Kush DWC grow

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Ok. Enough tough love for now. I don't care what anyone says, growing real good pot in soil is a lot more complex than running a bubbler. It's like making an angel food cake from scratch or one out of a box. A lot of guys are going for the gold and make DWC a lot harder for a nOOb to grasp than it has to be. All those additives and stuff fill the nute makers wallets and are of limited value when the harvest is done. All that extra coin may have got you an extra 25% but the extra expense eats up the difference. If you're willing to settle for silver or bronze you can have just as good weed just maybe not so much. Less headache is better than a little extra weed IMHO. I'll probably get flamed for that but oh well. I'm a miserable old prick and I got a tough hide.
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Flamed? I praise the courage to tell the truth like you see it.

I do have a question of semantics about the pollen producers and femmed seeds though - do you call a banana in a bud a male flower?

I'd just always used the term female pollen sac if it's going to produce femmed seeds.

Still looking very nice LabRat!

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Hashy[/B];937664]Good stuff there LabRat.. So, you don't flush huh.. To each their own I always say. I'm a flusher myself, but I have a few friends who don't. Keep up the good work bud, I like how you found your own way and stuck with it.

High there Hashy. to the LabRat's Lair.

I just like to see what happens sometimes plus I like to tilt at windmills. Thanx for the kind words.

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Fantastic grow and setups. All the years of experience are evident in beautiful plants, and an extremely elegant setup. There's soooo much good knowledge (the real knowledge about plants - not what the latest fad is) in this thread. Thanks.

Well thank you Whiskey Papa. I'm glad you're liking it. The massive upswing in cannabis growing info available these days sometimes confuses more than educates. I guess I like my plants like I like my dogs. Mutts. IMHO they're tougher, lower maintainance and more fun than a high strung thoroughbred.

This whole grow is an experiment. I jammed way more plants in there than I have before just to see what happened. Then I decided not to change one tub's nutes to see what happens with that. So far so good.

When I'm done with this grow I'm thinking of going through it and compiling all the informative posts into one. I'll call it something like "The Lazy Cheapskate's Guide to DWC" or something like that. LOL

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Flamed? I praise the courage to tell the truth like you see it.

I do have a question of semantics about the pollen producers and femmed seeds though - do you call a banana in a bud a male flower?

I'd just always used the term female pollen sac if it's going to produce femmed seeds.

Still looking very nice LabRat!

Thanks OBX! I just call a male flower a male flower I guess. Never really thought about the semantics. Bananas to me is an open male flower 'cause their stamen look like a bunch of bananas.

If there is a protocol I am unaware of it. I'm not a 100% certain of all the permutations involved in breeding fem seed but it's one of the subjects I'm working on learning more about. My wife thinks I'm obsessed with the whole thing and she may not be far off the mark. lol

 

[Stakkur]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

When I'm done with this grow I'm thinking of going through it and compiling all the informative posts into one. I'll call it something like "The Lazy Cheapskate's Guide to DWC" or something like that. LOL

I like, like, like the way every word of that line sounds. Keep up the awesome grow

 

[Green Utopia]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

I did some research a while back. I've not actually tried this yet cause I'm too chicken to pollenate the whole crop, but I think this is what I'm going to try and what some are talking about with the bananas:

As I understand it, if you let a female plant get extremely over-ripe, it will begin to produce female "pollen". This happens a few weeks after the plant would normally be harvested. This pollen looks like bananas.

The trick to getting feminized seeds is removing the male chromosomes from the equation. Since this is a female plant, it has no male chromosomes to add. The technique I've been investigating involves taking that pollen from the bananas, storing it carefully, then re-pollenating the mother's clone. Because all the genetics come from one plant it will be easy to pheno, unless you get a birth defect (which as I understand it is rare). Also, because no male chromosome was ever introduced, all the resultant seeds will be feminized for a generation.

I like this idea very much, and certainly better than me trying to mess around with silver-nitrate or any of the other chemical ways to stress the plant and make fem seeds. Takes a lot longer, but it seems more organic to me.

Looking forward to hearing any thoughts you might have.

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Howdy peeps!

A little bit of a progress report is in order. Nothing major to report. I did get around to tacking up some reflective materials so it's a lot shinier in there now. I swapped out one of the HPS bulbs for the EYE Hortilux. That yellow was starting to bum my trip. lol And I'm thinking about adding my 400W MH for the last 2 or 3 weeks. Sound like a plan? Three 400W HIDs, one standard HPS, one EYE and a standard MH. That ought to provide a full range spectrum eh. The 50% increase in light should kick them into high gear or fry them. If I don't get some money on my power bill I may be digging up the old Coleman lamp for light. LOL

I checked the ppm etc this morning and the unchanged tub has eaten the nutes down to 980 from 1250 and the changed tub only went down to 1170 from the same. Seems odd but I'm not sure why they shouldn't be almost the same. Makes me go Hmmmm...

Here's a couple of pix. They sure aren't that pretty of a plant but lots of resin and a killer buzz makes them beautiful in my eyes.

