It Begins!!!

Thanks wiseguy.

My X-mas trip has been cancelled! This means at least another week of flowering for my big girl! That is good news for those of us following the drama of my forced harvest predicament!

well it seems as if god gave ya the green thumb for sure. salute!
wiseass

I did the tying thing too, to about half my plants I think... It works, but after all is said and done I think I would have preferred to prune them.

Glad to hear your trip has been cancelled... feels a bit strange saying that, but at least you'll have more time to flower. If I were you, I'd keep the figure 10 weeks in mind... as I think you'll find that harvest will be closer to 10 than it is to 8.

According to my calculations I can now do 10 weeks exactly!!!

I'll have to clip a few buds at 6, 7, 8, and 9 weeks just to see how well the "44" lives up to her name - but this is looking very good for sitting back and letting things ripen up nice!

Good news... when you think the bud is ready, give it another day and you'll think that the same bud has about a week left. You'll notice the bud start to knot in on itself... this is a sign that the plant is nearly ready. The knotting is important as this is the time your bud will start to put on some extra weight.

You need to clean the cat boxes before you write your next post...

DAY 56
27th DAY FLOWERING


OK. So the plant is doing alright I suppose. I took a picture of one fan leaf that has some spots on her. I enhanced the color so it would be easier to see:

It's isolated on this fan leaf, and I'm not sure what it is? The rest of the plant looks great though.

The tying has definately started to pay off, as buds are growing out of every nook. Now the ones that would have been shaded and tiny are starting to rev up. I think that is why I'm noticing a decrease in overall growth. Instead of concentrating on the 4-5 top colas, the plant is growing every bud it has. Might mean a little while longer to harvest, but increased yield probably.
This is the left budding arm that I tied down last week. You can really see the progress of just a few days. All the flowers down the line are thriving!


Here is a nice full shot of this years Christmas Tree!!!


My camera (man-talk for, "my picture-taking abilities") sucks! Sorry for the blur. Here are a couple more shots of the dense flower growth...


And the prolific white hairs that shroud my baby in psychotropic funkiness:

Flowering is genetic, it cannot be altered.

If I were you I'd take the lower branches and clone them... as soon as they show root throw them back into flower.

skunkushybrid said:

Flowering is genetic, it cannot be altered.

If I were you I'd take the lower branches and clone them... as soon as they show root throw them back into flower.

Click to expand...

Skunkush, I honestly have no idea what you're talking about... Please explain.

I can't cut off those big lower branches - they have shit-loads of buds on them!

You're right, I have absoloutely no idea what I was talking about. You're way too far into flowering to try cloning... or are you? If you were to take the lower branches and clone them three things can happen.

1. The clone doesn't take and dies (no real loss when you consider that the rest of your buds on the plant are going to benefit from the lower branches removal anyway).

2. The clone takes, then just continues to flower, not really growing much.

3. The clone takes, continues to flower and grows into a massive cola.

You could also smoke the lower branches, which is not a very good idea as the bud will still have traces of nutes in it. You may get a slight headache to accompany the high.

Of course if all your bud is already benefiting from the light output then you don't need to do anything. I've found that cuttings with plenty of bud on them clone just as well as clone's without.

Also, I'm not there... I have no experience of 44. Genetically this is an early flowerer. As you say, the buds may be too well developed for clones.

i heard from an old grower that if you pluck the flowers off of the clone you can actually veg it out. this may take a while for the cutting to root

skunkushybrid said:

You're right, I have absoloutely no idea what I was talking about. You're way too far into flowering to try cloning... or are you? If you were to take the lower branches and clone them three things can happen.

1. The clone doesn't take and dies (no real loss when you consider that the rest of your buds on the plant are going to benefit from the lower branches removal anyway).

2. The clone takes, then just continues to flower, not really growing much.

3. The clone takes, continues to flower and grows into a massive cola.

You could also smoke the lower branches, which is not a very good idea as the bud will still have traces of nutes in it. You may get a slight headache to accompany the high.

Of course if all your bud is already benefiting from the light output then you don't need to do anything. I've found that cuttings with plenty of bud on them clone just as well as clone's without.

Also, I'm not there... I have no experience of 44. Genetically this is an early flowerer. As you say, the buds may be too well developed for clones.

Click to expand...

Photo circa 11/5


They are under 24/7 cfls and moving slowly but surely (I didn't get any rooting hormone and I didn't cut them @ 45° so they are not even ready to be planted yet, still in water - but healthy and growing some.

Sublime757 said:

i heard from an old grower that if you pluck the flowers off of the clone you can actually veg it out. this may take a while for the cutting to root

Click to expand...

You could, but why would you hurt a plant like that? It will grow (veg) under 24/7 light, I see no need to pluck the flowers off.

