A Little Bit Of Everything - Chemical - Organic - With COB Lights & UV

[Kriaze]

Gorgeous garden we all are just hoping to improve daily and learn from mistakes and I can tell you are doing just that. How tall are your killer skunks?? I've got some tall veg plants and I've noticed that the plants I train early on seem to have a more sturdy base and don't need support in flower. For my limited flower spaces and plenty of plants it's helped out alot!

I didn't measure them but they're getting on for around 4 feet tall from base to top I should think, I'll have to measure to be sure. When I 'train' my plants they don't tend to go the way yours do, it seems if I do anything other than let them grow they get floppy and fall over, although some of them do that anyway lol.

Enjoy poking fun at yourself over the issues while they last Kriaze. One by one they go away and you find yourself without so much stupid shit to laugh at (well at least more often you do)
I too was wondering if it's worth checking the soil ph just in case something is wonky with your compost ph or something. Mainly because I don't know shit about organics and everything revolves around ph for me. Yes I know soil shouldn't usually need it but sometimes it does.
Holy shit you've got a lot of trimming coming up. Lots of bud too in the end.
I love reading your posts.
Gotta run and unload stuff.
Happy 420 to you mate!

That's a good point Weasel, I've not checked the organic soil's ph. I think I'll have a look at that tomorrow. One thing is although they're scraggly those organic buds the smell from them is amazing, I find it hard to stop myself accidentally brushing past them while I'm in the tent working on them, nekkid just in case the oil soaks in and eases my back pain. They really do smell great, a fresher, sweeter and clearer scent than the dank smell from the chemical plants. I'm intrigued to see how they smoke. Happy 420 to you too and also to everyone else on this great magazine, I hope you all have a wonderful day

 

[Kriaze]

A calamitous cascade of catastrophies

This will be the title of my next journal as it does seem to be the way my grows tend to go.

I will explain why I believe my journal deserves this dubious accolade and you can judge for yourselves, but bear in mind that I will be smoking some good shit after this grow whether or not, I'll also be smoking some scraggly shit too but that's beside the point

As you would have read in my last update one of my lights burned out in the veg tent so I had only two DIY COB's in there keeping the plants alive. I thought it would be enough but when I went in a few nights ago the plants at the back of the tent had all collapsed in on themselves, I can't say for sure but it's most probably due to lack of light and the 'Alpha' females being the strongest and winning the game of survival of the fittest. So when I went in I saw something like this:

Luckily (hahaha) I have extra lights as backup so I decided to put my 300w CFL back in the tent for the extra light and it seemed to work, until two days later (did I say luckily?) the CFL bulb not only went but also tripped out the electricity and because I was having a bad day and I didn't want to go into my room that night I didn't realise until I opened the tents the following night to find the lights out, the fans off (including the exhaust fan) and a strong smell of mouldy air.

So the CFL was smashed up like a rockstar's guitar and the plants in the veg tent were left to their own devices, those that survive will survive and those that die will die. I have a lot of Mars Hydro LED's and GalaxyHydro LED's that I could have used but their heat output is always an issue with me so I refused to use them. Let the strongest plants win I say!

Now I had the option to move some of the COB's from the flowering tent but I'm not sure if there is enough 'wattage' (PPFD) as it is with the amount of plants that were in there, so I took the radical approach of chopping the two plants that looked the worst. It was a hard decision but two of my scraggly organic plants were chopped, let's have a laugh and a look at those two scraggly stragglers:

There are a few reasonable buds on there which I will smoke. As for the rest, well I'll smoke those too

Once I took those two plants out the other plants decided to up their game and started fattening up nicely, this leads me to believe that there wasn't quite enough light to go around so I have ordered myself a Sun System LEC (Light Emitting Ceramic) 315 with bloom (Agro) bulb. I could have gone for a cheaper version but I'm only hearing/reading good things about the Sun System vertical version, plus I've been watching grows using them and everyone seems happy with the outcome.
This light arrives tomorrow so it will be hung in the tent for the final week for most and final two weeks for the Sweet Cheese. I'll also move my two latest DIY COB builds into the veg tent to increase the light in there, I'll also supplement this 315 LEC/CMH (Ceramic Metal Halide) with the remaining COBs that are already in the flowering tent. I will be able to remove the UVA light now as CMH is FULL spectrum. Wahey!

