Nirvana Blue Mystic and Mandala #1 grow

Hi all,

Spent some time reading other grow journals about Nirvana's Blue Mystic and there really wasn't that much, so I figured I should contribute. I started 2 BM's and 2 #1's on 10/27, soaked the seeds in wet paper towel. Both #1's popped, one BM popped. A few days later, I started 4 more BM's, all of which popped. Seeds go into rockwool plugs as soon as they have a root and into a mini-deep water culture tub that I put together. I have a small grow cabinet for seedlings with a 50 watt LED lamp and a 27 watt CFL bulb. I have room for more lights, but no temp control, so that's all the light that seedlings get.



My grow operation is always changing and hopefully improving. This grow I got a 32"x32"x64" grow tent. I have a couple G-13 Labs poison dwarf autoflowers finishing up in a DWC bucket, but since they're autoflowers I moved my seedlings in with them in the grow tent with 18 hours of light a day. This put the plants under a 400 watt HPS bulb, quite an improvement over LED's. The lamp is about 3 feet above the seedlings so they don't burn-- plenty of space.

Here you can see the seedlings at about 6 days old:

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One problem I ran into right away was that my PH meters had crapped out since my last hydro grow (I grow hydroponically indoors in the winter, outdoors in dirt during the summer), so I was 'flying blind' on the PH for the 1st 2-3 weeks, and the plants suffered for it. When I finally got ahold of a replacement PH meter my solution was 7.5, much higher than I wanted. The bottommost leaves on all the plants were starting to turn yellow from nute lockout. By this point plants had 2-3 sets of leaves, so there was enough on the plants to keep them going in spite of the damaged leaves. Next week the BM's were showing new problems, necrotic spots on the leaves in the middle and bottom of a couple of the plants. After consultation here, I changed out my nute solution, settled for a lower target TDS, and blacked out my mini-DWC tub so light couldn't get into the tub and grow algae in the nute solution and the roots. The roots of ally the plants were pretty heavily coated in algae, and I'm guessing that was the major cause of my problems, as PH was good and TDS wasn't too terribly high (about 800ppm). Through all of this the Mandala #1's looked great and have performed wonderfully, which leaves me to suspect the quality of the BM's.

At this point the plants are just over a month old. They're on their 5th-6th sets of leaves and the larger plants are starting to branch heavily. The tallest BM is about 6 inches high and the smallest is a tiny dwarf under 3 inches. The dwarf had its root damaged while still a seedling so it has an excuse at least. The #1's are taller, 5 inches and 7 inches respectively. I'm not surprised by this as the #1's have sativa in them and are not a 'short' plant. Last indoor grow I did with them they were about 4 feet when finished.

I'll be moving the plants into a bigger tub in the next week or so, and plan to do a SCROG setup to control the height of the plants in this new, fairly short grow tent. Probably won't be necessary for the BM's, but will for the #1's. From what I've read the screen should be about 8 or so inches above the base of the plants, so they've got some growing to do still before I need to worry about it. I've built a 20 gallon resevior out of wood, just need some plastic to line it to waterproof it. I have some 5" net pots to move the plants into when I set them up in their new reservoir. I've kept the PH right around 5.5 and the TDS at about 800ppm and have seen no nute burn or other problems so far beyond my initial problems. A couple of the BM's continue to show necrotic spots on their leaves, but since all the other plants look great, I'm assuming that these are just weak specimens. People badmouth Nirvana a lot, so maybe this is just an example of their budget genetics. I've grown Nirvana's White Widow before but nothing else from the brand. The WW's were excellent quality smoke but light yield. I have no experience with indicas, so just don't really know what to expect from these BM's. Everyone says they're hardy and easier to grow than sativas, but so far my #1's are pwning them. I must say I'm biased, the #1's are the best thing I've grown so far, great quality and yield.

Here you can see my leaf necrosis problems with the BM's:



My plan is to let them veg at least another 2 weeks, get them up to that screen and then covering it a bit. From what I've read you want your screen 70-80% covered before you flip to flower, leaves me to suspect I'll be vegging for more that 2 weeks before that happens, as they're probably at least a week away from even touching a screen 8" above the base of the plants!

Here is a pic a few days ago with the plants in their mini-DWC tub. You can really see the difference in height between the BM's and the #1's. Also you can see the necrotic/yellow leaves that persist on the BM's even though the #1's look fabulous. (the shorter plant to the left of the tall #1 is the 2nd #1, it's about half the height of the tall one, too bad as that means the tall one is probably a male and will be cut down, fingers crossed that the short one is female!)


Ask questions if you have any. I'll try to add pics weekly and keep you all up to date. Hopefully this journal will enlighten someone someday regarding one or both of these strains.

Alright, another day, figured I should try to post some on my nutes and more about my setup so people have an idea of what I'm working with. I'm trying the "Lucas Method" for this grow, using GenHydro nutes, no Grow, 1 part Micro and 2 parts Bloom for the entire grow (both veg and flower). This is an old technique but some use it still and like it, and I figured it was worth a try and would save me from buying a 3rd big ass jug of nutrients at the hydro shop. I'm also using some GenHydro Diamond Nectar (humic acid) since I have it on hand from previous grows, as well as some Botanicare Aquashield and Botanicare Zho to promote some beneficial bugs in my nute solution-- this has been added due to the algae and ph problems I 1st experienced on this grow. I've also added a bit of superthrive since the plants were definately stressing when dealing with the algae and ph problems.

I'm using filtered tap water-- through a Brita filter, nothing fancy and no reverse osmosis or anything cool like that. It's in my plans to buy a RO system in the future, but not immediately. I'll need it for one of my businesses and the drinking water here is really shitty so I'm sure it would help my family's health to have one in place also. Lots of uses, justifies the expense, and a business write-off even.

One thing I can say for the Lucas method is it's damned easy. I figured out how many ppm 1 ml + 2 ml of micro + grow in 1 gallon of water (175ppm), then figure out that amount relative to my setup (2.5 gallons in my mini-DWC tub that the BM's and #1's are currently in, and 3 gallons for the bucket that my poison dwarfs are in), and then know exactly how many ml's I need to adjust my setup as long as the water is topped off. Thank god for basic algebra, my math teachers would be proud (they were probably all tokers).

I'm a lazy bastard and don't change out my nute solution unless I see problems, have done grows before in the same nute solution for all of veg, one change out when switching to flower, and then one last change out to clear the plants in the last week or 2. My main excuse for this is that my grows have been in attics and it's a bitch to haul water up and down from the attic. This new grow tent makes my grow much more easy to reach, so I guess I don't have that excuse now, but don't have any plans to religiously change out my nute solution. I did change out my nute solution in my mini-DWC exactly 2 weeks ago when I was seeing burned leaves and algae problems. I think I have 2-4 weeks left to veg, and will change out the nutes when I move the plants to their new wooden 20gal reservoir, probably in a week or 2, more out of necessity than any real desire to do so-- I'll need 20 gallons of nute solution rather than 2.5, so obviously I'll need to make up some new solution.

My tap water is 120ppm and a ph of around 7.5. No idea what the 120ppm is, although I occasionally see what looks like minor magnesium deficiency, which could be caused by a high calcium level from what I understand, so it's my guess that at least some of that 120ppm is calcium, which is pretty common in the US from what I've heard. I don't let the water sit to de-chlorinate (I'm on city water and yes it's chlorinated), I rely on the filter to get rid of hopefully most of that. I just don't have room to let buckets of water sit around for a day or 2 before I use it.

So far the Lucas method is working alright. I've been looking at pics and notes from my previous grows to compare sizes, etc, and they look like they're about the same as this current grow. I'm going lighter on the nutes this grow-- previous grows I did at 1200ppm for veg and then 1600ppm at flower, and did get some occasional nute burn from it. From what I've read and heard, full strength nutes are overkill for cannabis, so I'm going to try that theory out this time. I'm just finishing a grow of a couple G-13 poison dwarf autoflowers using 800ppm for the whole grow and they turned out alright. Read a post somewhere here pointing out that no one had ever seen a hydro grow where the problem was not enough nutes, it's always nute burn or PH problems, and thought about it and it does make sense. It's so easy to toss in extra nutes into your reservoir you can easily get carried away and before you know it your at 2000ppm and your plant's leaves are sizzling off the plant. I'm sure these plants COULD handle more nutes, but I just want to try a grow without pushing them so hard to see what happens. From what i've read you can sort of watch your PH as an indicator of whether you're overfeeding or underfeeding, and from my experience I think this works. Say you set your PH at 5.5, and come back the next day and it's at 5.8 or even 6.0. The PH increase indicates that the plants are wanting more nutes. If your PH drops down to 5.2 or 5.0, that probably means you've got more nutes than the plant can handle. You can either adjust your PH back up to 5.5 or add water in to dilute the nutes, which would also bring your PH back up unless you have super acid water, which isn't likely. In my experience what I've seen confirms this. I started to clear my poison dwarfs a week ago, changed out the reservoir with plain water and some clearex and set the PH to 5.5. Came back 12 hours later and the ph was at 7.0, which is an insane swing compared to what I usually see. PH downed it back to 5.5, and the PH has continued to jump up half a point every day since I took the nutes away. It's like the plants are saying 'hey fucker give us some food!' But these plants are done-- almost 90 days old now for plants that are supposed to be ready to harvest in 65. I'm growing them for seed, so I'm letting them go as long as possible to make sure the seeds are good and ripe. I cut one down this morning and am letting the other one go for another week as it is looking less 'done' than the 1st.

