Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

[donpaul.p]

@Dank, the 14 hours of darkness is what some growers use when they change from veg to flower schedule, so they would use 18-6 or 24-0 until the plants are mature or until they want to go 12-12, then they put the plant in 24 hours of dark before giving it the flower schedule, im not to sure what the benefits of this are and ive not seen anything that proves its a good option, from what ive read its suppose to make the plants start flowering quicker,
but you could give a 3 week old plant 24hours of dark then go 12-12 and it would not make any difference with when it starts flowering, plants start flowering when they are fully mature, when a plant in veg shows sex then its mature enough to flower, so if its shows sex in veg and you flip 12-12 then it will start flowering within 2 weeks or at least be growing more pistils within a week or 2, usually week 2 for me, the 24 hour dark period may work for matyre plants. ill give it a try and see if it makes a difference, when my plants in veg show sex ill flip the lights to 12-12 and ill use clones and give 1 plant 24 dark before going 12-12 then the others ill leave under 12-12 with no dark period, so maybe mature plants would flower a bit sooner with the dark period,

i know it will make the plant stretch like crazy for 24 hours though, during the night the plants do at least 3 things,
1, repair damage caused during the lights on period.
2, send nutrients and growth hormones down to the roots and this encourages more root growth, when grown side by side in a hydro set up the plants grown under 18-6 had much more root mass than the plant under 24-0, so 18-6 produces more roots in a shorter time and more roots means more nutrients the plant can take in, but if the plants in veg long enough then the plant grown uner 24-0 soon catches up.
3 during the lights out period the plant stretches, it does this to find the light, if one of my plants is blocking the light to a smaller plant then this smaller plant stretches like crazy, i planted some seeds a while back and they didnt sprout so i planted another, the new seed grew and a couple of weeks later another seedling popped up out the ground, it was not getting any light and it grew a huge stem then fell over, when it was big enough to support itself the node spacing was huge, the stem was at least 1ft between the soil and the first node,

so when the plants in the dark it stretches to try and get out the shade, its why plants stretch when we flip them 12-12, going from 24-0 to 12-12 gives you more stretch, i also find that growing under 24-0 means the plants take anything over 2 weeks longer to show sex, the best method for less stretch is to use glr for veg, im guessing deminishing light from veg to flower would also reduce stretch, so going 18-6, 17-7, 16-8, 15-9, 14-0, etc etc, doing this may limit stretch,

i also find plants grown under 24-0 stay more bushy and plant grown under 18-6 are taller with slightly bigger node spacing, ive tried lots of schedule for veg and i find the glr is the best by far but ive just finsih working on my auto strain so cant use it till i harvest the last autos i got growing, then ill use glr,

 

[donpaul.p]

@Skybound, its not a problem to add or take away an hour, if it was 4 or 5 hours then id say do it gradually, but adding an hour or taking one away wont cause any problems, but again please dont think im saying that 13-11 is best to use, im just experimenting and after checking out light schedules outdoors i decided to change the indoor light schedule as plants dont get 12-12 outdoors till later on in flower. so they will flower under 13-11, im sure they would flower under 14on and 10off but dont try it as ive not tried it, i will as i do my next grows but for now im using 13-11 for all my plants this grow round, i got 2 plants in flower at the minute and their getting 13on and 11off, when my veg plants show sex ill have all the plants on that schedule and ill try the 24 hour dark period also and see how it compares with the clone that didnt get the dark period,

another dark period growers use is when the plant is ready for harvest they give it 48 hours of dark before they harvest it, this is suppose to produce more trichomes, well this is pretty impossible, you cant produce something thats not their to start with, plus you wont grow many trichomes or any to be exact with 48 hours of dark on a fully mature plant ready for harvest.

