1st Grow - Crop King Seeds Purple Kush

[415friendly]

Had a minor scare last week; Saw these little yellow balls at the top of each cola and panicked, thinking it might be a seed pod forming.



I looked at it under a dissecting microscope and came to the conclusion that the striations I was seeing are just more calyxes forming around some yellowish tissue. I'm guessing that it's just the growth tip of the cola/bud/stem.




Still suffering from some excess nitrogen; I forgot that with the jump to LED's, there might be greater uptake of water/nutrients and didn't back off my feeding appropriately. I was hesitant to flush, so instead changed the reservoir and cut back to 50% nutrients from full feeding program, and cut the "Micro 5-0-1" out completely for this feeding cycle. They really do look dark green under dim light, and curling "claws" looks like excess N.

Day35 of flowering

 

[415friendly]

Lol.

My fiancé came into town for the first time since I started my grow. She stepped out of the car and the first words she said were, "Babe! I can totally smell that, can't you?!?"

Apparently my DIY carbon filter is getting replaced asap.

 

[dick23rk]

I guess that could be an issue if you are trying to be more discreet! lol I had sort of the same thing happen to me. A buddy of mine had stopped in and we were chatting just outside the house but the door and windows were open, I had mentioned something about the plants and he says "yeah I bet they are looking good, I can smell them right now!" haha Ooops

 

[415friendly]

Well, I live in a complex and have a grow cabinet in my garage. The idea was to have it totally blend in with my other storage cabinets and be very discreet. My fiancé says that people walking by might just think someone is smoking some weed, but if it's a persistent smell, then that definitely would indicate some kind of grow.

Problem is, I didn't think there was much smell coming out of my exhaust, so I don't know if a better carbon filter is going to reduce that too much. I wonder if the smell is coming from the times that I have the cabinet open and am working on my plants; that can be up to a half hour at a time and there's not much I can do about that except put a bucket of Ona Gel in my garage, or a shit-tonne of Febreze.

 

[dick23rk]

What size of fan are you using along with the carbon filter and what are both rated for cfm wise? Wondering if maybe your fan is pulling to hard and the carbon filter isn't getting the chance to properly filter the smell.

Another thing you could do to help that I had read someone do in the past is get some of those ona gel packs or something just like it and you can set it in a cap or something then place it inside your exhaust vent to help cover up the extra smell that way. They said it worked really well along with the carbon filter to get the last of the smell out.

People who don't smoke cannabis or aren't around it regularly while it's growing can smell it 2 or 3 times better than we can either when it's growing or burning. Its just something that really stands out to them when they smell it.

 

[415friendly]

I have a 265 CFM rated 4" fan, that I was running with a DIY carbon filter. Back when I was having heat issues I was running it full blast. I guess I could also reduce the power to see at which point I'm pulling out enough hear that the temps aren't increasing past an unacceptable level.

 

[dick23rk]

Could it be possible that the carbon filter isn't sealed up very well and it is taking in air from another area and bypassing the carbon filter itself? I am not sure what sort of DIY filter you made, I have seen some different ones. I am willing to bet it is sucking to much air through but I could be wrong. Maybe show me what yours looks like or how you made it and I will see if I can help ya out.

 

[415friendly]

I think it was just pulling air through the filter too fast; I had it set to max when I was having serious heat problems and never checked to see what kind of airflow I needed for my new lights. I turned the speed controller down to 50% and it has had no impact on the temperature. Humidity might be a couple of points higher, but I find that those measurements have a high degree of inaccuracy. The carbon filter is pretty well sealed...

It's basically a 5" diameter pipe with a screen mesh on the end. There is a piece of carbon pre filter that is fitted to the opening, and then about an inch and a half of loose activated carbon pellets. It goes through a very short pipe outside of my cabinet like a mini-chimney, and my fan is actually outside the cabinet and sits on top of the pipe. Everything is in-line with no bends so the draw is pretty straightforward.

 

[dick23rk]

Ok sounds good. Hopefully turning it down has solved that problem for you then. Sounds like a pretty good DIY filter, I have thought about making myself on in the future when i build my exhaust system

 

[415friendly]

Been too busy to update, pictures to follow.