I usually add about a quart of water every 2-3 days to keep my mini-DWC tub topped off at 2.5 gallons. I measure TDS and PH, add water, measure again, and then add back nutes and ph down to get things back in the sweet spot of TDS of 800pm and ph of 5.5. I ignore the 120 ppm of crap from my tap water, so my meter winds up reading 920ppm or so.

My grow tent isn't ventilated currently. I have a small oscillating fan in the tent that sets right in front of one of the open intake flaps. I have to keep the tent door unzipped a bit to keep the temp down. With the house at 65 degrees it will easily get up to 90 degrees in the tent with the door zipped. Unzipped it's around 75-85, which is acceptable. I do plan to get my HPS hood set up for air cooling soon, which should be plenty to keep my tent fully cooled. Always shit to buy with this hobby! I keep telling myself "$750 worth of weed per plant" to justify things. And no, I never sell weed, I grow for my own use and to share with friends that deserve good weed.

Alright, I guess that's it, you know everything about my setup except where to find me to bust my ass for growing weed. Here's a pic of my poison dwarf that I just harvest and trimmed. This is the whole plant-- 6.5 inches tall, bud starts at ground floor. When they say dwarf, they mean it! Probably all of 1/4 oz, not much but hopefully I have enough seeds for a good outdoor grow of a hundred of these little bastards next summer now.

Alright, it's been about a week, time for some new pics. I'm a little concerned that I'm seeing some nute deficiencies for the 1st time in my career as a grower. Lower leaves on all the plants are yellowing, and I'm still seeing some necrotic splotches and crispiness on some of the lower leaves of the BM's. Growth seems a little slow, too, especially in the BM's, the #1's are performing like champs as always.

Anyone reading this, please post if you think you have any ideas regarding the yellow leaves/ splotches. I've kept my nute levels at 800ppm and PH pegged daily at 5.5. PH keeps creeping up towards 6.0, which again indicates to me that the plants are wanting more nutes, yet I'm hearing over and over that high nute levels are not necessarily what cannabis plants need or want. My nute solution is mixed at a ratio of 5 - 10 - 9 (NPK) at 800ppm. I'm also adding Aquashield to the nute solution on a weekly basis to encourage beneficial microbes.

Root growth is looking good. The older roots are still coated with algae but new growth is white and healthy looking, and overtaking the old roots more every day. The plants are drinking about a quart of water every 1-2 days. The tallest is now about 8 inches. I'm sticking with my plan to scrog these plants, so I'm thinking 1-2 more weeks of vegging at least, as at this point none of the plants would even touch the screen if I put it into place. You can see that there are some real obvious runts also, which are the BM's. One is still like 3 inches tall.

Props to the Attitude seed bank. I put in an order about 10 days ago and received it already. Got about 12 different single seeds, all feminized, so I should have LOTS of shiny new genetics to play with. Next grow I plan to do some Mandala #1 clones of the current plants in this grow and am trying to decide which other 1 or 2 plants to grow along with those clones. Contenders are:

Female Seeds Pure AK
Female Seeds Black Widow
Female Seeds C99 Hybrid
KC Brains Brains Choice
Nirvana White Widow
Seedsman Seeds G13 Haze

Decisions, decisions! I'm hoping that these plants will grow to a similar height and take about the same amount of time to flower as the Mandala #1, since they're all sativa dominant strains. Trying to choose just one or two strains since I don't really have a lot of room for mother plants and only have one seed of each of these for the most part, so if I like the results and want more, I need clones (or another order to the Attitude). Attitude t-shirt is badass as always.

Sick Journal. I like blue mystic and havent had mandala #1 but mandala is an awesome breeder. I know noone has posted(I have no clue why) but me personally, I would LOVE to see the progress!!!