This is how the flowering tent is looking tonight, I will update again once I have fitted the Sun System LEC 315 but here we are as of today:

Well it can't all be doom and gloom can it? Let's have a look at those buds in there, next week I will once again enter the ethereal realm of those buds under the microscope, for now let's have a look at some close ups and macro shots:

So do all these problems put me off my hobby? Don't be daft, this is what gets me going So long as at the end of each grow I can fill my jars I'm a happy man, and I hope that the same can apply to you and your grows too.

Until my next update I will wish you all the best and may your buds be forever bountiful ​

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

Never a dull moment round these parts. Happy to see you got a plan in place tho.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Yeah all these little setbacks are just water under the bridge, as long as you end up with some smoke in the end. For years I had fuckup after fuckup. It would bother me sometimes, especially since I was working hard for it and burning a fair amount of expensive electricity. But I've always got some smoke in the end even if it was shitty bud rendered into hash. I didn't have internet then and really had no idea what I was doing at all. For example, one of the many many stupid mistakes I made was when I had mites, and I sprayed the entire flowering room, all in early bud. Next day all the pistils were red because the spray killed them, and I took that to mean that the buds had suddenly finished, even though they were probably only at week three or four. I chopped them all and tried to make hash, but got almost nothing out of it (not surprisingly). There were many screw ups like this and harvest after harvest had major issues because I just kept doing everything the hard way. It didn't help that I got some terrible advice from an 'experienced' grower, who trained me to use the wrong ph range, infested my grow with mites with a gift of clones, and hooked up the vent fan backwards- issues that all took a horribly long time to find and sort out.
Mold and more mold, years of using the wrong ph, mixing up random amounts of nutes- never keeping to a schedule and never keeping records, feeding 'whenever', watering 'whenever, major overwatering, light leaks, frequent timer malfunctions, complete timer burnup/meltdown which blackened a large part of a wall and ceiling and filling the room with toxic smoke smell that lingered for weeks, burnt up extension cords, electrocution from haywired together ballasts, basically every conceivable mistake with equipment, hermies and males giving me thousands of seeds, all kinds of panicky police scares, lots of paranoia, and round after round of devestated looking plants that rarely limped all the way through to harvest. I became quite immune to these issues and after a while I just expected them. I still do expect them sort of and miss them a bit now that the issues aren't so frequent. I find them strangely entertaining even if it's embarrassing sometimes.

Careful when taking your baseball bat to those CFLs- they're quite toxic.

Best wishes.

 

[Kriaze]

Haha Weasel cheers for cheering me up, I've still got a couple of those mistakes to go through yet although I'm still making most of them now, maybe I should consider keeping a record as I'm still watering whenever and overwatering at that.

Another little mistake that I've made today is being too comatose to wake up for my delivery so I've rearranged it for tomorrow, no extra light for the girls today...What a bad keeper they have

 

[Kriaze]

Hello everyone. Not an update as such am just shit bored while chopping some of the plants. I did two last week and tonight I'm trying to get through another four and am wondering how everybody else trims theirs. My last couple I let dry out first before trim which had been pretty much the norm until now, tonight I thought I would try and trim while they're fresh which is something I haven't done for awhile.

These are four of the killer skunk:

This is my fav, I'm saving this until last because I'll really be into the rhythm and enjoying myself by then

There is still one left under the old lights supplemented by the new sun system 315 but other than a quick shot I will save it for my full update:

So, I hope you're all well, how do you trim?

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

I trim fresh before I wash. I'm a lazy trimmer tho, if it has frost on it stays. Tried dry trimming once and it was a pain in the ass. I don't normally have many big leaves left when it comes to harvest time tho.

 

[Kriaze]

I'm finding that trimming dry loses a lot of trichomes, I've noticed it a couple of times but last time I put some paper underneath and realised just how much was falling off. It does seem easier that way though.

