2nd Attempt - DP Blueberry

[Hugh Splith]

Hey people!
I'm about to go in (AGAIN!) on the quest for the smoke of my dreams - 'blue' Blueberry.

My last attempt was a complete disaster, however I was a virgin and a lot more focused on financial gain. This time around, I have a completely different m.o. and I just want to achieve my goal of growing the best weed I've ever smoked.
So I have been doing some research and asking around for pointers and tips. However I need your help too guys.

What I will be using:

• Dutch Passion Blueberry (feminised 5 seed pack)
• Coco block 700g 10lt (x5)
• Hydrokorrels clay pebbles 8-16mm 25lt
• Square pot 6.5l 18x18x23cm (x5)
• 300w 8u dual spectrum CFL with reinforced reflector
• Co2 tabs (60 pcs)
• Atami BloomBastic 250ml
• Mega Pack CELLMAX COCO

I have more bits and bobs that are essential yet not particualry important to know about at this stage. You'll get to see it all in the pics I post throughout the journal.

Any tips you can give me before I set up???

 

[LeafLady]

Re: 2nd Attempt @ DP Blueberry. (need all the help I can get!)

Greetings Hugh! Blueberry is a wonderful strain to grow. Great yield if you know what your doing. Such unique characteristics like bent over leaf tips, blue hue, and blueberry taste. The last batch of indoor medical BB we pulled tested at 15.4% THC and 0.02% CBD.

Everything in your grow setup looks pretty good. The only major thing I would consider changing is the light setup. 300w CFL lights are okay for Veg, but not recommended for Flower. With only 5 plants I would try a 400w - 600w HPS instead. It will be worth it, believe me.

I can't wait to see what yours look like!

 

[Hugh Splith]

Re: 2nd Attempt @ DP Blueberry. (need all the help I can get!)

...Everything in your grow setup looks pretty good. The only major thing I would consider changing is the light setup. 300w CFL lights are okay for Veg, but not recommended for Flower. With only 5 plants I would try a 400w - 600w HPS instead. It will be worth it, believe me.

Thank you for the advice LL. TBH, I have been slighlty panicking about my light setup. This is the CFL:

The reason for my worries, is having a reflector. Now if you look closely in the pic, you can see the light emits both red and blue light.
Now, I can position the light so only the blue light shines while I'm vegging, but the reflector will be reflecting the light from the red side (and vice versa).
Is this really an issue???
Should I not use the reflector until flowering stage???

 

[Hugh Splith]

Re: 2nd Attempt - DP Blueberry - Need All The Help I Can Get!

DP BlueBerry (feminised)

Coco Blocks & Square Pots

CFL & Reflector

Nutrients

Fertometer & Thermometor

Small Fan & Easy Roll Suspenders

 

[Hugh Splith]

Needless to say, life is never straight forward and growing weed evidently isn't either.
First, I most stress my need for assistance with my grow as I am a newbie but very serious about my weed. So please, if you read this and have an opinion or something helpful to say, you are more than welcome to post it.

Now, turns out my supplier for the crucial parts of my grow is a bit incompetent. However, I am a quick thinker - able to adapt, and to be honest I didn't have time to wait around for them to fix their mistake (I have deadlines).

So I setup with whats in the previous pics, planted my seeds (5 blueberry &............. 1 BigBud), and now they have all shown signs of life.

I have been using regular tap water with a dash of root booster, but that is all.

NEED URGENT FEEDBACK!

 

[LeafLady]

Move the light closer to the seedlings....it will keep the stretch down. Remember, keep it simple. My suggestion if you are using tap water is to let it stand overnight. That way it has time to offgas some potentally bad stuff. Hope that helps!

 

[norcalgrown]

^what he said is my best advice^^ >.< nice setup.

 

[preprodigy]

Hugh Splif- I like your choice in strain, that was my first grow also. although my first grow didnt turn out so well, my 2nd one is doing allot better. Only thing is this 2nd grow was a seed that grew in the first plant i grew, bred by a hermed out plant.

this strain has a long flower time, mines pushing well into month 3 day 12 with trichome heads still clear! check it out

my suggestion if your growing all 5 plants out without topping or LST then veg them for a solid month, give them roots time to build up a solid structure, youll end up with (5) 4', maybe 5' tall monsters!

