DocBud's Hempy Grow

ferzha said:
Doc , mites can ruin a whole crop in a matter of weeks or even days if conditions are just right , it is better to deal with them as soon as you find them.

The best way to deal with infestations is prevention , I spray with an insecticide once a week , about a 1/4 second spray into the oscilating fan that blows over my plants , then I shut the door on my way out , I have never had any pest problem.

A 1/4 second spray once a week adds up to a 3 second spray over a 12 week grow period , not too toxic in my opinon.

As for that weird plant of yours , sometimes there is just no reason for it , some plants just grow weird , sometimes it can even work to your advantage , I had one that grew virtually no leaves , just some little tiny purple ones.

I let it grow and it eventually produced almost 1/2 pound of nice bud , If i can find a pic of it I will post it and show you.

Another thing I have found with the hempy's , the water in the resevoir can become stagnant after a while , I will let them dry out occasionally (maybe every two weeks) , just until the plant almost starts to wilt , then overfill with pure water once before starting with the nutes again.

Either that or overfill them every time so that lots of runoff comes out the drain holes , that effectively flushes them , that way uses lots of water though and I try to keep my humidity down so the first way works best for me.

Your grow is looking good dude.
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Thanks Ferzha.

I'm going to beat these things. I don't think the infestation is too bad, and although I found them on each plant, the underside of the leaves had like 0-4 mites and 4-40 eggs.

The mites seem dead or wounded right now, from the neem. But I know I'll have to spray again, or use something else.

I hear neem tastes terrible in the smoke....but I've no experience with it.

I'll have some product in hand today and tonite I'll kill these bastards.
 
Today I went to the underground hydro shop, where the pro growers go and the owner has a degree in plant biology and told them about my spider mites.

They recommended this product, which I used.
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I'm going to order some Mite-rid, but that will take some time to get here, so this will have to do for now. He claimed it would work just fine. I hope so, but I'll be ready for them if they return.

I sprayed each plant, each leaf, from below. Then, I staked up the plants which were starting to flop around due to the weight of the buds, which are rock hard and smell great.
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setting sun said:
I looked that stuff up.

Main ingredient is pyrethrum, which works well and should be safe to use up to a week before harvest.

Your buds are starting to swell nicely!

Out of curiosisty, is this hydro shop really "underground", as in no store front?
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PM incoming.
 
Day 24,

No living spider mites that I could see after one application of Doktor Doom. There are still eggs of course.

I now have some Azatrol and have Floramite on the way. I'm not going to use Floramite on this grow....I think I can control the Borg using less toxic means.

But on subsequent grows, I'm going to zap em with Floramite upon switching to 12/12.

Everthing is still growing, but the plants aren't drinking as much water as they were in stretch....probably normal?
The bud production on FLO seems to have slowed, although not stopped. I think she'll come around.
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DocBud said:
Everthing is still growing, but the plants aren't drinking as much water as they were in stretch....probably normal?
The bud production on FLO seems to have slowed, although not stopped. I think she'll come around.
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I've only noted that change in watering towards the end of bloom, when they've given it their all and are starting to decline.

Every strain is different though, so yours might stall a bit before they explode, because it looks to me like that's what's gonna be happenin' ;).

They look good for 24 days. Nodal spaces are filling in nicely, so looks like some nice colas in your future!

I've come to the conclusion that as far as pests go, we have to be loaded for bear. They take over fast and need to be dealt with right now, so I agree with your plan to have some good products on hand.

Your plants are looking great bro!
 
setting sun said:
I've only noted that change in watering towards the end of bloom, when they've given it their all and are starting to decline.

Every strain is different though, so yours might stall a bit before they explode, because it looks to me like that's what's gonna be happenin' ;).

They look good for 24 days. Nodal spaces are filling in nicely, so looks like some nice colas in your future!

I've come to the conclusion that as far as pests go, we have to be loaded for bear. They take over fast and need to be dealt with right now, so I agree with your plan to have some good products on hand.

