hey goldengoose! i just finished reading your GDP journal and i just wanted to say your pictures were amazing!
thanks for responding to my post about the issue i was having. i appreciate the help. i really respect your method of simplicity and it seems to pay off very well for you. also the info on powedery mildew and cloning was very helpful. you seem to know a lot about cannabis genetics, especially purple strains, and i was wondering if you have any experience or knowledge about Purps a.k.a. Da Purps because i ordered some feminized Purps about a week ago. Once again, great job and thanks!
Hey Treezzz!
Thanks for the kind words and WELCOME to my main grow journal!
Hope that you stick around and follow the remaining outdoor crop to flower! A few more weeks left to go outside, but now that we have passed the 12/12 barrier, they will start to really put on the frost and the swell!
I welcome any and all input from my 420 friends who follow along here, so feel free to ASK AWAY with anything you may want to know. I obviously don't know everything, but we have what I would consider the "Whos Who" of the 420 mag master growers following this journal, so if I can't answer your question, I am sure one of those good folks can!
I've only been seriously growing Cannabis for a few years, but I have been an avid gardener for over 30. Most of my "Less is More" techniques are simply carried over from my philosophy with other crops, primarily food crops where you can TASTE the difference between a light touch with fertilizers and a heavy handed approach where you spend a fortune on liquid nutes and the magic potion of the week. I went down that path a long time ago, and found that the fruit just didn't taste as good as the more organic and light touch approach. This same approach produces the kind of plants and buds you see in the pages of this journal.
Besides the bliss of not having to stick to some regimented feeding schedule and what not, it is a HELL OF A LOT CHEAPER!
LONG REPLY ALERT! 
Glad that the PM info helped you out! It is definitely the scourge of all gardeners, Cannabis or not! I have a HELL of a time with it whenever we grow things like Cucumbers and Squash. You think it likes Cannabis? It can turn Cucumber and Squash leaves TOTALLY WHITE overnight! I HATE IT!! But... As I think I mentioned in my PM section, it is everywhere in the forest behind our house. Anytime I take a walk back there and look around at the wild ground cover, it is all coated with PM! Sickening, but nothing you can do about it. I guess it is part of the circle of life out there and it must serve some useful purpose for something. At least I would hope so!
As to your question about "Da Purps". I haven't grown any of that particular strain myself, but most of these can trace their roots back to the wild growing purples of Northern California, of which Purple Urkle is the undeniable KING/QUEEN of the native purple strains. Well... It isn't actually native per se, but after it was introduced all those years ago, it spread on its own, evolved and now can be found growing wild in the hills of Humbolt County, Medocino, Big Sir and many of the other coastal mountain areas.
It LOVES a mild climate where the sea breezes come in off the pacific and cool the overnights into the mid 40s to lower 50s this time of year. It is at this time of year (September through November) that Purple Urkle ends its natural life cycle and because of the cool nights, turns that lovely purple hue!
If your purple strain is decended from Urkle, and I have no reason to believe that it wasn't, if you can give it those cool overnight temps it will definitely turn for you! Some growers are alarmed when they grow this stuff indoors and it never turns color. But that is simply because they never give it those cool temps during the dark cycle it likes and needs.
There are some more recently produced purples that don't require this temp range to change color. Not sure if your strain is one of these, but it might be. I'm also not sure what the creators of those more recent strains did to get around that environmental ingredient for the color change, but I have heard from many growers of these that they didn't have to do anything special to get their strain to change color for them.
One thing about Urkle that fortunately GDP does not share is its LOVE for VERTICAL GROWTH! This stuff is like a creeping vine if left to its own devices! While most strains will stretch a few inches during the 12/12 transition period, Urkle is a MONSTER! Early on I made the mistake of putting untopped plants into my bloom room when they were 30" tall. Within two weeks they had hit the limit of my hangers and I was out of rope for my T5 fixture! I was forced to pull them out and put them back outside where I pruned the crap out of them. They grew back rapidly and are now close to 5 feet tall. The "Back Hill" grow is made up of these two original clones and several of their cuttings that I cloned off before I originally put them into the Bloom Room.
Now, I know what needs to be done with these and top them early when they are under 15" tall and continue to prune them back all through veg until I can get them to resemble a hedge.
Here is a photo of a portion of one of the Urkle clones I made on the left and my single White Rhino female on the right. The Urkle is 5 feet tall, and the Rhino is just under 7 feet tall
Here is a BABY Urkle that I put into flower immediately after it came out of the cloner. This is going to be the future of my Urkle flowering technique, since if you start them when they are small, they don't get crazy tall but they still produce some respectable bud!
A couple of weeks ago...
This last Saturday...
The buds are just now starting to get dense and thicken up. Urkle is a more airy bud than others at the start, but they do get thicker and thicker as time goes on and eventually get pretty dense, but they are never going to be HUGE fat colas. However, what counts is the quality of the smoke, and I have sampled cured bud from the mother plant I got my original clones from and it was DIVINE!
I hope I helped give you some more info on your purple strain somewhere in this "NOVEL" I ended up making out of this reply!
Once I get going on a point, I can't stop digressing! LOL!
Feel free to follow up with another question or two if I didn't give you what you needed to know in here! And once again... WELCOME ABOARD!
are so important, as they help spread the word of cannabis awareness. And, this is why it's so important for each of us to help educate others as to the truth behind this wonderful plant we all enjoy!
