Small 1st Grow Already In Progress Using LEDs To Flower & T-5s For Veg

OG spider mites do tend to go upwards as we all know from seeing them collect on our top colas. Hang a sticky trap and have a bunch of strings going off of it. Put each string on a cola and they will walk on up to the trap.
 
Anyone remember the Movie Tombstone, this is my interpretation of one of the scenes from that move that I liked the best.
Doc Holidays says "Oh Wyatt, I was not as sick as I made out to be"
OG says "oh you guys, there were not that many mites as I made it out to be"
I did find a few maybe 8 total baby mites on one leaf, though I did find a few other leaves that I thought had potential to be troublesome, since I thought I had removed all the leaves that were obvious spider mite damaged on the last go around.
I decided to try a different approach to my attack, since technically yield really is a non-issue for this grow. The biggest problem I was having when I was applying the Neem oil on my last battle with my unwelcome guests was that in the scrog it was very difficult if not impossible to effectively spray every single leaf, top and bottom. So I started thinking, yeah this is where it starts getting a little scary and crazy. 1st me thinking 2nd what the hell is OG thinking. If I spray and can not get 100% coverage and miss a leaf here and there and do not get 100% coverage I am basically just shooting myself in the foot and they will always be back. While this really would not be the end of the world, the thought of having to keep my eyes peeled so that every 5 days I can find that small colony of SOB's that got missed, seemed like a poor approach to the problem. I like to think that a strong offense is better then a strong defense so I decided to go on the offensive. 1st was to come up with a solution to the current situation, to many leaves not able to get 100% coverage. Simple enough, if there are to many to get to every single one, then make some go away. I know, I know every book ever written including "the marijuana horticulture medical growers bible" clearly say, never remover the leaves until they are at least 50% yellow, got it. But the difference between Jorge Cervantes and all the rest and me is this. They care about the final yield, I don't. If my yield drops, so be it, I will make it up on the next one. Now before you go saying to yourself, wow that OG has gone off the deep end, hear out my logic behind what I already did. Yes I said already did, done can't glue them back on. :thedoubletake:
My logic is this, now that the plant is going into flower, which it already has, the leaves for the most part have done their job, though they will still feed the plant with the reserves it has much like a storage battery. Hence the leaves turn yellow near harvest time. But here is what I am thinking, anyone ever harvest a plant where every leaf was complete yellowed out and spent the day you harvested? Not me. there was always lots of green left in a lot of the leaves. So I am thinking that while the overall yield may suffer and even the quality may suffer a smidgen due to the removal of said leaves, the quality of the buds that were hidden below those leaves will increase due to the light being able to penetrate deeper into the plant. I took quiet a few leaves off today and if the plants do not show to much stress this time next week I will be taking even more off.
My plan of attack is spray them down today with AzaMax then wait 3 days, and hit them again with neem, defoliate some more, wait 3 more days and hit them again with AzaMax. I had to special order SNS217 since the grow shop I frequent does not normally carry it but when it gets here I will be adding it into the line up. My plan is stay aggressive and on the offensive. I will continue doing this through week 7 at which time I will stop and just pull leaves off until harvest.
Will this be effective?
For my situation I believe it will but only time will tell.
Will I pay the price for my decision?
If I do, so be it, I made that decision and if I am wrong, hopefully I will learn from it.
How will the plant get the nutrients it needs?
While I am taking a lot of leaves I am leaving some as well, just the ones that are not blocking any light or showing any signs of the SOB mites. Between the leaves I am leaving and the nutrients I am feeding them I believe they will be ok.
Now, this is all theory on my behalf and if I am wrong, well, only I am going to pay for my mistake. I would never recommend this for anyone to try. But part of the growing experience that I find enjoyable, is learning new things, finding out for myself what works for me and what doesn't.
In tomorrows update I will try to get some before and after pictures up so you can see 1st hand what I did.

Any and all comments will be appreciated, positive or negative they all matter, though if negative please direct them to the method and not the grower :Love:
 
swwilson20 said:
I'm gonna have to take some time and read through everything here, a lot to be learned from this journal!
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Thanks SW but please keep in mind that some of my approaches to situations are a little unorthodox and untested like what I am presently doing.
I have no issues if I loose my crop or my yield is cut in 1/2 by my learning something, you may be devastated if it went that route in your garden. I am a bit of an odd ball with the situation I am in, and would not expect you or others to use my approach to gardening since your expectations are most likely different then mine.
I would suggest though that what ever style of garden you choose, make it your own and own it.
 
oldergrower said:
Thanks SW but please keep in mind that some of my approaches to situations are a little unorthodox and untested like what I am presently doing.
I have no issues if I loose my crop or my yield is cut in 1/2 by my learning something, you may be devastated if it went that route in your garden. I am a bit of an odd ball with the situation I am in, and would not expect you or others to use my approach to gardening since your expectations are most likely different then mine.
I would suggest though that what ever style of garden you choose, make it your own and own it.
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Now that's some old head knowledge right there, I love that last line! I love a grow when a gardener does what they feel not what they've read, its like cooking from a recipe... yeah its gonna be good if you follow it word for word but if you try to zest it up yourself you can make something wonderful! You can also make shot too haha :blunt:
 
Hey OG glad you are staying positive through the more problem. Those buds will still help growing without all those fan leaves just remember that you will water less frequently as they will transpire much less without the fan leaves. Everything looks great though! Keep going Rambo style on those mites and they will be gone sooner or later!
 
