First CFL Grow Using 30 Watt CFLs

i was only asking as i have seen a few 2ltr hempies that look like they had 3 main colas, it looked like they kept the main stem and the very 2 lowest branches, basically the branches that had the most time to grow, anything above that was removed, but ive got a few days left before i make my mind, its showing preflowers and not starting its stretch yet i dont think, the branches are less than a.5 inch long anyways so wont be much spacing between nodes unless it stretched loads over the next couple of weeks

now i got some bad news and some interesting news, first the interesting, i have read everywhere that males show sex sooner but on plants planted the same day and the same height i got the females well into flower before the males showed any signs of been male.

now the bad news
my other 2ltr hempie is male, its now moved to its own room cuz i love the way this ak47 cross uk cherry cheese has grown so im collecting pollen from it, i might even cross it with something this time round if i can get something in flower in time to get seeded, but the male sacs are only just starting, but loads of little ones and by the looks of it the sacs are small but look ready to open, where as the hermie male sacs are still a good green color not ready to open, these are tiny and green and have yellow banding looking like their ready to pop, possibly due to been 12-12 from seed but not sure, now the next bit of bad new is that my ak 47 in the normal size pot is also male by the looks of it, dont you think its strange that these have shown sex a lot later than the females,

so at the moment the only ak47 i have got thats fem is the 2ltr hempie, so im really hoping the side branches grow so i got some viable clones cuz i loved that plant, so in flower now is my 2 big plants and 1 auto and 1 2ltr hempie, but all is not lost, i have also got an ak47 in reserve just in case this happened, it hasnt been under flower since day one, it have been under 20-4 from day one but its smaller than the 12-12 ak47 and smaller than the hempies of the same age, so fingers crossed its a female, this has now been moved into the flower room so its now under 12-12,

i need to get this flower group finished and the next lot i got as clones and sprouts finished then im going to start fresh using the hps from start to finish both veg and flower under hps so i should get some decent size plants, its the only way i can do it is by clearing out what i got and starting fresh.

i would love a big ak47 as it looks amazing but not sure i can buy any more of these seeds as they was a sample so not on sale yet but i have still got about 3 seeds left so should have at least 1 fem among them, im hoping my ak in veg is a fem as its now under 12-12, ill be keeping the males in a seperate room in the own sealed cupboard so as not to spread pollen, either that or ill send them to where the hermie lives and let the males flower and pollen elsewhere till i need some pollen for a plant then i can collect and chop and kill the rest of the male plant as ill have no use after its seeded one of my fem plants
 
Careful keeping that male, even opening the cupboard can send pollen drifting about your whole place.

Sorry to hear about the boys... fingers crossed for you to get a girl AK!
 
thanks mate, i think ill take them to where the hermie is, well away from these plants as i dont want the whole crop turning to seed, just a bud or 2 on the next crop.

im loving the look of the ak 47 cross, so i still got at least the 2ltr hempie as a female one of these, i just places an ak in the flower room that has been in veg for the same time as the other ak's but this one is smaller so thinking its female due to it been smaller as is often the case but its no sure things, failing that i have got another ak cross in my aero garden, thats just ticking over and is 3 nodes high and ive not took pics or documented it, i didd say when i done it that i had done one, but ive never grown hydro or aerogarden, its just like dwc with a water pump in it and ive put an air pump in it, so i got that growing although it is very slow, then i got 2 sprouted seeds growing in the veg room that are a few weeks old so i got 3 more plants to hopefully get 1 female, im hoping to take cuttings and veg one out, but i dont want to veg a seed out and grow it for ages and find out its male, id prefer to veg out clones and go 12-12 with any seeds and take cuttings when they show sex.

so if the ak47 cross ive put in flower room is also male then ill move the 2 i got in veg in seedling stage into flower room to try and get a female and failing that ive got the one in the aerogarden to consider, ive not bothered with it much in the aerogarden, just filled it up with solution and switched it on and added an air pump thats all ive done,

now this make shock you all what i did but it seems to be working, i got this aerogarden and none of the net things you place the plants in, so i got a new sponge and could a big gap in it and filled it with compost, and stuck a seed in, then i switched it on and left it thinking nothing would happen due to the sponge been constantly wet, well it seems i must of cut the sponge exactly right cuz the plant has got loads of roots hanging down into the solution, the light its under is not very good so it has stretched slightly, but its growing and looks very healthy, so my growing medium is some cut up sponge filled with compost and i pretty much left it as it is and not bothered with it thinking it would die, but it never died, so either this ak is some super strain or the plants will pretty much grow in anything as long as they got water and light.
 
