Willie's ebb & flow grow

Willie here, this is my third grow. My first 2 were done using homemade stuff. My 1st grow netted 2 ounces per on 3 plants, pretty good...my 2nd grow yielded me 1/2 pound on 19 plants. That was a disaster. I grew shiva skunk both times, but my second crop had a lot of lock out problems...this garden I'm growing Bubble Gum and Querkle. I got clones from Sky Blue Coffee Shop in Oakland. They have a good variety of clones packed in 6 packs in 4" rock wool, but they are still very fragile at this time. I brought them home, transplanted them into their own 6" cube, and fed them 1/4 strength fow farm grow schedule, per the guy in Oakland's advice, and against my gut feeling. Well I started them on a 22 hour light schedule, under T5 lamps and began feeding them 6 times a day. That was a huge mistake...I should have left the plants alone for at least a day. The cube was already pre-soaked in 5.5 pH adjusted water overnight...I should have let them be, but i used nutes and over watered them, just like I warned myself about for weeks, well I have a couple locked up, and half the rest are starting to have roots being exposed on the bottom. The couple that are locked up are in completely saturated cubes. I need to segregate them and let them dry up a few days under indirect light. The half that are showing roots, I'll put them togther and make a mix of Humboldt County Roots and pH adjusted water. (I have heard to keep the pH at 5.9 from start to finish when using rock wool). The other half will continue to get 7.5 mL of Clearex and 3.75 mL of Fox Farms Big Bloom. This will leach out the bad stuff in the plants and allow the plant to soak up the diluted Big Bloom. After the water logged cubed dry out, I will continue the clearex, big bloom mix until I see roots coming out, I will then flush with waqter for 1 day and tehn start the Roots schedule until I see good root coverage. Then I will begin a 1/4 strength Fox Farm Grow schedule. And in that week or so, I'll be looking for some rapid growth. once most of the plants get to 12" I'll flip the lights to 12 hours and beging blooming my babies.

This all seems like a lot of work, and it is, but it all could have been prevented if I would have let them root on their own. Start with only water if you buy clones. Maybe invest in some Clonex foliar spray solution, but DON'T give them a nutrient schedule until they show good signs of rooting and strong leaves. Oh also, I have stopped feeding them over the top, I now feed them by pouring the respective mix into the tray. I have 3 plants in a 10"x20" propogation tray. Once they show good roots and begin to show rapid growth I will flush tem for a day and continue the automatic flow and drain system at full strength nutrients (they'll be strong enough by then) I'm thinking by February 1st I'll be ready to start blooming these girls. More to come, with photos...

Here are the photos. I hope some of my early mistakes have helped some of you out.

After 2 full weeks of nursing these babies, it is time to start some real vegetive growth. All but 1 plant has roots growing out of the rockwool. The 1 remaining plant does show signs of fresh roots, but they are yet to break thru the bottom. I am keeping that plant away from the others and continueing to feed it Humboldt Roots. The other 17 plants will begin a 1/4 strength week 1 Fox Farm grow schedule. Over the course of the following days I'll look for any adnormalities in the plants' growth. If all is well, I will bump up the concentration until I get to full strength growth. i'm hoping by January 25th they'll be ready for a good flush, and ramping up to bloom schedule.

My 1/4 strength grow schedule is 135 ppm and pH of 5.8. I'm going to play with the pH a little. A buddy of mine said 5.9 pH from clone to harvest. Ed says 6.1 to 6.3. To me, 6.2 is a too close to 6.5. I've read after 6.5 the nutrients telnd to lock up. For me and Fox Farm, week 1 grow is 1 tsp grow big, and 1 tbsp of big bloom. I took 1/4 of that....1.25 ml of grow big, 3.75 ml of big bloom. this is a good way to start off any garden, in my opinion. More to come...

02/09/09

I'm 2 full weeks into bloom now. My plants range in height from 14" up to 22". They have shown great growth and the flowers are now beginning to turn into nice buds. I have included a few photos of some of my plants. I'm now full into the FoxFarm Bloom schedule now, and they seem to be loving life. Up until today I have only been feeding them once a day. Before, I fed them for 10 minutes at 7 a.m. Now, they get that plus a 5 minute feeding at 3 p.m. They took 3 gallons of water today, not bad considering they took 4 gallons over the past 2 days. They have taken off, but I'm thinking I'm going to see some large gains pretty soon.

