Sensi Star and White Russian

I just put a Serious Seeds White Russian fem in a jar of water to germinate. I really liked your journal and your thoughts on CFLs and Fluoros.

I veg with 225+ watts of mixed spectrum CFL and flower with 180 watts mixed spectrum CFL and just under 200 watts of mixed spectrum T5s.

I personally dont have the ventilation options to get an HPS, or do i? Would i be better off getting two 150watt HPS?

Its the heat thing that is my problem. I have a 4'x8'x7' grow room with a cabinet taking up 2+ feet on one side and the flower area is 3'x4'. All my exhaust air is mixed and treated in the room itself before it flows away.

greensister said:

I veg with 225+ watts of mixed spectrum CFL and flower with 180 watts mixed spectrum CFL and just under 200 watts of mixed spectrum T5s.

I personally dont have the ventilation options to get an HPS, or do i? Would i be better off getting two 150watt HPS?

Its the heat thing that is my problem. I have a 4'x8'x7' grow room with a cabinet taking up 2+ feet on one side and the flower area is 3'x4'. All my exhaust air is mixed and treated in the room itself before it flows away.

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Hello and thank you for the question.

If you are looking for pure efficiency, and probably lowest cost, you could go with a 150 MH in your veg box, but at least a 400 HPS for flowering. Cool tube and active ventilation of the HPS is optional, but will help with temps dramatically, another option is a 600w digital dimmable. You can run those things at 50% power and only put out 300w of heat if you need to. Unfortunately for CFLs in a small box, the heat is distributed all over the place, and full ventilation and air mixing is required - you can't use efficient heat extraction like a cool tube. There are a few ways to engineer the airflow through both areas, but I would need to know a few more details to advise.
My second choice would be to keep the flouros in the veg box, but improve your flowering with HPS. As long as you keep it watt for watt, you won't have any heat issues aside from the very tops of the plant where the infrared is strongest ... which doesn't seem like a problem if you have 7' overhead. I personally think for the money the 600w DD is the best way to go for flowering if you have a 4'x4' footprint. I won't go into all the rest of the CFL vs. HPS, I've talked about it at great length. But I do want to stress that HPS for flowering makes a big difference.
Hope that helps .. Good growing

There are a couple of interesting things to see here. One is my attempt at color-correcting the pictures for the 'yellow' HPS light. But what I really wanted to show was the degradation of the plants WR at 7 weeks, and SS at 6 weeks. Some plants show stress signs, heat and water. This is due to the uneven distribution of the plants under the lights, and the fact that I don't rotate them often enough. Most all show loss of their main leaves. One shows almost a total loss of leaf. Another problem with the WRs is that since I grew very bushy clones, on a few plants, there are just too many bud sites, and I'm not getting good overall production. ( I'll get a lot of small buds ) I also have to use stakes to keep them from falling or bending over under the weight of the buds. You may also notice a slight degree of nute burn, I'm playing with higher P-K this time, and keeping nitrogen low, just to experiment. If I use history as a guide, the WR should be ready in two weeks, and the SS in three.

1) WR - All
2) SS - All
3) WR dehydrated once - severe
4) SS heat and slight dehydration

Yeah, I just had a similar situation with some of my plants not getting and even distribution on light. I cut them down about a week early because they were actually dying from it and there was no way for me to get them better light 8( But, better early than dead right?

Here are some pics of the grow box now. The WR and Choc ( clones ) have grown up a bit. I will let them veg a while longer. Interesting how the Chocolope is more compact and light green.

1) Four WR
2) Four Chocolope
3) Close-up WR
4) Close-up Chocolope

Deja Vu ....
Here are some pics of the grow box now. The WR and Choc ( clones ) have grown up a bit. I will let them veg a while longer. Interesting how the Chocolope is more compact and light green.

