Small ACMPR Kush Berry Grow

Day 25

Since I won't be seeding these plants, I am now pheno hunting. I'm hoping for one great plant that meets my somewhat high standards. I will be looking for a pheno that gives me 1) great flavour 2) great smell and 3) great effect. Yield and bag appeal will come into play only if I have multiple plants that are tied after being ranked for the above three requirements.

However this does not mean that I am guaranteeing that I will keep anything at all. If I'm not truly happy with any of these phenos then I will not be running this strain ever again.

Plant 1) kushy sour fruit smelling. Excellent plant structure this is my biggest plant with 13 flowering tops all producing colas. It's very tall but nodes are still tight this plant is a monster compared to the rest. This plant drinks the most and looks the healthiest. It is a definite front runner right now. If this plant doesn't get me close to 3oz I will be surprised.

Plant 2) very strong blueberry smell, very nice plant structure but it is also the shortest plant with minimal stretch. 10 flowering tops with some of the biggest buds at this point. This plant is a very light drinker and has the most yellowing fan leaves on the bottom of the plant.

Plant 3) Hermie - removed from grow area.

Plant 4) very light kushy berry smell, decent plant structure, 9 flowering tops, average height and width. Heavy drinker.

Plant 5) very kushy smelling, no berry smell at all. 8 flowering tops excellent plant structure. This plant just looks good as the nodes are fairly tight and the buds are filling out nicely. I could end up with some nice colas off of this one. Average drinker.

Plant 6) minty grape bubble gum smell, nice plant structure, 13 flowering tops, main stalk stretched a fair amount but nothing too crazy. Thinner stalks though. Fan leaves starting to yellow on bottom of plant. Light drinker.

Plant 7) straight up bubba bubba bubblegum smell. Plant structure is ok but it is very tall as it stretched the most and has some of the smaller buds at this point. 12 flowering tops but only 5 tops are decent the rest are very small. Very heavy drinker.

As of right now plants 1 & 2 are in front on my pheno hunt. Plant 2 is winning with smell but plant 1 is destroying the group in every other category.

Damn hermies, hopefully grab a couple of nice ones from what's left though, they look good & healthy. If you're into regs and don't mind a hunt PM, I know a seed fairy that could have some interesting drops that haven't shown a single nanner

FML!

Thrips have come to visit.

I'll throw the damn crop out before I spray anything on the budding plants so I have very limited options. But I think I caught them very early as I can only see them on the lowest leaves and nothing higher up. I removed the lower leaves showing signs of infestation but I need to get this under control or toss the crop.

I found a Canadian site that sells neoseiulus cucumeris a predatory mite that eat things like spider mites and thrips. I can get 10,000 of them for $25.00.

Has anyone used these? Do they affect the plant negatively?

Well I'm going to pull the trigger in these sachets that you hang in the plants. If they work, I'll be buying them for all future crops as a preventative measure.

http://www.naturalinsectcontrol.com/product.php?id=000000215

Shitty buzz sir
Never had to deal with those bastards thankfully so I can't offer any advice I'll be watching to see what works for sure.
Got my fingers crossed those work.

My uncle uses a certain ladybug in his grow or well he used to. Never actually tried to find them either.

torontoke said:

Shitty buzz sir
Never had to deal with those bastards thankfully so I can't offer any advice I'll be watching to see what works for sure.
Got my fingers crossed those work.

My uncle uses a certain ladybug in his grow or well he used to. Never actually tried to find them either.

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After a second thorough inspection they are definitely thrips. But they are few and far between. I'm pretty sure if I did nothing at all, my crop would still be fine.

I really like the idea of the sachets full of predators though as I absolutely refuse to contaminate the buds with pesticides.

ThcGuy said:

Change of plans again.

I'm still pretty pissed about the whole hermie thing this morning and decided that if it can happen once, it can happen again. I'm pretty sure it was a genetic thing that caused the plant to go hermie as the flowers opened at the same time as my true male plants outside. It would be different if I was a couple more weeks into flowering and started seeing the male flowers, then I would suspect a light leak or abnormal stress causing it to show the hermie traits but thats not the case as far as I can tell.

Since I can't afford to keep growing a strain that has a track record of hermie traits, I will never seed this strain as the seeds could also have hermie traits. So I tossed my two male plants and all the pollen I collected over the past couple days. As of right now I will only ever grow this strain again if one of my current plants is absolute gold! If I do find a keeper, then I will attempt to reveg the plant into a mother plant for future cloning. If I don't find any keepers then c'est la vie, and I move on to other strains and breeders.

On a positive note, there are two plants that stand out as far as smell goes, one I mentioned earlier today, it smells like a very very strong straight up blueberry smell and the other is strong smelling as well but it is more of a grape bubblegum smell, if either of these plants has the taste to match their smell, I could have a keeper.