I ordered a 4" inline filter from Amazon. Substantially more surface area. After installing the new filter, temperatures actually dropped from around 85F to 80F. I'm still trying to find the right setting on the speed controller to maximize airflow and keep the smell down, though.

Big problem is that 5 of the colas are developing bleached tops. I've heard that these are called hash tips and not desirable at all. I'm wondering if these are the tops that got burned when they grew into the lights during the flowering stretch when I had to leave the plants unattended; the bleaching is pretty much localized to these 5, even though there are several colas that are all at the same height.

I turned the "bloom" lights off to reduce light intensity, but had them turned back on the next day.

 

[415friendly]

Had company from out of town for the last 3 weeks, so became very negligent on taking pictures regularly. I basically fed and defoliated with the occasional quick check on the plants. The buds are really starting to fill out now, and I've defoliated a lot to allow airflow through the entire canopy. I will put some pictures of the current growth once the light cycle kicks in again.


There are a few areas that I've felt were worth documenting over the last couple of weeks:
1. Carbon Filter
2. Humidity/Mold
3. Bleached Tips
4. Lighting
5. Leaf Colour Problems


Carbon Filter
I'm pretty sure that the new carbon filter I bought from Amazon is doing the trick. My house guests said they could smell the marijuana in the hallway leading to the garage, but not in the garage unless I had the grow cabinet door open, so I'm not sure what people outside on the street can smell. I can't seem to smell it at all, but I'm almost at harvest time, so I'm going to worry about it for the next grow. I think it has significantly increased airflow as temperatures have dropped by about 5 degrees F in the cabinet.

Humidity Problems
I was becoming concerned with humidity as I found some mold growing on the surface of my coco. I do have really good airflow in the cabinet (2 120mm computer fans, 1 12" fan and a mini oscillating tower fan), so was surprised to see it there. I vacuumed the top layer of the media out and backed off my watering. I had been doing an ebb/flow 3 times a day. I think that with the 5 gallon pots I am retaining a lot of water so I backed down to 1 watering per day. My next grow, I will be moving down to 2 gallon pots which will probably require more frequent feedings. Perhaps moving to hydroton instead of coco might be something to consider, too. Moving to a single watering has also reduced my relative humidity from 67% to 52%. Getting it lower is just a real problem; I may have to consider adding an infra-red bulb during my next grow to increase temperature and reduce relative humidity. I even added a mini-dehumidifier to the cabinet. It needs draining every few days, but hasn't made a huge difference to the overall humidity. I think it reduced from 67% to 65% when I first got it. The drop in humidity after moving to a single watering tells me that I had a lot more moisture in there than was necessary.

Bleached Tips
In mid May (17 days after 12/12) I was out of town for 4 days, and came back to a flowering stretch that had resulted in the plants growing right into the CFL's and several getting badly burned. Soon after, i switched to LED (Mars Reflecto 96) to help control heat issues. While this did control heat, I also started seeing some bleached cola tips.

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I raised the lights from 8" to 14", but reached my limit. I actually had to build an aluminum frame to support the bottom of the LED to squeeze out a couple more inches of height that the wire hangers weren't able to give me. I have about an inch of space between the top of the LED and the roof of the cabinet; just enough for the power plug and some airflow out the venting fans. Surprisingly, the bleached tips are localized to 4 or 5 of the cola tips, and there are several others that are at the same height, but look just fine. I trimmed off the bleached tips; my first experiment with backbuilding. Not really backbuilding, but I'll pretend to call it that; I snipped off more than was recommended.

Lighting
I picked up a couple of cheap COB LED's from Amazon. They're not Cree's, but for experimenting, I thought they might be fun to play around with. Figuring out how to put them together has been an adventure, and has been a lot of fun learning some new skills (soldering was the worst. Thank you, Youtube!) I added a couple of LED's for fun to my cabinet, a warm white (2700k) and cool white (6500k) driven by a 100W driver.