Does any of this help anyone? I see a lot of people checking out my thread, but nobody writes....wa

those are looking good.your plants are needing more because they are flowering.Up the nutes to full strength see how those girls love it..

I am running full nutes. The fox farm schedule calls for 10 mL of tiger bloom, 15 mL of big bloom. and 1/4 tsp of open seseme per gallon. I mix that cocktail with 15 gallons of water, and it gets me to 750+/- PPM. I did add an extra 5 gallons worth of nutes and hey're looking good. the only concern was the PPM's were climbing some when the PPM's were at 1100. i try to keep to the schedule. does anyone else out there grow bubblegum or querkle and use fox farm nutrients? if so, what PPM's do you like to run? I've been burned with lock up before....I'm not trying to lock them up now.

yeah locking them up now would be real bad since they are almost done.Just keep your babies looking healthy and you should pull thru just fine.

Thanks man, they're looking fantastic. It's too late to shoot photos of them tonight, but i'll be sure and take some photos tomorrow. Also, tomorrow I'll be getting ready to clone my shiva skunk b, bubblegum, and querkles. I'm going to use those gro-dan rockwool circular plugs as the cloning media. I was thinking about letting the plugs sit in a pH balanced clonex/water mixture. The pH will be 6.0 and I was thinking about using 1/2 mL of Clonex cloning solution. Is that too much? I was also thinking about using the Clonex gel and putting the clones in the soaked plugs using only pH 6.0 R.O. Water. I think the latter of the 2 ideas is best. I will also have the clones under a clear MONDI cloning tent. I'll mist the clones a few times a day. A friend of mine said a few times an hour, but I think that might be a bit much, Especially since I'll have them under a tent, and also I'll have a heating pad under it, waming the water, hopefully keeping the humidity up. After a few days, I might give them some Clonex mixed water, but that's after I start seeing some roots. I have Humboldt Roots, but I'll hold off on that til I see some real root development. Any ideas from anyone? Anyone? This will be my first time cloning, and I hope it goes well. I hope they all live, but from what I hear, most people have about 50% death rate with clones.

Here are some photos of my plants. I'm roughly 4 weeks into bloom. I took these photos earlier this afternoon.

Cheers

What do you folks think about using Humboldt's Gravity and Purple maxx? I used them both and they burned the shit out of my plants. This grow, I'm staying away from the Humboldt additives. It's not that I don't like them. I don't think they mix well with the Fox Farms nutrients. I think the most important thing is to keep that pH as close to 6.1 as possible all the time. This is what I have read from Ed. Ed said some nutrients are still locked up at 5.7-5.9. He said to bump the pH up to 6.1-6.2. Let me tell you what, He's right. I have seen so much bud production in the past week. They are looking fat and plump, and let me tell you about the smells...Wow. I think my really only problem is space. If I had an entire bedroom dedicated to this, and not just a walk-in closet...Damn, anyway...I'm pretty stoned by now.

I made some clones today. I rejuvenated a Shiva Skunk B from my last grow (Skunk B is what Oksterdam is now calling Candy Skunk). It's the lowest yielding of the 3 varieties they once supported. Now I think they use Skunk A as Shiva Skunk. I digress... I can't tell you what a healthy harvest will yield. I locked these all out in the first weeks of bloom time and my crop was a disaster. I'll be sure and let you all out there in rollitup land what a healthy plant produced. Tomorrow, I hope to make some Bubblegum and Querkle clones. I think I'm really going to enjoy smoking Querkle. That might be my strain of Willie. You never know. I grew this mystery seed. It's looking like it's a Grand Daddy Purple. If it is, then I'll rejuenate it. Even if it's not. I like the stink of it. It's fruity and good. I really enjoy growing pot. Once you got it down, they really do take care of themselves. But man do I love sitting there watching them grow, blowing purple smoke out at them...OK now I'm really stoned....peace out rollitup heads

My clones are now 14 days old and I have all but a couple transplanted into 4" cubes. I chose 4" because I plan on laying down one of those coco mats made by GH. Anyway, the clones look good. Some look a lot better than thw others, but none have yellow tops.

