Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

[Light Addict]

Awesome you got your stuff, its odd we got quite different stuff from HBI International and Smoke Cones, mostly alike yet some variation. It's all good, as I'm just so chuffed to get all these goodies (Nugg Jar). Still waiting on any news about Magic Butter and also Scientific soils. I'll take the butter machine but prob end up gifting the soil and also looks like my 50$ gift cert as well. As long as it goes to someone who stays the path and journals giving back to the 420 community I'll be happy.

 

[Spimp]

Excuse me please Donpaul.p. I just want to make sure everyone gets a vote in the contests.

Ahem..
PLEASE VOTE IN THIS MONTHS CONTESTS!! THIS IS THE LAST DAY!!!

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks Dank, the cones are great i gave one a try last night, makes the most perfect spliff. so glad i got to try something i would not normally of tried, ill save the big cone for new years or something, it will take a lot to fill,

@Light Addict, the HBI package is the same for the motm and potm, you get slightly less for notm, i think thats because the bud can be something you have purchased so the prize package is slightly less for that, but the list for plant of the month and member of the month looks the same for HBI, i know the smoke cones give more to member of the month, if you look at the contest page you will see each contest varies on what you win, i didnt get the scientific soils or the gift card as that is not one of the prizes for motm, so i think the 420staff split the sponsors prizes between the 3 contest to make it fair, so one contest gets slightly different prizes to the other but i think over all it works out to the same cost wise,

@Spimp, yep ive voted my friend, hopefully everyone else got their votes in as well, nice work spimp getting the contest votes up, it certainly got more members voting, well done mate, have some reps.

 

[Spimp]

Pretty much exactly what you said regarding the prizes. 420 doesnt have an unlimited amount of all the prizes so sometimes the have to divide them as they seem fit. Cosidering the time and work that go into a potm and motm they should be rewarded more so I think. Im more than happy with what I got. The SNS products and cannabutter machine have not yet arrived yet. Im interested to see the SNS because I have a perpetual Gnat issue. Not more than 3 ever noticable, but always at least 1 damn it!! Im hoping they accidentally send me some of thier nutriant line before its 'coming soon'... I need to get away from my FF line. Too many seperate additives and very inorganic if thats a word

 

[donpaul.p]

a quick update on my plants

since flipping to 12-12 the dwc auto northern lights has exploded with growth, i dont normally defol autos or if i do its just 1 or 2 leafs at the very most, but its grown like crazy in the last few days and leaves got really big so i removed some leaves as the stretch looks like its stopped as its now flowering, so im still leaning towards autos flowering due to age in light hours and not age in days, all autos ive grown under 24-0 produce very little and reach harvest very quick, the autos ive grown under 18-6 and less and even 12-12 seem to take 3 ish weeks longer to reach harvest and end up 3 times as big, but again dont quote me 100% on this until ive had chance to run some tests with a few autos strains, but i was always disapointed with low yields and small plants under 24-0, but since giving autos a night period ive found plant size is much bigger and harvest date is pushed back a few weeks, i know this auto northern lights is going to take more than a couple of weeks longer to reach harvest compared with the guestimate given by the breeder.

all the plants growing with dogget simpsons nutrients seem to be growing very well, its the best nutrients ive used so far and im more than happy with the results, bag number 3 or the flowering feed was like a kind of powder that looks like washing powder, but today i opened bag 2 expecting the same sort of product and was suprised to see its a nice green colour like a dark bright green, it is also sort of moist like cystal type structure, its like got a sugar consistency but a bit mushier, so i used this on the plants ive got in veg and reveg so ill let you all know how the bag number 2 does, but so far im not getting any signs of nute burn on flowering plants, no signs of any kind of deficiency, the dwc plant also seems to be responding very well to this product,

so at the moment id say i have to recomend it on the results im getting from my own plants, it will be a more fair test when i can use it from day 1 till harvest so next time i plant a batch of seeds ill plant some using the dogget simpson bag 1 and plant the others in new compost with nothing added, then i can compare how the seedlings do when bag 1 is used compared with not using it.