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Hermies?
I sent off a picture to a friend of a strain that most here would say was 100% pure,,,, until they made oil out of their nice hard crystalized buds...and saw what was forming inside some of those pods..

fucken traits gone wild I tell yas way to many queers in the audience tonight..."put em up against the wall"... isn't that how the song goes?

Day 28 Flower.

The buds are really filling out fast now everything looks good and the thrips aren't really causing any major issues. They did initially attack some older bottom fan leaves but I removed them on Friday and turned up both circulation fans to prevent the adults from being able to fly around easily. I have only seen a couple adults so far. Something is causing them to die off pretty quickly, I'm thinking that they are getting sucked into the fans and are being killed. With only 4 more weeks to go, I think the plants will be fine....hopefully!

My hermie plant is now an outdoor plant and is loving it. I move it around the yard to keep it in the sun and it looks super healthy. When I moved it outside I removed all the male flowers and haven't seen any since. If the bud turns out to be very seedy, I'll dry sift it and turn it to rosin with all of my other trim. It will not be wasted.

Ok, I know you guys are going to laugh but..... A couple days ago I picked off many of the pre-flowers (calyxes), dried them out and yesterday I rolled up a small test joint. The taste was brutal and harsh as it wasn't cured or even fully dried when I smoked it. However I got completely ripped off of it! Considering how small the joint was, I couldn't believe how stoned I got from it. This strain is a very powerful couch lock make you stupid kind of stone. I liked the effects quite a bit.

Today I noticed the trichomes are really starting to develop making for some pretty nice looking sugar leaves and buds. I also noticed the buds are filling out fairly quickly now and should produce some decent weight as they are already hard and getting denser everyday. I am pretty sure that I will be keeping a mother plant from this crop if things keep developing the way they currently are.

Day 30

Nothing new to report or comment on. Here are a few pics.

The girls are growing up so fast now. The buds are really getting dense and crystallized. I should get enough bud to last me though to the next crop. I have picked a few seeds off some of the buds as I don't see the point of letting them grow out to maturity. There are quite a few buds though that look like they don't have any seeds.

The hermie that seeded the girls is still outside and doesn't have any seeds as far as I can tell. In total I found 5 open male flowers on that plant and haven't seen any since then.

Day 33 of ~56

Looking real good mon!

Wife reports that my thrip problem is getting worse and she's not wanting to spend an hour or more every day hunting and squishing like I did my last crop when I had 29 plants to deal with and she only has 4 to babysit.

I used a big magnifying glass and sat under that 1000W bulb every day to keep their numbers down and never sprayed anything. Those 4 plants are in veg so I'll spray the crap out of them when I get home to wipe them out for good before putting more plants in that room.

Sorry I haven't been updating my journal much lately. I have been working long hours and haven't been able to see my plants in 3 days. I go to work before the lights come on and get home after they are out. My wife has been feeding them for me and tells me that "They are getting really stinky!". I guess thats good. She also says her arms get super sticky when she bumps into them, I guess this is good too.

OldMedUser said:

Looking real good mon!

Wife reports that my thrip problem is getting worse and she's not wanting to spend an hour or more every day hunting and squishing like I did my last crop when I had 29 plants to deal with and she only has 4 to babysit.

I used a big magnifying glass and sat under that 1000W bulb every day to keep their numbers down and never sprayed anything. Those 4 plants are in veg so I'll spray the crap out of them when I get home to wipe them out for good before putting more plants in that room.

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Thanks OldMedUser!
My Thrip problem is somewhat under control. I think having my fans turned up quite aggressively is making it hard on adults and not allowing them to live long. I still can find a few but they don't seem to be flourishing in the tent. I was going to order bugs to kill the Thrips but decided against it since they weren't spreading as badly as I originally thought they would.

They're no where's near as bad as the borg. Way less damage and population doesn't explode like mites.

I had spider mites once before from a clone a friend gave me. The little buggars destroyed my entire crop. I will take thrips over them any day.

I should get home tonight before lights out. I'll try to post some pics. I can't wait to see the girls!

Really like the grow journal, read the whole thing in the last two days.

newgrowboxgrower said:

Really like the grow journal, read the whole thing in the last two days.

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Thanks newgrowboxgrower. I tried to keep it up to date and as honest as I could. There will be new pictures tonight when I get home from work. I hope the buds are getting heavy and dense.

The girls are looking great! I'm really happy with how dense these buds are, they're like little rocks! The buds are getting a stronger smell and are filling out nicely. My wife did pretty good keeping my plants alive this week. She did feed them 1200ppm one time but they don't seem to be affected much other than some dead leaf tips. I can't hardly wait until harvest. If the breeder info is correct then this stuff should be ready around the 23rd.