Your plants are looking great bro!
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Thanks SS. Have you ever used a bomb before a grow?

blacken said:
those plants are looking good
glad to hear those bugs are gone
nice bud pics +rep good sir
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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the reps!
The bugs aren't gone....but they're fewer of them. I sprayed today with Azatrol and I'll do it again in a week.

Azatrol is OMRI certified for organic farming. I'm not cool with putting strong poisons into developing buds....but I'll spray earlier if needed.
 
Andy Botwin said:
Where'd you snag the Azatrol Doc, the underground ?
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Yep. :cool:

Dude bought a couple cases of it when he heard it was going to be illegal in CA. That's what he said....I don't know if it is or isn't.

Is it good stuff?
 
Day 28 flower:

No living spider mites, hard to find dead ones....it's been a week since my spray regimen:
Einstein oil
2 days later Doctor Doom
4 days later Azatrol.

I do believe it's working!

Plants all look healthy, but FLO is still curled up and crazy...but green and buds a filling in, but a bit slower than the others....but it is Sativa dominant.
If anyone would like to help me with FLO, I'd appreciate it.

White Widow now has a mild case of leaves drooping, not pronounced....but she hasn't been fed much in a week....I did a series of flushes with Hygrozyme, followed by a very weak nute solution 3 days ago.

Tonite I fed Jack Herer and Blue Dream sisters with a full dose of nutes, plus molasses.

WW: note the leave's drooping.....oh, and there's a bud there too. ;)
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Jack's main Cola.....over a foot long
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Blue Dream
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FLO
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It smells heavenly in there, it feels good, I have so much fun tinkering, measuring, calibrating.....growing is awesome. But.....the hairs on my arms get sticky when I brush up against the plants....but my wife says I smell good when I come back in.
 
Here's my idea for a complete lighting package. I'm going to prototype the bracket and give it a try after a grow or two.

AM light 400watt MH or 1-3 large CFL's
PM light Same as AM
Top light 1000watt HPS.

Mounting brackets for typical hoods, tie down for cords, bracket designed for typical light movers.

for a typical 12/12 photoperiod:

AM light on for 1 hour
Both AM and Top on for 5 hours
Both PM and Top on for 5 hours
PM on for 1 hour.

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Andy Botwin said:
I like this.

I know for some it's overkill, but I embrace the prospect of mimicking nature as closely as possible. Good thinkin' Doc, keep the ideas flowing.+reps
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Thanks for the reps! That means a lot. :peace:

It's definitely overkill for a garden of 4-6 plants.....but for someone like Pitviper, I think it would work well. The wattage could be tweaked, of course, to manage temps, size of plants and so forth, but the mixed spectrums and side lighting would work very well, imo.
 
DocBud said:
Thanks for the reps! That means a lot. :peace:

It's definitely overkill for a garden of 4-6 plants.....but for someone like Pitviper, I think it would work well. The wattage could be tweaked, of course, to manage temps, size of plants and so forth, but the mixed spectrums and side lighting would work very well, imo.
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I am doing something similar with my tent. I have two 600 HPS above and two 4ft 8-bulb T5's for side lights. Did not think of staggering the light times though. I will give it a try as soon as the seedlings get a little bigger and stronger.
 
Screwnuts33 said:
I am doing something similar with my tent. I have two 600 HPS above and two 4ft 8-bulb T5's for side lights. Did not think of staggering the light times though. I will give it a try as soon as the seedlings get a little bigger and stronger.
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Sounds like a good set up!
I think if you look at the differences between indoors and outdoors, there are two main areas:

1.)container size
2.)light

The container size is obvious, and indoor growers are limited to how big of pots they can use.

However, looking at the light is very interesting. When the sun moves across the sky, the plants, via phototropism, bend and twist to face the light.

Indoors, this doesn't happen.

Outdoors, the light starts off weak, gets very strong, and then weakens off as the afternoon turns into evening.