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I haven't checked the voltage/current being put out by the pair to figure out my actual wattage yet. Cooling is being done by two CPU fans hooked up to a 12V DC adapter. I have a 12V output driver that I'm going to use on a new DIY LED Grow light which will mean I don't have to use the big blocky 12V plug that takes up so much room on my power bar. Ideally, I'd like to run one plug to control both the LED drivers and the fan driver and mount everything to the DIY frame. I won't really get a chance to play with this until the Fall, but that just gives me lots of time to plan things out. The extra light hasn't increased my bleaching which makes me think that the bleached cola tips are some kind of damage inflicted when the plant tips grew into the lights, but I don't really know at this point. At the very least, it has allowed me to look at the plants under some normal light instead of everything looking purple. Really looking forward to building a 6 x 100W (actualy draw 300W) DIY setup. I think I can put it together for around $150 USD.

Big thanks to Rhetorrikz for posting pictures in his Grow Journal. Put a lot of things into perspective for me.

Leaf Colour
Some of the leaves turning yellow is expected at this point in the flowering cycle, but I'm also starting to see some purple. Hopefully this is a phenotype (Purple Kush) rather than a Potassium deficiency, although it sure looks like one. I did back off my nutrients because of too much Nitrogen, but kept the P and K levels higher, although only 50% of the recommended levels. I was going to begin flushing this week but maybe I'll give it some food for a few days and flush on the weekend in prep for harvest.

 

[415friendly]

Update:
91 days from seed/62 days from switch to 12/12

One of the nice things about having the extra LED's in my cabinet is that I can actually take some pictures under some normal light.
You can actually make out more details with the purple on than with the cob LED's...I guess they show the pistils more clearly and fluoresce different parts of the flowers so they show up better against the leaves. My scrog was strung super tight, but the growth has still stretched and strained the string instead of bending completely to my will. Still, I've managed to keep the colas spread out, for the most part and get them to equal heights in the canopy. Some of the stems are run horizontally the entire length from front to back, and then run from back to front above the scrog, tied down with pipe cleaners. I can't imagine how tall they would have got if I hadn't LST'd.

62 days into Flowering


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I do have some of the colas that are looking pretty nice. It's kind of hard to see, but I'm holding the stem at the bottom of the bud. Not super fat, but with the problems I've had and for my first grow, I'll take it.

62 days into Flowering
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I am wondering if this is foxtailing. I have had some heat and light stress during my grow at different times, so I wouldn't be surprised, but most of the problems were several weeks ago. Maybe this is normal? I dunno.

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I am starting to see the Purple that is associated with "Purple Kush". For a while, I thought it might be Phosphorous deficiency, but these are some healthy looking leaves. I'm pretty sure it's the plant's phenotype. I'm hoping this means my first grow journey is nearing completion!

CKS Purple Kush Feminized. 62 days into flowering, 91 days from seed
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Finally, here's a peek at my entire cabinet. Lights are as high as they will go, plants are actually lifting the scrog up off of the supports, even though I'm using some rare earth magnets to try and hold them down. I can drop the height of my flood table (by putting the fixtures hanging out the bottom of the cabinet) to get another 8 or 9 inches of vertical height, so I should run into fewer problems with the light distance on my next grow. I do like my cabinet, I look at the back of my garage and it just looks like another cupboard on the wall. If only I could get the smell sorted out properly.

​

 

[dick23rk]

Hey man, great update! Girls are looking good and healthy. I wouldn't say that bud is foxtailing but it's sort of hard to tell there. It very well could be the shape of the buds. Won't hurt anything

 

[415friendly]

Okay, before I bore you with anecdotes, the short of it is this. Should I be harvesting soon? I saw an amber trichome, and my intention was to avoid couchlock highs and try to go for more of a head high (I know...indica was the wrong strain for this, but I didn't know about head vs body high vs couchlock when I started growing). I've read that you really want at least half or most of the trichomes to be cloudy/clear. I think that I would like to avoid a lot of amber trichomes. Please look at the pictures and let me know any opinions that you have on when I should be harvesting.