im tempted to plant the blue mystic but ive got lots of strains i want to try but not tried yet, blue mystic is high on my list though,
this is what i got in stock at the minute,
30 x sensi star fem pollen cross with kerala x skunk,
30ish ken estes gdp male cross purple cheese auto
5x blue mystic
2x kc brains kc 36
2x kc brains mango
2x nirvana super skunk
2x nirvana white castle
2x white label white skunk
2x kc brains brains damage
4x delicious cotton candy fem
2x sativa blackberry
2x samsara green love potion
4x big bud#2
5x kc45 auto
200ish mixed seeds (my own crosses that got mixed up)
20ish ak47 x uk cherry cheese fem
10x ak47 x uk cherry cheese fem pollen cross with purple cheese auto
30ish sour kush x sour kiwi
50ish sensi star fem pollen x uk 47 x cherry cheese female
10x ak47 x uk cherry cheese fem cross with unknown kush fem
2x nirvana ice

so as you can see ive got a huge problem, which seeds do i pick, most of the 2x seeds are just cheap seeds i buy, i dont have the cash to buy expensive seeds often so if i like the free seeds at herbies then ill buy some of the cheap strains so i can get the free seeds, but some of the cheap strains have ended up producing better buds then expensive strains, the ak47 x uk cherry cheese was a test strain i was given 10 seeds of and that has been the best strain ive grown so far, the sensi star was another nice strain, but i think ill go with blue mystic first and possibly pic a couple of the 2x seeds and hope i get a female, the problem is theirs way to many strains out their so you just dont know whats good and whats not, so if i keep buying strains i might find something pretty amazing, it only takes 1 nice pheno type to pop up and it should make a good plant.

what i also do is each time i make a cross ill take between 10 and 20 seeds and seal them in tubs and store them in a different location, so that way if i make a mistake with one of the strains im trying to produce then i can go back 1 step and start again, but every cross i have made thats turned out decent ive put seeds in storage in case i run out of seeds or if i want to go back a few steps in the crossing process, plus it allows me to back cross as and when needed, its just a safety net in case i get a bad genetic showing up or some other problems, so far ive been pretty happy with the results and its a great learning curve.

id love to have more space to grow and live somewhere more cannabis friendly so i could then take things a lot further, but i cant and i wont take huge risks like that so its a slow process but each grow gets me one step closer,

the grow room is starting to smell now and today for the first time i walked past the grow room and had to stop, i smelled a smell i have not smelled for many years, i smelled a hint of jack flash, now the buds close up dont smell like jack flash just yet but when i walked past the room i could clearly smell that tangy amonia type smell, so im keeping my fingers crossed its the jack flash i can smell and not one of the other plants, if it is one of the other plants then it smells like jack flash,

the most stinky plants ive got is the gdp cross i made, the gdp cheese is super stinky, ive only got to move the plant or rub a leaf and the room instantly has faint wiff of a skunky type cheese smell, not quite as cheesy a cheese but still very nice so its going to be interesting to see how the gdp cheese does in flower and what it produces,

 

[Light Addict]

Wow Donpaul your own personal seed bank I love it. Got you on the prizes and don't get me wrong so chuffed with what I've Got. The Doggett and Simpson will be used by me soon, from beginning to end on either my Tutt clone if she's made it (not sure yet) she's getting very yellow and nearly 2 weeks old, no knew growth. or a Dinafem WW starting in about4-5 weeks. might be tempted to use it on my little Critical Sensi Star, not sure yet. if I keep hearing good things from you then I might take the jump.

 

[Harley001]

What do you think DP?????

