Hello
I hope everyone is well.
I've not updated much (apart from my last stonered semi update) as it has been a busy week here, plus there isn't much to report on the first week of flower or when plants are in veg. As it has been over a week and I have managed to get a few things done I thought it was time for some pictures and a write up of what has been going on, so here it is.
First and foremost the Incredible Bulk (reveg) is still plodding along. She's gaining new growth but the inner leaves and buds that were left on are still yellowing, I'm not too keen on defoliating them yet until they are crispy enough to just pull away from the plant but this will be done soon enough. Here she is:
The Think Big (2) Auto is also growing well, no signs of deficiencies and either her or the Think Big (1) will be topped so that I can have a side by side comparison between them both and see if one yields better than the other. It won't be any conclusive evidence but it will be a starting reference point for any of my future auto grows. Here she is a little bit bigger than the last time she was here:
Next up is the Royal Queen Seeds Critical, she's also doing well so far and is looking like she will have a nice structure when she is bigger. She along with the other new babies is only being fed tap water that has been left out for 24 hours to allow the Chlorine to evaporate off. Also I left them for two days longer than I usually would without a watering, due to the fact that I had to travel at the weekend and forgot to pop back in to water them. I was expecting them to be dead when I got back on the Sunday but on the contrary they were doing better than ever! This just goes to show that I do tend to over water even though you would have expected me to have known better by now, something I really need to bear in mind for the future. Here she is:
I don't know why but I keep feeling that this Bubba's Gift is going to be something a little bit special barring any mistakes. Maybe it's because I respect Humboldt's for their Secret Golden Tree feed which my plants do seem to enjoy, I know that it's not really a reason yet still this feeling persists and only time will tell. Here she is still looking quite squat but broad too:
We have an addition to the family! The Lemon Skunk that I dropped had not popped up in the usual 3 to 4 days (planted directly into soil which I had drenched then left to dry out for awhile) but upon my return on Sunday she had poked herself through the soil and was there smiling at me in all her glory. She's a spindly little thing yet but it won't be long until she's catching up to the rest of them:
Now this next plant is confusing me. The what I believe to be Milk Strawberry Skunk is recovering from her CalMag/Nitrogen deficiency after a strong feed and is showing burning at the tips, she was fed tap water only with some melted Black Treacle on her last feed and the tips have not worsened so is of no concern to me. What does perplex me is that I may have mislabelled her, has anyone grown this strain before? I don't know why but I get the feeling that I may have her and one of the 2 plants in one pot in the flowering tent mixed up. The reason I say this is that those two plants are quite different from each other yet neither are the same as this one. Maybe someone with knowledge of certain strains may be able to interject here and put me straight, until then she will still unfortunately be labelled as she is. Not that it matters too much as they all end up being smoked by me
Here she is:
Last but not least in the veg tent we have the Think Big (1) Auto. She is no longer shying away from the light and in fact is now leaning in towards it soaking it all up. I feel no need to lower the light though as she's not stretching too much and I'm happy with her overall shape and structure. As stated before either her or the Think Big (2) Auto will be topped for a side by side comparison grow:
Next up we have the flower tent and I just have to emphasise that not only do I love these new lights but it seems my plants do too! Usually whenever I transition my plants into flowering I don't feel I get the expected growth spurt since I stopped using the HPS for flowering. That's not to say that I was ever unhappy with my Mars 1600w, in fact I loved it until the 12 LED's burned out, but I was always slightly underwhelmed with the expected growth increase in the first two weeks. On a side note I will add that Mars Hydro have sent me replacement LED's to repair my light, but as it took so long (lost in transit for the first month), plus the fact that I'm wary of taking the light apart it's now stuck in my room unplugged until I can pluck up the courage to take it apart and solder them on (I did have the option to send it to someone in the UK and have it repaired but the less people that know of my whereabouts the better methinks, it will give me something to do on a rainy day), they did fulfil their warranty service to me. In the meantime I believe it was a blessing in disguise as it spurred me into action and resulted in me getting these new Rottweiler Cree lights, and hopefully my pictures will portray exactly why I like them.
So where are we at currently? Well, I'm happy with the lights, the plants are happy with the lights, the best thing to do would be to carry on, let the plants grow and reap myself some beautiful buds right? Wrong! lol, this is me we're talking about after all. There's no such thing as an easy grow for me, if it isn't broken let's throw a spanner in the works
I decided on the second night of flower that I would start spraying one of the branches of the Incredible Bulk with Colloidal Silver in an effort to stress it into turning male so that I can take the pollen and use it to seed one of the other plants that I'm happy with. I tied down one of the lower branches to pull it away from the main body of the plant and have carefully sprayed it every night since apart from one night where I was away from home. There has been no noticeable effect as of yet but it's no big deal, I will keep on trying for the 21 days that I have read about and see how things work out. Here she is with her limb tied down (bottom left of picture) and still growing like crazy:
Well after a few nights of seeing my Incredible Bulk plant having no ill effects from the bondage I noticed that the other 2 plants (supposedly Lemon Skunk and Paradise Delahaze) were growing rapidly and the Milk Strawberry Skunk in particular, densely meaning that there may not have been enough light reaching the centre of the plant so I decided that I would give her a bit of bondage too. So I tied some of her branches down (there was no need to pinch the stem or anything they were really supple and springy, I'm not sure if this is a good sign or not but they look very healthy except for one (there's always one!) yellow leaf) and opened up her centre to allow more light to her new inner growth. There was a fair amount of new growth in there too. If I am being picky I would say that the new growth is a little lighter green than I would like but I will continue feeding grow nutes along with melted Black Treacle (for the Calcium and Magnesium) and half bloom nutes until I cut out the grow nutes completely. The manufacturer of the lights stated that due to the more natural light spectrum of these LED's I should not need to feed extra CalMag as I would with my more traditional style LED's, that remains to be seen but I take them at their word and can always throw some in if I see fit.
Here are the 2 girls in 1 pot after I have tied down the branches:
A quick family pic (usually I would have at least another plant in flower at the same time but I wanted to see how these lights coped with just two, a good thing too considering that it's given me room to play around:
Finally I have a shot of the lights that has not uploaded sideways this time. If you have read the labels on them you are not mistaken, they
DO state
60w each, but wow what a 60w light can do
I've lowered them a little now that the plants are adjusted to the new spectrum, here's to hoping that 4 instead of 5 is enough:
Now and again I will pop in the tent and give them a burst of the 800w LED that I have in there too, only for 5 mins or so at a time maybe once every other day, I don't know why I do it for sure, but it's there so why not? If you have any questions, answers or advice then please feel free to post away, or if you would like a ramble, rant or rave still feel free to post. Other than that I will sign off from the journal for now and wish you all the best. As ever may your buds be bountiful