Round 2: Northern Lights x2, 1200x1200 Tent, 315W CMH

2/4
Real estate is becoming scarce!
20200402_101443.jpg


and flowers are looking pretty, with a bit of frostiness starting to show :)
20200402_101518.jpg


Was supposed to give them their 'third week of flower defoliation' last weekend, but time got away from me... working from home today though, so will give them a trim this evening sometime.

They're a little tall and spindly for my liking.. I've read that's a symptom of not enough light, and the plants in my first grow did it as well and the only things that were identical between the two grows are the tent and the light. Not much I can do about that this time around but I might think about how I can add more light for next time.

Humidity is a bit high but unfortunately there isn't much I can do about that, it's wet as buggery here and the dehumidifier is already running 24/7 :(

Min-max 23.9-27.1C, 60-70% RH.
 
2/4
Real estate is becoming scarce!
20200402_101443.jpg


and flowers are looking pretty, with a bit of frostiness starting to show :)
20200402_101518.jpg


Was supposed to give them their 'third week of flower defoliation' last weekend, but time got away from me... working from home today though, so will give them a trim this evening sometime.

They're a little tall and spindly for my liking.. I've read that's a symptom of not enough light, and the plants in my first grow did it as well and the only things that were identical between the two grows are the tent and the light. Not much I can do about that this time around but I might think about how I can add more light for next time.

Humidity is a bit high but unfortunately there isn't much I can do about that, it's wet as buggery here and the dehumidifier is already running 24/7 :(

Min-max 23.9-27.1C, 60-70% RH.
You're doing a great job.. with an additional light it would definitely improve a lot but still looking good.
 
You're doing a great job.. with an additional light it would definitely improve a lot but still looking good.

Thanks man, this grow has gone pretty much perfectly so far... not too long to go now :D Looking into larger light options, Adjust-a-Wings make a double head 630w LEC which could do it. Considering LED too but the blurple would be visible from the outside through gaps in the curtains, although one of my jobs for next time is to seal the window up properly so light can't get through at all, so that might not be as big a deal by then. Working on the plants under the blurple would be a pain in the arse though..

Ah well I've got a little while to go yet so plenty of time to consider my options :)
 
Thanks man, this grow has gone pretty much perfectly so far... not too long to go now :D Looking into larger light options, Adjust-a-Wings make a double head 630w LEC which could do it. Considering LED too but the blurple would be visible from the outside through gaps in the curtains, although one of my jobs for next time is to seal the window up properly so light can't get through at all, so that might not be as big a deal by then. Working on the plants under the blurple would be a pain in the arse though..

Ah well I've got a little while to go yet so plenty of time to consider my options :)

Nice. BudgetLED, HLG, Mars hydro are also good led non blurple lights. Truly top of the line. I use BudgetLED and HLG for flower and a viparspectra for veg.
 
Nice. BudgetLED, HLG, Mars hydro are also good led non blurple lights. Truly top of the line. I use BudgetLED and HLG for flower and a viparspectra for veg.

Thanks for the info!
 
4/4
Did the 'week 3 of flower' defoliation today, ran a week late on it though so this is the end of the 4th flowering week.. close enough!
20200404_155223.jpg


I left the top three nodes' worth of fan leaves on all colas (both primary and secondary), and just took all the other fan leaves off. This really opened things up, and light seems to be getting all the way to the middle of the plants especially with the help from the little LED side lights.

They're a bit messy down below (especially that right hand side at the front) as I decided to leave all of the lower growth tips and see what they produce... next time if I run two plants I might remove the lower stuff from one and see what the difference is.

Flowers are really starting to show some character, and the sugar leaves are starting to get a little frosty:
20200404_155242.jpg


Seems to be the tiniest amount of tip burn in the above photo, but it's limited only to the top one or two sets of sugar leaves on most colas.. everything below here looks fine. Not going to change my nute schedule, things are going great so will just leave it as is.

Both plants felt a little light when moving them, the top 15mm or so (1/2-inch-ish) was fairly dry, and the runoff reservoirs had very little in them.. so I think it's time to up my watering frequency to 5x daily.

Min-max 24.9-27.3C, 42-74% RH.
 
5/4 - 70 days/10 weeks from seed
Increased watering to 5x daily from this morning, but with the current res that means I'd be doing three mixes a week which is a bit much. I was using a 30L res (which holds just over 20L as the pumps take up a bit of space) but I've swapped that out for a 60L which takes ~50L of nutes (small res in front for comparison):
20200405_153658.jpg


Wiring's gotten a little messy for my liking, but it's all above the water level so it's safe. There's one new issue that having this large res introduces - my runoff containers now hold less than the res so, in the event of a technical issue (or more likely, a user fuck-up), if a full res was drained into the tent it would overflow the runoff containers. The bunting mat in the bottom of the tent would keep it contained and there's no power on the floor of the tent, but it'd be a hell of a mess to cleanup! Just going to have to be careful, but I'd have to make three or four mistakes at the same time for that to happen so I think I'm pretty safe.

Mixed up "week 8 - mid bloom" from the GH feed chart, same ratios as last week except now I'm doing 50L at a time so the mix is now:

Silica 65ml
CaliMagic 33ml
DripClean 5.5ml
FloraMicro 53ml
FloraGro 14ml
FloraBloom 78ml

Plant #1 got a little tall so I removed her runoff tub and replaced it with a saucer, putting the plant on a trivet so she's not sitting in the water. Same thing happened last time and it worked fine for the last few weeks of flower, although it did make flushing a bit tricky!

