PouceBlack First Journal: 320W Of QB In 2x4

PouceBlack

420 Member
Howdy!

This is my first journal (and first post) here. I want to make sure I document my grows better so here I go.

I've started growing in my closet 3 years ago after getting a 2x4 tent, filters and fans, and this is now 6th grow. So far it's been fairly well, I've mostly fought stretching in my 5' high tent and temperature problems in the summer. Last grow was my worst, with a spider mites infestation that I've never entirely gotten rid of. I took a few months break after this to recover, lol, but now I'm back.


Rough start. I germinated 6 seeds of 4 different strains. I used the paper towel method, which I never do, and being an idiot I forgot about it and went on vacations for a few days. I came back with germinated seeds with 3-4" long roots in a very dry towel. Planted them all in coco and most were looking real bad. In the end, only 2 survived, of the same strain; chemdog #4. Being an idiot, bis, I forgot about them again so they grew in the same pot for a while by the window sill, stretching and not looking well. Transplanted in coco + perlite in 1gal soft pots and put them under 50W CFL until I clean up the tent. They stretched a bit under that light but not too much, finally cleaned up the tent so now they're both under a 160W Quantum Board.




320W of QB in a 2x4 (in a closet) makes for a very hot setup but with 4 fans it's not too bad (30C under light, 20C under dark). After a week in the tent I topped them at 4 nodes. I usually top at 3 but I guess I wanted to try something different.

My main challenge in my setup is to keep them short because of the 5' limit of the tent, as well as keeping the temperature in control as the exhaust is in the same room, and the tent is snuggly inside a 2x4 closet. I will probably transplant in 5gal in the next 2-3 days, switch to flower within 7-10 days and setup a scrog net in the meantime.

So:

Space: 2'x4' tent (5' height) in a closet
Strains: 2x Chemdog #4 by BlimBurn
Lights: 2x160W HLG Quantum Boards
Soil: Coco Coir + 30% perlite
Pot size: 1gal, switching to 5gal within 2-3 days
Nutes: Canna Coco A+B, CannyZym, H&G Roots Excelurator, Cal+Mag
Other: SCROG net incoming
 
Thanks cal45.

This morning I realized I forgot the pH- in the last 2 feedings. Might explain the small brown spots that appeared on the lower leaves.


I corrected the pH. Meaning I eyeballed it (I've been using the same nutes for 3 years and 5 drops of pH- in 4L of water usually brings it down to ~5.5). Hopefully this fixes this small issue.

Daily pic:

In the meantime, my exhaust duct broke so the room got a bit more humid. It's full of houseplants so they didn't mind. I'll have to find a way to exhaust through the window, while keeping it closed, and still have a useable room where the closet is located.

Seems like all my activities in the past 3 days have been weed-related:

I subscribed to this forum, and started this journal.
- I feel like documenting my process will help me improve.

I made bubble hash with some C-grade weeds I had laying around.
- Around 7-8 oz of low quality buds, larfs and
- I expected +10g but even if I gave my all (oooouch my arms) I only got 7g. But I'm happy with the quality.
- Did 3 runs. This was worth it I probably had less than 4g in the first one.
- 160m: 0.1g of leaf matters. Thrown it out
- 120m: 1.6g of hash. Quality looks fine.
- 73m: 2.3g of hash. Looks pretty good.
- 25m: 3.3g of hash. Golden and sticky.
- Total: 7.3g

I finished my latest green dragon batch.
- It was in my freezer for a while, I filtered and reduced it.
- It ended up being pitch black. Not a pretty look, but works fine.

I trimmed my last outdoor plant.
- It was drying for a while and got waaaay too dry.
- Just a random seed I threw in the ground and didn't touch for the whole summer.
- By the smell I suspect it's maybe Blue Cheese, my favorite strain.
- Hopefully a good cure will salvage it (it's really really dry).
- Didn't weigh it yet. Probably only 20g. But not too bad considering ZERO care.

I started 2 new seedlings.
- Shishkaberry and Power Flower.
- Going to experiment in small 16x16 tents.
- Legal limit is 4 so might as well have 4.

