The Hobby Grow aka the Torture Chamber...Vertical/3x3/400w/Coco, Goal = 450g/Cycle

Hello folks...been a member here for a while but never posted (anything that I recall, anyways)...figured I'd throw this here and let it ride. I'm just copying and pasting most of these posts from another forum I frequent, so some of them might not make a whole lot of sense as they were posted over the course of the last several weeks. Here goes...

I've been out of commission for quite some time now for security reasons, but even though I've called it quits on the larger-scale gardens, I still need a head stash...right? Growing's in my blood and I find it difficult to imagine imagine a life without this plant, so better for me to mitigate the risks and stick to something real small instead of trying to go "cold turkey," as it were. In any case, here's the important stuff:

-Strain is a local cross of the Afghani #1 (male, smells just like the "coffee pheno" we have around...I have pics of that particular strain in its final form on this forum somewhere, as an fyi) and the local rendition of NL#5...from what I have seen, it is perhaps the largest yielding strain I have ever personally put eyes on in my entire life. The person who gifted me the cut told me that knowing what I know and given my growing style, I should be "flabbergasted" (yes, they used that word) with anything less than a quap per plant with this strain. He's not the type to use hyperbole, so I'm excited to see what I can pull off with this tiny little space.


-400w Hortilux for flower, bare bulb, hanging straight down the middle of the plants vertically. It's cold enough for the bulb to operate without a fan pointing up at it as I typically would for a vertical setup, but come spring/summertime I will need to throw that back in there. Plants are vegged for 3 weeks from rooted clone before flip...for most varieties, I almost always wait until I see pre-flowers indicating sexual maturity regardless of whether that takes 3 weeks or 5 weeks. Obviously this takes considerably longer than normal from seed rather than clone.

-Medium is Sunshine Pro Just Coir, fed with nothing but tap water and Canna A + B at 15ml/gal. I also hit nearly everything with a moderate to heavy dose of Rhizotonic (20ml/gal - 50ml/gal) up to two or three times between feedings until the 3rd week, but that's all.

-The grow is located in a ~3' x 3' master shower in one of my homes with the exhaust plumbed into the dryer exhaust located nearby.

-The goal here is maximum yield with respect to quality and the ability to tear everything down and dispose of it within 10 to 15 minutes. Doing so required a bit of jury-rigging (seen in the pictures later), but as they say...better safe than sorry.

-As the title states, I am looking to get at least a pound per cycle with 4 plants in 3 gallon pots. Veg will be 3 weeks from rooted clone (as mentioned above), up to 4 weeks depending on whatever strain I choose to throw in there in the future. In the interest of full disclosure, the plants currently in the space vegged for about 5 weeks before going to the 12/12 cycle on 12/12/2011 (clever, I know
), so I would expect to reach my mark even easier this first go-round.

-As this is a "torture chamber" grow (and if you know me at all, you know I'm fond of those
) I have subjected most of these plants to some rough shit in order to test the stability of the genetics and satisfy my morbid curiosity. Every plant was FIMed, and each one was trained and/or supercropped in a slightly different way so that I could observe the minute differences in the end result. Additionally, I defoliate very heavily, especially after they were nearing the end of the stretch...but more on that here in a little while.

I will add more to this as I go, and I will upload some photos in just a couple of hours when the lights come on. As of today (12/24), plants have been flipped for 12 days. I expect to flower for another 7 to 8 weeks, perhaps more, although my friend claims they can be taken far earlier...we'll see. To be clear, my goal for yield here is no less than 100 grams per plant, although I am hoping for up to 150g+ if all goes to spec. Although I only have 3 plants flowering in the space currently, it really requires 4 plants to maximize efficiency, so I recently threw a highland mexi cross in there that I had running from seed to sex it. If it's female, it'll stay, and if it's male and I think it's worth a shit, I'll segregate it to another room until I can take the pollen.
 
First up, a few pics of the girls in their natural habitat. See what I mean about jury rigging? Ignore the cheap hygrometer/thermometer, thing hasn't worked for the better part of a month and I'm too lazy to replace it. The temp, however, actually is accurate...getting a bit cold in there for the ladies, may have to throw a small space heater in there with 'em to play it safe.











Here's the first lady...as you can see, this one has only been moderately defoliated and then supercropped quite aggressively throughout its life up until the first week of flower or so, but I have done very little training as I wanted to wait until stretch was totally over to tie everything down. This can be an issue at times (doing it so late in the game, that is), but thankfully the structure of this plant should make that easy this go-round.












#2...this one was defoliated the heaviest, way up the main branches. I will also aggressively defoliate the flowers on this one, as I'm curious to see what that will do especially with this strain. Notice that this one and the preceding plant have considerably more developed budsites compared to the third one (below), which has not been defoliated since the flip at all and has a ton of bud sites being blocked by the light on account of all of the big fans that are still attached...as these are all the same pheno (obviously, as they're from clone), that may be food for thought...
