 

[donpaul.p]

i can really only go off bag 3 at the minute, ive only used bag 2 today on the plants and clone that ive got in early veg so ill know more about the veg feed in a day or 2, but so far bag 3 has been really good, plants seem to really do well with it, i only went half dose the first day and didnt spot any problems to bumped it up to full dose and still no signs of problems, so far its looking like a great product and so easy to use, no mixing or risking adding the wrong amounts, so for now im very happy and the plants are very happy, ill know more as i get further into flower, such as bud development and if the plant needs more but so far everything seems to be working very well,

i was just expecting a powder with bag 2 and it was like a green mushy type stuff, so mixed some up and gave my clones and plants in veg a good feed at full strength so ill see if their are any signs of nute burn tomorrow, the dwc auto is drinking a full res now roughly every 36 hours so thats been getting stage 3 at full dose and its taking the lot with no problems.

ive got to many seeds and not enough room to grow them all, i keep finding nice strains and keep buying them and then end up taking clones off plants that turn out to be very nice so then my seeds get pushed back for more grows, some of them seeds are getting old now so could do with getting through them,

@harley, its certainly male and looking at the size of the pollen sacs their not far from opening. does the plant have any pistils as its hard to tell by the pics, im thinking more along the lines of fem pollen but if the plants gone hermie on its own then the seeds will turn hermie at the same age as the mother plant. but id have to say it looks like a very healthy male to me,

 

[donpaul.p]

i just read BID's journal and read your comment,

if the male has released pollen and the females have only just started throwing out pistils at the nodes then this wont turn the female to seed, ive many a time made the mistake and pollinated plants way to early and dont end up with any seeds and i have to pollinate them again, so if the females are just showing sex and are not full of pistils then chances are you may get the odd seed at harvest or chances are if its pollenated this early then the seeds will fall out the plant long before harvest,

but if the male has released pollen then the room is going to be full of pollen, the floor and walls will have pollen on them and this will spread each time you move the plants or each time a fan is put on, so spray all the plants down with water, get a spray bottle and give everything a good spray down, take the females out and give them a good spray so it looks like its rained on them, then wipe the grow room down, use a wet cloth and wipe the walls,floor, celing, lighting rig, pretty much everything in that room now needs wiping down with a damp cloth, if you cant reach certain areas then give it spray with a spray bottle,
water kills pollen so the pollen can only be viable if it remains dry between the time its released and the time it gets on the female pistils, so if you spray everything down and wipe everything down then the grow will remain mostly seed free,

so as long as the females are only in very early flower and just showing sex then you wont have any problems, ive had to pollinate several plants twice due to doing them to early in flower, even when the pistils where at the ends of branches and top of the main stem i put pollen on these and never got seeds forming, so a couple of weeks later i had to use the same pollen to pollenate the plant as the pistils still looked healthy and not pollenated,

pollenated pistils shrivel up and die then that feeds the seed pod, so if it is pollenated then within a day or 2 the pistils will start to die and then you will see the seed pod forming at the base of the pollenated pistils,

 

[CronicHempHog]

Happy Munchday Dp

 

[Light Addict]

Mad great greenness to your self sir and to your awesome group of gorgeous girls. May they spew forth their bounty!

 

[Harley001]

Thanks DP

 

[donpaul.p]

hi all,

i fed my veg plants with the dogget simpson bag 2 yesterday, now the plants are not big and 2 of them are clones that have just been put into bigger pots and the other plants are not that big either, so i gave bag 2 at full dose and was pretty much expecting to see some nute burn on the edges of leaves due to the age of the plants, so when i checked today i was pretty suprised that their is no signs of any problems what so ever, the clones look really healthy and the other plants in veg look really healthy, so the dogget simpson product seems to be working very well.

ill be planting the blue mystic tomorrow and ill try them from seed to harvest with dogget simpson bags 1,2,3.
then ill have a better idea of how well it works, im thinking the dose could be bumped up slightly but i wont start changing anything until ive gone a couple of grows using the products, then i can start bumping the dose up slightly and see how the plants respond, but so far the plants can take full dose with no signs of any problems what so ever,

so im pretty chuffed with the products and not getting any signs of problems, i know its only early on in the testing and problems may not show up until the nutrients have built up in the soil, the only thing im unsure of is how often to use it, so far ive used it every time i water and not getting any issues, so ill see if i can find out the best feed guide and check if its every feed or every other feed, i dont want any salt build up problems,

actually im going to open bag 1 and see what that looks like
bag 3 (flower stage feed)looks like washing powder with specs of colour in it
bag 2 (veg stage feed )is like a dark green mushy stuff, pretty similar to sugar but has a wet consistency to it, not sure if it will dry out over time as it feels pretty sticky,
ok just opened bag 1 (50/50 seed and clone mix), inside its like a black powder with brown specks in it, i picked some up with my fingers and my fingers are now covered in black powder, looks similar to fine charcoal type substance, so will try that when i plant some new seeds and see how they do,