Funny story. 25 years ago, I was taking a plant physiology course, and we were to research and write a paper on plant development. One of my group members suggested that we research cannabinoid producing glands in Cannabis Sativa. I was so naive, it never dawned on me that he might be interested in Marijuana in a capacity other than academic and I never understood the snickers that we heard when our group announced our topic to the rest of the class. Funny thing is that I never matched the theory with practice, until now, and 25 years later, I realized that I didn't even think about where on the marijuana plant these glands would actually be produced.

For a couple of weeks, I've been stressing, because I have seen very few resin glands on the stalks of my trichomes. I've questioned myself my grow. Did I have temperatures too high? Were the fans in my cabinet too strong? I've been reading about other people harvesting at 8 weeks, and I looked at where I was at 9 and a half weeks and figured it might be close to 11 weeks before I was ready to harvest, and my bud would end up horrible.

I think I've been looking at the wrong parts of my plant. Everything I've read said to check your trichomes, look at your trichomes, look for cloudy resin glands on the trichomes. I've been very disappointed that the obvious trichomes on my sugar leaves looked pretty poor. Today, I decided to look at the calyxes themselves. What a difference!

I apologize for the pictures, my loupe doesn't photograph well, so I borrowed a dissecting scope, which also doesn't photograph well, but at least I can get some pictures that look a bit better.

Purple Kush Feminized. 65 days flowering. I'm a bit disappointed with how little purple there is, but the pistils are now starting to darken and are no longer stark white. I know the warm white lighting makes it a bit misleading, but they were definitely white white before.

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Through the microscope: Sugar Leaves Very few resin gland heads on the tops of the trichomes.

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So I turned my attention to the actual calyxes themselves. Trichomes with resin glands are much more abundant, and I even spotted one amber trichome!

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[dick23rk]

Looking good so far for the flowering stage! It's always best to look at the calyx's rather than the leaves when looking at trichomes. I find myself that a lot of the resin glands on the trichs of the sugar leaves tend to get busted from handling the leaves or getting the microscope/loupe in there for a good look. Also some plants do not produce the same amount of trichomes as others either, and a lot has to do with the growing conditions and what is being fed to the plants as well. There are so many different variables that come along with trich production.

Now, on the other hand when it comes to color/ripeness of the trichomes. When you seen that 1 amber trich, was this on a top cola or a lower bud? As a plant ripens up, the top buds or colas will actually ripen or be ready for harvest before the lower buds so you will see amber trichs develop there before the lower buds. Some people will actually harvest the top buds first and then leave the bottom half of the plant to ripen further until all buds are right where the said person wants to harvest them.

Hope this helps out some, feel like I was sort of rambling on lol. Take care!

 

[415friendly]

The amber trichome did come from a piece of a top bud. I was hoping to harvest Monday, which would be the 10 week flowering mark. I may see how they look then and end up harvesting later on during the week. I've sprung for one of the USB digital microscopes to see if I can get some better pictures; they weren't too expensive on Amazon. I've also started flushing with chilled water. I debated the idea of tossing a couple of ice cubes into each pot once a day as well, just because I read that a little low temperature stress can enhance some phenotypes and possibly increase resin production as well.

 

[415friendly]

I'm now 10 weeks (71 days) into flowering. I think I'm looking at the end coming up, probably this weekend. I started flushing with plain water a few days ago and I removed the screen. I dismantled the pumps for the flood table as well so there should be less standing water in the cabinet and a little bit less humidity.

My temperatures are around 81F during lights on with around 53% relative humidity. I'd like it to be lower, but even with a mini-dehumidifier in the cabinet, that's as low as I can get it. Of course, during lights out, the humidity gets higher. I may have to consider getting a dehumidifier for the room that the cabinet is in for my next grow.

Some of the colas have pistils that have almost turned completely orange, but others just keep producing more calyxes and get fatter and fatter. I've read that this is foxtailing, but probably the good kind as it's resulting in an even cola shape, although there are a couple that are looking like they're on the border of bad foxtailing. These are occurring on some of the smaller colas out on the periphery of the grow, so I'm not as concerned about them; as long as my main colas produce some good bud, that's what I'm most concerned about, the rest will become part of the trim that I try to make marijuana butter from.


