(flower, day 39) (lights 10/14)
Today finds the garden doing well, looking reasonably happy, and with lessons for me to learn. I begin in the veg tent, where the clones have been working and a few new seeds have been popped. I have added to the regular group 3 more first timer's... LSD, Royal Queen Critical and Cookies Kush.
The lesson to be learned today has to do with the 12-1 (Gas Lantern Routine) lighting. Although this lighting scheme works very well to keep vegging plants happy and stress free, it is not the greatest thing for clones and new seedlings. 12-1 inhibits fast growth, and I have found that there is a much better response on young plants at 18/6 or 24/0. I will be using the 12-1 later on when I want to delay the vegging plants a bit, waiting on the bloom tent to finish, but when I want to see robust growth in veg, I have locked on 21/3 as my timing of choice... a little bit of rest period for the plants, and conveniently, a little reduction on the power load during the 3 hours of NOON in my big tent.
So veg is doing fine, and I am working on 7 plants to take to bloom on the next round. The big news is what is happening in the bloom tent. The lights adjusted down 15 minutes again on the 26th, and right now we are running 10/14. We experienced that mid flower lull this last week, where I didn't think that I saw much bud growth, and after two distilled water waterings I started to notice more dramatic yellowing on several of the plants. I have adjusted 2 things in response to that, first thing is I am now adding molasses to my distilled water to feed the herd, and second, last night when I watered I gave a good top dressing of high P bat guano, ancient compost, phosphate, and bone and blood meal... the biggest additive being the guano. This was soaked in with molasses flavored distilled water and it was noted that the plants again took a record amount of this water before runoff occurred. These plants are all getting more thirsty all the time.
Things look good here, but I know that without my previous mistakes with the soil, they could have been better. I get the feeling that I am just limping along here with the organic side of things, but that to a point, there is a herd and it is trying to feed my plants. Next round is going to be much much better, since none of those plants will have ever seen a chlorine molecule or a synthetic nute of any kind.
Enough of me and my pontifications... let's see some pictures!
First, my hopefully prize winning plant... sure to show up in the January BOTM competition:
Here she is from the top:
And then to finish out... lets look at some 38 day buds: