New Grower Using BCNL Products Needs Help

Hi guys and gals
My friend and I just picked up a big mack from bc northern lights, the combo deal includes (2) flowering chambers a veg box for 2 motherplants and cloner and some dryers . we will be starting our first step to marijuana independence in a week or so. my question to the group is
we purchased a bunch of feminized seeds and also got a few varieties that are not feminized and we are trying to figure out what the most efficient process for establishing (2) good mother plants would be and how to quickly start reaping the rewards of a perpetual harvest.
do we just start a bunch of seeds pick the strongest 1 of each fem type and pray there not hermies?
can you even establish a solid motherplant off fem seeds?
Do we just germ and grow all start the flowering process and take a clone off the best confirmed females and turn those into mothers?

the strains that we purchased are

Barneys Farm Violator kush Fem and Regular
Barneys farm blue chees fem
dna kushberry fem
dutch seeds the church fem
g13 nlX skunf fem

Thanks for your help
-Papes

Welcome to RIU

Personally I have not had the best of luck growing fem seeds. I just dont seem to get the punch and stability that I get from regular seeds. My suggestion is to grow some regular seeds and pick the best from there while the fem seeds are doing their thing.

Hope that helps...but i'm sure there are different opinions out there.

papesjblowme said:

Hi guys and gals
My friend and I just picked up a big mack from bc northern lights, the combo deal includes (2) flowering chambers a veg box for 2 motherplants and cloner and some dryers . we will be starting our first step to marijuana independence in a week or so. my question to the group is
we purchased a bunch of feminized seeds and also got a few varieties that are not feminized and we are trying to figure out what the most efficient process for establishing (2) good mother plants would be and how to quickly start reaping the rewards of a perpetual harvest.
do we just start a bunch of seeds pick the strongest 1 of each fem type and pray there not hermies?
can you even establish a solid motherplant off fem seeds?
Do we just germ and grow all start the flowering process and take a clone off the best confirmed females and turn those into mothers?

the strains that we purchased are

Barneys Farm Violator kush Fem and Regular
Barneys farm blue chees fem
dna kushberry fem
dutch seeds the church fem
g13 nlX skunf fem

Thanks for your help
-Papes

Click to expand...

You're probably going to be growing moms for quite a while before entertaining any sort of perpetual harvest I'm afraid. Considering your setup, my immediate advice would be to get some clones going while you germinate your seeds. You can have an entire crop grown and harvested from clone before you're even able to start cutting your moms down for clones.

Anyways, ill leave that with you, as for your immediate situation. I have a producer myself, and I would *not* recommend doing multiple strains in a single box. If you are dead set on this, do it at your own risk, but i've never seen it end well in these machines. You should be able to count on your feminized seeds to produce mothers. *If* you want to have a mom of each of your strains, here's the approach I would personally take. Germinate 6-10 seeds of every single one of your strains. Divide the lot of the seeds into two seperate clone domes in the 1 inch rockwool cubes, and germinate them in the domes in the producers under the CFL lights (don't forget to lable!!) I'm assuming your BCNL producers came with CFL lights and metal halide lamps, if not, you may have to order the 'veg upgrade'. Anyways, take the strongest lets say 6 of your seedlings, and place them in the 3 inch rockwool, and into the producers. Use your producers under metal halide bulbs to grow them out until they show roots out of the bottom of the res, then flower them. Destroy the males, and select your most rigorous female from each strain, clone them and use them as moms in cocoa coir or whatever. If you're willing to use the 4 slots in the mothership as moms, then just transplant using hydroton and you'll be able to carry 4. To be quite honest the mothership isn't as useful as I wish it was. You can either fill it with moms and root/veg your cuttings in the producer, or carry 2 moms up front and do a bit of vegging and rooting in the mothership, but you can not completely veg in perparation for flower because of root and space issues. It's a bit overpriced for its function in my view, but, I digress.

As for your actual mother situation, I would personally (knowing these machines) pick 2 strains using the method i've outlined, clone them and put them in cocoa coir buckets in the mothership up front. If you have one strain in each box, you'll be thankful. Having one crowd out the other in these machines sucks, ive seen it first hand. Once your moms get bushy enough you should be able to get 20-25 cuttings off of each of them, leaving you wiggle room for 18 healthy rooted clones. Then you can use the left over space to veg out 18 cubes in preparation for the producer.

Anyways, lots of talk, love to see pics of ur setup.

Take the time to research your mother strains, considering your mothers may be hanging around for some time I would choose 2 different strains, so that every 5 weeks you get a batch of something fresh. make sure your strains are suitable for growing in the producers. be sure to check height, yeild, quality and flowering time (with whatever priorities you prefer) typically these are indica dominant

mothers grown from seeds produce better yielding more vigorous clones. fill a producer with seeds of the same strain, when you harvest get what you can for bud and then transplant your 2 favorite plants into coco coir to RE-veg in your mothership. This is gonna take longer then your hoping but if your aiming for perpetual harvests preparation is gonna be important. Don't rush it, just enjoy your first grow and learn about the system and the plants.

i do all my seed and clone work in my mothership. my big mack pack didn't come with a cfl and i haven't had any trouble using just the MH so if you didn't get a cfl i wouldn't sweat it.

you should invest in 1 4 output water pump if your producers are next to each other or 2 dual output water pumps if your machines are across the room from each other- no matter how you do it you should add an airpump with 2 air stones to each producer. Also a thermometer in each box is a good idea. my air pumps and thermometers were both 20.00 each

also a shop vac is the easiest way to drain the tub. I leave one net pot unplanted in the front and i just use a tiny shop vac to suck all the water out during nutrient changes . i find this way easier then useing the water override and hosing, and i prefer not to clog up the pump or run it dry. just don't suck up the roots!! i got one on sale for 20.00 at home depot and it works perfect.

reverse osmosis may or may not be necessary but i would recommend making absolute sure you have premium quality water.

these are lessons i learned the hard way so i hope this saves you some grief.