im gona try and stress a male out and get it hermie, any good ideas on how to do this, would not watering it and leaving it in the dark for say 48 hours and bring out out for 6 hours stress it enough, or should i put it in dark and bring it out at random times and stress it that way, plus would the pollen off a male hermie get me fem seeds or would i not gain anything by stressing a male, do hermie grow trich
 
thats what i thought, but if been looking around the net and both plants will hermie to produce seeds, a fem goes hermie and grows male bits to produce seed and a male grows trichs to produce fem parts and self polenate, ive also found out that female plants that have been in flower to long will also throw out a few seeds,

i didnt think males could hermie, but i did come across some pics on another site that showed a male hermie, it had the male parts with pistils coming off it, so as far as i can tell the males can go hermie exactly like the female, they go hermie to produce seeds so both male and femlae must carry this emergency self pollen gene to make sure the plant produces seeds before it dies,

the sponge i said i used in the aero garden was a bit drastic, it wasnt the type of sponge you wash your car with it was a big square fish tank filter i had that has loads of open spaces in it and not compressed like a normal sponge, but its working and the plant is growing and all the roots are now in the drink, so i added an air stone as i was not to impressed with the trickle of water coming out of the holes at each hole where you can grow a plant from, i covered the other few holes to prevent algae growing and only got the one plant in at the left hand side, im possibly going to lst to it so it grows from one side of the aero garden to the other, about a foot distance so should be able to manage that
 
The pic will be a female gone hermie, females go hermie because they want to reproduce, they think it's winter/season end/poor environment etc then panic making male flowers if they haven't been pollinated.

Males just make pollen and spread it, they have no other task, they don't know if they reproduce or not they just make pollen and spread it and hope for the best.

The problem comes when your plant hermies early on, chances are it will show male sacs BEFORE the female flowers show making people think a male has turned hermie but it just can't happen.
 
i saw pictures on a journal somewhere of a male that went hermie, the grower was growing it for pollen and it was showing all the male sacs then it started growing pistils out the sac so he said it gone hermie, ill try and find the journal and let you look

here is an extract from another site
males can express female traits - sometimes from stress
i have had 2 males show pistils
one did it after a branch pruning(cut male tops to harvest pollen)
the other male had a tiny female cola at the tip, was quite the sight
You can hermaphrodite male plants, but there's no rational reason why you would want to do so as most all the seeds from it would be non-viable for narcotic use.

Hermaphrodite females work because the seeds become 100% XX (female) genetics. Male hermies become 25% XX, 25% YY(non-viable), and 50% XY (Male).
hmm I was incorrect. Males CAN hermie. We just don't notice them as most males are pulled before they can ever get to that point. Thank you incognito weedo for the correction.
A quick word on "backward" hermaphrodites – declared males that eventually sport female flowers – as opposed to the usual female-to-male hermaphrodites. These are semi-rare occurrences, usually sterile but sometimes viable, that I have found at times to be valuable in their genetic contributions. Some of the most resinous and desirable males I have encountered exhibited this trait. This trait almost seems to guarantee against unwanted hermaphroditism in subsequent generations as it also increases the female to male ratio in its progeny"

i think its actually from a grow bible but unsure on where this quote originally came from
interesting if true, have no reason to believe its a lie..

i just done a quick search and found all them, ill try and find the pictures i came across, it was a male plant with male sacs at all the nodes, but at the end of each branch it started growing flowers and self pollenated and you could see the seeds in the plant, ill try and find it
 
hermaphrodite-cannabis.jpg

Backward hermies.

Backward hermaphrodites are also a good thing and some growers say that with these backward hermaphrodites you can produce the most potent and most resinous females and also get a better female to male ratio. These weird hermies are very rare appearance and there is not much information about their positive and negative traits but the potential of these male hermaphrodites are huge and we need to do more research.
 
them pics are suppose to be male plants that went hermie and grew fem flowers, its called a backwards hermie, very rare but does happen, potential is hug what ever that means
 
this last pic is a male that started flowering long after it had grown the male parts.
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problem i have now got is it dont say what the potential is or what even the potential for these plants is trying to explain, are they talking about super males or something, im not sure, dont really understand it,
 
interesting yes, but is making a male go hermie totally pointless, i have got 2 males now showing early signs of male, i got 1 hermie as well that im collecting pollen from, but would i gain anything by making the males go hermie or would i just be better off leaving them as un-stressed males to get pollen for later use, what i have done with the males is one is on window sill until it goes to another place to grow, and the other male is in darkness for random light periods, ill probably leave it dark for 48 hours then keep shocking it, but is their anything i can gain from doing a male hermie, or should i just kill it and collect the pollen from the male and from the hermie
 
just curious if the pollen from male hermie wud be the same as female hermie, i was reading something about super plants due to males going hermie, but i dont want to start a breeding program that big just yet, just want a few seeds so dont need to buy so many,
 
hey man, just stopped by to see how your ladies are coming on, with them being roughly the same age as mine. looking very well man. they look a lot tidier than mine!! i LST'ed mine to try and get more main colas, and let it veg till it started showing pre-flowers so now it looks like a massive messy bush thats gone out of control lol!. hopefully it'll give me a good enough yield to be able to put some money into a better prepared grow next time. have you any idea what the cfl's are costing you in electric? cos my 400w hps is costing me like an extra £10-15 per fortnight on 12/12. im wondering if i should scale down to maybe a 250w hps or just use cfl's.
 
