Environmental changes in week 6 of flower? (Wedding Cake)

I am running Wedding Cake strain in a 4x4. I've heard that the supposed 8 week strains are more often than not, actually requiring 10 weeks and verified this with various growers who generally agree... reports online indicate that this strain takes from 8 to 11 weeks. So, I think aiming for 10 is reasonable.

...Albeit, 2 of my plants seem to have developed much faster than the other 2 so I might be wise to stagger the harvest as well...

My question is about how to plan for the ripening. Now I've reached week 6 and the advice I have, is to reduce temps/nutrients/light/co2 at this stage and then really reduce it a lot more for week 7-8.

In my case I suppose I will add 1 or 2 weeks to these week counts. But here is the advice I plan to follow:



My question is: how does this all sound? Is it wise to encourage the ripening as such? What are your experiences with that, and any experience with this strain? Or comments on my strategy? Thanks

Throw that chart in the trash. Continue to care for them as you have the entire grow (assuming it was correct). Slightly lower nutrient EC towards the end if you wish otherwise do nothing different.

Even aiming for a 10 week harvest is wrong. They finish when they finish.

@twentyeight.threefive I appreciate the advice. Can you also detail the WHY for your instruction?

The idea of the schedule, is that changing these factors signals to the plant to send all energy to the buds and thus fatten and ripen them. This is wrong?

I am using synthetic nutes. Isn't the final flush / nutrient reduction necesary to avoid harsh tastes in the end product? I have only used organic in the past -- so please enlighten me.

The plant will simply finish on it's own without environmental signals.

The whole advantage of indoor growing is that you can control the environment to optimize your growth. Dropping temps into the 50s is just silly. Feeding until they are done and providing optimal grow conditions will give you the best results.

Harsh taste comes from improperly drying and curing not from the lack of a flush. Near the end of the plants life cycle they will start drinking less (and taking up less nutrients) so you can lessen your feed EC/ppm.

50F??? Where did you take that?

This information is from the attatched PDF. By GreenCoast Hydroponics "Advanced Growing Methods" that I found searching around online. It sounded legit to me. But if you guys say its wack, then I'll take it with a huge grain of salt (no pun intended).

For the last 2 weeks, however; the final flush, perhaps this below looks roughly correct (as they've advised)?

Overgrowtho said:

This information is from the attatched PDF. By GreenCoast Hydroponics "Advanced Growing Methods" that I found searching around online. It sounded legit to me. But if you guys say its wack, then I'll take it with a huge grain of salt (no pun intended).

For the last 2 weeks, however; the final flush, perhaps this below looks roughly correct (as they've advised)?
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I'm glad you posted this. When I first started growing I remember people saying they were running 1600ppms, and I never understood how they weren't completely frying their plants. At that point I didn't know about the different scales and only had used the 500x. It always stuck in my head, and I never put 2 and 2 together until now. 1600 is still pretty hot, but not like scorch the earth hot.

lusidghost said:

I'm glad you posted this. When I first started growing I remember people saying they were running 1600ppms, and I never understood how they weren't completely frying their plants. At that point I didn't know about the different scales and only had used the 500x. It always stuck in my head, and I never put 2 and 2 together until now. 1600 is still pretty hot, but not like scorch the earth hot.

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I am following the Dr. Bruce Bugbee's agronomy methods, and run approximately 850-950 PPM throughout or about 1.25 EC. I am not sure that bumping up to 1600 is helpful, but I've seen my runoff around 1300 (and therefore started to flush with pure water every day until that runoff starts to really come down).

What should my flush or nutrient strength regiment be for the final few weeks?

Your plants will care less about charts or graphs ..... your skill , environmental conditions for them , feeding of YOUR grow will dictate how long. As stated they finish when they finish .... breeder estimates are from strain testing under optim conditions or marketing bullshit.

Think tomatoes ... do you give them a harvest time cutoff ? .... they ripen as long as it takes. Same shit.

Overgrowtho said:

I am following the Dr. Bruce Bugbee's agronomy methods, and run approximately 850-950 PPM throughout or about 1.25 EC. I am not sure that bumping up to 1600 is helpful, but I've seen my runoff around 1300 (and therefore started to flush with pure water every day until that runoff starts to really come down).

What should my flush or nutrient strength regiment be for the final few weeks?

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Are you sure your meter reads on the 700 scale?

I don't even know who uses that scale.. savages.

Edit: also I wouldn't be following that chart. Telling you to go up to 1600 ppm(700 scale) that's 2.3 EC. To give you a reference the highest I've ever run any of my plants is 1.8 EC. And my last run never exceeded 1.2 EC.

