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

[d42zero]

19/4
New mix - "week 10 - late bloom" from the GH feed chart. Same as week 9 for the macronutrients and I'm not using any supplements, so my mix stays the same. Quantities per 50l:

Silica 65ml
CaliMagic 33ml
DripClean 5.5ml
FloraMicro 53ml
FloraGro 0ml
FloraBloom 105ml

About 5-10 litres left in the res, so ran that through the plants as a mini flush and started fresh.

 

[d42zero]

23/4
Not much to report, just posting some photos

I did the "three weeks into flower" defoliation, wondering if maybe I should do one more this weekend and take a few of those bigger fan leaves? Seems a bit crowded in there, and a lot of shade down below. I think last grow I defoliated a bit too hard and it may have been part of why it didn't go brilliantly, so I'm wary of overdoing it this time around.

@Havocsm1 @The Dirty what do you fellas think? Cut some of those bigger fan leaves, or leave as is?

EDIT: You know what, I have a chance to experiment here... until now I've had two plants of the same strain raised identically, so maybe I should defoliate one plant tomorrow and not the other to see the difference in a few days?

 

[Havocsm1]

I usually defol some of the old bigger ones, and if they're shaded pretty well on the lower branches I trim. Nothing crazy just a haircut.

 

[The Dirty]

I defol pretty hard and remove most large fan leaves prior to the end of stretch.
Defol can be a polarising topic man so just find your own happy place.

 

[d42zero]

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to defol one plant today and take photos over the next few days to see the difference. If it makes her swell I'll do the other one in a few days time

 

[d42zero]

24/4
Defoliated plant #1 today, but not plant #2. Both plants before:

Plant #1 before:

Plant #1 after:

I decided not to remove it from the tent for this job, which turned out to be the wrong move. Couldn't reach the back right corner, and ended up with a lot of bent branches and a lot of the little colas all tangled up, but I got it a bit tidier than the photo before closing up and she'll perk up tomorrow. If I see a noticeable improvement in this girl in the next few days, I'll do #2... I'll take her out of the tent to do it, and while she's out I'll be able to get to the back right of this girl and finish the job.

If this doesn't work and, worst case, she dies... I've still got #2 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm about to build a carbon filter, think my shop-bought one is about done... keep getting a little whiff when I'm sitting out the back It's not strong, but I'm in apartments so upstairs' window is only ten feet away, roughly the same distance I sit from the window. Project for the weekend

Min-max 20.4-24.9C, 43-61% RH.

 

[d42zero]

26/4
Fairly sure I've notice some swelling in #1 after the defoliation but it's not quite pronounced enough yet to make a call, so I left #2 alone for now. I'll give it two more days and take another photo to compare, then make a decision.

Buds are looking bloody yummy:

Took a few trichome shots today:

A few cloudy and amber trichs but mostly clear, so I think another week or two yet.

I still have two weeks left on the GH feed chart, one more week of flower then a flush week. This is where the feed chart breaks down though as it's designed for autos, so I think I'm going to stick with the "late bloom" mix (week 10) for one more week, then transition to the "ripen" mix (week 11) next Sunday. I'm not convinced of the benefit of flushing the plant with plain water for a week (although I do flush the medium) so the 'ripen' week might be my last week. It's actually now been exactly 13 weeks from seed and the manifolding process takes about two weeks, so that timeline works out to a 15-week grow from seed or 13 weeks if I hadn't manifolded, which I guess sounds about right.

I'm considering staggering my harvest as well, so that I take the ripe buds as soon as they're ready and leave the rest of the stuff that's not quite ripe for an extra week or so to ripen properly. I started a thread in the harvesting forum about that so we'll see what the brains trust says about that idea

 

[d42zero]

3/5
Sooo I made a rash decision today, I decided the light was too far away from the buds at the bottom so I should get a SCROG net, tie a bunch of the higher buds down, and lower the light. I may have gone a bit overboard, but the top buds are very close to harvest so I don't really think there's enough time for it to matter much to them.

Here it is with all the tall stuff tied down:

I've never done this before so it's a bit messy, and I kind of ran out of room at the back left which is why it's higher than the other three corners, but I'll go back in there tomorrow and give it a bit of a tidy up. End result was the light came down almost a foot so that means less light falloff for the buds right down low, unfortunately as I couldn't just do one plant there's no way to know if this helps or hurts, which isn't usually how I like to do things..