but some growers swear by it and use it for every grow, when the plant is showing its ready for harvest they give it 48 hours or more of total dark before harvest,
but what i think is happening and why the plants look like they got more trichs is because when they see its ready for harvest they give it the dark period then when they check it again it looks like its got more trichs, this is either a trick of the eye where you have not seen the plant for 48 hours when you normally look at it a few times a day, or what i actually think going on is the trichomes are forced to mature a bit quicker during the 48 hour dark period, so when the plant is taken out of the 48 hour dark period it looks more frosty, im pretty sure this is because a lot more of the trichs are now milky or amber so they stand out a lot more, so if anything it can really only make the trichs mature quicker during the dark period, it cant create more trichs in that 48 hours,

 

[Skybound]

Going from 18 to 12 back up to 13 seems it might confuse her a bit and maybe cause a little delay. I will finish with 12/12 and wait for your results and maybe use 13/11 my next grow which I hope to be in flowering a week after my first harvest. I am also thinking of giving the GLR a whirl in the near future. I also like the sound of that DLR as it conforms more to natural laws. When I get my first INSTEON receptacle, I will be able to make light adjustments from my smart phone making planning a whole lot easier. Thanks DP!

 

[donpaul.p]

@LA, when you give the plants them 2 weeks of lots of light in middle or towards the end of flower i think its doing the following,
when you have a plant in flower you can put it back in veg by giving it 2 to 3 weeks under a veg schedule, when i reveg a plant its back in veg between week 2 and 3 of the veg schedule, so going from 12-12 to 18-6 for example forces the plant back into veg then it allows you to grow a monster cropped plant which is something i do with at least 1 plant each time i harvest.

so what i think happens when you give it them 2 weeks of veg schedule is it makes the plant think its going back into veg, so for them 2 weeks the growth hormones change to veg mode and it starts putting the plant back in veg, if you gave it 3 weeks it would go back in veg and you would have to start the flowering process again, so by only giving it to weeks your getting the plant to start entering the first stages of going back into veg then after the 2 weeks you flip it back to 12-12 until harvest, so i think when you flip it back to 12-12 then plant is still in the early veg stage so now it has to revert back to the flowering stage, this then increases the flowering time and im guessing the plant grows more pistils and this clearly means fatter buds.

the method Light Addict does is a known method and it does work, ive not tried it myself but LA reminded me a few months back about this flowering method, ive not heard anythone end up with hermies, the main ways you get hermies are if you let light in during the lights off period in flower, in veg it dont matter what you do, ive messed around lots in veg with schedules and it dont produce hermies.

so the main method for getting hermies is to give them plant less than 30min of light during the 12 hour lights of period, the reason i say less than 30 ill write below, so for example your lights are on 12-12, you forget to close the door for a few nights then during the 12 hour dark period you get up and down to go the toilet or what ever and this light then interupts the plant and forces them hermie.

growers who grow outdoors was getting hermies and couldnt work out why, then they noticed when the neighbour pulls his car on the drive the lights on his car was lighting the garden up for 1 or 2 minutes a night and over a week of this it turns the plants hermie.

now why do i say less than 30min of light during the lights of period, well this is down to the gas lantern routing,
the gas lanter routine is for veg and the schedule us this
12 hours on
5.5 hours off
1 hour on
5.5 hours off
then repeat, so glr is basically a 12-12 light schedule but in the middle of the 12 hours of dark you give it 1 hour of light, this one hour of light stops the flowering hormones fully building up and it stops the plant from flowering, how ever your giving the plant 1 hour of light in the middle of the 12 hour dark period and this dont make any plants hermie,

so for a plant to hermie it needs to be in flower and the dark period needs interupting only for a short time over a week or 2, one night of the light coming on wont cause any huge problems, but if you had a security light in your back garden and cats was setting it off 2 or 3 times a night then you will have hermie plants, indoors if you have light leaking into the grow room during lights out period then you will end up with hermies.