Overgrowtho said:

I am following the Dr. Bruce Bugbee's agronomy methods, and run approximately 850-950 PPM throughout or about 1.25 EC. I am not sure that bumping up to 1600 is helpful, but I've seen my runoff around 1300 (and therefore started to flush with pure water every day until that runoff starts to really come down).

What should my flush or nutrient strength regiment be for the final few weeks?

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What medium are you growing in?

Overgrowtho said:

I am following the Dr. Bruce Bugbee's agronomy methods, and run approximately 850-950 PPM throughout or about 1.25 EC. I am not sure that bumping up to 1600 is helpful, but I've seen my runoff around 1300 (and therefore started to flush with pure water every day until that runoff starts to really come down).

What should my flush or nutrient strength regiment be for the final few weeks?

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Sorry, I wasn't suggesting anything. I was just saying I finally understand how people were able to hit such a high number of PPMs. They were using a different scale.

But 1.2 EC is low for flower. That's about what you want for large vegging plants. The 500 ppm scale is what most people use, and 1.2 EC only about 600ppm.

twentyeight.threefive said:

To give you a reference the highest I've ever run any of my plants is 1.8 EC. And my last run never exceeded 1.2 EC.

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You only fed them 1.2 all the way through flower? Were they autos?

lusidghost said:

You only fed them 1.2 all the way through flower? Were they autos?

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No, Noble Genetics - Dragon Funk photoperiods regs. Cross of two Bohdi strains.

twentyeight.threefive said:

No Noble Genetics - Dragon Funk photoperiods. Cross of two Bohdi strains.

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That's impressive. My medium sized veg plants are asking for around 1.1 right now.

lusidghost said:

That's impressive. My medium sized veg plants are asking for around 1.1 right now.

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1 gallon coco, cloth pots with tiny plants.

Glad I posted this because now I see I have been using the wrong scale all along perhaps. My meter actually measures "TDS" (so I assume 500 scale now?). I wasnt able to verify which scale is used for my meter, so I tried to use a medium of the 3 scales...


It seems perhaps I was wrong in assuming it was the 700 scale. So, it looks like I've been feeding them 30% too much nutrients all along (according to Dr. Bugbee's method of feeding 1.2 EC throughout all grow). Albeit, the right minimum amount on the nute bottle.

Well it seem that this is not a big deal since the plants have been pretty much healthy. However I will likely plan to feed less nutrients in the future to account for this, I guess.

twentyeight.threefive said:

What medium are you growing in?

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It is 50% peat 50% vertmiculite as done at Utah State University research labs.

lusidghost said:

You only fed them 1.2 all the way through flower? Were they autos?

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Turns out I was feeding them 1.7 throughout flower! Sounds like an okay number right? Not auto.

Now how to scale this down for the last few weeks? Cut it down by 50% per week for the last 2 weeks or so? Just run water at the end?

From what I have read plants put out hormones or chemicals at different stages to basically adjust ph and facilitate different nutrient uptakes.
If that is true, just feed it in ph range and it will take care of itself.

The charts are great. Are you sure your plant is exactly where you think it is on the chart? That is the problem, I had, not being able to read plants well enough to judge close enough for the chart.
Now my plant is in wk 20. chart only went to wk 18... Obviously there is some discrepancy there. I was feeding bloom in veg, because I just read the chart, but the plant was never in line with the chart in the first place.

If you know a strain really well, I imagine you could get it nailed right down to the time it finishes. After a few grows of it in a consistent room anyway.

I grew some Wedding Cake.

At 8 weeks some of the buds were bending over my skinny branches and laying on the floor, so I chopped those plants. The 8 week buds were not as good as the plants I let go to 9 and 10 weeks. I agree with you, I would for sure push past 8 weeks and 10 weeks sounds reasonable.

I think lower humidity near the end of flower is OK. Play it safe and don't take chances with mold.

I also agree with turning down the lights a little near the end, which should lower the temps a little too. I believe this helps prevent fox tailing or fluffy, poofy buds. It's like when it's too hot the buds do weird things to get less dense.

Going a little mild with the nutrients is OK too. You don't want your mostly finished buds to push out a bunch of fresh white pistols right near the end.

So I agree with the General Idea of your visual aids. Just maybe don't go so extreme with the changes. Don't worry about using the environment to influence your buds or "trick" your plants. Just crank things down a notch the last week or 10 days so you get some nice buds.

At the End of the day remember they are weeds lol and your plants the charts are usually perfect conditions etc