants are looking and smelling amazing and I am hopeful that the harvest will end up being more than my first grow. This grow I have not ran into any fox tailing issues since my temp and humidity were way more consistent and low during flower.

I had to do some tent revisions because my oscillating fell and broke. Everything seems to be doing well though.

I messed up the feeding by switching to water earlier than I should have and the top sun leaves faded really fast on some of them. I am currently giving them a lighter feeding at my normal schedule.

The dehumidifier has been keeping the tent in the high 40s / low 50s. I adjusted the set point down another 10% as we get towards the end.

I haven't seed any bud rot sneaking in so hopefully the way I have everything set up continues to work.

My temperature has been staying in the mid 70s with the heater and dehumidifier running. I will definitely need to do some fixing up and rework of how I have the tent set up come next winter because this winter was mild for us.

As far as next grow, I am going to experiment with breeding and got a small tent to mess around, but I am pulling everything back after this harvest to prep for my outside garden.

I expect I will harvest next weekend. Most of the pistils are browned and a few of the buds are starting to show amber trichomes.

I'll pull some photos tonight before and after I clean up some of the dead sun leaves and double check how things are going.

I'm very hopeful that the plants will all be at a good place to be harvested all at once. I'm not certain though. I enjoyed having each strain I grew last time have a slightly different affect not only due to the strain but also due to the harvest time difference.

My harvest and cure plan is to feed as normal except the last day which will just be straight water. I will cut whole branches off and hang them upside down in the top of my grow tent and set my dehumidifier to 55 and angled so it blows into the one wall/corner. I will also keep my small floor fan running as well to help keep air circulating inside.

I am hopeful this cry and cure will go smoother than my last. Not that my last one was bad, but there is always room to improve.

I ended up getting busy and neglecting the final updates on this journal.

Chop day was 03-18-2023.

I removed any dry/dead looking leaves and cut each plant into sections. Think each big branch was cut and hung separately because the plants were so huge.

I used yarn and plant ties to tie the branches to hangers again.

I ended up with so much popcorn bud but ended up turning it into lots of edibles.

Photos of chop day.

Here's photos of them hanging up to dry and some closeups. I didn't have a bunch of photos this time around.

I let them dry hanging up in my big grow tent again. Each hanger was set up to only hold a specific strain to help keep everything separated.

I'm pretty sure I dried them like the last batch, dehumidifier to 55 to start and after 2 days I turned it down to 50.

On 03-26-23 I decided the plants were dry enough to trim and cure. The stems were more slightly brittle this time than last time.

My process for trimming and curing:

1. Remove all of the hangers with a specific strain.
2. Remove all of the branches from those hangers and put them on a huge ass tray.
3. Strip smaller branches off the big stems and work on removing any remaining large leaves. I left the buds on the smallest stems.
4. Load the entire strain's worth of bud into the trim bag and swish them around for a few minutes.
5. Empty all of the shake and trim from the bottom part of the bag. This goes into a bucket for edibles.
6. Repeat the same 2 steps until the buds are clean enough. (I think it took 2 or 3 batches so <20 minutes)
7. Weight and jar the bud for curing. I added a cheap humidity/temp meter that is visible from the sides.
8. Watch the humidity and burp as needed.
9. Move them into jars with boveda packs and to the basement for long term storage.

Photos from trim and cure along with the resultant 'Shake' for edibles.

Final report:

I ended up losing my final grow weight tally so can't give any accurate numbers. I know it was pretty close to the first grow as long as I didn't count the trim weight. The shake/trim weight was a lot because there was so much of it due to having so much popcorn bud.

Figure first grow was almost 1.5lbs and this one was probably just over, not counting anything in the shake/trim part. I ended up with between 3 and 4 gallons of mid range trim/shake which made a lot of butter and coconut oil.

The first grow was 3 plants and some random clones I was messing around with that produced okay while this one was just 4 plants and no clones. The clones had the largest buds on last time because they were basically a single stem while the actual plants had lots of tops.

Smoke report:

• Blue Cheese:
  • This plant turned out ridiculously good this time around. It is so resinous.
  • The first time I pulled it out to grind up, it basically just smeared inside the grinder. I actually pulled buds a part to try to see if there was mold or something wrong with it. In jar humidity was 58% at that point but hot damn, so sticky and smelly.
  • Potency runs in a bit higher this time around than last time and I picked it earlier than last time so it has less of the couch lock feeling and more of a high. Though, it still is great for sleep.
  • Smell wise, it's mildly funky and has some strong earth undertones but is also super sweet on the initial inhale. Very complex and just gets better each time.
  • I love the purple color that these buds turned and stayed.
• Blue Dream:
  • This plant turned out about the same as last time.
    Potency runs about the same, which is good here as the Blue Dream from my first grow was the most potent. It is also still mostly a head high and very mild body feel goodness.
  • Smell is more mild and kind of funky mixed with a little bit of floral notes.
• Blue Haze:
  • This plant turned out worlds better than the previous.
  • Potency vastly improved this time around here as well. The high is still more cerebral and light compared to the other strains. It is a great one for day use when I want to feel altered but not "high", if that makes sense.
  • Smell wise, it has a bit more funk than the blue dream but way less than the cheese. It is more floral forward with a kind of sweet afterwards.
• Gold Leaf:
  • This plant turned out really good. I didn't grow it before, but am happy I did.
  • Potency on this is at least equal to the blue dream but might be slightly higher. We smoked the hell out of it for the first week.
  • Smell wise, it is sweet and floral. The sweet notes kind of remind me of the smell of cooking sugar right when it starts to brown and turn into caramel.

Thoughts looking back:

• The trim bag worked better this grow. I imagine it is because of the slightly drier bud before trimming combined. I still had to break buds down to a point, but it took care of cleaning off 98% of the leaves that I actually cared about.
• The new DIY nutrients seemed to still work really well. I need to dial in the amounts a bit better, but I am very happy with the results.
• The temperatures were more manageable this time around and really helped dial in some bomb ass tasting/smelling bud. The cooler temps also helped the color of the cheese.

Future grows:

My first outdoor grow I did not document. I was going to put in an actual garden but got busy and side tracked with lots of other house/summer thing that I left the plants in their 1 gallon pots without extra food for way to long. They were the most wretched looking plants I have ever grown.

In the beginning of August, after some of them started flowering, I moved them into 25 gallon pots. I planted them 2 per pot and just hoped for the best.

While they did recover, I don't expect them to put out any more root mass or to produce much of anything outside because of how badly handled they were.

I am also starting a new indoor grow again but will probably not be adding it here.