Most indoor growers go from pitch black to high noon in 3 minutes.

Outdoors, plants get more light on each leaf than indoors.

So.....this little method gives more light, and also causes the plants to exercise phototropism, which has got to be good for them. Who knows what hormones and such are released in order for the plants to do that?

So....I don't know when I'll get this idea in a test run, but I will, and you can be sure I'll journal it. I'm just glad for the feedback. So far, it's been positive.

If there's anyone who thinks it's not such a good idea, please feel free to chime in.
 
I think it's a very cool idea, but without comparing the results to some kind of control, it's going to be difficult to draw any hard conclusions.

And how would you set up the control?

Same total watts, but timed conventionally?

I tend to look for difficulties and problems that a project might present, so don't let me rain on this parade, because I really do think it's a cool idea, and I always try to think of how things work in nature when dealing with growing.

As far as using a fogger before starting a grow, I haven't done so before, but I think it's a very good idea and I'm going to order some pyrethrin foggers.

thanks doc!
 
setting sun said:
I think it's a very cool idea, but without comparing the results to some kind of control, it's going to be difficult to draw any hard conclusions.

And how would you set up the control?

Same total watts, but timed conventionally?

I tend to look for difficulties and problems that a project might present, so don't let me rain on this parade, because I really do think it's a cool idea, and I always try to think of how things work in nature when dealing with growing.

As far as using a fogger before starting a grow, I haven't done so before, but I think it's a very good idea and I'm going to order some pyrethrin foggers.

thanks doc!
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I've actually run several double blind clinical trials, with control groups, statistics, etc. Of course, those weren't anything remotely resembling growing herb, but the principles are the same.

I've got access to lots and lots of seeds, so I was thinking I could run a grow with just 1000 watts, another with side lighting, and then another with the full Monte.....same room, same nutes, same seed genetics, same grow media.

It wouldn't be scientific by any means, but then not much of what we buy and use is.......some of it is.....but not much.

If I had some promising results, I might be able to persuade a few other growers, like this guy Setting Sun here......and maybe they'd try it out....who knows?

The way things are now, only larger growers would be interested in such a thing....but I've got a feeling that our little hobby is about to turn into a full blown industry, just like the Wine industry.

SS, what do you think of my FLO plant? What's up with that crazy twisting?
 
DocBud said:
I've actually run several double blind clinical trials, with control groups, statistics, etc. Of course, those weren't anything remotely resembling growing herb, but the principles are the same.
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I would love to see you set that up, and sounds like you've definitely got the background to conduct it properly.

I've got access to lots and lots of seeds, so I was thinking I could run a grow with just 1000 watts, another with side lighting, and then another with the full Monte.....same room, same nutes, same seed genetics, same grow media.

It wouldn't be scientific by any means, but then not much of what we buy and use is.......some of it is.....but not much.
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I actually think that's pretty ambitious for a home grower, and I admire your curiosity and willingness to experiment.

If I had some promising results, I might be able to persuade a few other growers, like this guy Setting Sun here......and maybe they'd try it out....who knows?
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I'm not loyal to any method or any product when it comes to growing. I may defend my current beliefs, but if you show me something that works better within my means and circumstances, I'll bail on my current understanding without looking back ;).

The way things are now, only larger growers would be interested in such a thing....but I've got a feeling that our little hobby is about to turn into a full blown industry, just like the Wine industry.
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I can't get my head around that quite yet.

SS, what do you think of my FLO plant? What's up with that crazy twisting?
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Not sure what's going on with that plant, but I found this anecdote when researching problems particular to Flo:

"For me Flo cannabis seeds is couch lock weed. despite the literature, I would rate it at 90% body, 10% head high. Matures very fast, like 45 days, has tons of resin, almost no odor, tends to be purplish in color. Difficult to clone, gets nute overdose leaf curl down when others don't. not a strain to continue. The high is very physically relaxing and emotionally amotivational"

Maybe a flush would perk her up?
 
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