It Begins!!!

skunkushybrid said:

What makes you think you'll be harvesting at 49 days, only 7 weeks?

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I'm going to be leaving town somewhere around the 20th of December. My operation needs to be shut down before I leave.
Also, I was interested in seeing what the potency is like after approx 44 days considering the strain is top 44 and blah blah blah.

harvesting after 7 weeks will leave me a week to dry / cure before I have to leave town.

Last night I confirmed the availability of Jack Flash clones for my next grow, So in January I'll fire the ole' garden up and grow some flash!

I harvested parts of a plant on the 7th week. The smoke was good in the high sense, but a little harsh on the throat... the reason for the harshness was because there was still chemicals in the plant that hadn't been used yet. The smoke was good... but not that good.

What I've noticed, as we've now harvested 5 plants, is that as time goes on the plants are increasing drastically in potency and weight the longer we leave them. The other 14 plants are still flowering and are in day 61 of flower. What I'm trying to say is that if I were you I'd wait till as long as I could before harvesting, I understand that you need to be away, but you are still allowing for a week's drying. The week you are allowing for drying could be used to flower... then just pack up your wet buds (quick-dry a little to see you through while you wait for them to dry) and go where you're going. It seems such a shame to get to the 7th week and not allow the plants to achieve full potential. In some cases flowering can take 10 weeks... even if you know it to be an 8 week flowerer they can still take closer to 10. The final couple of weeks are very important for bud development and overall yield. I don't believe you'll be able to do it... the plants will be screaming that they are not ready yet. If you harvest on the 7th week you'll miss out on the treats of your endeavour.

Well, I'll try to see what I can do about giving her some extra time to flower but It's going to be difficult to impossible:

1. I'm driving so stopping to air out my sticky buds along the interstate is not going to work.

2. I can't leave them here to dry because I don't trust anyone to just swing over, turn and air the buds and leave. Even though I'd encourage good karma and offer them some free smoke... It's only ONE plant!

I made my mind up when I started this endeavor that it was my first time, and I was going to stick with my timeline. The strain is supposed to flower to a potent point after only 6 weeks (under "ideal" conditions)... Well she has balanced nutes, a 400w hps all to herself, love and careful attention daily... I think she'll do just fine, and if not - there is always next time. I was on a tight schedule for my first grow, but I learned I could do it. Next time (January) it'll be slow and easy, i promise!

Also the grow room is not humid at all so I'm doing fine in that regard.

Last night I spent 30 minutes on a wonderful pic filled post commemorating the 44th day of growing. I must have hit "preview" instead of "post" because it's totally not here today!!! I'll redo that soon...

DAY 45
16th DAY FLOWERING
38-ish DAYS TILL HARVEST

Cut three clones last night:

Ahh, the children are our future eh?!
These will sit in this tube for a few days under a CFL and then probably go under a 400w hps in soil (or possibly a rockwool hydro contraption if I get around to it). These babies, as well as some Jack Flash clones will be my next grow

Here are some unfortunately unfocused shots of my female 44:



Some new leaf fingers were seared by the light because the plant grew an inch and a half in one day and got too close to the light. I trimmed the dead stuff away and she seems to be doing fine.

I started alternating nute and water feedings by giving her fresh water every Wednesday and nute feeding every Sunday (approx as needed). Is this a good idea? It seems to be working great, but maybe now isn't the time to be stingy with her nutes

I'm also wondering when to trim the underbrush?

This plant (marijuana in general), grows so fast that I'm almost glad my other plants were male. My closet would have been bursting at the seams because the male plants were almost three times as big as the female I have now! Next time I'm going to flower earlier than 12-15".

Let me know how it turns out...

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!! Let's see if I can't get myself kicked off THIS forum!! HAHA!!.....

godandie said:

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!! Let's see if I can't get myself kicked off THIS forum!! HAHA!!.....

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Thx rollitup... My nice quiet little community is about to get raided by my girlfriend, friends, family and all for a handful of magic seeds

At least I'll be able to sedate them

DAY 46
17th DAY FLOWERING

I'm an update whore...

I'm calling this pic "Blinded by the Light":


Plant got too close to the 400w hps after a night of stretching.

Some other pics taken during bi-weekly watering.

You can really see the curve from the LST.


I like how my cats eyes match the bud colors, and no, he didn't eat any!

Clones are doing well on day 2 or 3, I realized I never cut them at the preferred 45° angle, I just snipped them at 90°. It will probably take awhile longer for a tap root to develop.

OHHH!! Everybody!! Do you see that cat right uptop of me in the pic by the plant? That's our third cat. The oldest is vervejunkie avitar pic (he's a kitten in that pic) and the other cat, the second one, is my avitar...after she got spaded.

--On the other hand, isn't that plant so god damn bushy?! Who ever grew that sure is cool! Specially to think that that WAS the runt!

Verve' are you suffering MPD? I'm imagining you as a Norman Bates type character right now...

skunkushybrid said:

Verve' are you suffering MPD? I'm imagining you as a Norman Bates type character right now...

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As I warned everyone in the "Contest" thread, I have coerced my room-mates into signing up on the site. godandie is my wonderful, beautiful, bodacious girlfriend who is bat shit crazy and likes posting weird comments, which she will probably do exclusively in this thread because she is scared to start her own.


That being said, I do on occasion, dress up as my dead mother

Lol... is her lifeless corpse sitting next to you, telling you to kill the bitch?

DAY 48
19th DAY FLOWERING

Had to move the light up for probably the 3rd time in 3 days. I definately did not anticipate the rapid post-veg growth. I should have flowered sooner! No biggie though, more buds for me!!!