May I throw my 2 cents in?
OG, I do not believe that you can eradicate mites while a grow is going on. There are just too many places to hide. Removing the leaves will enable you to keep them at bay but the only way to completely rid yourself of them is a complete sterilization of your grow room. I think if you remove about half the leaves you will be able to keep the mites in check. I usually defoliate my plants about 1.5 weeks before harvest, leaving just the sugar leaves. I think you could go that route now and still have enough leaves for photosynthesis.
 
Ricky Bobby said:
Hey OG glad you are staying positive through the more problem. Those buds will still help growing without all those fan leaves just remember that you will water less frequently as they will transpire much less without the fan leaves. Everything looks great though! Keep going Rambo style on those mites and they will be gone sooner or later!
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I figured that would be the case with the watering :thumb:
Llama said:
May I throw my 2 cents in?
OG, I do not believe that you can eradicate mites while a grow is going on. There are just too many places to hide. Removing the leaves will enable you to keep them at bay but the only way to completely rid yourself of them is a complete sterilization of your grow room. I think if you remove about half the leaves you will be able to keep the mites in check. I usually defoliate my plants about 1.5 weeks before harvest, leaving just the sugar leaves. I think you could go that route now and still have enough leaves for photosynthesis.
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Oh I know Llama, there is only I place I have ever been on this planet that I could grow in where there is no insects what so ever, but I am pretty sure Intel will not let me borrow a corner in any of their clean rooms. Go down in to their sub-fabs and pre-fabs and you will find spiders and insects if you look around, just none in the clean rooms. But if I ever happen to have a billion or so spare bucks laying around, maybe one day I will build my own ;)
 
Day 30 is here, and while a few things that I was expecting to see when I looked into the tent were what I was expecting, I did find one thing I did not see coming so soon.The RH% in the flower tent is dropping but I still need to get it down a little more, my high was 52% and I would rather it be a high of low 40's. Reset the gauge and will see if another slight tweek on the t-stat helps get a better exchange during the night. Veg tent is still plugging away and I have a feeling the next grow is going to see bigger plants when I flip, I have tried to slow them down by cutting down to only 4 lamps running but that is not working as well as I had hoped.
No sign of my lil unwelcome guests but as Llama pointed out, it is more about keeping them under control as opposed to eradicating them completely.
I did consider cutting the scrog out and removing since that is a big part of the problem I am having with getting good coverage on my plants but after talking with "she who must be obeyed" I came to the conclusion that the support they give the plants out weighs the inconvenience they create. Though my next grow I am redesigning my scrog to help me accommodate the best of both worlds for me.
So the veg tent is doing ok nothing exciting going on in there,
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Oh I almost forgot to mention, what it was I found in the tent this morning. I opened the tent expecting the SCROG to either look ok or to be totally pissed off and sad. The scrog was fine but Mango the plant I did nothing to yesterday was a freaking mess. Apparently those buds are starting to develop some weight. I had 4 branches that were flopped over and needed to be supported. That kind of problem I do not mind :high-five:
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As you can see the scrog is opened up a bunch more and I think there is still room to remove a few more but I will wait and see how she handles the next 6 or 7 days.
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Here is a pic before I started removing leaves. As you can see I still left some but did open her up to more light and less overlapping of the leaves right under the scrog.
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As Ricky Bobby was so kind to point out, they will be drinking a little less often which I found out this morning. Mango got her normal feeding of Fox Farm Nutrients plus a little un-sulphured Molasses. Ph was 6.1 and PPM was 1840. She drank 1 gallon, though Power Wreck and Lemon Sour Diesel are close, they are not quite ready to be fed. I will check on them this evening before lights out. May even hold out till tomorrow morning.
As for people giving me their 2 cents, I always appreciate the input, positive or negative. It helps me learn.
And Llama, I have no idea how that was only 2 cents worth, I would pay at least a buck and a quarter for that my friend and worth every cent.:thanks:

Hope you all have a great day, I will be hanging with "she who must be obeyed" since it is her day off.
Maybe a walk in the rain, we could take turns jumping in puddles:thumb:
 
Not to crush any hopes, but buggers will often cause plants to weaken, causing stems to bend/snap/break easier.

Damn shame cause those buds keep looking better every day! Do a quick search for they love and give them a planter filled with X.? Damn shame!:reading420magazine::Namaste:
 
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