Day 110 above ground, day 46 of flower, and "7-9 weeks of flower" puts me at 18 days till Chop.
Forgive me reader(s), it has been 21 days since my last posting…
The 18 days till chop is based on the 7-9 week timeframe from the seed vendor. I spent a few minutes checking out the plant today and, big news, a very small percent of the trichs are amber on a few nugs. Could this grow be done in 18 days? Nah but even if it takes an extra week, it's a hell of a lot more accurate than the timeframes I have dealing with for my auto grows.
One things that's thrown me a bit is the shape of the plant + the size of the colas. I did use the veg light for about 45 days, IIRC. That plus weighing everything down got me a shrubbery. In contrast, even though I tried to get a compact plant for my auto grows, they ended up at 50" plus. I switch to photos and a get a 2' tall plant. Howzat?
Another factor is that these colas are nowhere near as big as the ones on my autos. OTOH, there are about twice as many of them. Harvest will be interesting.
I spent some time delarfing and, while I'm sure it did some good, there's all sort of immature growth below the canopy. There are enough colas and they're frosty enough that I don't want to try to depart any more so I'm thinking I'll just trim off the good stuff and leave the lard on the stems.
Very little has changed. Light levels are good, res is slowly dropping in TDS and slowly rising pH. I'm adding 2 mk Down every other day or so. TDS started at 680/500 with the new res and I've put about 20 gallons back in the res since the new res on 3/29/23. I've tried different approaches to maintaining the res and adding RO and then swapping the res at the 50% level (14 gallons) is a very valid approach. This res has gone to 75% so it will time to do a new res this weekend.
I did one top off with ¼ strength nutes about 10 days ago and it looks like that caused a little nute burn in some of the leaf tips. That idea came from a Bugbee paper on res maintenance but it was was a crapshoot for me — Bugbee's team does actual chemical analysis whereas I just went with a 25% solution. No worries though because the amount of tip burn was minimal but it was worth a try.
The Bugbee paper is "Nutrient Management in Recirculating Hydroponic Culture".
Another good paper that I dredged up - "The Effect of Light Spectrum on the Morphology and Cannabinoid Content of Cannabis sativa L." Good info in there. Lots of subtleties.
In response to a thread, I'm not sure which cannabis site, I checked the temps on the light - 95° in one corner and 107° at the hottest spot. I never grew with gas discharge but the low temps of this light allow me to use a hang height of 10". I referred to an HLG light as an "air fryer" though that was my description of the hot spot that board lights have. Still I thought it was apt - check the PPFD map of any board light — they all have that hot spot.
I tried adding in the Mars SP 3000 to get more PPFD on the front row but that meant I would have to leave the tent open so VPD went out of range. That's was a no go.
After two years and, I think five grows, I'm not at "zero maintenance" but
very close. I check the tent every other day, add a little water, refill Hugh, check the lights, and then zip it up and leave it alone.
Another big excitement today was swapping to the external driver. I have two 330 watt lights - one for veg, one for flower. They use the same driver so I have one in the tent and one hanging outside. One of the reasons why these lights are on the $$ side is because they use push lock drivers but they're worth it.
With three days of temps approaching 80, the garage/tent will get in the 80's. Parking a car in the garage adds another 2° and that gets the tent into the mid-80's. Me no lo gusta. Thanks to the push locks, it takes all of 30 seconds to switch from the internal driver to the external.
No thrips. I've had thrips for the past three grows and nothing so far. I've held off on spraying, primarily because the tent is open only when I"m working in it. I was used to having the tent open and being able to push more light in using the Mars but this grow has given me a different perspective. I did like the rapid growth and the size/yield from autos (I won't be pulling 24 ounces from this grow, that's for sure) but, based on this grow, I see no reason to grow autos. Not to knock autos per se but because of how my grow equipment is set up, photos just make a hell of a lot more sense.
Ok, enough angle bargle.
First the lights:
Current light levels
Light levels for this grow:
And now it's time for the camera:
