Emeraldo's 2020 West-Facing Balcony Grow

Temps at about 80 F today, getting up there! These past few days have set the girls in the sun from about 12 o'clock noon until 6 pm when the sun goes behind the big oak tree.

So here's the variety pack from left: Dream Berry, Acapulco Gold, Blackberry, Super Lemon Haze
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IMG_1612.jpeg

from left: Dream Berry, Acapulco Gold, Blackberry, Super Lemon Haze

A few years back Female Seeds sent me some freebie Blueberry Cheesecake seeds and I grew them out and really liked the strain. A clear sativa-high with a good body buzz. And a beautiful plant, with a hint of a blue sheen.

When I heard about Dream Berry, I wanted to grow that one, too. It is Blueberry Cheesecake crossed with Blue Dream, which is a clone- only strain. Genetics: ["Blue Dream" = Blueberry x Super Silver Haze] x Blueberry Cheesecake.
The color is striking. Light green with a shot of blue.
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IMG_1613 (1).jpeg

Dream Berry (Female Seeds's Blueberry Cheesecake x Blue Dream)

Dream Berry is definitely a slow grower, Female Seeds even mentions that, so the slow start was expected. The first seed I tried somehow did not make it, could not get the outer shell to fall off. The second popped the shell right off and never looked back. But it is slow, so that's what it is. Maybe there is a gene for slow starting.

Blackberry is a similar cross: Nirvana's own Raspberry Cough, very hazey, crossed with an indica-leaning clone-only hybrid strain, Black Domino (not Domina).

Blackberry germinated right away and grew vigorously from the start. I am looking to Blackberry for a sativa with a nice indica side to her.
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IMG_1612 (1).jpeg

Nirvana's Blackberry

I'll transplant these four into the 15-gallon fabric pots around May 1.

The other part of this grow was going to be an attempt to select the indica pheno of Jack Flash regular. I would have been absent for June and most of July, returning in early August when sex would be apparent, at that time I would have so many boys and so many girls, and I would have selected the girls having the indica pheno.

As it is, with stay-in-place, I will be here straight through till August, it looks like. So my plan now is to germinate all 10 Jack Flash regular seeds I got from Canna Seed starting around May 1, growing them mainly outside (the first 4 plants above have yet to stay outside overnight). In early August I'll make the selection and then leave them for two months and return, if I will be able, around November 1 for harvest.
 
A very nice start to Spring by the looks. Can't wait to see the rest of the plan unfold. :hookah:
 
The weather has been consistently hitting 30 C this past week. Definitely going into rapid vegetative growth, with stems thickening from the breeze and one new node opening after another.
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IMG_1638.jpeg

 
A beautiful shot Emeraldo! :hookah:
 
Well, now that we've gotten all the harvests down under in, we can look forward to harvesting up over again.
Here's the original gang:
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IMG_1652.jpeg

In current perch hanging off balcony, sun reaches them by 9:30 am. Left to right: Dream Berry...
I've not been posting, tsk tsk. Still enjoying my homegrown from last year, but now the new grow is starting to get exciting. This year I set up the seedlings to grow in pots that hang off the edge of the balcony railing, like windowboxes. In that spot, they get the maximum amount of sun possible, and the sun reaches their apical tips by 9:30 am at this point. I realized, the amount and quality of light directly influences the effect of the weed, so am playing with a 2-track (hot & sunny all day at railing, and morning shade with afternoon sun on the left) grow strategy: late ripening strains will be in the hot & sunny track, the strains I don't want to get overripe will take the shade. This is important because later in the grow I will be absent for two months and the plants will be on automatic watering until basically the day of harvest.
Photo of sunlight angle taken at 2 pm.
IMG_1651.jpeg

IMG_1651.jpeg

Sun moving over roof reaches far-right edge of 15 gal pots at 12:30 pm on May 10. Shown here...
If I move them now into the 15 gallon fabric pots (as close to the railing as possible), the direct sun won't reach them until around 11:30. So am content to leave them in the 1-gallon terra cotta pots and do some top dressing, feeding blood & bone mixed with crab shell meal, just to provide some N & P. When the Super Lemon Haze reaches 2 feet I'll move her over into the 15 gal in the left side below, in the shade.
IMG_1658.jpeg

IMG_1658.jpeg

hot & sunny track on right (12 hours direct); morning shade & afternoon sun on left.
So, yeah, the idea of growing the regular Jack Flash has crashed and died. Not only because of the stay at home order, making all that unnecessary, but because not a single Jack Flash seed has germinated. It's been over a week. I've given up on them already an am going to germinate up to 4 new seeds left over from last year plus Gold Leaf from 420. I'll probably grow them in 5-gallon pots on the shady side of the grow: Gold Leaf, Arjan's Ultra Haze #2, G-13 x Haze, and White Widow. If they'll sprout, at this point I will take whatever I get.
 
Have now popped one bean each of Gold Leaf, Arjan's Ultra Haze #2, G-13 x Haze, and White Widow. Photos yet to be posted... I went through some seeds from last year and not all sprouted, but I was lucky to finally get one AUH#2 by Greenhouse Seeds to germinate. Am also curious about Gold Leaf. Will update as it gets more interesting.

So here's the current status of the first four, clockwise from left SLH, Blackberry, Dream Berry, and Acapulco. They've now been up-potted again from 8 inch diamete pot to 10 inch. They now get around 11 hours of good light, from 7:30 until around 6:30. That position hanging off the balcony railing (shown in my previous post) gets the earliest light possible. In addition, the air movement is extreme, which is good. Breezy days are great for strengthening the stems, and these have thickened almost visibly. This afternoon it was getting downright windy and I gave the girls a rest, out of the wind, on their future homes.

IMG_1665.jpeg

IMG_1665.jpeg

May 16
 
So now it's June 1 and all of the original gang of four have been moved from the ceramic pots into their permanent homes in 15 gallon fabric pots of supersoil. All 4 have grown up through the fencing I placed over the plants to give them support and hold them in place in the breeze, which can get fairly breezy. Super Lemon Haze, shown on the right below, was always the most vigorous, and she is still way above the rest. SLH has a bit of a skunky aroma, even as a seedling. But Dream Berry, on the left, is growing fast in second place. Here a photo from today;
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IMG_1712.jpeg

Clockwise from left: Dream Berry, Blackberry, Acapulco Gold, Super Lemon Haze

I am learning new ways to grow to optimize light and shade on the balcony, and if you saw my journal last year you would have seen what the problem was. I only have so much room, and the plants do get big, so the plants closer to the sun tend to throw shade on the others behind them in the afternoon after 3 pm, when the sunlight is coming in latterally from the left in the above photo. The solution I developed last year was to bend those front row plants over, but I did that only much later in the season, say in mid-July. That's not too late to "supercrop", but the plants were really fully formed at that point -- woody and not as flexible as they would have been if I had started the training in June.

My current idea is to bend the Dream Berry directly towards the big oak tree (which you can see above in photo # 1651 on May 10). Am thinking of tying her down pretty much flat on the lattice, then topping her after her growing point is held low. This will not only get Dream Berry out of the way so as to allow more light to the Blackberry, Acapulco Gold and SLH behind her, it will also allow her to send up buds vertically off the horizontally tied main shoot. If those get too high, I can deal with that too by supercropping those flowering shoots.

The Blackberry will be similarly trained/tied down -- and probably topped twice as well to keep her short -- and trained to grow off towards the right of the oak tree where the mid-summer sun goes down. These two plants DB and BB will receive much sun but not block the back row girls from getting theirs.

Acapulco Gold is barely visible in the top right corner of today's photo, but she has passed through the lattice as of yesterday. She and Super Lemon haze will not be trained to stay short, as I'll let them grow as tall as they can, usually that is around 2.5 meters in these 15 gallon fabric pots. They be up over the rain gutter, getting their first light at 6 am before long.

I still have room for a few more seedlings, and will be uppotting them soon. The AUH#2 sadly did not make it, it popped and then struggled for two weeks and finally it looked like she was going to make it. Alas, her root was somehow wrapped around her cotyldons and it did not turn out well. I can only blame my own skills.

However, the other three seedlings of the new round are doing well: I have one White Widow and also a G-13 x Haze (my favorite from last year -- sort of a Jack Herer with a strong body buzz). Will leave the White Widow on the shady side of the grow along with the Gold Leaf as they are both indica dominant and will ripen more slowly without the full sun in the morning hours.

As I mentioned, Robert Bergman's Gold Leaf, shown below, is a new strain for me, looking forward to trying this 60% indica from 420.
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IMG_1713.jpeg

Gold Leaf by 420
 
Looking good Emeraldo! It is exciting to have the new grow kicked off as they develop quickly at this point. It'll be interesting how you go in practice maximizing the sunshine for your plants. I guess the more involved the training the more time needed to keep their progress along your desired lines. But it seems a lot is possible if as you say it not left until branches have got too woody. :hookah:
 
Here's another of the girls' view of the sun on June 1, 2020, just a few minutes past eight. Am waiting to see exactly where the sun goes down on June 21, ushering in the shortening of days. They say flowering sets in two weeks after the daylength has shortened to under 14.25 hours. I checked on that and it works about right, just a rule of thumb.
IMG_1715.jpeg

IMG_1715.jpeg


And here they all are. G-13XHaze had a bad time with the breeze the other day and needed support. Now she looks a bit overwatered, hopefully better tomorrow.
IMG_1716.jpeg

IMG_1716.jpeg

 
First step in training this year. I pinched and bent the main stem of the Dream Berry. She lay flat on the grid all night and was perky in the morning, with the branches next node down already pushing upwards, now in the apical position they will probably get tall from here. The break in the stem has healed fairly quickly.

IMG_1720.jpeg

IMG_1720.jpeg

Training commenced

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IMG_1721.jpeg

Recovering from supercropping

Up-potted the seedlings into larger pots. Below, the 420 Gold Leaf.

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IMG_1722.jpeg

Gold Leaf

I have the 5-gallon pots ready with supersoil for the three seedlings, but once the seedlings are in the 5-gallon pots I will not be able to set them out on the railing in the mornings, where they continue to get good sun. When I re-pot again in a few weeks, I'd like them to be a good 12 - 18 inches tall. Then they'll go into their permanent 5-gallon pots and hopefully will be tall enough to reach the light, or be at least within reaching distance. The Super Lemon Haze (below on left) will soon be up at the raingutter!

IMG_1719.jpeg

IMG_1719.jpeg

Reaching for the rain gutter

Am toying with the idea of leaving the lower branches if they in fact get enough light. The Dream Berry is in a good position for that, since this year I set up the grow so more light can get in to the lower branches for that first row. Not sure how well it will work. In past years I have simply pruned all leaf and branch material that did not reach up through the grid.

IMG_1724.jpeg

IMG_1724.jpeg

Sun under the grid
 
So now we are at mid-June, and things are really taking off here. As I mentioned in the first of my two posts on June 1:

Emeraldo said:
I am learning new ways to grow to optimize light and shade on the balcony, and if you saw my journal last year you would have seen what the problem was. I only have so much room, and the plants do get big, so the plants closer to the sun tend to throw shade on the others behind them in the afternoon after 3 pm, when the sunlight is coming in latterally from the left in the above photo. The solution I developed last year was to bend those front row plants over, but I did that only much later in the season, say in mid-July. That's not too late to "supercrop", but the plants were really fully formed at that point -- woody and not as flexible as they would have been if I had started the training in June.