ive not noticed any difference really, if anything i say the hps is cheaper, i was using the same watts give or take with the cfls so im using about the same, but it should work out more cost effective due to them finishing quicker under hps, so it should make it cost affective, but what your paying sounds about right, cfls are cheap if you are only using a few, but they tend to grow the plants a lot slower, mine wouldnt get very tall, but they got me into flower till i switched to hps,
my plants where pretty messy when i switched to 12-12, now they seem to have sorted themselves out and some stems are growing longer than others so should have some main cola sites due to this, i lst and topped both of mine.

so now im only using the 400hps for flower its dual spectrum so can use for veg if needed, but iv also got plants in veg, but when my hps comes on i move the plants ive got in veg into the flower room and turn the cfl veg room off until i move the plants back before the hps goes off, but i dont think im paying any more for electric than i was with cfls; i was using roughly the same watts as i am now so it didnt really affect me when i switched, but i have changed all my house lights to cfls and cut back on all i can in the home to keep the extra electric costs down,
 
donpaul.p said:
just curious if the pollen from male hermie wud be the same as female hermie, i was reading something about super plants due to males going hermie, but i dont want to start a breeding program that big just yet, just want a few seeds so dont need to buy so many,
Click to expand...

start clone n then!
 
what im thinking is i really like the way this ak47 looks so would like some pollen and would like to cross it with a big bud#2 fem which i dont have, the males are on their way to their new home, im not bothering stressing the male to make it hermie, seems pointless and not sure what results id get anyways, but the bigbud#2 hermie grew the best out of all the plants and it was the one i was really hoping was female, but it wasnt to be, so ill collect the pollen of the hermie big bud#2, do i just then place it in a tub and stick it in the freezer when its dry, just wondered cuz wont it get damp when you take it out the freezer, so ill collect pollen of that, im not trying anything this grow in case i mess it all up and end up with a load of seeds instead of buds so i dont think its worth the risk when i have not done it before.

ill collect pollen from the ak47 cross as well as i would like some more of this strain so id like to pollenate one of the small plants i got in the veg room so ive got time to get that sorted out, big bud#2 hermie ill collect the pollen and try and make some fem big bud seeds when i get round to planting some more big bud#2 seeds, i got a few left,

so im not going to mess about with this lot of plants now,
so in flower i have got
1 x special kush,
this is packing on the trichs now and the buds are starting to grow now and im getting upwards bud growth now instead of just pistils at end of branches and nodes it is not growing into longer buds. they seem really packed and the nodes are so close together, the whole plant looks like its gona end up clumping together in one giant football size bud, all the node growth is so packed in, ill try and get it sorted out tomorrow when lights back on, i wont pull any leaves just try and open the plant up a bit to get more light into the smaller bud sites.
1 x northern lights cross big bud femenised
this to is well in flower and buds are forming and bud growth is now getting bigger and the bud leaves look so amazing when compared to the leaves on the branches and the leaves it grew in veg, the bud leaves seem to have thinner fingers and are so perfectly formed it really is looking like a totally different plant now its in flower, loads and loads of bud sites, many top bud sites and many lower bud sites, cant wait to see what happens over the next month or so.
1 x g13 poisen dwarf auto none femenised
this is female and is in flower, the pistils are massive but not forming into buds yet, the base of the pistils is the bud formation and thats just starting to swell up forming buds, i have tied the top down slightly as the top leaves where covering all the node growth so i used some very gentle lst to get some light into the lower branches that are only an inch long, this plant was stunted all the way through veg, but now its in flower its decided to grow, so glad i didnt decide to kill it off. but its in flower and im hoping it gets a lot bigger before it finishes, according to the grow report it should be flowered and harvested by now, it must be getting on 8 weeks old if not longer.
1 x ak47 cross uk cherry cheese. 2ltr dwc hempie.
this is the amazing plant and i love the way it looks and grows, im vegging one of these out as i wont to grow a big plant of this and take cuttings as it seems such a perfect plant, must be a really stable strain, it hasnt even got a name yet just something a seed bank was experimenting with so gave me 10 seeds for free to try it out, im so amazed at how it looks and grows, faster than any of my other plants at growing and its growth is identical both sides of the plant, no funny shaped leaves at all not even the first leaves and this is the same with all the ak seeds i planted,
1x ak47 cross in bigger pot.
as my other 12-12 from seed was a male i fetched another out of the veg room to replace it with, i want to see the difference in yield between the 2ltr hempie and the 12-12 from seed in normal pot, both plants are the exact same age and roughly the same height so will be good to see the yield at the end.