Some more close-up bud porn for your hungry eyes.

That's all for now.

 

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Thanks OBX! I just call a male flower a male flower I guess. Never really thought about the semantics. Bananas to me is an open male flower 'cause their stamen look like a bunch of bananas.

If there is a protocol I am unaware of it. I'm not a 100% certain of all the permutations involved in breeding fem seed but it's one of the subjects I'm working on learning more about. My wife thinks I'm obsessed with the whole thing and she may not be far off the mark. lol

I gotcha - have you had a plant with female sacs? It's a blessing and a curse.

I know more about it than I ever wanted too from my last grow - had one indica that was very prone to popping nanas, but all of them popped at least one. I got most of them, but a few hidden away gave me tons of femmed seeds for this grow, and sure enough, all the plants are female.

I should take all the pics I took of the pollen sacs and do a femmed seed tutorial or something. The sacs come out of the buds just like hairs - I'd guess they grow from the same spots in the buds as the hairs do, but some kind of genetic switch makes them pollen producers rather than receptors.

Obviously, they can switch for genetic or envionmental reasons, or a combination of both. I had one plant I took outside during flowering during my first grow last spring to see what the sun would do... and I can tell you, the stress of the cold and extra light from the sun (I was using CFLs at that point) popped bananas out everywhere in the buds.

However, next grow, they had perfect conditions, most only had one or two like I said, but that one be-yatch just started and never stopped. This time I'll pull a plant that goes bananas like that...

(edit) - just saw the pics - man, I've got to try that two lens macro macguyver setup you're using - awesome closeups for a rigged up system.

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

I'm pretty sure I did have a plant with female sacs last time. I had harvested a bit at a time over a period of 6 or 7 weeks. On the last of the buds I found one male flower while trimming and put it aside. Further down on the same branch I found a dozen seeds. As there were no male flowers on any of the plants during the grow I assume that one came along because the plants had flowered for so long. So those seeds should be fem right? If so I may use them for the next grow. I just put 3 KaliMist in dirt yesterday and another bean has popped this morning. None of the 4 NL has popped yet but they're older than the Kali and it's only been a few days so I'm hoping.

Very interesting stuff.

 

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

I'd guess the harvesting in stages might stress them enough to pop a banana... lots of new light on buds that were not getting any should produce a couple.

When you say "male flower" - was a complete set o balls? Or just one little yellow banana inside a bud?

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Just one ball and when it opens it looks like a bunch of 'nanners inside. I don't know how else to describe it. Just at the juncture of a branch and stem, not in a bud.

 

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Just one ball and when it opens it looks like a bunch of 'naners inside. I don't know how else to describe it. Just at the juncture of a branch and stem, not in a bud.

That sounds like a hermie - you'll only get one 'naner at a time, right out of the bud. When it starts, looks just like a hair, then fattens up and splits.

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

I think that we're on the same wave-length here but the semantics are still a little off. It's as you describe but by bananas I mean the pollen producers that are exposed when the ball splits. To me that's a male flower whether the pollen is male or female it's still a male flower to me. The female flower has the lovely long platinum blond hairs.

C'ya.

 

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

I think that we're on the same wave-length here but the semantics are still a little off. It's as you describe but by bananas I mean the pollen producers that are exposed when the ball splits. To me that's a male flower whether the pollen is male or female it's still a male flower to me. The female flower has the lovely long platinum blond hairs.

C'ya.

Well, we could keep working towards the thousand words... or I could try this:

There's the banana at 11 o'clock - and now that I look closer, twelve o'clock, and another at two o'clock.

Here's a closer view:

They look like two hairs fuse together to form the sac.

 

[kailpot]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Hey LaRrat just caught up on your journal......quite the read! Love the pictures, I'd rate them about the best I've seen. Good luck with the grow, I'll be watching

 

[Green Utopia]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

Man I love this site. Obx those are text-book shots of the bananas. Best I've ever seen.

And awesome convo you guys are having. Gonna remove myself from the picture and just listen for a while.

 

[MountainHigh]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

RAPE!!!!!



Nice photo btw, so that is after the ball splits open and before the little flower opens? So they already poofed their wad?

 

[Tyrone Hamilton]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

RAPE!!!!!



Nice photo btw, so that is after the ball splits open and before the little flower opens? So they already poofed their wad?

No, those bananas are still closed. There are no balls to split open - these come right out of the female flowers instead of stigma (hairs).

 

[MountainHigh]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

So they really are totally different creatures? Male and female flowers?

 

[OldMedUser]

Re: LabRat's latest Kush DWC grow.

No, those bananas are still closed. There are no balls to split open - these come right out of the female flowers instead of stigma (hairs).

OK. Only one of those little 'nanners but under the bud where there is usually a lone calyx or at the junction of branch and leaf stem all by itself. That's the male flower before it swells up, opens and dumps it's load. I've still got those dead hermy plants. I'll try to get some macro pix later when I can go in the grow room if there are any 'nanners still visible.

"Nuff of guys! I like talkin' 'bout chicks man! lol