other causes of hermies can be under and over watering, if you let the plant wilt then over water and repeat this then chances are it will hermie,
keeping plants in pots that are to small also causes hermies, i use this method to force females to hermie so i can make fem seeds, so this method will cause hermies,
to much nutrients followed by not enough nutrients will also cause hermies,
or some plants will turn hermie on their own with no stress, if a plant turns hermie on its own then its no good for breeding as its a natural hermie, to create fem seeds you need to use hermies that have been forced to go hermie


@Kingjohn, thanks for the info mate, i will try 14-10 possibly with 1 or 2 plants after i harvest these, ill use the same clones so its a fair test, im thinking the best option to increase yield and bud size is to gradually reduce the light hours until you get to 12-12 just after half way through flower, ill keep a record of what happens in case of have similar results as king did, but under 13-11 im getting good results in early flower so no problems what so ever so far. maybe it was down to the strain you grew or maybe 14-10 through the whole of flower was just to much, maybe 14-10 for 2 weeks followed by 13-11 for 4 weeks then 12-12 for the last week or 2 of flower, i cant see 13-11 causing much problems people have flowered plants off in the middle of summer by convering them up.

but ill give all the schedules a try and see what works, king has provided some info so ill look out for the symptoms he has described then i can post a comment if i see something similar happening, my sensi star seems to be doing very well under 13-11 and its perfectly clear that the bud formation this early on is much better than before and looks like its going to produce big buds.

its all an experiment and if i find something that works then its all good, if it dont work then others dont need to try it, it could also depend on strains, indicas might prefer 12-12 as their bred for that and sativas might be the opposite, but until i try i wont know, i know LA's method works and is often used, 13-11 is what ill run for all the plants this time round,

its all good and if it gives me some buds at the end of harvest then ill be very happy indeed.

happy growing everyone, if we dont try these things we could be missing out on something that performs better than the methods we currently use,

 

[donpaul.p]

@Skybound, all we can do is try these things, if we dont try and we all stick with what we know works then we might miss out on something that works, i mean lets go back a few years before fem seeds where around, no one would do anything to a plant that turned hermie, everyone killed them, then people noticed that when they had a hermie and it produced pollen it produced only fem seeds, so thats how we got fem seeds.

outdoor growers dont flower under 12-12 and the plants do ok, clearly the light hours drop the further it gets into flower but they are well into flower with huge buds before the natural light is down to 12-12, so clearly their is room for moving the schedule around a bit,
i now from my own plants that if i want to reach harvest quicker then ill give them 10 hours of light and 14 dark until their ready to harvest, this does shorten the flower time but it also means less yield,

so if the opposite also works then 14-10 or 13-11 means your giving the plant more growing time like it gets outdoors so this should improve yield, plus the plant would sort of be in the middle of flower and middle of veg at 15-9 so the plant is still in veg and growing but also the buds are starting to form so this i think helps produce huge buds outdoors then as the nights get longer the plant totally stops the veg schedule and goes into full flower so the buds just get fatter instead of stop growing.

anyone is welcome to try 13-11 or even 14-10, their your plants at the end of the day. i tried 13-11 on 2 plants and im very happy with the results so far, if i notice any problems then ill go down to 12-12, but i really cant see 13-11 causing any problems, it can really only add to the amount of grow time the plant has.

im not saying its the best schedule to use, but if all my plants do much better under 13-11 then i will say that from my own experience 13-11 is better than 12-12, after this harvest ill try 14-10 and even 15-9, or at least go from 17-7 down to 15-9 then down to 14-10 and stop at 13-11, theirs just so much i want to try and if i had the room i could do all the experiments at the same time,

 

[Bud Grant]

 

