Didnt explain properly
DarkStar Project - Advanced Growing
- Thread starter Mr Smith
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #82
With your bucket system it would be done the same way. Pull the plant at the base and remove from container then fork or spoon the girl. In veg the root mass will grow back fast to match the canopy. I normally trim the canopy before I thin out the root mass. I trim the canopy all the time but I only thin out the root mass about 2 times a year, sometimes 3 depending on how old and big the mother is. With the STG storm inserts I can't thin the root ball but I am not planning on keeping them for long.
If you have an electric carving knife, you could cut off an inch of STG all around.
- Thread starter
- #84
Have you done this? I do have one. That stg sure is hard to cut with scissors or even a razor sharp knife. I figured they cut it in the factory with a stamp.
I haven't tried it on STG but have used it on memory foam and other similar materials. I'd give it a try on a few cubes to see if it will cut through. If it works it will make the bonsai process easier.
- Thread starter
- #86
Steve, thank you. I am not sure if it will be necessary this round but I might find out in the near future. I still have a number of seed to use and will probally still have some left when I am ready for the next purchase. I try not to let my seed get too old, sorry but I am not a bean collector. If I try it, I will let you know sometime in the future and I extremely am greatful for a simple honest answer.
1/26 was when these pics were taken. Day 27 in flower. Didn't get a chance to check on them for 5 days. PH was a lil low, down to 5.37ph.
Trimming. Concentrated on larger leaves then removed and cleared up leaves around buds close to center stalk. Removed any leaf that is in the way of bud sites for light penetration and made sure no leaf overlaps another leaf or bud. Made sure all plants don't touch each other. They can look at each other but no touching is aloud unless its by me lol. The next 2 pics show only half the plants with haircuts to give a ideal of how much leaf is removed.
With this type of sog trimming and pruning needs to be kept up with the grow or it will just become a free for all jungle of a mess. These last 3 pics are with the plants trimmed. There will still be a lil more trimming to go but bud building is now the plants' main factor.
This journal is starting to look like a tutorial for a SOG. The extra pics and documentation is to actually help me fine tune this method for the next SOG setup for the aeroflo 60. Not sure when that will be, my partner has had money and landlord issues so I might lose that room. That will be a shame cause that room and the 60 is one of my crown jewels when it comes to bud production and I don't wish to bring the 60 home because I don't wish to add the power consumption of another grow op to my place.
Finally was able to do a nute/water change. Last change was 16 days ago, sorry BPN sponsor.
Aprox. 30gal rodi water
BPN 3 part nutes 12ml grow, 7ml micro, 20ml bloom, 2ml blue booster per gallon of water.
Actual amount used. 360ml grow, 210ml micro, 600ml bloom and 60ml blue booster.
Brings it up to 1235ppm and added 20ml ph up setting at 5.75ph. res temp 68F, no need for a chiller. Room starting to get cold, might need to add a heater soon. Room temp and humidity is 73f, 37%. The high is 77f, 58% and the low is 61f, 22%.
1/26 was when these pics were taken. Day 27 in flower. Didn't get a chance to check on them for 5 days. PH was a lil low, down to 5.37ph.
Trimming. Concentrated on larger leaves then removed and cleared up leaves around buds close to center stalk. Removed any leaf that is in the way of bud sites for light penetration and made sure no leaf overlaps another leaf or bud. Made sure all plants don't touch each other. They can look at each other but no touching is aloud unless its by me lol. The next 2 pics show only half the plants with haircuts to give a ideal of how much leaf is removed.
With this type of sog trimming and pruning needs to be kept up with the grow or it will just become a free for all jungle of a mess. These last 3 pics are with the plants trimmed. There will still be a lil more trimming to go but bud building is now the plants' main factor.
This journal is starting to look like a tutorial for a SOG. The extra pics and documentation is to actually help me fine tune this method for the next SOG setup for the aeroflo 60. Not sure when that will be, my partner has had money and landlord issues so I might lose that room. That will be a shame cause that room and the 60 is one of my crown jewels when it comes to bud production and I don't wish to bring the 60 home because I don't wish to add the power consumption of another grow op to my place.
Finally was able to do a nute/water change. Last change was 16 days ago, sorry BPN sponsor.
Aprox. 30gal rodi water
BPN 3 part nutes 12ml grow, 7ml micro, 20ml bloom, 2ml blue booster per gallon of water.
Actual amount used. 360ml grow, 210ml micro, 600ml bloom and 60ml blue booster.