Trichs are looking good:

They still look mostly clear to me but there's some milky heads forming. I think the ambers in the top right are a reflection of the red hair below them rather than amber trichs. I think I'll start photographing trichs every 2-3 days now to make sure I don't run over.

 

[d42zero]

4/5
Mixed "Week 11 - ripen" schedule from the GH feed chart. Was a day late mixing this week, so did up 40 litres instead of 50. That made the mix as follows:

Silica 52ml
CaliMagic 26ml
DripClean 4.4ml
FloraMicro 26ml
FloraGro 0ml
FloraBloom 84ml

Plants are bouncing back from their training, a few branches are turning back up towards the light and all looks fine. I pulled a couple of little buds over the past week which I've dried and now have curing in a little jar, looking forward to trying those this weekend

Temps are getting a bit low due to winter kicking in, so I've set a small heater up on a timer to start 30min before lights on and finish an hour before lights off.. hoping to bring the daytime temps up a few degrees to mid-to-high 20s and keeping them in the low 20s overnight.

Min-max 17.0-26.0C, 44-69% RH.

 

[d42zero]

7/5
Trichs still on the clear side:

I'll do another round of photos tonight and take different angles of the same bud, I still feel like the ambers in the second pic above are reflections of the orange pistils rather than actual amber trichs..

@The Dirty @Havocsm1 not long to go now

 

[d42zero]

10/5
So things are just cruising at the moment, upper buds have kept swelling slowly since I tied them down to netting, and lower buds seem to be responding well to having the light lowered.

Trichs on an upper bud that I picked today:

Still looking very clear to me, although maybe 30-40% cloudy? I might post this over in the harvesting section for a bit of guidance.

Today is day 105 from seed, or the end of week 15.. and day 63 from the flip, or the end of the ninth week. Manifolding adds 2-3 weeks to veg so overall I'm more like week 12/13 which seems to be tracking well. Another week or two and I think the top buds will be ready for the chop; I'll spend most of the next week getting my equipment and materials ready for that then I'll be good to go as soon as the girls tell me they're ready

Since this week was the "Ripen" week on the GH feed chart, and the next week is "Flush" week (which I'm not doing), I'm now just going to stick with the "Ripen" mix for another week or two until they're done. In hindsight I probably should have stalled for a week on one of the 'mid bloom' weeks but it's too late now.

It's been fucking freezing lately, so have had to run a small column heater in the room to get temps up. It's running on a timer so it starts 30min before lights on, and finishes an hour before lights out, and is doing a pretty good job of keeping temps where they should be.

Min-max 19.7-26.3C, 38-61% RH.

 

[d42zero]

16/5
Here's trichs today:

Here's the last pic zoomed in a bit:

I'm starting to get a case of 'budclipperitis' that @Lowrider72 diagnosed me with in my first grow These still look a little clear to me so I think I'm going to give them one more week... that works out well as I'm still not fully set up to harvest yet, I still need to set up the drying tent and get the materials required to wash the buds. I can do that through the week and be good to go next weekend.

I'm going to have to build a better carbon filter for my next grow, the store-bought one must be failing as there's a noticeable smell outside the window! It does seem to fade in and out, and I figure I notice it more because I recognise the smell, so I think I'll be OK for the rest of this one. Not ideal when you're in an apartment with a neighbour's window six feet from your exhaust outlet though...

Temps have been a bit low the last few days, but it's been between 5-10degC every night for the past week so the little heater I put in there hasn't been doing too bad. I almost definitely won't start a new grow immediately after this one, will give it a month or two until temps are back on the rise then I'll get going again... not a big fan of running a heater 12hrs a day on top of the grow light, as a 2.4kW heater at full stick costs about $1.25 per hour to run (I pay approximately $0.50c/kWh) so the electricity cost starts to add up really quickly.

Min-max 16.9-23.7C, 32-65% RH.

 

[d42zero]

22/5
Trich photo from today:

I'm seeing mostly cloudy with about 10% amber..... GAME ON!

Picked up a 600x600 tent for drying, will set it up tonight then the first round of harvesting will happen tomorrow morning!