i would def advise pickup yourself up a strain that finishes in 40-45 days, otherwise your gonna kill yourself waiting for this grow to finish, plus having to harvest, dry and cure properly for quality smoke. your looking at roughly 5-6 months before you can smoke any of it, you get a 40-45 day strain you can smoke in 3-4 months.. just looking out, as i know what it feels like to have a grow closet full of some blueberry, (or for me whatever strain it is) and not be able to smoke it for 6 months straight, still having to buy shit haha. it sucks!!

ill def be checking this grow out, keep them updates coming

 

[preprodigy]

help with stretching issue:

pic bellow.

take a spray bottle and fill it with nuke warm watter, nothing above 73 deg. f but you cant have it cold either!

spray down your ceedling with this watter until they fall over. when spraying seedlings make sure that they are NOT, and i repeat not, knocked over from the force of water from spray bottle, but rather from the weight of the water that build up on the seedling. this will just help to prevent un needed shock to the seedling.

next gently manipulate the seedling around the surface of soil like displayed in the pic by dotted green line.

once you have this done lightly cover that part of stem with fresh loose soil, only enough to hold down stem, just make sure that you leave the top with leaflets poking up threw soil.

this is displayed in pic by black line running scross tops of seedlings.

it will take a week or two, but doing this will cause the stalk thats burried to grow roots from it, which in the end will make your plant more sturdy and give it a larger root zone which is never bad!

then lower your light so that you dont have the same stretching issue again..

I guarantee (AS LONG AS YOUR GENTLE WITH THOSE SEEDLINGS) that this will solve your issue, if you dont do this you will have weak stalks and your plants will most likely need support for a while..

 

[preprodigy]

^what he said is my best advice^^ >.< nice setup.

lol, might wanna take a 2nd look at Her screen name haha... close though, you were one letter off

 

[Hugh Splith]

...it will take a week or two, but doing this will cause the stalk thats burried to grow roots from it, which in the end will make your plant more sturdy and give it a larger root zone which is never bad!

then lower your light so that you dont have the same stretching issue again..

I guarantee (AS LONG AS YOUR GENTLE WITH THOSE SEEDLINGS) that this will solve your issue, if you dont do this you will have weak stalks and your plants will most likely need support for a while..

Thank you for the advice. I've moved the light closer but I have not buried the stems yet.
I wondered, how much should I cover? Surely, I should leave more than just the leafs out? What will happen if I leave them as they are?

Also, last night I mixed some cocogrow with some root booster and left it in the grow room overnight, which is about 79dg.

 

[preprodigy]

well i mean you dont need to bury them up to there throats but you should def burry a majority of the stem, the plant will continue to grow like normal, all this is, is low stress training, or bonsai, your manipulating the plants form to grow the way you want it to grow. and as long as you are patient and gentle with the plant they will have no issue growing upwards like nature intended.

id say leave at least 1/4- 1/2 inch above soil until the first set of seed leaves sprout out.

if you leave them they will grow, but youll have to support them for a while, let them grow for a week then you top them and they will start to sqyat out, stems and branches thicken up, more lateral grow develops, then you wait a week and do this again only topping more ares now to develop multiple tops. n
now like i said before she'll grow no prob, but its not guarenteed shell support herself very well.

however, if you law down the stalk using method above, and lightly burry them (leaving 1/4 inch of stalk above the new soil surface) you'll be fine, but just remember that that 1/4 inch of stalk plus leaves might not be standing straight up yet, they might be sideways, diagonal but dont worry, a full day of light and they will all be standing up reaching for that light! if you have a rooting hormone you could even apply it to the stalk before you soak and burry, this will help encourage quick root footing which bring in that stability you lost form the stretching..

it may sound intimidating but it really is easy! the plant want water do all the work, you just have to apply the soil and maybe rooting hormone/ mycorrhizae... but thats a topic for another day. use if you got it though

either way, its your choice, you cold do one just to try it and if it dosent work you you dont like how it worked out, dont try it with rest.

let us know how it works out, which ever you choose.

sorry but im not following the coco part,.. you added more to plants for rigidity? or you mixed some up for the process? haha i smoke too damn much..

 

[Hugh Splith]

I'm not sure if they are dieing or are just severely over stretched, but some of the seedlings are in a bad way. On these ones I will take your advice and doctor them.

I figured this could be one of may reasons:
Lack of oxygen
Under/over watered
Light (still) to far away
ph levels in my water...

What do yo think?

 

[Mark Green]

My guess is for over or under watered. Now the strech is from the light being to far away. You really need to try and have cfls just a few inches from the top of the plants.
I also find it easer to care for seedling in a smaller pot, then transplant them to the bigger one. I use 16oz cups, it's really easy to tell if the cup is dry or not. The cups I use for seedling (16oz) are clear this way you can see the roots grow and know when it is time to transplant them.
I hope they make it!