 

[MaxVice]

Your plants look great. I'm about 1/3 of the way through catching up w/ your journal and excite to finish and be current.
In your opinion how do jack flash and jack herer match up against each other. Do you have enough experience to give a basic comparison?

 

[donpaul.p]

Hi MaxVice, first of all a huge welcome to 420 magazine, the best site of its kind by far, we got the best growers, best staff and by far the best sponsors, plus we have 3 contests each month,
contest 1 is member of the month, for this contest the 420staff have to pick the members they think deserve a chance to win or we can send them a msg and give reasons why we think someone else should be entered, in the past the members decided who the nominees where but it was a bit unfair as it was more of a popularity contest, so the new system is much fairer.

contest 2 is nug of the month, this the bud you enter has to be dry and ready to smoke, so no fresh buds or drying buds, if its not been cured then its ok as long as its dry and can be smoked as is,now the nug can be one you have grown yourself or it can be one you have bought from a dispensary or something similar, so anyone can enter this contest with any bud as long as its ready to smoke.

contest 3 is plant of the month, this has to be a plant you have grown, it can be in any stage of growth, seedling right through to just before harvest, as long as the plant is yours you can enter this contest as often as you like, it was pretty amazing to see an indoor plant win the last contest run, outdoor plants usually do really well this time of year due to their size and colour of buds as some will start turning purple so the next month or 2 will be showing some very nice plants,

you may know about the contest all ready but thought id mention them as the more that enter the better, plus always make sure to vote each month once the nominations have been posted, the contest link is in my sig below.

now to answer your question:
i can only tell you what i know about jack flash as ive not tried JH, i know a lot of members have grown JH but not many have grown jack flash or at least not that ive noticed, now when i traveled around the country i live in and when i was living down south i came across jack flash, instantly it became one of my all time best strains if not the best strain, so im going back to the 90s to 2000s, that when i was smoking jack flash, the taste is really tangy and fruity with a sour at piss type smell to it, i know it dont sound nice but its not like regular bud or skunk its like smoking sour sweets, when someone walked past you smoking jack flash you knew the strain strait away, if you was in a packed room with people smoking different bud then instantly you would smell the flash,

its such a tangy sour type smell, the taste is pretty much the same, the only way i can really describe it is it smells like cat piss or amonia type smell, i know if you try smoking bud before its dried properly then you get a sort of amonia type taste to it, but jack flash is much stronger smell and taste and ive only ever smoked it when it was properly dried,

so unless anyone can post us some info here on JH then i really cant say how it compares, jack flash is a long flowering plant of 11 weeks, i bought one and put it in flower after just 2 weeks of veg as i cant comit that much time to growing a strain if its going to turn out nothing like true jack flash, so its nearly ready for harvest and the lowest 4 shoots or branches that are just a couple of inches long will be used as clones when i harvest the plant or ill take cuttings in the next few days. at the moment id have to say the 11 week flowering period seems to long for the one im growing as i dont think its going to go that long at all, but maybe because its only going to give me 1/2oz to 1oz dry, so at the moment i do get the odd whiff of a tangy flash smell when i walk past the room, but when i touch the buds the smell is lost and its difficult to say for sure, so ill quick dry enough to have a smoke strait away and if it is pretty similar to the old skool jack flash then ill grow out the clones and produce my own fem seeds for future grows,

chances are if it is true jack flash then ill be doing a reveg or reveg clones each time i grow as i really did love that strain, plus its a great daytime smoke and gives you energy and you can actually get stuff done, i mainly smoke on the night time due to the couch lock affect that indicas give me, but i came across jack flash at herbies head shop in fem form for cheap.