And here is girl #3...this one has not been defoliated since a couple of weeks before they were flipped, and is suffering a bit as a result of it. As you can see from a couple of the pics, this one loses a few large fans to bulb burns every time she is rotated simply because of how unruly the plant is with all of the fans attached and no training as of yet. This current grow doubles as a layman's experiment to test the benefits of defoliation with this new strain, this plant being the "control" so to speak. I have not decided whether I should defoliate it after the stretch or continue the "experiment" and allow it to flower without being messed with. I think it is very clear that yield will suffer because of the structure of the plant and how large the main fans are, and it would be an awful big waste to let this one go without at least a bit of cleaning up and tying down. Decisions, decisions...












 
snapped some quick lights off pics at the very end of day 42...couldn't resist, hit a few branches with some pollen that may or may not have been viable from a real greasy, stout highland Mexi male. Also had a timer break on me so may end up with a few beans either way, although I haven't seen any nanners. haven't really looked hard though... I've truthfully neglected these quite a bit, been very busy the last few days, so I'm happy that they're doing as well as they are. Still wondering if my buddy didn't switch up clones on me, as a couple of these look like I could chop 'em by the 1st while the tall one still looks to have some time left judging by how it's filling out. Trichs are mostly milky on just about all of the main colas so this strain may finish as quickly as my friend claims, I guess we'll find out in the next couple of weeks...anyways, enough yapping, on with the pics.









Accidentally snapped a pretty hefty lower branch the other day and quick dried it and made QWISO with the trimmings...very impressive considering how early it is and how little I've taken care of these girls, that's what made me decide to hit it with the pollen and try to work something out for posterity... that and the fact that these buds are some of the densest and frostiest I've come across. Unbelievably tight nugs, very impressed overall so far.
 
To save myself some trouble and all of you folks a bit of reading, I have assembled a "time lapse" sequence of photos showing each of the 3 plants at days 12, 19, 28, 35, 40, and 49 (yesterday). These are in order as I have listed them, and it should be pretty easy to tell the different plants apart based on the color of the zipties. I've been calling the red #1, the black #2, and the clear #3, so I'll stick with that for easy identification purposes in the future. On with the pics:



























































 

arik maso

Active Member
your resin production and bud density look outstanding! i like the bondage on those girls too. looking forward to more pics:leaf::leaf::leaf:bongsmilie
 

SFguy

Well-Known Member
they look frosty and dense, i LOVE the timelapse shots, they are really huge for 49 days....im VERY IMPRESSED with your vert 400

+rep to you
 

iamaaror

Well-Known Member
This is one very nice grow and the end result will be very much to your liking for sure :d Signed a recently converted coco grower
 

HotPhyre

Well-Known Member
Looks awesome man it seems to me in the picture the one plant with the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 removed had the fattest buds...did it end out weighting more in the end or did the other ones produce more.
 
arik maso: Thanks man! I'm looking forward to see what these ladies can really do for me, especially after this initial run. I have a feeling that if I were in a dialed-in environment and not such a half-assed ghetto setup these would already be twice the size. :lol:

SFguy: ​Thank you sir! +Rep to you as well...and everybody else who replied for that matter :bigjoint:

iamaaror: I sure hope so dude!

Hot Phyre: I would agree that the most heavily defoliated has the fattest colas. The largest one on that plant in particular is currently about as wide as a 2 liter soda bottle. :bigjoint: These are still going, currently on day 51 of flowering, so I do not know weights yet. I have a feeling that the one you mentioned will be, if not the largest yielder of the group, then #2 for sure behind the taller, less "bondaged" lady.

More to come soon guys! Should be taking at least one of these down within 10 days, another within 2 weeks, and the last (the largest one, with red zip ties) will go at least another 2-2.5 weeks as that was the one I pollinated most heavily with the highland mexi male...

thanks for posting and checking this out everybody...much appreciated.
 

arik maso

Active Member
arik maso: Thanks man! I'm looking forward to see what these ladies can really do for me, especially after this initial run. I have a feeling that if I were in a dialed-in environment and not such a half-assed ghetto setup these would already be twice the size. :lol:

SFguy: ​Thank you sir! +Rep to you as well...and everybody else who replied for that matter :bigjoint:

iamaaror: I sure hope so dude!

Hot Phyre: I would agree that the most heavily defoliated has the fattest colas. The largest one on that plant in particular is currently about as wide as a 2 liter soda bottle. :bigjoint: These are still going, currently on day 51 of flowering, so I do not know weights yet. I have a feeling that the one you mentioned will be, if not the largest yielder of the group, then #2 for sure behind the taller, less "bondaged" lady.

More to come soon guys! Should be taking at least one of these down within 10 days, another within 2 weeks, and the last (the largest one, with red zip ties) will go at least another 2-2.5 weeks as that was the one I pollinated most heavily with the highland mexi male...

thanks for posting and checking this out everybody...much appreciated.
they're fat though!!!! your setup seems to be performing well
 
Thanks bro!

for shits n giggles, here's an early nug from the biggest one (red ties), one of the larfy, behind-the-other-buds nuggets in fact. not bad for 50 days...freshly cut in this pic, will take another one when it's dry in a few days to compare.


