NeerGreen: New Era grow #1

Today I changed lamps!
I pulled the MH bulb and installed the HPS, an Ushio "blue-enhanced" bulb. I also decided on a 6am to 6pm light schedule. The principal advantage is that I risk ferer light leaks into the grow space during the dark 12. A secondary advantage has to do with less light leaking out into a potentially attentive neighborhood at night.

I pulled the plants out for a last bask in the winter sun patch from the window. The pots were very light! So each received a good watering using just RO water. I rearranged their "pedestal" and made sure the lamp works ... now let's see what the new year will bring! cn

Halle and Alice, last MH pic!

Here are the watered pair under the HPS.

Five days of 12/12 have passed so far under the merciless coruscation of the yellow 600.
Alice, my runty little Widow is growing taller and wider. I can't rightly tell what Halle is doing. So far, they haven't really begun to set flower. cn

Good stuff cn, I bet you can't wait to see some nice bud sets

Did you take any clones from them?

Hi upthearsenal
I took no clones. I only planted one seed of five for each of my two strains. I am growing enough to see me set for years ... and I am in a renter. I'll do the good fancy stuff like selecting and propagating favorite phenos once I am in a place I own ... if merciful Fate sees fit to let me find one. In my current situation, a summer grow in hot weather would not work. It was a bit unseasonably warm today, and my tent must have pushed 90º for a spell there.

As of yesterday, the girls are in definite flower. Three days ago I had a weird thing happen. I noticed at 1 am that the light in my tent was on! Somehow I'd closed two of the little switches on my timer in the middle of the dark period. No obvious harm, and I corrected the timer situation at once.

Here they are, with a close-up of one of Halle's tops setting flowers. cn

Day 8 of flower; day 17 of 12/12!
Halle remains squat and bushy as all get out. She's supposed to be the Sativa-dominant strain, hmmmmm.
Alice is stretching a wee little bit, but neither plant is showing the sort of "stretch" that I've anticipated. Maybe too early yet.
They're needing a watering about every fourth day ... they drink their soil dry and get a tiny bit droopy. I mix a gallon of "transition to flower" feed - 5 ml each of the GH Grow, Bloom and Micro into RO water.
I think the root balls must be eating the soil somehow ... two weeks ago they could absorb 4 liters of liquid without difficulty. Now I have to add it slowly, carefully, and sop up some run-through and recycle it to the top. Each wil just barely hold the 4-liter charge of feed.
Here they are in a "couples"-style portrait.

Alice, my almost-dead rescue case from a coupla months ago, is bigger and leggier than Halle.
But Halle is denser and, despite being smaller ... tangibly heavier.
Here is a branch on Alice. She seems to have a sativa-ish branch structure with leaves that are wider than Halle's. Huhrrmmm. And those wide-spaced fluffy cottonball buds. Huhmmm.

Now Halle is a dense bushy beast, and if this flowering habit is not some sort of colossal tease, I can expect heavy fat colas. She's 19 inches tall vs. Alice's 23 inches.

Here is a shot from above Alice. It shows poorly on this pic due to color rendition under HPS. However the leaves in the middle of the plant, from about four weeks ago, are yellowed and not responding to nutrition. The leaves underneath are green (except where they are dying back from too much shade) and also on top ... but the mid-level ones are a bit yellow. I just hope that she has enough vigor to continue building bud. Both ladies do seem to be growing very slowly ... where is the legendary early-flower growth spurt??

Finally, here is a shot of Halle's fattest main branch, with flower. A close inspection with a 20x loupe showed me the first lovely white capitate trichomes coming in on the calyces. Interestingly, a few leaves in shaded areas have "the claw", suggesting I'm pushing it with nutes. However I am not getting burn, and deep/shaded and older leaves are yellowing, so I don't think it's too much.

cn

I took some pics of Halle basking in the winter sun earlier today. You can see her amazing bushiness and a few yellowing leaves.


Here is a shot with the sun backlighting the nascent buds. Ohh does she smell strong ... sort of green/citrus/pine/petrolatum. The cherry cough drop scent went away (for now?).

I also got a Phresh filter via UPS. It's the 6x24 rated for 550 cfm. I wanted the 6x16, but it was $30 more! The 6x24 was discounted to about $170. Setting up from scratch has been pretty pricy! Since I am running my MaxFan at a sort of high idle (throttled with a variac), I have noticed no drop in air flow or fan "labor". Pretty cool! With the filter in the tent ... I am getting much better exchange of air into the tent. In fact, i had to open one of the side vents ... the rectangular ones with a Velcro shutter panel.
I used the duct that fed air to my hood for the 600. I threaded the duct back into a lower port in the tent, then taped it to the filter, which stands in a front corner.

I have been impressed with how effective the filter is. I was running ozone for maybe an hour a day to kill residual green odors ... and the filter just wipes them out. No ozone at the moment at all. I get a good whiff of Halle when I open the tent. Remarkably, Alice doesn't smell much, or of much. I wonder if her bud will be much good. No sense counting my chickens until they're cut and cured though.

cn

Yea, awfully early going to make any judgements about either of them.

I'd consider a little cal-mag or whatever your mad scientist equivalent would be. Early bloom is when lots of growers experience leaf yellowing and dropping. The name of the game is to prevent that. $.02

Last evening I was inspecting the plants, and I decided I wasn't entirely pleased. Alice has a slight yellowing issue at mid-level. Halle has many leaves beginning to yellow in the core and lower parts of the plant. Yet there are dark green healthy leaves in the same places, so senescence andor shade won't do to completely explain what sure look to me to be incipient signs of imbalance or lockout.

I have never watered to the point of runoff since planting them in the cloth pots almost two months ago. It has also been my technique to water into the center of the soil by the stem, so that I'd not simply spill nutrient down the sides and out the fabric of the pot. So, with a bit of Blue Dream as my copilot, I thought that maybe unabsorbed salts were accumulating in the outer portion (shell? cortex?) of the soil, making the roots a bit unhappy. I thought that the thing to do would be to take a lady to the bathtub, top-water until incipient runoff ... then take my TDS meter to it to see if the salt buildup hypothesis, uuhhm, held water.

If the ppm were high, that would identify the likely issue.
If the ppm were low, I would not necessarily know what the problem was, but I could put the Salty Cortex model to bed. And I'd have to do some more brain-ups before identifying a different likely failure mode. My plants are just not looking as lush as others in this section ... Halle has this strange interveinal chlorosis on young leaves that does not fit the usual "Mg def" pattern imo.

So this post is about Alice, my stretchy White Widow. I began feeding her a coupla weeks after Halle the Berry started gobbling nutes like the hungry broad she is. Soooo if Alice showed salty runoff ... that would strongly suggest that a good soil flush is the right thing to do.

I began with tap water, which today is coming out at 50 ppm from the faucet.
Upon initial runoff, I got a read of 830 ppm.
After a few liters more, runoff read 520. After letting her sit a bit and measuring the slower runoff, it rebounded to 670.
So I went hog nuts with the water, just dumping liter after liter through the soil, beating the sides of the pot to make sure there were neither channels (through which I'd lose clean water) or pockets (of unwashed salts that would then sour the soil later). Got her down to 290 on initial runoff, with the later slow runoff after a few minutes getting back up to 420. (!)
Rinse. Repeat. Until late runoff was at 230 ppm, an hour and ~30 liters later. Later liters.

I mixed a gallon of GH Flora "transition" nutrient into RO water (5 ml each Green, Brown, Pink). This read 780 ppm. I top-fed with this, slowly, gently, to displace some tap water and give my rinsed naked roots something to eat. Late runoff was 400 ppm.
So now Alice is back under the 600, sitting on a folded towel to wick away the wet excess.
cn

It is now Halle's turn. I took her to the spa&resort (the bathtub) and top-fed her water until initial runoff. 1160 ppm! Forty liters later, I got her to a late runoff of 250 ppm. She's now getting a top feed of GHatorade that's at 800 ppm.
...Late runoff after her four-liter feed was 270 ppm.
The girls are back in the tent, with temporary towels folded under the pots in their saucers. After such a heavy wetting, I want to get some air to the roots soonest ... so I'm using the towels to wick away some excess.

Let's see how they respond. I would very much like to have the signs of lockout disappear. I am pretty sure it wasn't mere deficiency because Halle is showing healthy leaves, yellowing leaves as if low on N, interveinal yellowing of young leaves, and some clawed leaves (which to me suggests excess N). So now after a good detox and a dose of fresh nutrient ... and a quick spin of the prayer wheel supplicating the deities for the stretch that I've been rather expecting ... it's time to relax for a few days.

But first, time to clean the silt and drippies out of the spare bathroom!
cn

<edit> Here are the gals, striking sultry poses for the Junior Wet T-Pot competition ...



It is now day 20 since the switch to 12/12. It is day 11 since the appearance of definite flowers. Halle is showing the beginnings of frostiness, but Alice, oh she's my problem girl still! She has many small bud sites but no hint of trichomes yet, and she smells just vegetal ... not at all danky. Shouldn't White Widow be the very embodiment of stinky and frosty? If so ... shouldn't she show a hint of these traits, even as early as it is? Halle, now ... she reeks a rich redolence of green, yellow, pink and hints of bluish-brown (eucalyptus, grassiness, lemonoid, pine, oil and a trace of coffee) that says Weeeeeed.

I hope Alice isn't a dud pheno.

cannabineer said:

Today I changed lamps!
I pulled the MH bulb and installed the HPS, an Ushio "blue-enhanced" bulb. I also decided on a 6am to 6pm light schedule. The principal advantage is that I risk ferer light leaks into the grow space during the dark 12. A secondary advantage has to do with less light leaking out into a potentially attentive neighborhood at night

...........snip..............

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Is that Jose Ferer or ? LOL You are the typo king

cannabineer said:

.....snip.....

I hope Alice isn't a dud pheno.

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I'd be surprised if there was a dud phenotype among those seeds. Maybe just average but I'd be very surprised about a complete dud.

curious2garden said:

Is that Jose Ferer or ? LOL You are the typo king

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Oh dear me; of course. I meant "Herer".

I'd be surprised if there was a dud phenotype among those seeds. Maybe just average but I'd be very surprised about a complete dud.

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I must say ... if Alice turns out to be mediocre ... after the money and energy (including kWh) I invested in this grow, that qualifies as a waste. When I bought strains 11 years ago, I got nowt but winners. I naïvely expected mail-order seeds of today to be past that mark. I feel gypped to find out that a site sponsor is the subject of many many threads describing inconsistent genetics. White Widow should be, in the charming parlance of today's youth, dank as ass and frosty as fuck. Alice doesn't earn any bad word bonus points as of a few minutes ago. cn

cannabineer said:

Oh dear me; of course. I meant "Herer".





I must say ... if Alice turns out to be mediocre ... after the money and energy (including kWh) I invested in this grow, that qualifies as a waste. When I bought strains 11 years ago, I got nowt but winners. I naïvely expected mail-order seeds of today to be past that mark. I feel gypped to find out that a site sponsor is the subject of many many threads describing inconsistent genetics. White Widow should be, in the charming parlance of today's youth, dank as ass and frosty as fuck. Alice doesn't earn any bad word bonus points as of a few minutes ago. cn

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indeed, it's ironic that with the proliferation of the seed market since, say, a decade ago, hasn't made it very much easier to find *those* genetics as seeds.

... and yes, i've been lurking/e-stalking since about 2 pages ago

cannabineer said:

Oh dear me; of course. I meant "Herer".

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Yah well it was just to tempting for me not to poke you a little LOL.

cannabineer said:

I must say ... if Alice turns out to be mediocre ... after the money and energy (including kWh) I invested in this grow, that qualifies as a waste. When I bought strains 11 years ago, I got nowt but winners. I naïvely expected mail-order seeds of today to be past that mark. I feel gypped to find out that a site sponsor is the subject of many many threads describing inconsistent genetics. White Widow should be, in the charming parlance of today's youth, dank as ass and frosty as fuck. Alice doesn't earn any bad word bonus points as of a few minutes ago. cn

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Well my fingers are crossed for you. I'm hoping she turns out.

Okay, my faithful lurkers, I am tugging at my flowing tresses trying to figure out if I am doing owt wrong.
They are not growing "fer shit". Alice and Halle are the exact same sizes as I indicated in a recent post. WHERE is the stretch that Nirvana's site promised!?
Here they are as of minutes ago, just before lights out.
Today marks the end of week 2 of flower.

Preliminary assessment of the results of the flush: None, either good or bad.
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Looking at Halle the Berry, I have leaves in various stages of healthy appearance. There is a weird interveinal chlorosis that hasn't responded to magnesium. On the worst leaf, the center of the interveinal spaces has a very slight incidence of coppery-looking lesions. This is only on a couple of leaves, but still I don't know what it is ... a nutrition issue, or simply a pheno idiosyncrasy. Some leaves have claw, which I believe is usually a sign of overfert, specifically N. Since the plant is reasonably healthy over all, I will continue to feed as usual once she's drunk up that massive bolus of water from a few days ago. Earlier, Halle's "striping" responded to a jugful of N as ammonium nitrate, but I don't have the guts (or perhaps the stupidity?) to do that to a plant in obvious flower.
Alice has almost dried her soil. Halle still feels pretty heavy.
View attachment 2017756
Here are close-ups of the bud sites.
Alice is on the left ... little Dr. Seuss puffies at every armpit. She has jjuusstt begun to show the very beginnings of "the frost" on a few leaves close into the bud sites. Her odor, when I stop the small fan I use to move the air, is not entirely pleasant ... metallic/plant-green, petroleum, and some run-over skunk in dilution.
Alice on the other hand (some of which shows in her bud pic) is very dense and has several inches of luxuriant flowering sites running into each other. but she has not grown, one, inch. WHERE is the stretch!!? This one needs the Stretch so that I can get some weight off of her. And her smell is like night&day to Alice's ... citrus, eucalyptus and that tiny hint of minty cherry. Mmaann, did my fingers smell good after taking that shot!
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If this were not my one grow of the season, I'd be playing with nutrient levels. However even though I am not entirely satisfied with their performance, I will take an attitude of "it'll do". I wish though that I could learn from them how to do it better next time. I am a bit peeved that the promised/warned Stretch isn't happening. That would double my yield estimates. If I can pull 2 oz. per plant like this, I'll have done OK I think ... but with the Stretch, I could have set my sights much much higher. ~long string of moderately bad words~
cn

I have no ideas why the photos are not showing in the above post. cn



Halle ... Alice ... Halle's weird leaf ... Alice bud shot ... Halle bud shot (note incipient frost).

cannabineer said:

Okay, my faithful lurkers, I am tugging at my flowing tresses trying to figure out if I am doing owt wrong. .......snipo.......

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Hey cn didn't you just flush them like 2 minutes ago in soil time which equates to something like years ago in hydro time?

I thought once you went soil you had to work with a lag and allow time for changes to take effect. Even with hydro I was expecting to see change in real time, that just didn't happen. Sort of like over correcting when flying and porpoising up and down there's a bit of a lag between trim change, control surface response then effecting eventual flight path.

Can you clip a clone now and allow for a re-veg? Maybe try going hydro? That way you are ready to put it right back into flower so you haven't wasted time for germination and vegetation you can go with hydro straight to flowering and pick up more weight before the cool part of the season ends?

Since you've already paid for the kWh for firing the light aren't additional plants free after the first plant up to the max light distribution pattern for the current light in use wouldn't it make more sense to grow the max plants under the light you have? Anyway that was my justification for 4 plants.

Ah well sorry I'm afraid I'm a case of more questions than answers for you. I'm sure actual knowledgeable growers will come and give real help vs my guessing at you. But I am watching you and learning and hoping it all turns out good in the end.

curious2garden said:

Hey cn didn't you just flush them like 2 minutes ago in soil time which equates to something like years ago in hydro time?

I thought once you went soil you had to work with a lag and allow time for changes to take effect. Even with hydro I was expecting to see change in real time, that just didn't happen. Sort of like over correcting when flying and porpoising up and down there's a bit of a lag between trim change, control surface response then effecting eventual flight path.

Can you clip a clone now and allow for a re-veg? Maybe try going hydro? That way you are ready to put it right back into flower so you haven't wasted time for germination and vegetation you can go with hydro straight to flowering and pick up more weight before the cool part of the season ends?

Since you've already paid for the kWh for firing the light aren't additional plants free after the first plant up to the max light distribution pattern for the current light in use wouldn't it make more sense to grow the max plants under the light you have? Anyway that was my justification for 4 plants.

Ah well sorry I'm afraid I'm a case of more questions than answers for you. I'm sure actual knowledgeable growers will come and give real help vs my guessing at you. But I am watching you and learning and hoping it all turns out good in the end.

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Thank you for that sentiment, Annie!
Now that I've flushed the bejeezus out of my soil, I am effectively running "soilponics", and have to figure out just how to nail the nutrient requirements of the plants.
If a four-day feedback cycle is too slow for that, it makes it hard to respond effectively to their needs.
In re the differing feedback times of hydro and soil ...
I wonder if flying an airship is a similar experience to "soilponics" ... you have to have the reflexes of a heavy pilot (hydro) combined with the foresight and patience of a balloonist (soil). I am confident though ... the tower at Lakehurst has been sighted. cn

cannabineer said:

Thank you for that sentiment, Annie!

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I aim to please

cannabineer said:

Now that I've flushed the bejeezus out of my soil, I am effectively running "soilponics"

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At this point I'd be running spoilponics

cannabineer said:

........snip.......I am confident though ... the tower at Lakehurst has been sighted. cn

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Weren't those the immortal words of Captain Pruss, immediately before the crash and burn (Hindenburg reference). Oh gawd I shouldn't be laughing this hard but I am

Bing-a-rino on the Hindenburg reference, Annie! But who knows ... maybe that just means that the endpoint will be "pure fire", to borrow another idiom of the younger generation. One can hope, no?

Today I pulled the plants into the spot of real actual sunshine from the window ... to assess their health in good light. My conclusion is that they're doing basically OK. I do wish however that they'd stretch some more, because the "height that they don't yet have" is the obvious place to pack on the bud mass. Especially Halle, who looks like a ScrOG queen even though there isn't a support in sight but for her stem.
Here's Alice basking in some January sunlight ... while I mixed her a flaskful of nutes. Still feeding 4 liters of GH mixed for transition, but with a splash extra Pink (flower) ... about 5 ml green, 5 ml brown and 7 ml pink.
I also included a close-up of a main bud site. I topped her once way back when, and she responded by growing a ring of eleven (!) approximately equal stems/main buds surrounding a hollow, a sunken canopy of leaf with a few minor bud sites embedded within.
This plant has a weird metallic/vegetal stink.


Halle is quite green and happy ... I don't know if she's a bit hungry or what. Even so I fed her 4 liters of Please Grow Dammit. Since the flush, the soil has become rather less absorbent ... I needed to wait for the wet spot to spread, and even so ended up with a bit of it leaking out of her cloth pot. (The flowering ganj plant's equivalent of the LBD?)
I cannot figure if the leaf drop is stopped, or simply no longer picking up speed. There's some yellowness there, but no runaway problem. I leave the leaves on until they either fall off or come off with a very slight tug ... I figure the plant is salvaging nutrients until dropoff.
Two bud shots: one from the side to show how thick the early buds are, and one from the top, highlighting the trichomes making their appearance. Where Alice is pungent ... Halle is fragrant ... such a cheery yellow-orange fruit, citrus, eucalypt, Pine-sol smell.
Stretch, you wench!
cn

So your soil became a little compacted from flushing. a knitting needle is a great tool and no, it won't shock your plant. Poke a lot of holes straight in, straight out.

Since you flushed so thoroughly, yes, you do need to add back some nutrients. I hope your leaf drop has stopped. Your recent pictures suggest a slight lack of N rather than a Mg def. I'm guessing that this takes care of that: "4 liters of GH mixed for transition, but with a splash extra Pink (flower) ... about 5 ml green, 5 ml brown and 7 ml pink." I don't know if plants really 'salvage' nutrients from dying leaves, but the leaves remain functional as long as there is chlorophyll present, so that's why I don't pluck them until, as you say, they pop off with little effort.

I think you must be past the stretch period, and you won't see much more height than you have. You are well into bud set now. I always keep running veg nutes the first ten days or so of flower so there's plenty of energy for stretch. Maybe that's what has kept your plants short. Personally, I'm always straining to keep my plants short, so I don't have any understory of fluff. Even with 1000 watts I don't really like a plant to be taller than 24" when it's finished. Short plants can have great yields.

They look really healthy aside from the yellow that hopefully has stopped.

About your analogy about soil vs hydro. I think the exact opposite, that soil is the more daring medium requiring close observation of multiple variables whilst hydro is more like ballooning or gliding. Actually, for me, in water, it's more like baking. Follow the formula, use the correct temp and time, don't use old baking powder or flour with bugs in it and all will be well. If you open the door of the oven too much your souffle will fail, beat your mayonnaise too much and it will separate.

Be sure to degauss before mooring to the mast in Lakehurst.