Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori

I just took BB clones and they look good so far, but you can never tell until they die. It was my first time so ill just tell you what I did. First I soaked 1" rockwool cubes in distilled water for about 5 hours. drained the cubes and preped my humidity dome and heatpad. I cut the cubes in half so they stay warm. I took 2 cuttings each from the bottom internodes of my 3 best girls. I had to cut them at the base because they were not that long. Once I cut them, I gave them an extra 1/4 inch slit for better rooting, dipped them, then stuck em in the rockwool. Its been 2 days so hopefully they

There is a fuzzy pic of them in my journal here. Is there any flaws in my method that you might see. Im sure you have done this a few more times than me.

babygro said:

.....with 1mil Formulex, (recommended 5.0 mil per L, and Formulex is specially developed for clones and seedlings) ........roots beginning to form outside the Root Riot cube. ...

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do you have info on the formulex you can share wtih us? please?

babygro said:

.....I'd like to think it was my wonderful cloning technique and feeding that's produced the roots so quickly, but I rather suspect it's much more to do with the vigor of the genetics. The Sensi Star clones I took, took exactly 14 days to show roots according to my Grow Diary - these did it in 6. ...

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no babygro it is was you and your undeniable love for these plants!

Formulex is a lighter balanced one part nutrient, its chemical based and is good for a mist mix or for a straight feed for young plants, it is ph buffered and lowers the ph of the water really well, I only add a small amount and it drops the ph from 7.5 to about 6/6.2

see why i like this site!

nongreenthumb said:

Formulex is a lighter balanced one part nutrient, its chemical based and is good for a mist mix or for a straight feed for young plants, it is ph buffered and lowers the ph of the water really well, I only add a small amount and it drops the ph from 7.5 to about 6/6.2

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Ah, something new for me to buy.

Babygro, did you do anything differently at all? Are these just showing a tiny root?

I picked up a 1 litre bottle of the stuff not too long ago, 6 quid for a litre and you dont need to put that much in, at first i was expecting it to be watered down grow nutes, but i guess its all in the formulation and you dont need to put that much in. I'm using it as feed on the super skunk seedlings at a rate of 5ml per litre. They seem to be loving it and are all a beautiful colour.

It sounds a little like superthrive.

Formulex is more of a stand alone nutrient though, you could use only formulex on them as a nutrient and they would be really healthy.

Growth technology who make formulex also have a product called super drive which is more like super thrive.

Ah, I have used an advanced nutrients product very similar, back when i first started cloning... which is why I can't remember the name of it now. I just remember that it smelt quite bad. Definitely helps clones root quicker.

Now i don't use any kind of rooting hormone. I suppose i could be losing a day or two on time, but who's counting?

skunkushybrid said:

Ah, I have used an advanced nutrients product very similar, back when i first started cloning... which is why I can't remember the name of it now. I just remember that it smelt quite bad. Definitely helps clones root quicker.

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Hiya Skunky

Thanks to NGT, he's pretty much filled you in on Formulex. Just to add a few comments, it's basically as he said - a chemical based weak full nutrient formulation. It's quite versatile too, as I have it for feeding clones, you can also use it on seedlings and as part of a weak nutrient flush for soil too.

As it's chemical based it's immediately available for plant uptake. It's the only time I use a chemical nutrient as I prefer to grow organically or as close to organic as I can. But for clones it's ideal for just giving them enough nutrients at the first water as the nutrients in the Root Riot cubes begin to be used up. I only start using it at 20% recommended dose, if I see any fading or yellowing I increase it.

Growth Technology make Formulex and in my opinion are a pretty decent company who make cost competitive products at the lower end of the market. I personally wouldn't use their nutrients for mature plants as I use the Biobizz range of organic nutrients, but for beginners who want to simplify things and not get involved in soil microbiology and organic processes, their range of chemical based nutrients are decent quality at a decent price. They come in hard and soft water versions as well, presumably the hard water version being weaker than the other. They'll never be as good as good organics, but for people on a budget they offer good value. They also make Clonex rooting gel that I use and also the Nitrozyme that Sk3th3 uses.