My current idea is to bend the Dream Berry directly towards the big oak tree... Am thinking of tying her down pretty much flat on the lattice, then topping her after her growing point is held low. This will not only get Dream Berry out of the way so as to allow more light to the Blackberry, Acapulco Gold and SLH behind her, it will also allow her to send up buds vertically off the horizontally tied main shoot. If those get too high, I can deal with that too by supercropping those flowering shoots.

The Blackberry will be similarly trained/tied down -- and probably topped twice as well to keep her short -- and trained to grow off towards the right of the oak tree where the mid-summer sun goes down. These two plants DB and BB will receive much sun but not block the back row girls from getting theirs.
Click to expand...

So here are the results of my "training" efforts so far. As mentioned, 2 weeks ago the Dream Berry was gently crushed and bent towards the oak tree, and has since recovered quite nicely and is even pushing up vertically again. In addition, I bent and tied 4 of her side branches that had become apical and were taking over the lead. Now that this is done, in another week or two the main stem growing tip, now apical again, will get a second training. This time I'll probably crush and bend again, tying her down once again to let her rise up. So far this is working out perfectly. Females Seeds writes in their breeders' notes that Dream Berry will produce compact buds at the growth tips but, further down on the plant, her buds tend to be "open structure" buds, loose and not dense. If she is anything like Blueberry Cheesecake, I will be satisfied. She is a Blueberry Cheesecake (an indica/sativa) crossed with an indica-leaning Blue Dream.
IMG_1732.jpeg

IMG_1732.jpeg

Dream Berry

As for her neighbor, Nirvana's Blackberry, this plant has a different structure or morphology. Blackberry grew fairly tall, but nothing like other tall strains. She is bigger around and bushier, and what I find fascinating are her many strong side branches. So I decided to top the main stem at a point lower than the current height of those many beautiful side branches, which were already competing with the main stem. Below is the point where I topped, and a second photo shows the side-branching, all competing now for the pole position. I am looking forward to trying her out, too, being a cross between the clone variety Black Domino and Raspberry Cough, a mostly sativa.
IMG_1734.jpeg

IMG_1734.jpeg

Blackberry topped 13.06.20

IMG_1735.jpeg

IMG_1735.jpeg

Blackberry after topping

Seems the latest craze among breeders is to take a 3rd party's indica clone variety and cross it with a mostly sativa from their own shop, creating a new mix with more body buzz. Examples are... Dream Berry and Blackberry above.

Moving on, here are the other two, Super Lemon Haze on left and Acapulco Gold on right. These two will not be trained or topped, just to go as high as they wish. I have done a bit of pruning but not much. Am letting the side branches on Acapulco Gold and Blackberry grow out through the slots in the railing just to see what happens. Am inclined to prune away everying under the lattice at some point, it just gets too dark in there for any bud to form and ripen.
IMG_1729.jpeg

IMG_1729.jpeg

Super Lemon Haze, Acapulco Gold

Oh, and we've had some nasty winds in the last week or so. Not only hot, but so hot that the breeze off the SF Bay Delta, the so-called "Delta Breeze," became a high wind. That is unusual, but nothing is usual around here. Here the damage or windburn I guess, on leaves from the tall Super Lemon Haze.
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IMG_1736.jpeg

windburn on SLH

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IMG_1737.jpeg

windburn on SLH

Finally, the kids are also coming along...
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IMG_1730.jpeg

G13-Haze, White Widow, Gold Leaf


Be well everyone!
 
They're looking good Emeraldo. I wonder if giving them some foliar feeds would help the leaves against the drying of the wind. Altho it probably doesn't matter too much as they're eventually expendable and the wind will probably only help produce more oils and resin.

Being winter time here I miss not having some plants to tend. On my next grow I intend to take greater control over the training, I have plenty of buds in jars from my last grow so I can afford to prune off any weak or in the dark growth.
 