She is a healthy 2.5 foot bushy beauty. She's got a husky frame that is sprouting with thick white hairs out of every crevice. I'm guessing in another two weeks she'll be completely full of hairs. Not really seeing the other parts of the "flower" or "bud", just a lot of hair and a lot of upward and outward growth. The budsites are just pumping out I can't get enough of this!

How or should, do i slow growth? I was thinking of switching nutes to something with less Nitrogen and more P & K - anyone concur with that?

I've also been foliar spraying with distilled h2o every night - right when the light kicks off. Maybe that's just egging on extra growth though... Meh, I still have a foot or so of vertical growth to spare - but what if that isn't enough??? I'd hate to have to top her 3 weeks before harvest ya know!? Should I perhaps trim some bottom foliage to slow growth or make room for more light to hit the bids?

And now, PICTURES to satiate your eager blinkie eye holes:

Looking good Verve'... well done son!

Trim the bottom foliage now, if you haven't done it already. If you try to grow bud where the light don't reach the buds at the top will suffer. Trim before you feed.

After reading up on the pros and cons of post-veg pruning, I followed your advice Skunkush and trimmed her bush... My camera is out of batteries so I used my built-in Macbook camera to take a pic, which looks like shit - it doesn't react well to the HPS...



The light is hitting all the right spots now, and there are still plenty of sun/fan leaves to keep her growin'

A couple little, teenie, tiny buds were sacrificed during the trim; however, they were doomed anyways once the bigger branches would've filled out. I'm "drying" them now and will not be able to resist a puff on a 20 day old flower.

Fair play... although it's the lower budding branches you need to prune... the fan leaves are okay to leave... you should only really pull fan leaves if they are dying anyway. Hope the smoke is okay! Don't forget to give your plant a nice feed after pruning... the plant may look a bit ill but will soon pick back up again, and look bigger and better than before.

Don't forget no nutes for 2 weeks before harvest, and no water for the final week.

DAY 50!
21st DAY FLOWERING

Today is a special day. 50 days of first-time growing
Also it's about half way through the 44 days of supposed flowering time. I'm going to flower for only about a week longer. I know that is not (probably) ideal, but it's the best I can do for this grow.

I've been lucky with this plants health, she has been super cool and growing strong

My cola:


Bud-Sites Galore!


Close up of the future Mrs. MyLungs


Thanks skunkush for reminding me about my nute schedule. I plotted it out for today through harvest. I'm planning on upping the dosage one more time to 175% recommended dosage; maintaining that dose for three feedings (i feed twice a week - once with nutes and once with distilled h2o only). Then I'm going to use decreasing doses of the organic bone meal infused nutes and Rose Bloom until two weeks before harvest.

I'm also going to try watering less each time and watering more often so I can keep an eye on the effects of the increased nutes as well as the effects of the Bone Meal and Rose Bloom...

Behind the scenes: bottom shelf is my h2o spray bottle, alcohol for pruning scissors, Miracle Gro, Ferti-Lome slow release soil nutes, Seltzer spay for Co2, Soil Test Kit for ph, N, P, K; Rose food. On top is the Organic Bone Meal and the Rose and Flower blooming stuff.


It's getting down to the last 30 days and I'm excited, and more hopeful than worried about the flowering time-frame. If there are any tricks or tips you have for making the most with a short flowering period - let me know!

A good trick that I did with my first plant that was harvested dead on 8 weeks was to, a week before (about 4-7 days before should be fine) harvesting, trim the bud. Not the fan leaves, i took great care to leave these in place. Put newspaper around the bottom of your stem to catch any materials, then with a sharp pair of scissors, you trim the bud. Try and catch little pieces of bud now and again while you trim. Only tiny amounts every now and again. When we did this to the plant, and moved it really close to the light, it seemed to harden up after a few days and looked more and more ready to smoke. Trimming the bud also has the advantage of stressing the plant into producing more thc. Remember when trimming the bud, you are only really getting rid of the smaller fan leaves and the tiny single leaves that poke out from the bud. Just give your cola a haircut.

DAY 52
23rd DAY FLOWERING


I had an idea that I quickly asked about in the general growing thread. For posterity I'm pasting it into here:

I read somewhere (i believe Ed Rosenthal), that it can be advantagous to pick out 5-6 top bud sites on your plant, and then snip off all the other smaller, lower, weaker, shadowed, underdeveloped bud branches on the plant.

The logic:

Premises:
P1. Flowering plants will use energy to grow buds at flower-sites.
P2. Well-developed, well-lit bud-sites will have the biggest buds.
P3. Lower branches will have smaller, less-developed buds.
P4. Eliminating non-essential parts of healthy plants will cause concentrated growth in remaining areas.

Conclusion:

C1. Eliminating lower branches on flowering plants forces productive energy into remaining bud-sites, resulting in greater "buddage" of the key areas.

OK, so I trimmed a little bit. Mostly just the very tiny new growth at the base of the plant under the canopy. Everytime I thought about clipping a main branch I hesitated. It isn't that the lower branches were necessarily inferior. Anymore, they just were not getting lit enough.

So I thought, what do I love more than clipping and pruning?

TYING!

A role of hemp string, some office clips and a staple gun:


The plant was basically spread-eagled in the grow room.
Left side:


Middle tie:


Right tie:


I still have no idea how I'm going to water her come Wednesday, but I'll deal with that later. Hopefully she'll set enough that I can drag her to the bathroom, water and retie without too much trouble.

With the trimming and tying this has greatly increased the potential yield as well as continued to stunt the vegetative growth that I don't want anymore. Over the next month these tips will rise up and buds that would've been underlit and weak are now directly under the light.

In fact, every bud site I have on this plant is getting direct light

very nice there sunny jim! well dun,i cant wait to see what they look like when flowering......... good luck with the rest of the grow..
wiseass