As for the flowering ladies, they are day 5 into the 7th week of bloom. They look wonderful. When my dsl is working I'll upload some pix. Still reduced to having to use the blackberry...

here is my garden. see how my leaves are turning brown and dying? that was under discussion in another thread. i'm going to clip all these leaves off while they are ripening. I'm the 2nd day into week 9 of bloom. the buds are looking great and under the 30x the trichs are looking nice too. they're not quite ready yet. I'm flushing them out now, using RO water and Humboldt Honey ES; 15 mL per gallon. As the water level drops, I'll only add water. Mayber next week I'll begin using some Clearex. Attached are some photos...

Are you guys getting any good input here? Does anyone out there have any suggestions for me? I wish I had more space to work around the tray. I'd like to monitor the water pH in the cubes. I'll do that with the crop. With spring comes bugs. I could have gotten white flies or spotted spider mites, but I got gnats. I'm trying to keep it allnatural and organic, so I'm fly paper stuck to popsicle sticks. A buddy of mine used FOX Farm Don't Bug Me but it almost killed the plants.

Everything looks good! How early are you trimming back the fan leaves around those buds, and for what reason? What kind of dry weight are you getting per plant?

The only way I can monitor the ph of water in my cubes is to know what ph water I'm putting into them, and what ph water they drain back into the reservoir. That said, conditioning the cubes before putting any plants into them is essential, as it prevents any wild fluctuations in ph level throughout the grow.

Your clones look great; are you planning on cropping or topping them, or just letting things go au naturale?

As for pest probs, I'd just keep the rooms more sterile, maybe take off your shoes before entering the main flower room, and spray your floors and house plants with Avid or some equivalent. I hate spider mites with a passion!

I was/am trimming back the leaves for a couple of reasons. Ed says to clip aleaf. If a leaf is blockinglight from a bud, cut the leaf. Also, the Fox Farm bloom schedule really does a number on the leaves. I trim them back to try to keep pests and disease, as can follow having dead leaves hanging on.

As for the clones, I do plan on topping them, to continue cloning them. I'm trying to start a cycle. About 5 weeks into bloom, I put a fresh batch of 6 or 7 into a smaller 1020 propogation tray and habd feed them til the main crop is ready for harvest, then I put the ones fromm the prop. tray into my main tray, and re-load the prop. tray. I'm checking out the blue LED light to see how performs. Maybe I might replace my t5 in the grow tent for 2 or 3 blue LED's.

I'm also starting to dabble in other types of growing. I'm trying out strawberries, tomatos, and various flowers; all outdoors. I was thinking about planting a few flowers and strawberries in my indoor garden just to see how they do and if they can hide the odor a little bit. Man these 2 varieties really do stink.

Looking unde the 30x; they're beginning to look good. The trichomes are beginning to turn color, but are yet to stretch out. They're getting close. I'm thinking 11 more days on the ripening. It's a good thing too. I just smoked thelast of my clubweed, and I only have maybe 15 grams of some homegrown GDP I chopped early because earlier in my grow I had a slight mold problem, and I guess I squirted that one with fungicide too cause the leaves on that began to turn crispy. It sucks that I didn't squirt it down like the others after to rinse them off. My bad. Fuck, but somehow it gave me 2 seeds to grow again when I have the time.

Let me know what you all think about putting legitimate plants in your garden.

you know after smoking pretty much 10 gramsin a few days of some recently grown GDP I realized that this is shit. I grew it with 3 fixtures of 4 t5 flourescents, at 4 feet long. It advertised 20,000 lumens per fixture. So I bought 3 of them thinking 20,000 times 3 is 60,000, same as a 1,000 watt HPS right? Wrong. The buds are pretty, but no density really. They are fluffy. Although, I did pick it probably about 3 or 4 weeks too soon. I let it go 8 weeks. I think using T5 lights instead of HPS will add a couple more weeks to your schedule. Next time, I'll go 10 weeks on nutes, and flush after that.

My Bubblegum and Querkles are looking great. The bubblegum is starting to dreadlock, and I'm hoping the Querkle will turn purple

do any of you guys use a 30x microscope to check for optimum ripeness, or do you guys just go the 10 weeks that people recommend? I'm 4 days into week 10, and when I look under the microscope, they look like they might need another week or two. Any suggestions?

I finished picking and snipping my ladies. They should have dried enough by the weekend for a good weight. 8 bubblegums and 4 querkles.