I bought new seeds online.
- Blue Cheese, Strawberry Couch and Holy Grail.
- Ended up 20$ / seeds with shipping wtf.
- At least I go like 15+ freebies paying with BitCoin.

Hash pics:






"Green" dragon:

 
I realized that I'm really not a natural photograph. Totally forgot to snap pics in the last 2 weeks, but I wanted to log an update in my journal. Seeing this thread makes me realize how much it grew since last update; will post pictures tonight.

I transferred to 5gal pots about 10 days ago. I expected to see a lot of roots but it seems they were not as developed as I thought. I can not pass final judgement yet but it seems Canna's rhyzotonic was giving me better results than H&G's Root Excelurator, but it's been banished here AFAIK. I forgot to adjust the new coco pH, so more leaves grew brown spots. I'm very confident this is just a pH issue and will resolve naturally next feedings.

Did more minimal trimming and LST'ing. I will wait after ~10 days in flower to really decide what stays and what's going out. Wait 2-3 days for recovery and then was ready to switch to flower. The brown spots are gone and it's looking healthy.

Decided for a 2-3 days period of full darkness before switching to 12/12. They seemed to really take it well, there are now clear preflowers (quite yellow because of the lack of lighting).

So my "flowering" period officially started this morning. I expect 9-10 weeks before harvest and hopefully will take more pictures now that they're getting pretty.
 
Forgot to tell you guys the story of the fuckedup timer.

So after the 3 days period, I switched to 12/12. 4 days later I realized my timer was reset and they were under 24h light.
I guess I totally wasted the 3 days of darkness. That's almost a week lost, and as you can see in the previous pictures (which were taken a week after the incident) I don't have the real estate for these kind of mistakes...


So I will count December 1 as my first day ot switch. After a week of real 12/12, I finally see pre-flowers budding. So I guess I'll count Dec 8. as my day 1 of flower. Estimated harvest: February 10.

The tent really felt overgrown so I decided to give a good round of defoliation, focusing on lollypopping, basically removing the entire lower half of the plant. This will also make watering much easier.




Canna instructions tell me to start giving BOOST right away but I'll wait a week or two. This bottle is so goddamn expensive.



I still have ~2" to raise the light, so I'll continue training the stems down so hopefully I don't lightburn everyone.
 

The entire point of this run was to start flowering early so I do not have a problem with height again...

Well mission failed.

I did manage to gain 2-3" by using smaller light fixtures.
When tying the stems down I broke the main trunk of 1 of those 2. Badly. Hopefully it will recover.
 
Finally, sitting at ~14" from the lights, I think I have the height situation under control. Stretching is over and buds will have to learn to grow into this light.


--

I believe we are now around day ~33 of flowering. I added the PK 13/14 last week and the buds are slowly getting fatter. With 4-5 weeks still to go I'll probably have to find some additional support for the buds as the plants are getting quite top-heavy.



The plants that broke down is showing some sign of deficiency. I'm gonna take a look around to find what it is but I'm pretty sure its a pH issue again. I really have a messed up setup for checking my pH. I flushed last week and it seems that the damages are not spreading any further. I'll keep an eye open.




Heavy defoliation coming up this week, I wanted to do one last post for archive / pospertity before I trim it down substantially for one last time.


 
...more or less one week later, the buds continue their fattening.

I think the issues I had previously is over, as no new leaves show the rust discoloration.

I defoliated a bit more but I'm trying to keep as much as possible for this grow as it's been heavily lollippoped already.

4 more weeks to go. I think it looks I'll finally manage 1g/W.







I'm starting to see a bit of light bleaching on the top of the top colas, should I dim the light a bit or just not worry?
 
So it's been a pretty uneventful finish; just as we all like.

The 2 chemdog#4 has been in flower for around 8 weeks now.
Yesterday I gave them the last nutes. Will serve pH'd water until I chop, most likely next monday.

I'm thinking I'll try that 48h of darkness tips some of you guys seem to swear by before I chop.







Next updates should be of the harvest.
 
Back
Top Bottom