Krat, thanks for all of your comments to help my (and my friends) grow.
I'm way disappointed in my Jack Herer's. I'm at about the same flower time as you after 4 weeks veg. and 3 1/2 weeks 12/12, but my plants have at best about a quarter of the bud sites at the canopy compared to your Jacks above and I'm only seeing just a hint of frosting with some brown pistils. I think I burned them somewhat when experimenting with the height of my new and unfamiliar Ceramic Halide light, less than a foot off the plant tops for a few weeks. I've since moved it up to a foot and a half, this probably explains the curling leaf tips of the plant tops.
I know 2 other big reasons for my poor performance. 1. I'm using 7 gal. smart pots. And 2. I had/have a very problematic aphid infestation due to vegging out of doors then bringing the plants inside. Never do that again! I noticed the aphids in the second week of veg, then got lady bugs in there last week (week 3). I was zooming in on a leaf section with my new hand held microscope when this huge green monster comes over the leaf seemingly right at my face!! After falling over backwards I realized the monster was really a 64th of an inch or so in size aphid.
We have a bunch of yellow spotted/stripped leaves with most of the leaf tips brown and curled, but I think the lady bugs have the momentum now and haven't seen an aphid in days. I only see some eggs (I guess) on the underside of some leaves now that I hope are dead. Live and learn I guess. And this is my first indoor soil grow, and practice make perfect.
I have a couple of questions for you. Help me understand how raised beds are an advantage for you. I thought the chief benefit of raised beds was getting oxygen to the roots (and I could easily be wrong about this), but you are currently using smart pots which also give the roots oxygen? My second question is about watering. I've been watering about a gallon of water in each 7 gal smart potted plants every 7 to 8 days, since I kept reading about how the biggest mistake new soil growers make is over-watering. You are watering every 2 or 3 days. I think the answer here may be due to (first, your growing and thriving healthy plants) your much hotter room temperatures. Remember my light is a very cool running 315 watt Ceramic Halide and you have 4 HPS', two 600 watt-ers and two 1,000 watt'ers. How do you judge by the soil or plant when it's time to water?
Well, this Friday I'll be approaching week 6 so it actually sounds like you're a good couple of weeks behind me if I'm not mistaken? But before I babble, I just want to say you're definitely not watering enough. You should hit them with water until you start seeing runoff, but do it in short bursts to give the water time to work its way down. First order of business every day at lights on is to do the finger test, usually the top inch or so will be dry so I know it's time to water. I just gently stick my finger into the pot (stopping if I meet the slightest resistance) and feel if things are moist or not. If dry, I water then, if still moist I wait another 3-4 hours. Lately they're always dry at lights on.
I water with a hose nozzle, circling around the container twice just fast enough to get the top layer moist, then I hit the middle a bit. I do this with every single plant, then I let the water do it's thing for a bit. I'll then go around and inspect the plants and the room to make sure everything is still in working order. After that, I hit all the girls with more water, let them rest again, and then water one last time if I don't see run off by then. Usually that does the trick. I've actually been watering every single day first thing at lights on since about week 2 of 12/12 I think?
But keep in mind, I'm also running CO2 though so I'm using more water than normal too. When the plants process more CO2 than normal, they also need more light, water, and nutrients than normal. My temps are at 81-82 with CO2, 77-78 without CO2 (tank ran out of propane
) If your plants are root-bound (and in 7g I'm sure they are), they'll be soaking up water like nobodies business. Even as humans, if we were in constant 77-78 degree weather, we'd still dehydrate without water after a while. The cooler temps just mean we'd lose less water over time, but without proper hydration the temps are a moot point. Same thing with plants.
Some people will say that watering too much will "flush" the nutes in your soil but apparently this is a total fallacy. The nutes apparently become bonded to your soil (a result of the CEC I believe?) which means that you're gonna have a hard time flushing them out.
