TGA Chernobyl

Just wanted to add my current Chernobyl grow, since this is a pretty legendary strain, and you can never have too many dankenstein grow journals. Just a single plant as that's all I've got room for.

This was the last seed out of a pack I bought 7 years ago. I'd tried to germ 2 others earlier in the year and neither popped so it was down to this last one. She took a while, but finally popped, but was looking really sickly. She had odd misshaped leaves,with only one branch per side rather than 2. But, I thought, since I probably will never get the chance to grow another TGA Chernobyl seed again (since you can't seem to buy them anywhere anymore) I left her to see what would happen.

Eventually, after 2 weeks of virtually nothing she must have suddenly got over whatever it was holding her back, and she took off like a rocket....she stretched like a b**ch unfortunately, so outgrew my space. Given her shaky start I decided to grow her without pruning and little training. A few pinches here and there was all. This has given me problems in the main cola, which got heat damaged, but is still going now I've tied her to one corner of the tent.

I'm currently on week 6 or 7 of 12/12. (I can't remember exactly what day I flipped her)



I'll add more photos...

Oh...forgot to add that it's a soil-only organic grow.

Super frosty! Cola in picture looks good to me! Should look even better after a few more weeks! Let us know how ir all turns out!

I'd better post a pic of the whole plant, but please...no laughing. As I said, I didn't want to risk slowing her down with trimming or training, so she's a natural shape. Not exactly an efficient use of space, but it is what it is.
The main cola is about a foot long, but not so packed out...possibly because she got singed during stretch. But apart from that she's been pretty healthy. As ever with this variety, despite her sativa tendencies the nugs are already very dense

Edit: Not sure what pheno it is. Top fans seem more like sativa, but the bottom ones are quite broad-leafed. It's only about 4-5ft tall.

@ Pappy, cheers. I'm hopeful she'll go on and fill out a little more.

The photo above was from 10 days ago..this is the latest. Hopefully she won't eat up her leaves too quick. I'm sure there's 2 weeks left at least. We'll see.


Here's a closer shot of the main cola...


and the bud sites just below it...



I might well trim off the worst 2 fan leaves at the top as these really aren't filling out they they should. Probably ought to have done that a while ago....

And another crystally close-up. This is a cola from the bottom third of the plant.

I forgot to mention that she had a mutation where she grew alternating sets of 2 and 3 branches per node, from about the 4th bottom node right the way to the top. That's also part of the reason I didn't top her. I didn't want to lose that...

Not much change today...but here's another shot of her with a lighter for scale. Chernobyl is know to be only an average yielding strain, and I'm only using 400W (an old bulb too) so I'd be happy with 3 oz or thereabouts. Time will tell.

More frost-porn...I can't remember how frosty my first grow of this strain was back in 2012, but I certainly remember it was v high quality smoke.

This is also a good pheno I guess Get yer hands on some Chernobyl if you can. Highly recommended. Turns out you should still be able to get some Badgers Batch seeds of this strain, which should be good.

I'd love to try crossing this with a good Indica, like one of my old sensi seeds, but I'm really not set-up for a full-time grow, so probably won't try to re-veg and clone her now I know seeds are still out there.

Day...whatever. Nice red colouring starting to come through on the fans. Classic sign that she's nearing her time...


Fewer white pistils visible now, though some of the popcorn still seems to be sprouting them, so she's not done quite yet...trichomes still mostly clear with no amber visible.

Just a quick bud comparison. Same cola.....@Today vs 16 days ago....little visible change in size over the last 16 days, but definitely gaining weight.

I bought a usb microscope to see if it gave me a good view of the trichs...which I'm not entirely sure it does...every trichome kinda just looks slightly milky to me...as if they are not quite in focus. If they were all milky then I'd expect at least one or two to be amber....but none of them are.

I'll get proper microscope out tomorrow and chop a leaf for a proper look. Here are the shots anyway.

Here's another of the lower colas off to the left side of the tent. Most of them are getting some sort of support now for the weight of the bud on them.



And here's my standard bud-shot below...

No amber trichs visible. Plenty of milky and clear ones.

She'll go another week at least I think, my current plan is to chop her in about 10 days...but obviously I'll keep a close eye out in the meantime.

In the search for the perfect view of ripening trichomes over the years I've acquired lots of different magnifying implements....Magnifying glasses, loupes, an actual microscope...and this week I finally bought not one but TWO USB microscopes.
One was dirt cheap, and the other a bit more pricey. I've put together a direct comparison below. For other people trying to choose between models.

Top Left: BySameEye USB "1000x" - £15 Top Right: Plugable USB 2.0 Digital Microscope = £40


The bottom two are wobbly-hand-held camera-phone shots taken through my Aomekie childrens microscope (the focus is much sharper in real-life). I'm really not doing this thing justice. The camera-phone added a lot of blur... These cheap chinese microscopes do actually have glass optics and it is easily possible to see details inside the head of the trichomes themselves....if you wanted to!

On the left it the 64x magnification. On the right is the 160x magnification.

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Quality wise...I think the cheap USB microscope holds it's own pretty well, and certainly provides a usable view, but the image tends to feel slightly crisper and sharper with the more expensive one, so that's the one I'll use from now on.

I'll probably give the other to my bro's kids, as it's very easy to use.

Milky trichs everywhere I look. A few amber ones on sugar leaves here and there, but maybe 20% clear/mostly clear, 75% mostly milky, 5% light amber. A few straggler calyxes and pistils still emerging in places, but I'm still thinking harvest should be about 10 days. 15 at the very most.

Anticipation levels...now off the chart.

Waiting out the dry and cure is going to be real tough, but I can't do any less than give this lovely looking bud the slow-dry that it deserves.

ETA 9 Days. Lots of reds now.

I've actually still been giving her a light feed every now and again with worm-casting tea...but she's still looking a bit too hungry for my tastes. I'll give her another final does of that tomorrow I think.

While I'm pretty happy where she is I don't want that deficiency creeping into the bud leaves if I can help it. We had a really hot day today, and there's another due tomorrow....really bad timing, as I struggle to control the heat anytime it's above average. Night time humidity here has rocketed too...so a few tense days ahead.

Today's snapshot shows the leaf colours more accurately. I've just had to switch off the HPS as the temps were hitting 33C!!

She's only got a 75W CFL on her right now.

Like the goddam motherf&*%^ng mook I am....when I took out the plug to the HPS and changed in the CFL I must have knocked a load of timer switches...because I noticed the light on at 1am last night when she should have been asleep. (she's been on 8am to 7:30pm cycle)

To compound my stupidity, I flipped the switches back before properly seeing what time they'd switched on. I glanced at it tho, and am fairly certain she'd had less than an hour in the 75W light...I switched the light off as soon as I saw it, and she sat in darkness until 10pm this evening, just to give her hormones a chance to recover. I was already worried about hermies from the heat, so this is not ideal. She will still finish well whatever though so...
it could definitely have been worse, but....MAN. What a stupid mistake.

On the positive note, she is now on a 10pm to 10am light schedule with the HPS (11pm to 11am tomorrow), which should fix the humidity issues I'd been starting to see at night, and the heat issues I've been seeing during the day.



I'm away for a long weekend, so she'll get a really thorough watering tomorrow evening (with a top up before I go), and then nothing more until harvest sometime next week...