[donpaul.p]

glr is a great schedule to use, from my own experience i found the plants grow much quicker than other schedules i use, the plants showed sex much sooner and they showed sex from week 3 onwards but usually always by week 4 the plants had shown sex, then when you flip to just 12-12 you dont get the crazy stretch so i can vouch for glr, a member on this site started using it ages ago and he wont use anything else now, jandre is his name and you can ask him questions if you need to as its the only light schedule he has used,

i usually went from glr down to 12-12 for flower, but ive always been told that when you use glr for veg you get better results if you use deminishing light routine for flower, the only reason i never used dlr is because i know my plants reached harvest quicker when the dark period was longer than the lights on period, i could easily cut 1 or 2 weeks off the flower time by using 10on and 14off, the plants flowering and matured much quicker but yields where lower, maybe using it with glr gives different results but again id need to do some tests once ive finished with this grow, while i got autos growing i cant give glr a try, i think it will make autos go hermie if their in the middle of flower but some growers have flowered autos under glr with no problems or hermies, so again thats something ill have to try.

id love to get my hands on some led lights so i could run more rooms without temp problems or higher electric bills but i just dont have the funds for leds, id like to set up another room of the same size which i have where i live and run an led in one room and the 400watt hid in the other room, then i could grow clones and do side by side from seed to harvest, id need to make sure led's perform better than hids before i invested in several led lights. led's have come into their own over the last few years, if you go back a good few years then they was more a gimmic and results where poor, well to find this out just buy some cheap lights off ebay and try growing with them, but these now COB or chip on board led's seem to be heading in the right direction and im pretty sure led's will be what most growers will use in the future,

for me the bonus would be lower running costs and no heat problems but i cant afford to risk spending £200 on a new light and find out it dont perform as well, if i did get hold of an led then i could run side by side grows with the 400watt dual spec hps and an led that matches the 400 watt hid as close as possible then i could see which light clearly produced the best results

 

[Skybound]

You once told me that it is not advised to switch from 18/6 to GLR. Question, I am waiting for my Pineapple Chunk seeds to sprout, but I am using 18/6 in my mini fridge, would it be harmful to switch them to GLR in another veg area?

My train of thought on 13/11 is that the added hour of light might trick the plant into thinking this is the start of an Increased Light Routine and maybe have some harmful effects. Couple that with the fact that this will be my very first harvest and also that my area is bone dry for buds, I feel the best thing for me to do is stay the course till I get my harvest. Me personally, I am always dealing with surprises in my grow. Almost nothing about this cabinet is ideal for a flowering cannabis plant. I spend probably about 4 hours every single lights on trying to dial everything back into the optimal range. To add just one more variable might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Hopefully this harvest helps me make improvements when possible. Being a few months behind on all my bills doesn't help either, but I should be able to escape with hopefully an RO unit.

My next grow, I will definitely do the 13/11, and if possible, I'd like to do a GLR after a brief 18/6 period, but I'll wait to hear your opinions on that before making any moves.

 

[B A R]

but some growers swear by it and use it for every grow, when the plant is showing its ready for harvest they give it 48 hours or more of total dark before harvest,
but what i think is happening and why the plants look like they got more trichs is because when they see its ready for harvest they give it the dark period then when they check it again it looks like its got more trichs, this is either a trick of the eye where you have not seen the plant for 48 hours when you normally look at it a few times a day, or what i actually think going on is the trichomes are forced to mature a bit quicker during the 48 hour dark period, so when the plant is taken out of the 48 hour dark period it looks more frosty, im pretty sure this is because a lot more of the trichs are now milky or amber so they stand out a lot more, so if anything it can really only make the trichs mature quicker during the dark period, it cant create more trichs in that 48 hours,

This & mostly everything you posted since makes sense to me Dp. But I was under the impression that you already seen more yields with 13/11. I almost switched last night but KJC slowed me down. Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

Going from 18 to 12 back up to 13 seems it might confuse her a bit and maybe cause a little delay. I will finish with 12/12 and wait for your results and maybe use 13/11 my next grow which I hope to be in flowering a week after my first harvest. I am also thinking of giving the GLR a whirl in the near future. I also like the sound of that DLR as it conforms more to natural laws. When I get my first INSTEON receptacle, I will be able to make light adjustments from my smart phone making planning a whole lot easier. Thanks DP!