As NGT pointed out, Formulex is pretty cheap too, hard to go wrong with a bottle of that to be honest it has so many useful uses.

skunkushybrid said:

Babygro, did you do anything differently at all? Are these just showing a tiny root?

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The only thing I did differently this time was to use the Seaweed Extract! I'd been using it at potting on, as an ocassional root and foliar feed as well, but not on the clones. It's only really recently that I've come to realise and understaand all of the benefits of Seaweed Exctract. I was aware of some of them, like it's stress relieving properties at potting on, but I never thought to use it on clones.

Interestingly, recently I was watching a cookery program and they were talking about seaweed, but I was only half listening. My attention popped up when they mentioned that seaweed contains powerful growth hormones and as an example he mentioned that seaweed grows at about a foot a day! Apparently adapting this fast growth via evolution in order to hang on to rocks and float on the sea surface.

It was then that I realised how useful it would be for clones - if it contains growth hormones then perhaps it might speed up rooting as well. Plus seaweed extract has loads of nice minerals, vitamins and trace elements as well as quite small quantities of NPK as well.

babygro said:

The only thing I did differently this time was to use the Seaweed Extract! I'd been using it at potting on, as an ocassional root and foliar feed as well, but not on the clones. It's only really recently that I've come to realise and understaand all of the benefits of Seaweed Exctract. I was aware of some of them, like it's stress relieving properties at potting on, but I never thought to use it on clones.

Interestingly, recently I was watching a cookery program and they were talking about seaweed, but I was only half listening. My attention popped up when they mentioned that seaweed contains powerful growth hormones and as an example he mentioned that seaweed grows at about a foot a day! Apparently adapting this fast growth via evolution in order to hang on to rocks and float on the sea surface.

It was then that I realised how useful it would be for clones - if it contains growth hormones then perhaps it might speed up rooting as well. Plus seaweed extract has loads of nice minerals, vitamins and trace elements as well as quite small quantities of NPK as well.

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Cheers mate. informative as usual. I'm going to buy some tomorrow as i have to pick up some cubes.

I bet you got more nute bottles than plants now mr kush hybrid

nongreenthumb said:

I bet you got more nute bottles than plants now mr kush hybrid

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This is the only hobby I've ever had. Definitely worth spending my money on. My nute selection is still growing, although i have taken 16 clones recently so the plants just have the edge.

skunkushybrid said:

This is the only hobby I've ever had. Definitely worth spending my money on. My nute selection is still growing, although i have taken 16 clones recently so the plants just have the edge.

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Is that hobby or obsession. Everytime i go to a hydro shop i always come out with twice as much as i went in for. My trainers I wear now are currently falling apart, the mrs says to me, you need some more go and buy some, I say no i cant afford to spend money on trainers, these are still ok, but its quite acceptable to look for things to spend on with hydro. I went out to get some rockwool propagation cubes today, cubes cost 5 quid but still spend 40. The cubes were all i really needed.

Yeah, fuck, you hearing that? We have an angry storm brewing here.

Hasnt reached us down here yet. Sun is still out here but i have felt the odd drop of rain earlier.

MRbudsmoker said:

nice one babygrow. One of the best threads/ journals i've seen!!! can't wait till you get some bud shots!! how tall you think they will end up being and the time span roughly from start to finish???

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Thanks MRbudsmoker glad you like it.

Tall, well the tallest at the moment is about 2.5-2.75 foot, the smallest I guess is about 18 inches tall. It's only just at the beginning of the second week of flowering too, so they've still got another 1-2 weeks to continue stretching - I hope they don't get much taller! I'm going to have to move the lights at some point today.

Time span, I can tell you almost exactly how long they'll be. At the moment they're all about 57 days from popping the soil surface and day 8 of flowering. So that basically means I vegged them for 49 days. I'm expecting the Satori to take between days 65-70 of flowering or days 115 - 120 total. The Kalichakra much the same except it finishes a couple of days earlier.