Skunkush I thought you were implying I should clone the big tied-down branches that are already full of flowers

DAY 66
37 DAY FLOWERING


Hey everyone, I've been away for awhile eating, drinking and smoking with friends and family over the holidays (Thanksgiving, for the non-Americans, is the rememberance of a harvest festival Pilgrams held in 1621).

I watered my plant last Sunday (11/19). I switched to once a week waterings because the soil stayed so moist up until a week. This time however, I came home after 5 days of neglect to find my plant looking pretty sad:




My poor COLA!!!:




After a 2-gallon soak with 200% nute dosage, she went back under the 400W hps for about three hours before her 12hr bedtime. A dozen leaves had to be pulled off due to extreme yellow-ness, crunchiness and/or other dead-ness issues. Otherwise the droopy leaves are still dark green and looking good n' healthy!

I spray-bottled her with pure h2o, all over before lights out. Temp was a steady 76°F the whole time I was gone.

One bud is already turning colors! This is Top 44 @ week 5.5, so it's not inconcievable that a smal bud could be clinically mature according to the breeder (i forget who originally bred this strain... Nirvana?)

Anyways here she is!


Probably I'll clip her on day 44 just to compare the difference to my actual harvest date, which may not be for 3-4 more weeks.

Pretty excited about my contest win Decided to use soil again, modified to allow drainage from the grow room (instead of dragging plants to the shower!) I'll be investing in some fancier nutrients. And definately experimenting with more topping, tying, cloning and other training. I'm also going to flower much earlier, after only about two weeks of proper vegging, and rely on clone mothers to keep buds coming. It should be a blast!

Peace in the middle east homies

sounds great verve, can't wait to see how it all turns out.

DAY 68
39th DAY FLOWERING


With 6 weeks almost gone by and 3-4 weeks to go till harvest, I thought to myself "what can I do to really step things up a notch?".

Behold! The 400W MH that did such a great job veggin' my baby is back in business - Tilt-mode style





So there are now 800W of Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium on one plant. I lowered the HPS to 4" over the cola, and aimed the MH directly into the outstretched arms of my tied down mama.

She is 2' 10" (6 Centimeters short of 1 full Meter) with a 12" (36cm) cola.

Here is a shot of a bud filling in:


And here is the whole plant.


This should help perk her up

Verve... I can't believe that all this time you had two lights and only opted to use one. It's a little late in the day but as you say, it's all good... just a pity you didn't use them both to begin with. Did you have both lights during veg' too?

skunkushybrid said:

Verve... I can't believe that all this time you had two lights and only opted to use one. It's a little late in the day but as you say, it's all good... just a pity you didn't use them both to begin with. Did you have both lights during veg' too?

Click to expand...

Nah, I used the MH to veg. And figured that for one plant the HPS was enough. But for the next thirty days or so till harvest, 800W MH / HPS should really tighten up the buds and get em nice and juicy!

Still adjusting and tweaking doors, fans and windows to get the temp perfect.

not long left now Verve... I have my 2nd crop coming through on or around the 15th Dec... Just in time for x-mas. Have you thought about a 2nd crop?

DAY 74
45th DAY FLOWERING

Sorry to all my loyal fans about the lack of updates and more importantly, lack of contribution to the site lately. I've been studying non-stop for finals and after next week I will be done

So the 44th day of flowering came and went. I snipped off a lower rung bud and dried it using a microwave/oven combo. The bud dried fine... The taste however, wasn't so great

It did get me high in a light kinda way. I would describe it as an immature smoke with a harsh aftertaste of plant (chlorophyll is the green pigment, i'm not sure it is a taste, but that's what it was).

Here's a camera phone pic of the bud.


In other news, the dual light system is definately showing results.The buds are packing on girth and the trichome crystals are starting to pop up around the buds and their little bud-leafs! I put the whole pot into a plastic bin so I can now water her without dragging her to the bathroom! I untied the plants "arms" to let them creep toward the new light as they see fit. I also tied the cola to a steel rod in the pot to avoid the weight snapping her off.

The newly untied arms will have to be retied to support the weight of the nugs, because I think the joints are loose from all the LST, and better to be safe than sorry right

I plan to gently strain the cola sideways, to maximize the light from both bulbs hitting the entire length of the 12" cola bud. I decided to do this after noticing the cola leaves were severely crunchy and yellow. Probably due to heat searing from foliar feeding (which I've stopped btw). It could be from some wierd nute deficiency, that I would have freaked out about 2 months ago But it's too late in the game to start overhauling her nutrients and adding shit to save a few leaves. I'm wondering if I should trim them off to allow more light to hit the cola - any suggestions? I'll try to get a pic of it up soon.

According to the mailman, my contest seeds are at the post office, and I will be picking them up tomorrow

I plan to start a new MEGAMIX grow probably in mid-January. The Top 44 plant should be ready by the end of the month, which would put it at 71-ish days of flowering instead of the advertised "44 days"

The more ya know I guess