so i should know in a couple of weeks if its the true flash, if it turns out its not the true flash then it means i need to take a weekend break and head south to an island just off the south coast of where i am, i can get the old skool jack flash and the true uk cheese in clone form as its been in clone from since the 70s, its one of them smokes that sells very quick once word gets out someones got flash, i dont sell bud i grow enough for what i need and i need what i grow, but i want to narrow the strains down that i grow and grow strains i really like and that help me medically

so the same goes for the big buddha cheese, i was told that big buddha managed to get hold of the true clone only version of uk cheese and he then used it to produce fem cheese seeds, now cheese is the most potent strain ive ever had and the most seasoned of smokers can take much of it, i can easily smoke an 8th a day and up to 1/4oz per day if i wanted to, but with cheese i cant finish a spliff on my own as it really is that potent, its badly affected the black market, if you dont have cheese then your not going to be able to sell what you got, they can tell its cheese just by looking at the buds and a quick sniff confirms its cheese or not as its so easy to know what it is, put it this way if someone was smoking it down the end of my street then everyone in that street would know someone is smoking cheese, then when you see someone walk past with blood shot eyes and stumbling or falling asleep then you know they been smoking the cheese,

but i have info from a good source that both bigbuddha and exodus have made the cheese into seed form and its suppose to be the same as the clone only version, but again i wont know until harvest or till its further in flower, but all ready the plant sticks and its only just started showing sex, its the smelliest plant ive ever had in veg, but then my own gdp cheese strain is pretty similar and stinks even in veg, so will be interesting to compare them 2,

so sorry i cant be more help on how the 2 strains compare, i will try JH at some point in the near future but i keep buying seeds and crossing plants and i end up with thousands of seeds that i just dont get time to grow,

 

[donpaul.p]

you really are a great bunch of people and i call each and everyone of you a close friend. so thanks everyone, you are all way to kind.

i love this site and i love the members, im on here many hours each day and enjoy every second of it, the only people that know i grow are on this site and its pretty amazing that you can share your grows with other members and you have never even met in person, in real life no one knows what i do, so to be this open with members on this site really does show what a great bunch of people we all are, i can talk plants all day long on here and ive made some very good friends along the way.

i would also like to thank 420 magazine and all the staff for putting so much time and effort in to keeping this site what it is.

 

[B A R]

It's the least we could do for all the help & advice you've given us. Reps for you DP

 

[danklover79]

You deserve it DP.

 

[donpaul.p]

Now for the plants, ill try and take some pics tomorrow if i get back in time, my parents have gone away for a week so been going to my moms and walking her dog and feeding the other animals she had so will do that then take the kids out metal detecting when they get home from school. so if i get back early enough ill take some pics as im very happy with my plants and the nutrients im using.

as you may all remember this time round i tried a different water method, before i followed all the water feeding guides where you check the moisture of the soil a few inches down by poking fingers down into the soil, but when i harvested my plants last i had let them dry for a few days and the top 5 or 6 inches was totally dry, so i tipped the compost and root ball out of the pot and could clearly see that when i mulched it all up the bottom half of the pot was pretty damp compared with the top, so the top was drying out and the bottom was still moist,

so after watching some vids and seeing how well plants do using this other technique i decided to give it a try,
so the method i have now been using is letting the pots totally dry out between waterings, normally id be watering every 3 or 4 days at the max, but now i leave the plants much longer, they are now going between 7 and 9ish days between waterints, so instead of poking my fingers down into the soil i now let the pots dry out much more, so i have a pot that i harvested plant out of and left the soil in the pot, so this soil is now bone dry and it has no plant in it, the soil is dusty dry and the pot is very very light,

so the exact method i use is this,
i use a pump spray bottle, the kinds gardeners use with weed killer in them, their a big bottle and have a longish wand on them so you can choose where to spray, so now i use this spray bottle i find the water soaks into the soil instead of running through the soil and out the bottom like it did when i used jugs or 2ltr pop bottles to water with,
so now i give the top layer of soil a spray and let it sit for 2 or 3 min while i do the same to my other pots, this allows that top layer of water to soak into the soil and i find this makes it much easier to water, so once ive done that i go back to that pot and give it a good even spray over the surface, the water soaks into all of the compost and i dont have any run off at all.

