Phototown Unchained!
Grow/Veg Day 66
Training Method Demo/Tutorial Continued
Today the girls shed their shackles. Every stick and twist tie holding anything in place has been removed. Now you see how effective your chains have been to this point, as when you release all the bonds you will see the branches rise to some extent and the plant will again be bushy and uncontrolled. But if you have effectively chained your outer ring and given the plant's stems a few days to "set" into place, the plants should bush up in something pretty close to the ring you created. There should be a center mass of growth that is on a lower level than the outer ring. This is why we kept her chained as long as we did, to "set" the outer ring. The addition of the mono-silicic acid helped noticeably with this part, as the strength and plasticity of the stems allowed me to pretty much do whatever I wanted with the branches and it appears also helped them get "set" nice and solid after a few days. This is what makes it possible to effectively spread out your branches and buds so that the entire plant, in a perfect world, ends up nice and even with a flat canopy when we start to see actual little cotton balls. The idea with the center growth is that we are going to let it "catch up" to the outer ring growth during the stretch. So as we control the outer ring, we will let the inner circle grow uncontrolled, and hopefully over the course of the stretch we end up with the center growth as high to the light as the outer growth, cuz once you see buds you're done with your training, and what you have then is what you get.
DAMN are these girls bushy. Lol. It's a beautiful thing, I gotta admit. So now we will flush the Ghost Train and the Hulkberry, as they are the two Fox Farms nutes plants. The Slurricane is in Sohum and will not get flushed (thanks for the help on that one yesterday guys!).
We let them go and will leave them till Friday so we can get some vertical growth to the stems. This will make it a lot easier to separate branches vs. having the ring all bushed together choking one another out. God knows how fast they will grow this week.
I have figured out a relatively efficient way to flush these girls the way I truly want to. That way is one gallon at a time, as slowly as I can manage, letting the pot drain all the water from the previous gallon each time before the next one. And each and every gallon I want Ph'ed to 6.3. Well, for two plants in fives we're talking about 30 gallons of water. That would take forever a gallon at a time, even I have no interest in that. BUT....instead I'm going to fill my five gallon food grade plastic buckets and Ph to 6.3 the entire bucket at a time. Then all I have to do is dip the gallon jug in the bucket to fill it and there you go - a relatively quick flushing process. Especially since the plants are mobile by design and I will be able to remove them from the tent and simply do this right outside the garage on the driveway. Yes, I have stealth measures in place for this. Heh. But that's 3 of the five gallon buckets per plant, and this should be able to be accomplished in about an hour per plant.
Hey, love takes time.
At that point we are done until Friday morning, flip day. That day it's likely the girls will need watered and they will get a clean watering with their final MSA application, as they recommend to discontinue it's use once you flip. Then we will do the final training on each plant before the flip, which will be to spread the branches as effectively as possible and tie down whatever is necessary to even out the canopy on each plant. Then we will make sure all three plants are on the right level in terms of their height so that the canopy across all three plants is as close to level-flat as possible. At 6 pm Friday the girls go to sleep for their first 12 hour nap and the beginning of flower. They are going to be on a 6 am to 6 pm light schedule. This is perhaps opposite how many would try to schedule the budding, as most might want to have the lights on when it's cooler overnight. That makes perfect sense and is what you will read most often in the literature online as the recommendation on that. I do it the opposite for two reasons, one, so the plants are awake when I am and I can work them. And secondly, so that the temperature difference between day and night is more dramatic. This will become important later when we go the cold route at night to try and develop colors, and when we add the second AC unit.
This really is a ton of work, and just for that reason I really think you can accomplish the same thing with a screen much easier and wouldn't recommend it as your normal thing. But when I do the one plant to try and fill a 5x5 in a large pot, this method is going to be perfect. Doing this to one plant is fun, kind of like a cool hobby even, and you definitely learn a ton about growing and how your plants grow. You also learn a ton about what the plant is capable of in terms of training, which is just about anything!! The learning experience for a relatively new grower like me is well worth the effort, and when you begin to see what you're going to get from this method, the memory of how hard you worked to get here is going to quickly slip away and be replaced with a serious PSYCH!! And if you happen to have physical limitations and need plants you can turn, and that are high yielding while staying manageable, this is not the worst way in the world to do it. It's when you decide to do this to, say three plants at a time that the workload becomes unpalatable and/or impossible to most people with lives. Lol. In any event, the fireworks we're about to share should be really spectacular.
So the Monday porn.....
Picture 1 - The Gang before the unchaining (sorry it's a little blurry)
Picture 2 - Slurricane unchained
Picture 3 - Ghost Train Haze unchained
Picutre 4 - Hulkberry unchained
Picture 5 - The Gang again, now completely released and looking like some SERIOUS bushes
Picture 6 - This is the sum of what was necessary to chain all three girls down
Have a great week everyone!
I saw your post about @Emilya being your teacher and you her student, and it would appear we both have the same favorite teacher!
