Jay's First Time: 3x Lemon Skunk In Coco, With 315W LEC In A 1200x1200 Tent

[d42zero]

5/7

Sooo today's topping day again, and after how they recovered over the last week I'm not hesitant at all to slice em up! I decided not to top the plant that already had 8 mains (#1), but instead just give it a simple trim and let it keep growing. This'll put it a week ahead of the others on veg time so it'll be interesting to see what the differences are.

Here she is after trimming off the lower growth and re-setting the training ties:

#2 is the plant that was going to end up with 8 mains after the third topping, here she is all cleaned up to the new tips:

And #3 was supposed to have 8 mains, but broke a stem last week so is down to 6. As an experiment I also removed a lot more growth, maybe a little too much..

That was a fun little exercise but it always feels counterproductive to throw all this out!

Watered 600ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml 11pm
Min-max 20.6-25.1, 64-81% RH.

 

[d42zero]

6/7
Watered 600ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 20.6-25.4, 61-75% RH.

Nothing to report today, all plants are recovering well from topping, clones have visibly grown. Clones getting 40ml each 3x daily of nutes at 1/8 label strength (50/50 mix of my 1/4 strength mix for the plants & plain water).

 

[d42zero]

Time for a weekend project! I got tired of manually tipping out runoff from the three shallow trays.. I either have to empty them every couple of days, or if I let them get too full there's a big chance of a spill on the way to the bathroom! So today I set up a container for each plant that will catch my runoff, meaning I could go weeks without having to empty them!

Here's a pic of my full setup:

I'm told this strain is a big stretcher so I'm going to let the plants get to about 18 inches before flipping, hopefully I'll have enough room. The fan and filter are right up against the back of the tent so I can get the light all the way up to the roof level

The next little project for next weekend is to set up an automatic watering system that uses these containers as its reservoir and pumps water up to the coco a few times a day. I have all the parts ready to go, just waiting on the pump I ordered from Amazon to arrive and I'll be able to get that going! I'll do it for one plant to start with and see how it goes, then if it works well I'll do it for the others. That being said, now I have the runoff situation a little better taken care of I might end up finding manually watering is just as easy.. see what happens!

 

[d42zero]

7/7
First watering with my new setup Moved a few ties around to tidy the new growth up, and I trimmed the lowest nodes from plant #1:

I re-tested my nutes pH halfway through this mix (10l used of a 20l mix) and it tested super low, 4.7!! This batch was 5.8 on the nose when it was made so I'm not sure I get what's going on. I'll make a separate post elsewhere about it in a bit more detail..

Clones are doing well too:

The runoff from the clones has been really dark red/brown, you can see it at the bottom of the cup in the pic... tonight I put them on top of the front drain box and put about 200ml through each one. Once they're up to their 6th or 7th nodes (tallest one back right is just sprouting 5th) I think I'm going to top them and re-start the clone process using the cuttings. I'd like to understand it properly because where I live it can be hard to get seeds and I don't know anyone else with plants, so being able to nail cloning every time is the only way I can keep things alive.

Watered 700ml @ 11am.
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 19.3-24.9, 62-80% RH.

 

[d42zero]

8/7
Watered 700ml @ 11am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 20.0-24.4, 60-74% RH.

 

[d42zero]

9/7
Watered 700ml @ 9am
Watered 700ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 18.9-23.3, 51-67% RH.

 

[d42zero]

Just a quick photo update, the girls are looking lovely and green

 

[d42zero]

10/7
Watered 800ml @ 9am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 18.3-23.1, 47-75% RH.

 

[d42zero]

11/7
I pulled the girls out to do a bit of trimming and to re-set the training ties.. here's #3, the one that ended up with six colas, from the side and top:

and here's #2, the one that took three toppings to get to eight colas:

and here's #1, the one that was split into eight colas in two toppings:

So it's clear from these pics that #1 is looking much better than the other two.. because she hit 8 colas in two toppings not three, the other two had a topping last Friday which put them a week behind. I'm sure the others will look like her in a week, but she'll always be a week ahead so all things being equal she should yield a little more than the others. We'll see what actually happens...

Clones are massive, I think I'm almost ready to top them and start the clone process again... maybe tomorrow night. Here's the family:

Watered 800ml @ 9am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 21.0-23.2, 60-71% RH.

 

[d42zero]

12/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 11pm
Min-max 19.3-23.7, 51-71% RH.

 

[d42zero]

13/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Flushed 60l each @ 8pm
Watered 1l @ 8pm
Watered 1l @ 1130pm
Min-max 18.8-23.4, 39-64% RH.

So I decided to do a full flush of the medium, mainly to play around with some watering equipment.. I ended up making a drip ring from 13mm tubing, putting a plant in the shower, and just hooking the ring up to a 20l drum elevated on the bench.. ran three drums through each plant (sixty litres per plant).

I've been reading split opinions on flushing coco vs. not flushing, many say always flush with a weak nute mix but as I mix nutes 20 litres at a time it was enough work just to pH nine batches let alone mix nutes in... I decided to flush with plain pH'd water then finish the flush with a couple of litres of nutes so I'm not leaving the plants in the plain water.

 

[d42zero]

14/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 17.9-22.7, 40-64% RH.

Girls lookin fiiiine today:

Can't say whether the flush did them any good but it certainly hasn't done them any harm! They look to be growing an inch a day.. at this rate another week or two and they'll easily be pushing the 18 inches I was chasing before flip

A few days ago I shifted to 1/4 strength of the "Aggressive Veg" mix on the GH bottles, which in Gro/Micro/Bloom is 20ml/13.5ml/6.5ml per 20l, and I'm still adding 4ml cal-mag per 20l. Final ppm in that mix after pH is 520 +/- 10. Considering increasing to 1/2 strength soon but that ppm is already fairly high and the girls look healthy to me so is that a good idea?

 

[Remystemple]

Looking good! the plastic cups are good, but if you find paper cups to put those in will be helpful. I think it's actually called a california cup, google it you'll see. the clones made it, awesome. the first time i tried to clone was in the jiffy pellets too and they all almost died until i did what you did and removed them as much as i could.

Now for cloning i use rapid rooters and keep them under a clear plastic bucket for a "dome" under a 45w growneer LED. I get roots in 2 weeks or less and after the first 5 days i start spraying them with 1/4 strength flower nutes and let them breathe for about 20 mins once or twice a day. the leaves stay green the whole time and as soon as i pot them they take off.

subbing in to watch the manifold.

 

[d42zero]

Looking good! the plastic cups are good, but if you find paper cups to put those in will be helpful. I think it's actually called a california cup, google it you'll see. the clones made it, awesome. the first time i tried to clone was in the jiffy pellets too and they all almost died until i did what you did and removed them as much as i could.

Now for cloning i use rapid rooters and keep them under a clear plastic bucket for a "dome" under a 45w growneer LED. I get roots in 2 weeks or less and after the first 5 days i start spraying them with 1/4 strength flower nutes and let them breathe for about 20 mins once or twice a day. the leaves stay green the whole time and as soon as i pot them they take off.

subbing in to watch the manifold.

Thanks! I picked the clear plastic cups cause I wanted to see the roots growing, it was rather interesting! Soon I'm going to take new clones from these ones and try again, and I'll keep doing that until I have the process downpat. Will try your method and see how it goes

I have Jiffy-brand peat pots, instead of transplanting you're supposed to be able to plant the whole thing pot and all... is that what you're thinking of? I put my seeds into coco in them when they sprouted but I didn't like the way they stayed really damp (pots sucked up a lot of water instead of draining) and I wasn't sure they'd break down in coco the same way they're supposed to in soil.

Thanks for joining in

 

[d42zero]

Also I just scrolled up and noticed in this photo that the edges are much darker than the middle... that makes me think the light isn't in the right spot to evenly hit the canopy, so tonight I'll have a play with it and see if I can spread it out better..

 

[d42zero]

15/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 18.0-22.8, 45-71% RH.

 

[d42zero]

16/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 18.5-22.8, 59-72% RH.

 

[d42zero]

17/7
Watered 800ml @ 10am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 18.6-22.8, 54-78% RH.

 

[d42zero]

18/7
The girls are getting bushy!

I added a circular trellis (tomato ring) which you can see in the foreground, the lower ring is under the manifold and they'll be loosely tethered to the top ring when they reach it so that the colas are evenly spread out. The top and bottom ring are 425mm apart (just under 17") and I was going to let the plants reach 18" or so before flipping, so when they're an inch or so above the top ring I think it'll be time.

The bloody clones are nearly as big as the plants haha! Haven't had time to top and re-clone yet but I think I'll try to do that this weekend.

I added a small A/C-style dehumidifier in the room, it has a 1.6l tank and is filling that about every six hours! Humidity has been really variable lately with swings of 20%+ (weather has been a factor) and maxes of >70%, but I think with the little unit running it should be more stable. I'm not sure if it's powerful enough to get the room right down to the ~40% area I need for flowering though, but it's only been running for a day and the room started off very moist so it might catch up in a few days.

Watered 800ml @ 8am
Watered 800ml @ 730pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 20.4-23.1, 53-66% RH.

 

[d42zero]

19/7
The girls have grown at least an inch since yesterday... it's easier to see now that the tomato ring is in and it gives a point of reference:

Here's another side-by-side of their growth in the last week:

They've gone craaaazy, I think it's going to be time to flip fairly soon... the front girl will be past the trellis tomorrow and I think I'm going to flip when all colas on all plants are level with it, so considering the back two are a little shorter we're probably looking at three to five days before that happens.

The dehumidifier seems to be working well.

Tomato rings will go on the other two plants tomorrow and I might do a little defoliating but I'm still not 100% sure how much I should be doing so I might resurrect my post in the veg forum about that...

I bought a small tub of Great White and mixed a scoop into a new 20 litre nute mix, so they'll get a few feeds worth of that too

Watered 800ml @ 8am
Watered 800ml @ 8pm
Watered 800ml @ 1130pm
Min-max 20.1-24.2, 51-63% RH.