I'm with you Sky...

 

[Skybound]

Donpaul, there is so much discussion of when a female hermies, but how come there is little chatter about making a male hermie? Could a male produce fem flowers, and if controlled so no pollen gets to them, would these flowers produce THC? If allowed to pollinate itself, would a male hermie plant produce only male seed?

 

[b.real]

a feminized plant IS a "feminized male" which is why it may produce pollen.

 

[Skybound]

a feminized plant IS a "feminized male" which is why it may produce pollen.

By this same logic, is a masculine plant a "masculine female" capable of producing flowering bud?

 

[b.real]

By this same logic, is a masculine plant a "masculine female" capable of producing flowering bud?

not sure. I know that females are xx and males xy, so maybe it has something to with the xx chromosome combination that allows pollen to be produced when poisoned by the heavy metal silver?

 

[alex801]

Thanks for the reps don Paul
And that's a cool back story about the G-13
I may of read it somewere b4 it rang a bell definitely
The link does indeed include the name and basic procedure

 

[B A R]

THE REPS ARE RIGHT Will Start AT 6:00 pm EST... Approximately 1hr & 40mins from this post

 

[donpaul.p]

@Skybound, your spot on mate, dont switch for any other veg schedule to glr unless its with clones, if its a fresh clone thats just rooted then its ok to flip to glr, but its not advisable to flip to glr once the plant is further into veg, how ever im not saying it will cause any problems as ive never had a plant turn hermie no matter how messed up the veg schedule is, it really only turns hermie if its in flower, at least thats what im finding with my results.
as for the 13on and 11 off routine ill let you know how i get on, so far its looking great though, but i never went from 12-12 to 13-11 i went from 17-7 to 13-11 and when the rest of my plants are mature all my plants will be under 13on 11 off until harvest as the results im getting with the sensi star look really good
most mj plants will flower under 14-10 but ive not come across any results to say its worth doing, what makes me think about moving away from 12-12 is due to how outdoor plants grow, so ill go 13on and 11 off with all the plants i got growing and stick with that till harvest, if the results i get are better than 12-12 then ill do more testing, if not ill try deminishing schedule so ill go from glr or 17-7 down to 14-10 for a couple of weeks, then down to 13-11 for 3 or 4 weeks then just go 12-12 for the last couple of weeks, this i more inline with outdoor plants,

im just thinking the extra hour of light might help with bigger buds and yields and the results im getting off the 2 test plants suggests thats what will happen, plus they seem to be flowering quicker but the pistil formation is a lot bigger than under 12-12 with the sensi star plant, the dragons breath ill know more about in a week or 2,

as for the male turning hermie ive got another journal up called super male project, males turn hermie just like females do but we dont grow many males so we dont notice it happen, plus when we do grow males we use the pollen then kill them so they dont have chance to turn hermie but males are the same as females hermie wise, so yes they do hermie.

ive had 2 male hermies in the past but that was before i come across super males, regular male will hermie, regular female will hermie and femenised seeds will hermie, most only hermie due to light leaks in flower, the plant getting root bound which is the method i use to get pollen for femenised seeds, or nutrient shock can also make them hermie.
their was a website i was on a few years ago and it had a study using males that turn hermie, the study was titled super males, it didnt give much detail on what method to use to get the best results and thats why im running a super male journal.
basically this study went into detail on the results for using a super male for breeding, it said the seeds produced where nearly 100% female, not all but much higher % than regular seeds, it also said bud size was easily double what it should be and potency was also much higher,
but i found the site after i killed my males that went hermie, i binned them thinking they would produce hermie seeds, but the study didnt go into detail about the breeding method used to produce the best results, so my super male project will be doing the following tests.
test 1, turn a male hermie then use the pollen from the super male to pollenate a female plant.
test 2, turn the male hermie then use the pollen from a regular male to produce seeds on the female parts on the male plant.
test 3, turn it hermie and self pollenate it and grow the seeds.
so i have 3 tests to do with the hermie males so got plenty to keep my busy, it didnt say if the hermie male produced much buds but again ill find out by remove the male pollen sacs and just grow the female buds, so i got a lot to keep me going and got 4 males growing at the minute so ill be forcing them hermie, they did say their was a chemical that can be used to turn a male hermie but the website either no longer exists or i just cant seem to find it, but it was a study by some experts and was full of info on lots of other mj related tests like polyploids and all that, its what got my interested in polyploids, i just wish i had more room and more money then i can do these tests a lot quicker
a femenised plant contains no male genetics, we force a female to go hermie and use the hermie pollen on a female plant
so a femenised plant is xx cross with xx, it contains no y cromoso at all, but both male and female mj plants have an emergency backup to make sure they reproduce so they turn hermie, when a female turns hermie its still xx, so the pollen is xx and its why a hermie dont produce much pollen as its only trying to self pollenate itself.