Thanks. I hadn't thought of doing anything about the wind just yet, but maybe it is a good idea to foliar feed or do a spraying of some sort, maybe even just neem. It isn't so much the dry air of the wind that frayed the leaves, I think it was the whipping effect in the high wind, snapping the plants this way then that way.

Yeah, I know how it is to wait for Spring to come. But I have to say this last winter, your grow and the many things that went on there really cheered up the dark of winter. It is quite nice to be able to sort of take part in your grow literally on the opposite side of the planet.

Cheers
 
Stunger said:
...
Being winter time here I miss not having some plants to tend. On my next grow I intend to take greater control over the training, I have plenty of buds in jars from my last grow so I can afford to prune off any weak or in the dark growth.
Click to expand...

Yes to that. Weak or in the dark growth is, after a certain point, a drag on the plant's energy. I usually wait until that in the dark growth or leaf is turning yellow. Then it goes. In all my past grows, bud that doesn't have direct sunlight will not ripen as fast as bud that gets it. But I must say I've never really consciously tried bud that grew in the shade. Does it even get ripe at all? I will have to try it. Maybe that's a reason to leave a few branches below the lattice.
 
Am now convinced that taking control of the direction of growth early in the vegetative phase is key. With Dream Berry, the top 6 inches of the mainstem, then about 3 feet tall, was easy to bend and tie down. Once the soft mainstem or branches turn woody, it becomes more difficult. Had a good experience with the Dream Berry, which is happily growing towards the sun. She will probably continue to grow straight out into the air off the balcony, towards the oak tree.
IMG_1764.jpeg

IMG_1764.jpeg

Dream Berry, June 16

But I waited longer than optimal on the Blackberry. I topped her mainstem a week after tying/LST'ing Dream Berry, and it was already more difficult to bend Blackberry's mainstem and to tie it in a bent position at a 45-degree angle. Already woody. But at least this training pushes Blackberry's overall direction of growth away, over the balcony and giving more room and light to AG and SLH. Also, this allows room and light for the new strains (White Widow, G13-Haze, and Gold Leaf -- soon to go into their 5-gallon pots), which will go on the shady side of the grow. I will have to bend Blackberry's side branches as well as they firm up and stretch, mainly just to allow direct sunlight to the other plants. Not much to look at in this photo, I even managed to break one side branch and taped her up, I hope that recovers well...
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IMG_1744.jpeg

Blackberry topped, tied to grow towards light, away from other plants

Super Lemon Haze has just about reached the raingutter, with AG not far behind...
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IMG_1765.jpeg

Super Lemon Haze, June 16
 
Dream Berry is positioned at a corner that points due west, and the LST'ing of that plant has gotten her into a fan-shaped form that covers about 45 degrees, with due west right in the middle. Now that the plant is, at least above the trellis, fairly flat, I'd like to let the "horizontal" position of the mainstem and side branches promote bud growth along those parts. So yesterday I pruned away a few of the larger fan leaves that were throwing shade on bud sites along the various side branches. In a few weeks, I'd expect this growth, which is at nodes that otherwise (in an untrained plant) would get little sun and would not grow much, to produce bud sites that get full sun. I'll post other photos as this develops. Here a photo of Dream Berry from behind, so the newly "cleared" sunny areas are visible. Also below a photo of her showing her front side with the mainstem starting to head up again.
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IMG_1776.jpeg

Dream Berry, June 18

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IMG_1774.jpeg

Dream Berry, June 18

Also have moved the seedling G13-Haze, now in full veg mode, from her erstwhile 1-gallon ceramic pot into a more spacious 5-gallon fabric pot, and she has started to grow almost visibly. This strain seems to unfold new leaves in sort of a whorl or whirlpool effect, not quite as perfectly symmetrical as other strains.
IMG_1771.jpeg

IMG_1771.jpeg

B13-Haze, June 18
 

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