 

[Kriaze]

One thing to say about wet trimming though. I'm in hospital for an op next week, feeling like this I wouldn't need it

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

I can imagine how much it loses, I see them fall when I pick up some Nugs and I always have dusty fingers when I handle them. Hated dry trimming tho. I hate fresh trimming too. This is probably why my subconscious allows me to neglect them so much they practically trim themselves.

 

[Kriaze]

lmfao. Yeah I can see what you mean with that.

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

lmfao. Yeah I can see what you mean with that.

You haven't seen anything yet. I should update my journal later, it's been a while. That Chocoloco..........

 

[Kriaze]

I'll look forward to it, I'm going to be here for quite awhile

 

[Kriaze]

It's slow going here, but I'm in a happy place

 

[The Celt]

Hey mate, things looking good in your grows. You've advanced along way with the organics and LEDs since I was last here, well done

 

[Weaselcracker]

I trim everything at harvest. I hate dry trimming. It's wasteful and way more work. Although if you did it enough and became a dry trimming expert it could be more bearable, and you could have a setup to collect the falling trichomes. But it will always be more work (that's bad).

I have some square white plastic trays that work well for the purpose- you can see them in the top of my last update post. I think they're meant for washing dishes in or something. I also have a bunch of surgical type gloves though I don't always wear them. Get a piece of cotton cloth and soak a bit of vegetable oil into part of it- keep it on the work table to wipe the scissors on once in a while. You lose that tiny bit of scissor hash- but are repaid with unclogged scissors that actually cut properly. Also when cleaning up- clean your hands, arms and equipment using vegetable oil. I slather my hands and arms with oil and rub it around as if it were soap, for about a minute, then follow up with soap to cut the oil. If you don't know this oil trick- try it. It will save you a lot of trouble.
I cut off individual branches, about as many as I can stand to look at and trim in a 30 minute sitting, strip all the fans off and throw those in one tray to be discarded, then start trimming off the sugar leaves- which go into another tray for bubble hash. I remove as many of the small leaves as possible by hand- just pinching as close to the base of the leaf stem as possible while using my other (left) hand to support the bud and open it up a bit in that spot. Usually with the right motion you can snap those leaves off clean at the main stem- but it varies by plant. The best ones are the ones you can trim completely without scissors.
Those little spring loaded fiskars pruning scissors are nice.
After the hand trimming I usually have to go back with the scissors and snip off the ends of sugar leaves that aren't sugary enough- or lever/cut them right out if possible.
The trimmed bud gets its own tray- into the dryer and that's it. Any half-ass bud also gets tossed into the hash trimmings tray. Finger hash usually gets smoked enroute. Then cleanup to hide the evidence and that's about it.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Kriaze do you have anything to say about the Incredible Bulk strain? I gather you like it? I am wondering if it's prone to mould because of its large buds, and if it could maybe fill the kickass indica niche for me -in the never ending quest to replace the Pineapple Chunk.

 

[Advocate420]

I have a seedling and 3 beans of Pinapple Chunk. Any cautions? It will be going outdoors.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I'm often blathering about the PC in my journals. It's a weird scruffy, unruly plant which is the most prone to mould of any of the strains I've grown. It's very smelly and extreme sticky to the point of being obnoxious to work with- and it does need a lot of trimming to deal with its plentiful undergrowth. I scrog it because it's way too floppy to support itself in flower.
But the end result when I can get it there- is a killer smoke.

Growing outdoors from seed will be a bit of a different animal than what I have going. A plant from seed, especially if it's not topped too many times- tends to grow stronger, have less tops, and support itself better. The clones tend to grow more bushy. You'll also have more weather and wind to strengthen it. If you have a rainy climate you may have trouble with it. I have high RH so a mould prone plant is not a good thing for me.
I'm sprouting the last seed of it today in a last ditch effort to maybe find a better pheno. The three seeds I first started, a couple years ago, all had identical characteristics.
I do see some people online growing it and not having the issues I do- especially when they grow from seed. I think most people I know that grow it have similar experiences to me- a weird mangy plant that produces great bud.
I flower mine for a minimum of 13 - 14 weeks usually. Longer than normal I know- but it just isn't ready earlier than that.

 

[Advocate420]

Great info thank you. Yea I have no idea what to expect. Never finished a plant outdoors before. And only have one harvest ever under my belt.