This has many pistils that have turned orange and the leaves are really starting to turn purple, but there has been a lot of bud growth and you can see lots of new white pistils that are forming all around the cola itself. Ideally, I'm hoping that these all darken up in the next couple of days.


This cola has some new bud development on the back, but almost all of the pistils are orange now. There is some purple on the leaves, but not as much. This is the reason why I think I'm going to be harvesting this weekend; I'd like to harvest everything at once and do one massive wash and dry. Then I can deal with all of the trim at the same time.


This is one of the smaller colas right at the edge of my cabinet, so it may be getting less light than all of the others. It also has some foxtailing lower on the cola with lots of new calyx formation, and you can see all of the new white pistils. The very top of this cola, though, appears to be forming the spires that I've read are bad and could result in lower potency caused by too much light/heat. I'm a little torn about what to make of this, because the ones in the middle look fine, to my eye, but I might be wrong.


One more cola that I think is looking nice and healthy. New calyxes are forming down the length of the cola with new, white pistils, but there isn't really the spire formation that I think is associated with bad foxtailing.


I'm really hoping to harvest on Saturday; my plan is to cut the lights on Friday and then check to see how things look on Saturday afternoon. Tomorrow I'll have to start putting together a drying rack; I was unable to find one for sale anywhere at a reasonable price for a size that matches my grow. I popped down to the fabric store and picked up some mesh that I'll stretch on a couple frames to make a rack. I have enough material that I can probably make a couple of layers, too. I'm just wondering now whether to dry in my upstairs bathroom, or in the cabinet in my garage. I think it's a little bit less humid upstairs and I have the bathroom fan that can help with airflow, but the cabinet in the garage has the carbon filter. Decisions, decisions...

 

[dick23rk]

Looks like things are going well over here, you are very close now! Don't worry so much about new white pistils forming, sometimes this will happen towards the end of the grow as the calyxes swell and the older pistils will start to shrink up inside the calyx. Hard for me to tell from the pictures if the buds are really foxtailing or not, but if you are seeing new calyxes forming than this is possible. I think you will be fine though since you plan to harvest this weekend.

Will be interested to see what you come up with for the drying procedure. Sounds like you are getting things under wraps here, I will pop in again to have a look. If you have any questions just let me know

 

[415friendly]

Well, the grow is finished, the harvesting is done, and the buds are now all in 1 quart mason jars curing. This was a really educational experience, and I learned a lot for my first grow.

Just to recap:

Plants	2 Cropking Purple Kush Feminized
Grow media	Schultz Seed starter, then transplanted to 70%coco/30%perlite
Pots	Originally intended on 10gallon smart pots, but ended up using 5 gallon smart pots
Tent	DIY wooden cabinet, 37" x 21" x 48" tall
Nutrients	Green Planet GP3 + Massive formula. Also used their ProCal and Hydrox
Lights	Started with 8x45W CFL (actual draw) but switched to Mars Reflector 96 halfway through flowering to combat heat issues. Added in 60W (actual) of COB LED's for supplemental lighting as well.
Grow time	5 weeks in veg (18/6), 11 weeks flowering (12/12)
Watering	4 weeks by hand, 12 weeks using a DIY flood table and 12 gallon reservoir

From:

To:

Reflecting on My First Grow
I really had a great time growing these plants. I spent tonnes of time reading and learning, building my DIY cabinet, lights, carbon filter, flood table...There were lots of trips to the hardware store, lots of online shopping and visits to the local hydroponics/grow store. Halfway through my grow, I really got interested in DIY monitoring and automation using Arduino boards, and that's what I think the rest of my summer is going to be spent exploring.

I had a real hard time using the pH strips and drops, but ended up coming to trust my cheap pH meter that I picked up on Amazon. Combined with bromocresol green and bromthymol blue, I was really confident about my pH levels and was able to nail it inbetween the 5.5 to 5.8 range every feeding. Still, the first week or so where I had dropped the pH down to about 4 using nitric acid probably didn't help the plants get off to a good start, but they did recover pretty well.