As for the amount of bud sites, you fed them coconut water in veg if I'm not mistaken yes? Regardless, the fact that you mention heat stress makes me think that could be why you don't have many bud sites. My plants were pretty much never stressed during the entire cycle thus far (Thank God! Aside from the one day with my A/C shutting down) and were fed coconut water once-twice a week. Did your problem with heat just recently become an issue or has it been an issue for the entire grow? Usually a lack of bud sites/long node spacing is a problem with temps. Either things got too hot too long or your day/night temps have more than a 15 degree difference.
Aside from the aphids you actually answered the questions to your problem quite nicely and I couldn't say it better myself. After this crop is done, top dress with crab, neem, and kelp meals and some EWC if you have it. Then plant some clover and let things chill for a week or two. The neem top dress will help prevent any new invaders and once the microbiology builds itself back up it'll start going to work on the remaining larvae/eggs..
However, as you said it does almost sound like the ladybugs have things under control. The reason I say this is because I've had the pleasure of dealing with root aphids before and believe me, if you had them you'd know. Only thing worse than those fuckers are spider mites and caterpillars.. ohhh how I fucking hate caterpillars. Anyway
The reason I think your aphid problem is dealt with is because your Jack seems to be having the same issues I'm having. In fact, I actually had the same thing happen with both my Jack Herer and Amnesia Lemon, the Lemon getting the worst of it. Exact same problems, curling leaves, dried/burned spots, yellowing leaves, smaller and more airy nugs than the other plants and so forth. I've got pretty much the same thing going on minus the aphids. The problem isn't so much the heat, but the watering. For the last two weeks or so I've noticed the symptoms get worse and worse and it only got better as I started watering more, seems I too was erring too much on the side of caution and trying not to over water. It was working just fine for my other plants, and still is, but the sativa dominant strains are hating me for it now.
I'll be switching to SIP (Self Irrigation Potting) or Blumats because of this exact reason. I'm just now realizing that I could never possibly be able to water any single plant perfectly, however with SIP/Blumats my plants would be able to stay perfectly moist the entire cycle. This would effectively eliminate any watering problems for sure. Aside from weak humidifiers that remains my grows biggest flaw is the watering.
As for your raised bed question. The reason for that is mainly because of the amount of soil you can fit in one of those bad boys. Take my 3.5x7 sqft screens, right now each light has a 25g pot in it for 50g total between the two. However, if I made a 1 ft tall 3.5x7sqft bed I could fit 24.5 cubic feet or just shy of 185g of living organic soil. I plant 3 seedlings in that single bed and they have 185g of soil to access as they see fit. I saw a journal on ICMag of someone doing this. He started off with 400 gallon pots and eventually went to raised beds because he was able to fill more soil in the same space. Every single last inch of the lights footprint had soil underneath it in his beds. The more room the roots have to grow, the more they will grow. He was rocking 4x8x3 beds I believe, each bed had 2 rows of 9 plants and 2k watts I believe. He was pulling 2.5lb+ per SE 1k light with his beds if I recall. I'd link it if I could find the damn thing :/ He was watering with blumats though, so perfect watering constantly.
My main hang up on it so far is the price of everything. The price of amendments for that much soil is pretty steep, so funds may hold me back from doing this for a while, but we'll see. I'm convinced that making beds the size of your light foot print will produce massive yields. The plant count can be entirely based on your style and/or plant limits, the main thing is having that huge mass of soil putting in the work. The only issue is space, most of us are in 7-8 ft tall ceilings and would have to grow shorter plants if we wanted 2-3ft high beds. If I am able to make beds, they'd be a foot tall at the highest.
However, the main reason raised beds are even a viable option for me is because of the amount of light I have as well as CO2. The growth I saw in the tent during veg was remarkable, I couldn't help but wonder how fast they'd veg out if they had their own light. So long as I keep the nutes coming and supplement with CO2 I think I'll be quite surprised with what they look like 8 weeks from seed.
Sorry for the delayed and lengthy response!
And I'm even more sorry for the lack of updates and pictures everyone! Life has been a bit hectic and unfortunately this gets put off more than I'd like :/ Here's a couple quick shots though.