Brings it up to 1235ppm and added 20ml ph up setting at 5.75ph. res temp 68F, no need for a chiller. Room starting to get cold, might need to add a heater soon. Room temp and humidity is 73f, 37%. The high is 77f, 58% and the low is 61f, 22%.
fncg
New Member
Nice trim! Damn, you're ruthless with those things. Always amazing to watch how they bounce back so quickly, and stronger than before.
Wow, the girls are looking so nice 
1234a5678b
New Member
Look nice. Following with interest.
- Thread starter
- #90
Yes, yes I am. lol
Day 31 in flower.
One hour trimming
Mums need a haircut. I have been holding off for a reason, hint hint lol, cloning time is this weekend I think, busy busy.
onegramperwat
New Member
Looking good Mr. Smith, the moms are incredible. BPN too?
Like the approach your taking here Mr Smith, mothers are some bushes.
Great journal so far Mr. Smith. I'm paying close attention to your pruning methods for future reference. I'm thrilled that you took the time to provide so much detail on the specifics and the timing. A few things I've taken away from this so far in the event I try to do a tighter grow or SOG like this (let me know if any of this is off somehow):
Thanks for keeping such an excellent journal.
- Everything you're doing with the pruning is dependent on having healthy plants and good environmental conditions
- Flower right away - as soon as the roots are established sufficiently.
- Prune heavily, and often over the first few weeks to keep the foliage manageable.
- Transition nutes should be toned down slightly at the beginning to account for younger clones
Thanks for keeping such an excellent journal.
- Thread starter
- #94
Yup. That's pretty much it for this part of the journal or at at least this grow. Clippings in the powercloner for 10 to 14 days and as soon as they are tranfered, start flowering right away.
1st week is best to start the nutes on the light side then back to a normal strength once all plants show new growth. It doesn't seem to matter which phase you use use on the nutes on the first week weather its veg, transition or bloom as long as nutes are used and ph is good.
Pruning and trimming should only be done on plants that are healthy, chopping up a stressed plant might slow or stop growth.
The pruning part.
When it comes to pruning and trimming is best done by the grower's judgement and the style he or she wants to grow the plant. My plants are stationary meaning I can't move them around without fucking with the rootzone and they are rather close together so I am force to prune constantly the 1st half of flower. If my plants were farther apart I would have to prune less often. In this SOG I pretty much have to strip them down, in a more normal grow operation I still prune but only the parts that get in the way or will not recieve good light.
Pruning gets easier and better with experience. Once you know how the plants react to pruning your judgement will become stronger and better.
Pruning, trimming, lst(tieing down), topping, supercropping, FIM is all the same thing, plant manipulation. If you want or need to manipulate the plant you need to understand why your manipulating the plant and thats where experience and judgement help out.
Over the years I tried just about everyway you can to manipulate the plant starting with tieing down the plants because too much vertical height was achieved then all the others like FIM. I did FIM mostly for the experience and because it sounds cool. The first time I did FIM I did it too much and got a bush full of small buds with more popcorn bud I have ever grown on a plant. The same problem happened when I did supercropping and cropped too many times. I learned alot from it but at the cost of time and a crappy plant but unfortunately thats how I learn. Topping would give me two main colas but can cost bud when the one central cola can grow twice as big as the 2 central colas. Part of that is strain dependant and when the plant was topped. I can ramble on and on about the subject but I doubt that it would be very helpful and it might just confuse people. Besides once I start using strange words like auxins I can only imagine peoples eyes glaze over in front of their computor screens.
So I will try to explain cause and effect from pruning and trimming, the other techniques is best learned from trying them out for yourself. Looking at a young plant you should see a main stalk with leaves and branches. Each place where a leaf or a branching point is a node. 1st the leaf grows out then the node extends out. The leaf that grows out first is a fan leaf. A fanleaf provides structural growth for stem and stalks. Removing the fanleaf slows structural growth in that area and cause the next node or branching point up to grow faster and the next set of fanleaves will become the next major structural point for that branch. Just by removing fanleaves can reduce the length between nodes or branching points causing them to stack closer together. This is also dependant on how much light that area is given. Now if the branch is cut the closest nodes will branch off and start new branches. You can slow that branching by taking their fan leaves. The cycle keeps repeating. I'm fucking stone right now so I don't know if my rambling was complete jibberish or if I might have taught something but this is my simple view on pruning and trimming.
1st week is best to start the nutes on the light side then back to a normal strength once all plants show new growth. It doesn't seem to matter which phase you use use on the nutes on the first week weather its veg, transition or bloom as long as nutes are used and ph is good.