I noticed on a few of buds that some of the white hairs are starting to turn red, so I think we might be in for a bit of a show this week :)
 
9/4
Not much to report, all going well:
20200409_125609.jpg


Flowers are looking lovely, and little red hairs are starting to form nicely on some:
20200409_125716.jpg


20200409_125731.jpg


The new reservoir should hold enough for a full week of watering, and the small tray under plant #1 is holding about three days worth of runoff so I only need to empty it a couple of times a week. I'm using a syringe to empty the runoff tray which sounds like a lot of work, until you see the big bastard I'm working with.....
20200409_164744.jpg


Takes about ten syringes full to empty the tray from full, so really isn't much work at all :laughtwo:

I think the different heights of the two pots means that the lower plant is receiving a little more water than the higher plant, seems to be more runoff in the tray on the left than the container on the right:
20200409_165103.jpg


It's not perfect but the plant on the right is still plenty moist and isn't having problems so I'm not considering it an issue yet, just something to keep an eye on. Probably easily fixable by adding a tap to the left pot's watering feed, I just can't quite be bothered this late in the game. Something to think about next time, but it could easily be fixed by a bit of supercropping up top to keep the canopies at the same level.

Min-max 21.9-26.8C, 41-66% RH.
 
11/4
Emptied the runoff tray under #1 today for the third time this week and took 3.9 litres out of it (from full)... that's 12 litres of runoff over six days, with about 20-25 litres going in.... so that's too much water. Also #2's runoff container hasn't yet gotten anywhere near the 10 litre mark so the height difference means that #1 is getting more water than #2. I installed a tap in between the T-piece and plant #1, and set it to halfway to see how that goes. At 20% runoff, for every 20 litres that goes in I should be emptying the runoff tray once... there's really no other way for me to measure it at the moment, but that's good enough for now.

I'm going to leave the watering at 5x daily however I think the watering events are too long, so I'm reducing them from 30sec to 20sec except for the lights-on watering which I set to 25sec. Tomorrow lunchtime is exactly one week from when I last filled the res and there's not quite enough in there right now to get through til then, so reducing the watering time slightly should stretch that res out for the full week and, judging by the amount of runoff I've collected this week, will still be enough to keep them nice and moist.

----
@The Dirty forgot to tag you for ages so there's a bit for you to catch up on here mate :sorry:
 
treat for you my buds an hour ago under 630 de cmh light in a 5 x 5 x 8 tent with 6 inch blower and 12 inch fan on very low.. temp at top of canopy 28.5 c good enough for me .. these buds are rock hard this light is awesome..

im using gh ferts too..

might be a good idea to chop off the bottom foot of green off you plants or more..

put the energy into top of plants..

cheers
 

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treat for you my buds an hour ago under 630 de cmh light in a 5 x 5 x 8 tent with 6 inch blower and 12 inch fan on very low.. temp at top of canopy 28.5 c good enough for me .. these buds are rock hard this light is awesome..

im using gh ferts too..

might be a good idea to chop off the bottom foot of green off you plants or more..

put the energy into top of plants..

cheers

Looking good :D

I trimmed a lot from the bottom on the last grow, decided to leave it this grow and see what happens. Just experimenting with this one :) I don't mind a bit of popcorny stuff so it's not a big deal as long as the upper stuff still grows strong. See how it looks in a few weeks :D
 
be fluffier buds i bet i think the lower u go the fluffier.. the light doesnt penetrate deep enough

with intensity .. also go for pest control tidy ..

i would recommend chopping go for top

Too late to chop now, I've made the decision to leave them so gotta live with it :)

I like to experiment and compare, and I'm not growing for $$, so I'm just interested to see what the difference is. The lower stuff is annoying when I'm trying to work on stuff down there so in that sense I think I prefer getting rid of it, but I can't make up my mind until I see if there's a difference in yield and quality
 
never to late to prune off bottom plant will send more energy to top buds..

i wish i did more myself

yeah just grow for me to lost 2 plants being male.. was going to seed but said i want good smoke ..
save on buying seeds.. make your own .. clones are pretty cheap around here..

im days from harvest what a waite.. then 2 weeks after that for a taste..

i need more grow rooms 4 be nice ..

happy Easter ..
 
18/4
Been a bit quiet lately, but I'm just on autopilot at the moment. Reducing the watering time slightly has worked, the res has about 25% left and is due to be filled tomorrow at lunchtime so that's perfect, and I've fixed the problem where one plant was getting more water than the other. Here's where we're up to:
20200418_114630.jpg


20200418_114642.jpg


20200418_114707.jpg


These upper buds feel like ROCKS when I squeeze them!

The little buds down low are smaller than up top but they seem ok, they're frosting up and they also feel nice and hard.
20200418_114732.jpg


I haven't started looking at trichomes yet but I think I'll bust the loupe out tomorrow and have a little stickbeak :)

Min-max 19.9-26.1C, 39-65% RH.
 
So I got excited and pulled the loupe out, here's what I've got:
20200418_122556a.jpg


Still pretty much all clear, but forming nicely :) I'll take trich shots once a week until I start seeing cloudies, then I'll go to every couple of days til it's time to chop
 
This is only my second grow so I'm only going off what I've read, definitely not the guy to be asking for advice :laughtwo: Looking at your pics I see one amber trich and a lot of clears so, if it were me, I think I'd be waiting a little while... when my trichs look like yours will be when I start checking them every day or two instead of weekly and I'd expect to be pretty close to the chop. A few days after they look like yours is when I would probably start posting regular photos and asking for input on harvest timing.

Hope that helps!

There's a ton of "should I harvest" threads on here which is where I gathered info last grow, and most of the guys here seem pretty OK answering another "should I harvest" question lol
 
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