The biggest problem I had was heat. 300+ watts of CFL's (actual, not equivalent) generated a lot more heat than I was expecting. This was not helped by a DIY carbon filter that wasn't allowing enough air to pass through. My lights on temperatures were getting in the 95+ range which forced me to look at alternatives. Even swapping out from a 120CFM exhaust fan to 285CFM exhaust fan didn't solve my problem, so I picked up a Mars Reflector 96x5 which brought my temperatures down to around 86F at lights on, and then added an Apollo 4" carbon filter from Amazon which brought my temperatures down even more to around 81F. By then, though, the damage was done, and I had really thin leaves and large internodal spacing. With the scrog, I was able to tie down the branches, but if I didn't, I think the stems would have ended up being around 4 feet tall.

I also had some recurring problems with some brown slime coating the tubes in my DIY ebb / flow setup. While this didn't make the recirculating nutrient solution slimy, it did cause me serious concern throughout the grow. I picked up some Hydrox (30% Hydrogen Peroxide) to try and help control mold/bacteria, and a local store suggested using "GP Clean Slate" to control all the organics. Since I'm not doing an organic grow, I'm not that concerned about killing off all the bacteria/fungus.

I look back now, and think I probably flooded more than was necessary. The coco never really got dry. The only good thing is that you apparently can't overwater coco to the point of killing your plant, but it probably didn't help either. In fact, the extra watering probably contributed to some nitrogen toxicity that I started seeing in the last half of flowering that I was never able to get rid of. I've since learned that I probably should have been doing a flush when I was doing reservoir changes to help remove salt buildup.

My plants flowered for longer than they were supposed to, 11 weeks instead of the 8-10 suggested by Cropking Seeds, and they probably could have gone for another week or so, but I ran out of time before my planned vacation. I think I can blame this on some of the issues I had, which probably included heat stress, overwatering, minor root rot and possibly lights too close to the plants.

I also learned a lot about bud formation and how they should look compared to the finished product. I could have done a lot more pruning to get rid of the tiny buds at the bottom of the canopy. During harvest, I ended up throwing out almost all of it, as it was just too small to bother with. Not really being a cannabis user, I didn't really know what good buds are supposed to look like (I grow for my fiance), but after seeing the results after drying, I now have a much better idea of what I should be keeping and what I can remove.

Conclusion
With a 5 week veg time, I was probably on a schedule that was no better than growing autoflowering strains, but I ended up pulling around 3.8oz dried weight at the end of my grow. By my calculations, I need to grow around 8oz total to recoup all of my initial cost. Electricity is cheap here (.12/kwH) and I still have a lot of nutrients and 23 seeds left after I went crazy at the CKS office and bought 4 more packs of 5 seeds.

Looking Forward
For my next grow, I think I'm going to take a step back and grow a couple of Jack Herer Feminized Autoflowering seeds, starting in September. I can keep them under 18/6 all the time, so I can veg a couple of Sour Diesel feminized for 8-12 weeks in the same cabinet (if there's room) and try to do a better job of height controlling by flux'ing. I have both my Mars Reflectors that I can keep for flowering in my cabinet as well as my CFL's which I now realize I can probably veg in another room if I need to; veg doesn't smell nearly as much as flowering anyways, it seems. I'm also exploring the use of COB LED DIY's as an alternative to the CFL's, and I may look at using a 450W computer power supply to light up 6 x 100W LED's running at 50% efficiency, (although I'm doing some research on this, because I think I may have some current draw issues). I may end up just using some LED drivers instead.

Future plans are also to look at using an Arduino controller to monitor my temperature/humidity/light levels, control lights off temperatures with an infrared bulb and take periodic pictures of my plants. I've read that keeping lights on/off temperatures closer together may help reduce stretching as well, so something to experiment with.

Next watering cycle will probably go back to hand watering for the entire grow, or maybe a drip irrigation, drain to waste system. I'm going to take a step back from ebb/flow to monitor my watering more carefully.

Unfortunately, I was so caught up in my harvest, I ended up forgetting to take pictures. Oops.

 

[JimmieJ]

I just read your journal today, very nice job, and you whipped out that harvest in a hurry!

Hope you journal your next grow.