@Havocsm1 @The Dirty @Lowrider72 Thanks for all your help so far with this grow

 

[d42zero]

24/5 - 119 days from seed
Yesterday I harvested basically everything that was on or above the netting, along with anything underneath that was obviously ripe. Washed with the four-bucket method (hydrogen peroxide > baking soda/lemon > hot clean water > cold clean water) and hung to dry:

It'll get a few hours hanging with the tent open so they can drip dry, then I'll take the towel out from down below and close it up to let the little 4" fan pull air through the carbon filter to get rid of the stink.

I left anything that didn't really look like it was ready:

Unfortunately the tomato rings mean I can't lower the net enough to be useful, so I've just got to let this stuff do its thing. I didn't plan to use the net (installing it was a rash mid-grow decision) so I'll have a better think about how to do the next grow so that problem doesn't happen again.

Ambient humidity is high at the moment, but the dehumidifier is set to 50% and is doing a good job, tent is 51% and the room is 52%. I know that's a little high for flower but I don't want the cut stuff to dry too quick, and it's only for a week so I don't think the girls will mind too much.

Next weekend I'll move the dried stuff to

 

[d42zero]

30/5
Yesterday I had a feel of the drying buds and they were way too crispy... I pulled down about 3/4oz, trimmed it, and put it in a jar with a hygro, and this morning it's stable at 53% That's after five days in a room that floats between 50-60%.

I'm going to pop a humidifier in the drying tent for a little bit, maybe just 15 minutes or so, until the tent is up around 65%... then I'll leave it like that for the day and I'll trim/jar tonight. If they don't suck up a bit of moisture from the air, I'll use the old wet stem trick to try and rehydrate them in the jars a little further.

Luckily this is only half my harvest, the other half is happening tomorrow... this time around I'm going to keep the room closer to 60% I think, so I can get them to five days or so without them going too dry

 

[d42zero]

1/6 - 127 days from seed
Yesterday was a big day... first up I trimmed and jarred my first harvest and ended up with 6.5oz:

Here's a couple of nuggies all trimmed up, yes I can see my scissor marks... I'm still learning!

Over-drying doesn't seem to have bothered them, it seems I caught it early enough. I ran the humidifier in the drying tent for about 20 minutes until the humidity was about 80%, then I let the bud suck up the moisture and it stabilised around 62% in the tent. It may have benefited from another day in the tent as it stabilised in the jars at 60%, but I'll put a piece of moist stem in the top of each jar for a day or two and that should bring it back up a couple of points.

Once I had that sorted I did another round of harvesting and took everything that looked ripe, I ended up with slightly less than the first round:

I think there is a little bit less than the first batch, as most of this is smaller bud whereas the first harvest had all the big stuff from up top. I'm guessing about five ounces here.

The best news is there's a third harvest coming this weekend... I left all the stuff that still didn't look quite ripe and I used plant ties to pull some of the colas up towards the light so they can fatten up this week:

There's probably a little bit less here than was in the second harvest... if I get four ounces from this I'll be happy. Add that to the 6.5oz from the first harvest and my estimated 5oz from the second harvest, and we have about 15.5oz or just short of a pound!

This staggered harvest has taught me that I need to either a) plan for this three-stage harvest better next time (the tomato rings are getting in the way of installing a net to spread the buds out, and the plant trunk has grown too thick to remove them), or b) spread the colas out much better in a SOG/SCROG type of setup so that everything ripens at the same time. Setting up to wash buds three times was a PITA so I think I'm going to lean towards option B.

@The Dirty @Havocsm1

 

[d42zero]

7/6
Batch #2 has been trimmed and jarred.. unfortunately didn't get quite what I was hoping, only 57.5g or just over 2oz. That puts my harvest up to about 8.5-9oz all up and there's still a third batch to harvest (happening today) so I'm thinking we'll get to about 12 or so all up.

Starting to think about the next grow already!

 

[d42zero]

7/6 - PM
Batch #3 cut, washed, and hung to dry...

More there than I expected, I ended up spreading it out onto another hanger... I got 6.5oz from the first batch and it feels like it might be similar? We'll see...

Took some trich shots before harvesting, here's one:

This batch is probably closer to 30% amber, vs the first batch roughly 10-15%... will be interesting to see if there's a difference at the end of the day!