 

[ggrant]

Hugh.

LeafLady said:

Move the light closer to the seedlings

Best advice yet, in my opinion!

preprodigy offered an interesting way to handle stretch, but you want to keep it from happening in the first place.

Move the light closer to the seedlings!

Is there an echo in here? Can't say it too many times.

I can see you're using big whompin' CFL's, so not sure how hot they get. Move the light progressively closer to the seedlings until you find the right spot. Put you hand under the bulb for a few seconds to see how it feels. I have a seedling sitting under a couple of 25W CFL's and it is about 2" away.

Two grows ago, I germinated five seeds with a single 25W CFL! They were completely spindly like yours, either wobbling or flopping over. I used splints to support the stems until they got strong enough on their own.

Make a support like the following pictures:

Not sure how clear the pictures are. Basically, I used a plastic knife and a twist tie and a piece of tape to hold the twist tie in place. Basically, it's a loop through which the seedling can grow. Think of it as a basketball hoop without a net. The seedling goes through the loop. The loop is loose, i.e., it does not compress or crush the stem at all.

Since I made this patented device, I have found that coffee stir sticks (available at your favorite coffee shop) are ideal.

By the way, after I did this, all the seedlings made it!

Not showing off, but here's a picture of a seedling I'm growing now that has been germinated under 2 25W CFL's that are about 2" away.

Miss Nebula​

BTW, I moved the seedling further away from the bulb to take the picture. Otherwise, she's snuggling right by the lamp.

Finally, I think you mentioned that your CFL's are dual spectrum. There's absolutely NO need to worry about having just one spectrum or the other for vegetation and flowering.

A combination of blue AND red spectra is ideal for both vegetation and flowering. Sorry for all the bold fonts, just want to get my point across.

Oh, one last thing. Place a fan near by your plants so that a gentle breeze wafts over them. This will not only keep the tops of the seedlings cool but a breeze will cause the stalks to toughen up.

Coco Coir dries out really fast. I just bought some but haven't used it yet, so I have no experience, but all I've read says it's hard to overwater using it. I germinate in a "soil-less" soil that holds moisture for a longer time. Hopefully, there are some "coco nuts" here who can offer you advice about this medium.

 

[Hugh Splith]

@preprodigy Believe it or not, I actually used your technique before you suggested it, on a seedling that looked as though it would not make it. It seemed like the only sensible thing to do. I have just removed it from the grow because it did not make it. The top (leaves) came right off. The stem however is still erect. I was wondering... is it still capable of growing or should I throw another seed in? And, will the others I treated in the same way (3 in total) survive?

@ggrant Thank you for answering my question about the cfl. I have moved to light to within a few inches of the seedlings and I keep the fan on most of the day. I find coco coir to be very thirsty, but was told that plants prefer some dry spells to a constant damp environment. I water them 2-3 times a day.

 

[ggrant]

So it's coco coir, Hugh?

I have no experience using it to germinate seedlings, so I can't say if it's a good medium or not. I've never seen such stretch in seedlings. I thought maybe they were getting pinched by the "soil" being too compact.

Anybody here germinate with coco?

I just bought some coco, but haven't tried it out yet. I hear it dries out really fast and that it's hard to keep it damp for long. Some growers cover the surface of their soil with perlite or pebbles to act as a moisture barrier to slow down the evaporation from the "soil."

Next time you germinate one of these critters, put it close to the light, even after it first pops out of the soil. You don't have to worry about the intensity of the light (within reason), just the attendant heat. CFL's are pretty good at staying cool and 2" - 4" should be fine. If you have a fan wafting over your seedlings and plants, it will also prevent any "hot spots" from forming on your gals.

Hope you get a couple of keepers.

By the way, if you get some wounded survivors, keep them. No matter how badly these plants are treated, they will spring back to health if you give them a chance. After all, they're weeds, not orchids!

 

[Twelve12]

I usually start seedling in a small cup, that way if they do stretch some when comes to transplant the stretch will act as an anchor for the plant. Bury it deep so only an inch of the top is sticking out of coco. Definitely keep the light closer and keep the fan moving. Hope they make it through. Looking forward to your grow.

 

[Hugh Splith]

This is how they looked yesterday.

The two in the middle seem like the only survivors.
How do I officially know if the seedlings are dead?

 

[Twelve12]

How do I officially know if the seedlings are dead?

When the plant completely dries, and turned into Earth colors.