one thing i gota say about the 2ltr hempie, since making the res a lot bigger and making sure the roots where just touching the nute liquid, i had a look at the roots before light went out and the growth in the roots is shocking in less than 8 hours, the roots where just poking out the bottom of the bottle when i checked it at dinner time, when i checked it before the light went out the roots had grown 3 inches or more and was hanging into the solution then i turned the bottle around and every hole i poked in the top half had roots growing out of it like crazy, and thats just in one day, ill be adding an air pump to it tomorrow, and spirit and teSmp was right, they really do drink the water up really quick, i wonder why the plants dont like the roots water logged yet when their is no grow medium and the roots are in the water then why do they drink so much like this but then dont grow if the soil is to wet when growing in pots, seems real strange to me, does anyone know why this is.

so thats what i got in flower, below is what i got in veg
3 x northern lights cross nig bud fem clones, healthy and growing the method i was told i used to take the clones was ubt or something like that, i should get some very nice plants by doing the clones how i have done them.
2 x special kush clones.
both set of clones will be vegd for a while and i may keep one of each as mother plants depending on smoke report of the 2, i think ill keep an nl x bb mother as its an amazing plant and it was a freebie from herbies,
i have also got 2 x ak47 seedlings just growing their 2nd set of proper leaves, im hoping one of these is female for my next flower round as ill veg it slightly before going 12-12 to compare yield with the 12-12 from seed grow.
1 x greenhouse seed auto bomb femenised, this has not shown sex yet, but its not stunted like my other auto was, this seems to be growing like a normal plant, the only difference is the leaves are really wide but not long, the leaves feel really thick as well, not thin like normal cannabis but really thick, maybe thats how a ruderalis plant grows, not sure as never seen one,
its meant to be auto so should start flowering when it reaches a certain age, all my plants under veg are on the 20-4 time setting, i would have them all under glr but i dont think glr will help the autos, if i thought it would give the autos a boost then id use it,

when i ran a test with lighting schedules i found glr no better than any other method if anything it was slightly behind the 24-0 of the same age, but i think the glr method works great with plants that are ready to start the stretch phase when they flip to 12-12 so clones and plants over 4 weeks would benefit from this, so i was hoping to use that with my clones now they have rooted, but ive got my autos still going and dont want to stress them out as well.

so thats what i got going on in both rooms, ive got a good few strains left in my seed colection for my 3rd flower round, but im going to flower off what i have got now, then ill veg what i want to veg then flower off everything i have got left, i may keep mothers depending on smoke report but not planning to as of yet, then ill start again with just one grow room and have the plants growing in veg under the hps, im thinking about trying the glr method from day 1 with that 3rd grow but thats a good few months away so got time to make my mind up, just thinking if i can keep the hps hours of use down then it will make the bulb last and cut costs down a lot, plus i could just use a couple of cfls on different timer to disrupt the dark period for an hour to prevent flowering, but thats a long way off yet.

my plants in flower look amazing, i was worried i went 12-12 to early, but i think if i left it any longer the plants would suffocate themselves due to all the growth.

now im not sure if i have got a problem with 1 of my plants, the special kush has got a few bright green to yellow leaves, these are way inside the plants, so are these that colour due to the light not reaching that far due to dense growth or do i have a problem, all the leaves in the light are a perfect healthy colour and texture, its just these inner leaves at the bottom of the plant, gone real bright greeny yellow colour almost white,
 
forgot 1, i have also got an ak47 cross in my aero garden, this is under 24-0 under the bulbs that come fitted with the aero garden they are cfl daylights and i think 23 or 30 watt. im going to lst it all the way across the aero garden as its planted in the far left corner so im going to train it along the front of the aero garden and over to the right then try and train it back again, ive got enough room to have 3 lines running along the top so if i can train it from left to right, then right to left, then left to right again i should end up with loads of tops, i can leave it vegging as long as it takes as its the only plant in the aerogarden so its got a shed load of space for roots to grow, could even use it to mother the ak if its female, now thats an idea, but ill see what happens, but i am training it as we speak to grow to the other side, so all been well it should give me loads of node growth growing upwards and if it is female then all this new node growth could be used for flowers and clones,
 
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