@BAR, yep your right mate i did try it a while back but it wasnt 100% fair test as it was done with seeds, this time im using clones and seeds from my own strains, so ill have better results to compare with, plus i will know exactly how much more or less time it takes to reach harvest from flipping to flower, so this time the results will be easier to compare where as before i was just going on how the plants and buds looked, i didnt have any hard data to compare it to, so before i dive in and use it for every grow i can now compare the results with previous harvest, but so far its all looking good, thanks for stopping by my friend,
loving the reps is right show, nice work. it moves so damn quick.

 

[donpaul.p]

@AleX, no worries my friend, if anyone can provide info on super males or polyploids or triploids then please feel free to post the link here as long as its not a link to another grow site, if it is then just pm me, maybe someone might come across the super male study that i came across about 2 years ago, it had lots of graphs showing the test results and it compared thc levels and cbn and cbd levels but i cant seem to find the site anywhere but would love to come across it again, i know a male will hermie but i need more info on which way to use it for breeding,
it gives me something to do and if i can share my adventure in this world with all of my good friends here then its all good, if i learn something along the way or just learn its not worth doing then its still a result,

again im hugely sorry for been awol all day again but my fiance died on this date so went and bought some flowers and small gifts to put on her grave, my kids was both young when she died so dont really know what happened, but my daughter today got really upset so i think she is starting to understand why her moms not around which got me really upset as well, so not a good day today, christmas and new year has never been the same for me since, all i can do now is make sure my kids have the best xmas i can give them, my family spoil them rotten every year and they end up with more presents than they know what to do with, when i was younger i was lucky if i got 3 or 4 presents, my mom and dad had to buy for 3 kids and money was tight when i was young, so we often had 1 big present between us, but now kids want everything and they usually end up with it all.
they got all the computers, all the games you can think of now, we lost a lot when we got flooded but they now got their rooms full of stuff.
im happy if i got some chocs and some new socks, its all about my kids for me.

ill do my best to get caught up with all your journals now im back home,
peace

 

[B A R]

a feminized plant IS a "feminized male" which is why it may produce pollen.

Whoa! I was getting real confused after reading this but DP, your post #1277 clarified my confusion. I almost wish I would of keep my RACHEL SUAVAY alive just for testing. But that would have been risky in my bedroom with my other plants & the kitchen and living room is public access to guest & friends.


... Edit... Didn't realize you had 2 post in a row. My condolences.

 

[alex801]

Don Paul god bless u that is heartbreaking
Can only imagine what it must be like for u and ur children coping with that kind of a loss even if it were a while back
Nice though to no the kids got what they wanted and more
Ur childhood sounds like mine..... My children now sound like urs with the "getting everything bit lol"

 

[ViceCity]

DonP been reading your journal some would call it a book damn I smoked a few blunts and it took me a couple of days but I'm caught up wit it good work on ur research.

Question for you real easy real quick.

Can I get 1oz from auto with 1000w HPS on 18/6 schdule two weeks after it goes in soil