i have also noticed that my plants in fresh compost like the ww x sk1 didnt need any nutrients at all during veg, i could of let them go further as the plants look great even when i flipped 12-12, they had big leaves bigger than dinner plates and was very nice shade of darkish green so i could of let them go longer but as i flipped 12-12 i needed to change to a flowering nutrient to get the soil ready for the flower stage,

then i dont water again until the soil is totally dry and the pot really light, i dont let me plants look wilted, if they look wilted then the soil is draining to quick either due to watering method or due to the medium your using, so even though my plants are going 9 days without water their still not wilting, when the pot feels very light i then water again,

the results im getting a pretty amazing compared with previous grows, my plants have never grown so quick and never looked so healthy, so i just researched online about this method and its all to do with the roots, when the medium is kept moist the roots dont grow as quick or spread out as much as their getting the water they need, so by me letting the pots totally dry out the roots have then had to grow so they could try and find the water source, it said the more roots a plant has got the more nutrients and water it can take it so this means a more vigorous plant, ive not tried this method in flower but will do with the plants i got growing now,

what i have read about the flower period is the plants will use up the water in the soil a lot quicker so they will need watering more often, so ill keep an eye on them once their stretch is over and see how quick the pots get dry and adjust my watering times accordingly,

also in flower their is a method that helps produce huge buds, most of you may know this all ready due to the video i directed you all to or at least some of you to, if you want to check the vid drop me pm, its the strain hunters vid,

anways what they do during flower is flush the plants 3 times with a very weak nute feed, they dont flush because they have a problem they flush because they say its a method that allows the most oxygen to get to the roots and this then helps the plants put on weight during flowering, so ill be giving this a try, not sure if ill flush though ill just let the pots totally dry out 3 times, but maybe the flushing is what helps the roots get oxygen, ill have to double check, but thats the method ill be going with during flower as the drying out method seems to be working really well, ive never had plants grow anywhere near as quick as these, i never over waterd in previous grows but by following the watering guides i think that has slowed down my plants growth,

i wouldnt suggest either of these methods for 1st time growers, wait until you know your plants and wait until you have got the rest of the grow room dialed in right as well as nutrients etc etc, not getting this right wont help even if you follow the method im using, so get to know your plants and how well they grow, then you can play around and change things to see what works best for you,

but what works for me might not work for you.

the dogget simpson nutrients ive been using are doing great, all the plants in flower are growing like crazy and really throwing out branches all over the place, so it looks like they work very well so with getting my grow room dialed in i think the mixture of the nutrients and grow method has really bought out the best in my plants this time round, its only took me 3 years to get to this stage so hopefully things can only get better,

dogget simpson nutrients seem to really do well, ive given a very young rooted clone full dose of the veg feed and its not showing any signs of problems and its growing very fast as well, so even though the dogget simpson products are very simple to use it dont mean their not no good, im more than happy with the results so far but ill know more as i get further into flower, im sure the doses could be bumped up slightly but ill go a couple of grows before i adjust doses,.
but you cant get an easier method of nutrients, no mixing or anything, just use 1 bag for each stage of growth, so far everything seems on track and ill put some pics up so you can see how they compare to the pics of a few days ago,

if my plants had always grown this quick then id of had more harvests over the same period as my veg time has decreased due to the plants getting so big so quick

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks both,
this site truely has got all the best members, them other grow sites will soon lose members as they find their way over here, as long as they dont bring their attitude over and put members down for asking questions then their welcome, but all ive seen on the other grow sites is people slagging each other off and if a new member asks a basic question then they get put down and told they should not waste time asking questions as the answer are on the site, if thats the attitude you give fellow members then we certainly dont need them here,