 

Xoshua

Well-Known Member
I like how the OP said it was in one of his homes. I'm very envious. I would like you to hire me an apprentice please. :) Let me know.

Such a nice grow.
 
400W HID touching the plants, I don't understand how the bulb can be cool enough - you even say you have no fan. Are you growing in a freezer :-)?
 
Xoshua: hard work pays off my friend ;)

OldGrowAddict: and to top it all off, it's an EYE Hortilux, which I've noticed burns hotter than most other bulbs of the equivalent wattage. To be fair, there aren't any parts of the plants actually touching the bulb, but there are some branches/buds that are less than 6" away...these do have some slight heat stress, but nothing too bad or noticeable at all. To answer your question: this home does not have central heat (nearly 75 years old) so my lights off temp without any ventilation is 50-55 degrees on a cold day, 65-70 degrees max with lights on that same cold night. I use a dehumidifier in there which pumps out a good bit of heat, but my extraction fan pulls all of the air through the scrubber and directly out of the dryer vent on the side of the house, so the air exchange is better than necessary. I simply use a space heater in the hallway adjacent to the master bedroom where this bathroom is located when necessary (i.e. during cold days while lights are off) to ensure that my temps stay at 62-65* (lights off) and 72-77 degrees (lights on). If this were a more permanent arrangement I would be a lot more OCD about keeping the ranges much smaller, but since the whole idea is that I can break this down and get rid of it in under 20 minutes or so, I'm not too worried. Obviously the plants aren't suffering too much, so I like to stick to my standard "don't fix it if it ain't broke" worldview there.

Thanks for the comments/questions!
 
Thanks my man...would give ya some more rep but it won't let me, apparently I have to spread it around a bit first...

So a brief update...as I may or may not have mentioned earlier in the thread, my plan was to chop one of these girls pretty early, right around 8 weeks, so that I had plenty of smoke for my own head that I can burn throughout the day...I like to smoke a lot and I also like to be productive, so it's hard to find that balance. I harvested the plant with the clear zip ties at day 56 (possibly 55, I kinda lost count) and have had it drying for the past 4 days. I sped up the drying process a bit compared to what I usually do, mostly to see whether this strain can hold its stink even with a quick dry and no cure...and thankfully, it does. I have some photos I'll post up here when I get a chance to sift through them. But here's what ya'll are really interested in:

At the current time the harvest from clear zip tie lady is stem-snapping-dry, and with all extraneous leaf matter and stems removed (even from the main colas), along with the ~150g of wet trim and lower buds that I made bubble with, I ended up with a cunt's hair over 95 grams of excellent quality chronic. Since this thing was taken down early, and considering how much trim and larf I took off (I'm very anal about my trimming), I believe my number would have been at least 110-120g, just about right at 1/4lb...this is exciting for me, because, based upon this weigh-in, I can surmise that I will not only reach my 3/4lb goal from these plants, but perhaps even far exceed it.

Pics very soon...gotta lot of work to do today so I may not get around to posting them until tomorrow. Thanks for following along folks!


edit- oh, and I ended up with roughly a half ounce of bubble hash (73u), and probably at least another quarter combined of the 25u and 160u, neither of which I'm particularly too keen on. Love that 73....
 
Random assemblage of shots...will put these in order and label them when I have a chance....before I post them, I'll do a quick breakdown of what has happened since my last update:


1.) Had a pretty big scare that was entirely my own fault -- do not really want to go into detail. In the interest of total safety and security (and the ability to freely grow another day), I chopped the other two girls a hair earlier than I would have liked at 63 days.


2.) As I mentioned before, the early-cut plant (clear zipties) weighed roughly 90g completely dry (stem snapping, that is)...now that it has been totally broken down... i.e. all colas cut down into smaller flowers, large stems removed, and after the final trim....I ended up with 82 grams of fantastic herb, even despite the fact that it was taken so early. This, once again, does not count the almost 150g (wet weight taken at time of harvest) of larfy popcorn and trim that was made into bubble.


3.) If appearance and density of the last two specimens are any indication, I am going to hit my yield estimate out of the fucking ballpark. Not only that, but the quality of these flowers are OUTSTANDING. Some of the greasiest, stinkiest plants I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Very happy with this run...still very confused as to what I was growing though, as I mentioned before. Either way, sick nugs...the foxtailed one (black zip ties) reminds me of a good Sour cross...smells like body odor, garlic, onions, and menthol with a bit of lemon floor cleaner thrown in for good measure...not the frostiest one out of the three, but definitely the most stank for sure...


Anyways, more to come soon, these photos are pretty half-assed...my apologies, but you guys are lucky I took the time to snap any at all, as I've been in cover-my-ass-and-hide-the-felonies mode for the last 3 days and haven't had time for much else at all.









 
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