Pruning and trimming should only be done on plants that are healthy, chopping up a stressed plant might slow or stop growth.
The pruning part.
When it comes to pruning and trimming is best done by the grower's judgement and the style he or she wants to grow the plant. My plants are stationary meaning I can't move them around without fucking with the rootzone and they are rather close together so I am force to prune constantly the 1st half of flower. If my plants were farther apart I would have to prune less often. In this SOG I pretty much have to strip them down, in a more normal grow operation I still prune but only the parts that get in the way or will not recieve good light.
Pruning gets easier and better with experience. Once you know how the plants react to pruning your judgement will become stronger and better.
Pruning, trimming, lst(tieing down), topping, supercropping, FIM is all the same thing, plant manipulation. If you want or need to manipulate the plant you need to understand why your manipulating the plant and thats where experience and judgement help out.
Over the years I tried just about everyway you can to manipulate the plant starting with tieing down the plants because too much vertical height was achieved then all the others like FIM. I did FIM mostly for the experience and because it sounds cool. The first time I did FIM I did it too much and got a bush full of small buds with more popcorn bud I have ever grown on a plant. The same problem happened when I did supercropping and cropped too many times. I learned alot from it but at the cost of time and a crappy plant but unfortunately thats how I learn. Topping would give me two main colas but can cost bud when the one central cola can grow twice as big as the 2 central colas. Part of that is strain dependant and when the plant was topped. I can ramble on and on about the subject but I doubt that it would be very helpful and it might just confuse people. Besides once I start using strange words like auxins I can only imagine peoples eyes glaze over in front of their computor screens.
So I will try to explain cause and effect from pruning and trimming, the other techniques is best learned from trying them out for yourself. Looking at a young plant you should see a main stalk with leaves and branches. Each place where a leaf or a branching point is a node. 1st the leaf grows out then the node extends out. The leaf that grows out first is a fan leaf. A fanleaf provides structural growth for stem and stalks. Removing the fanleaf slows structural growth in that area and cause the next node or branching point up to grow faster and the next set of fanleaves will become the next major structural point for that branch. Just by removing fanleaves can reduce the length between nodes or branching points causing them to stack closer together. This is also dependant on how much light that area is given. Now if the branch is cut the closest nodes will branch off and start new branches. You can slow that branching by taking their fan leaves. The cycle keeps repeating. I'm fucking stone right now so I don't know if my rambling was complete jibberish or if I might have taught something but this is my simple view on pruning and trimming.
OG13
New Member
I like it when you ramble on stoned....
Aberration
New Member
No, you are doing fine and making sense. In fact, it helped me to understand a few things. Thanks, man.
- Thread starter
- #97
Dynagrow 1 part grow. Nothing else at the moment but ph up and down when needed. Nute/water change every 2 to 3 weeks.
- Thread starter
- #98
These pics are from Friday. Day 33 in flower. No trim needed to be done.
- Thread starter
- #99
Saturday I took clippings to make clones for my vertical machine.
They look wilted in the pic because I just finished loading both machines before I turned them on.
This is the DarkStar mom 1. She's the mum I plan to keep for a while. DarkStar mom 2 had more lateral branching left on her because she was originally smaller than ds1 and since they both grow the same comparing the clones growth, ds 2 seemed to be the better choice for flowering out a mother plant.
This is Dark Star mom 2. She is setup in the rdwc and is vegging under a 600w metal halide. The light power will increase later.
More info will come later. I think I might have to breakup the dark star project into parts and journal them seperately so there is less confusion. I am not sure. I had a long weekend of working my but off and I am tired so I am done journaling and I am going to smoke and veg my brain til this day is over. Thank you for your time.
They look wilted in the pic because I just finished loading both machines before I turned them on.
This is the DarkStar mom 1. She's the mum I plan to keep for a while. DarkStar mom 2 had more lateral branching left on her because she was originally smaller than ds1 and since they both grow the same comparing the clones growth, ds 2 seemed to be the better choice for flowering out a mother plant.
This is Dark Star mom 2. She is setup in the rdwc and is vegging under a 600w metal halide. The light power will increase later.
More info will come later. I think I might have to breakup the dark star project into parts and journal them seperately so there is less confusion. I am not sure. I had a long weekend of working my but off and I am tired so I am done journaling and I am going to smoke and veg my brain til this day is over. Thank you for your time.
1234a5678b
New Member
Looks like you have more than earned the rest and vegging- Even the Lord supposedly took one day a week off.