So about 120 days from popping the soil surface to harvest, so that's about 4 months basically, so you could say I'm pretty much half way there now.

lumberjack_ian said:

what kinda yeild you hoping for each? what it says on the site they got (they test yeild in a 1 square meter flower room SOG style with a 400w HPS)

the satori is a huge yielder at 550-600 grams dried (in that m^2 setup)

with the kalichakra at 500- 550 grams

and like you guys, i' m excited to see it flower!!!

good luck bg

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Hiya Ian

To be honest I never start a grow out with a final yield harvest amount in mind that I want to achieve. I simply try and grow the plants to the best of my ability and as long as they stay healthy and I don't make any major mistakes (which I haven't yet) they'll yield whatever they yield. If I achieve 2 ounces dried or more from each plant I shall be very pleased. I fully expect them to yield more, but if you're getting 2 ozs per plant in my mind you're doing pretty well.

That's what I achieved from my previous seed plant, but that was Indica dominant and didn't get much over 18 inches to 2 feet tall. The two clones I flowered after it, yielded about an oz each, I never weighed it, it's judgement only it looked about the same as the previous one 2 clones at 1oz each.

Satori and Kalichakra are rated as quite high yielders, but whilst that's obviously an advantage it wasn't the primary reason for growing them out. In my mind, strains should be selected on a variety and range of characteristics of which yield is only one factor.

I do intend to grow them in the style best designed for high yield - SOG next time around so it will be interesting to see the total and final yield numbers for both the seed plants and the clone SOG plants.

The main difference between growing from seed and growing from clone SOG style is mainly that growing from seed you need to veg them for a lot longer to get the yields up to where they should be. Also, seed plants ideally should be vegged for at least 6-8 weeks or until they reach sexual maturity before putting them into flowering. This is the most natural process for the plant - it shows preflowers pretty much when its ready to flower and that happens at sexual maturity.

It's no accident or coincidence that I vegged my plants for about 8 weeks or until they started showing preflowers - it was consiously done.

The other point to bear in mind is that clones take on the biological age of the mother. So if the mother plant is 8 weeks old, the clone taken from it also becomes 8 weeks old, so that clone is effectively already at sexual maturity - and the need to veg it for longer now no longer exists except for yield purposes. The importance of this isn't just because it's the most 'natural' time for the plant to be flowered, or for yield, but because the plant produces more Cannabinoids the older it becomes. ie a 3 month old plant will contain and produce more Cannabinoids than a 1 month or 2 month old plant.

So with clones the two main problems associated with seed plants are avoided - they're already at sexual maturity and therefore already ready to be flowered pretty much as soon as they've rooted out. However, flowering clones with little or no veg time is going to substantially reduce their size, height and root mass and thus also their final yield in comparison to seed plants vegged for up to 8 weeks.

To get around this the SOG style was developed. Sea of Green effectively means flowering lots of small plants (12-24 inches) rather than less bigger seed plants. Because you're flowering lots of little plants - they can take up the same space as fewer bigger plants - yet still produce a comparable yield per m2 as bigger seed plants.

It works on the principle that the top half of the plant produces the most buds and if you keep the height of the plant small, you can get more effective light penetration for the top 1/2 - 3/4 of the plant than you can with a tall seed plant where most of the bottom half of the plant receives so little light it only produces popcorn buds.

As you can see, clones are ideally suited to SOG growing and for many is the most cost effective method for producing good quality bud at decent yields but without the added veg time seed plants require to yield the same.

Okay very quick update.

I actually took some pics today but didn't get round to getting them out of the camera, I'll try and post them tommorow. Had to raise the lights again today, tallest is about 2.5 foot now I guess, I hope they stop soon!

Clones needed another watering today and I noticed one of the leaf tips just beginning to yellow so I upped the Formulex dose by 0.5ml, to 1.5ml per L, but I'm not sure it'll be enough. They also got another 0.5ml of seaweed per L as well. Roots are starting to go crazy now, going to have to pot them up in a day or so I think.

Males are gone now - all 3 were confirmed as males and I took them out of the grow room a couple of days ago but didn't get round to getting rid of them till tonight. I wanted to free up space for the other plants asap really. From memory they were Kalichakra 2 and 4 and Satori 2.