1) Four WR
2) Four Chocolope
3) Entire box

Here is an update on the grow room.
Seedlings are coming along nicely ( 5 x Bubblegum, 5 x Kali Mist ) at about 5 weeks from seed now. The sexes are starting to show. Looks like I have one male of each - now sitting in another room, waiting for their doom. I see three other clear females, so I'm not doing too bad. I'm not sure these are the ones I want to clone. They are healthy, but are quite stretchy. This may not be critical, as some other stretchy plants that I cloned came out fine after cloning. I'm convinced its the HPS light that is doing that. The blue/flouros I veg the clones with keep them nice and compact. The chocolope was a complete surprise in this way, very compact compared to the seedling.
The three free seeds ( Moby dick, blue hash and haze hash ) are coming along nicely. The haze hash is doing its crazy, stretchy sativa thing, and the other two are flowering like an indica. A few weeks to go for these, they need more weight.
My main clones this time around ( sensi star and white russian ) are doing ok. They had a couple cycles with not enough water. My fault. So they look a little burned now. Buds are nice and juicy, but I will have to trim if I want it to look nice. Lots of brown leaves on the outside. I'm not sure its worth the effort. These are at about week 10 - and have just about had it for their strain, so they will be chopped soon. I've already harvested some WR, drying now, and one plant of chocolope.
The super star seedlings are doing fine, compact buds with long nodes. The remaining chocolope looks good, very full profile.
Then there are the four super star clones, just starting to flower. ( week 2 - 12/12 ) They are looking good, but very thin leaves, and not very full. I don't think these will flower well, but just a guess.
Finally, my smoke report on the chocolope, third in my experience of positively-identifiable strains. I have not been able to determine a specific high from this yet, as I've only tried it 3 times. Twice from the vape, and once in a J. The taste is very unusual. The fresh bud smells like chocolate, but the smoke and vapor have a slightly different smell, more rancid and harsh. This is supposed to be a sativa strain, so I expect a more intense flavor. But they may be correct, I've not tasted weed like this for a long time. Overall, its probably more of a reminiscent attraction than truly loving the flavor. After tasting, I may give more thought to how long I want to clone it. I'm not sure I like it as much now. But that's just my current feeling. After I smoke an oz I may feel different.

1) SS, WR
2) SS, WR in the back
3) Super star buds
4) Super star clones
5) Seedlings
6) Moby dick cola

Awww. Poor ladies. Are they 10 weeks into flower? If so, WR is supposed to have a shorter harvest time, so you're definitely fine to cut those down. If it's just 10 weeks from clone, then that's different, but you'd only have 2 more weeks anyway. Might as well leave 'em unless they're abut to die. I mean, 2 weeks will go by fast and you don't wanna be smoking crap weed. Even if you don't care for the strains much. Well, that's just my opinion. I've cut down plants early for various reasons, so it's understandable.

Thanks for the Chocolope report. I was wondering about that one. If the flavor isn't chocolatey then I don't think I'd enjoy it much either. To me, the flavor is more important than the bag smell.

I've accomplished many things this last week. Reconfigured my grow spaces and made clones. Harvested a few plants.

I bought a new 600W HPS bulb, Solar Max ( $100 ), to replace one that appears to be going out. The problem I've had is a slow start, I can apply power to the ballast, but I've seen it take 20 mins - 2 hours to finally strike. This seems to be getting worse for this bulb over time, so I expect failure soon. I've made this a "spare" for now. Bulb was easily replaced, and the new one works perfectly.

Seedlings - These are getting bigger and I've moved them to their own pots and rockwool blocks. They have all shown their sex. 12/12 from seed - 4/6 female kali mist and 3/6 female bubblegum. Since I must clone as soon as they show their sex, I had to do it this week.

Clones - I made 4 cuttings each from WR, Choc. The WR then went to the flower room. Choc still remains in the grow box for additional veg. Then 6 cuttings each of bubblegum and kali mist. 20 clones total, but I expect to remove four before I grow them out. We shall see.

Harvest - I've cut down now all the sensi star - I will never be able to have that exact plant again, I've let all the plants die now. Four plants yielded a few oz. Also did the 4 WR, and I have a bit of a stash of this now. First Choc came in, and these two plants were productive. I've already commented on it's quality, but the more I taste it, the more I like it.

The flower room now contains 4 WR ( flower week 1 ) and 4 super star clones ( flower week 2 ) as main production. This will expand to include 4 Choc very soon.

The flower room also contains : 2 super star plants from seed in week 8 of flowering. Moby Dick , Blue Hash, Hash Haze are all doing acceptable, but were damaged by lack of water and may never fully recover, they are in week 5 of flowering. The remainder is the KM and BG from seed, now in week 1 of flowering. I consider the non-production plants as experiments - all from seed. The deep indicas and deep sativas really give you hands-on experience with the dramatic differences in these two types.

Here are pictures from the grow box, all the clones and the Choc. I will get more pix when the lights come on in the flowering room.

I've already described most of the flowering room in the last post, but here are some pictures :
1) Kali Mist ( 4 ) from seed
2) White Russian ( 4 ) clones
3) Free seeds Haze Hash ( sativa looking on left ) Blue hash, back right, Moby Dick front right.
4) Bubblegum seedlings ( 3 ) in two pots
5) Super Star from seed ( 2 )
6) Super Star ( 4 ) clones

wats up bro stopped in to chek ur white russian i been curious about this strain because of its supposed high yield of killer bud. and from the looks of it it is a good yielder am i correct? by the way man throw that bulb out and when u get sum spare nickels get ur self a good replacement. thats sum of the best advice i can give iz have spare bulbs especially for flowering stages when any uneeded stress should be kept to a minimum.

keep it green,
greenthumbz

dr. greenthumbz said:

wats up bro stopped in to chek ur white russian i been curious about this strain because of its supposed high yield of killer bud. and from the looks of it it is a good yielder am i correct? by the way man throw that bulb out and when u get sum spare nickels get ur self a good replacement. thats sum of the best advice i can give iz have spare bulbs especially for flowering stages when any uneeded stress should be kept to a minimum.

keep it green,
greenthumbz

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Hey thanks for your interest. WR is truly one of the best producers I've had and makes very attractive buds. The smoke has it's own unique taste of course, but is very mild and not obviously sativa or indica. Very balanced plant in most respects, but gives a good indica-type compact bud. I only have to watch the trimming so I don't have too many small branches on my clones.

I've placed the Bubblegum and Kali mist clones into rockwool blocks 6 of each.

For some reason the WR and Choc are taking some time to root. Hope there isn't a problem there. They stay in the dome for now.

The Choc on the side continue to veg. For some reason, I thought this was a more sativa 80-90 than this slow-growing compact plant. Very strange, but the taste bears out its name, I don't doubt I got the right seeds.

Damn. Found one bubblegum in flowering with balls down low and hairs up high. No pollen released, I got it early enough, but there were tons of small balls. I'd already made at least one clone from it. I can't tell which one though. Now I only have 2 bubblegum from seed left. They both are def. girls ( cross fingers ) Out of 6 clones, I will lose at least one. Good thing I made more than I needed.

Clones continue to improve, chocolope looks a little sick.
I've harvested all my free seeds now. I've tasted the moby dick, and am preparing the blue hash and hash haze for consumption.
The chocolope has been growing significantly slower than the rest of the clones cut at the same time, and is showing strange nute signs now. Yellow inner leaves, burned outer edge. Not sure what the issue is, I've been using the same nute formula for a long time on many different strains. I'll give more details and pics if anyone wants to diagnose.

1) All clones now rooted and in rw blocks
2) BG, KM ( 5 of each shown vertical )
3) WR, Choc ( row vertical )
4) Chocolope in veg

hey nice grow report and photos. have you tried the sensi star bud yet? I have one about to go 12/12 and am curious as to how you like it. thanks

shannonball said:

hey nice grow report and photos. have you tried the sensi star bud yet? I have one about to go 12/12 and am curious as to how you like it. thanks

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Thanks. Sure, I've been smoking the same clone of sensi star for a few years now, but I let the line die just recently in favor of some new strains. The super star I have is related to sensi star, but I've found it to be much more sativa than my original, I'm not going to keep it either. But, the original sensi star was very balanced with sativa and indica properties in it's smoke and it's grow. Flavor was milder than most, very pleasant and hard to describe after smoking it so long. The plant was easy to grow and clone for hydro / rockwool. Hope that helps.