Blackberry Kush 400W MH/HPS 4x4 & Maybe More

[electro gypsy]

Mornin'

I was going to start checking out that leaf issue before I went to bed but didn't make it lol.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Mornin'

I was going to start checking out that leaf issue before I went to bed but didn't make it lol.

Morning!

Lol it's cool, I think I'm making mountains out of molehills by worrying about it anyway. This scrog plant I got was doing this before I flowered her and she's turned out pretty well. Just wanting to take care of things like this for the sake of yield.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well, I decided maybe the clones need some extra light since the T5 is now so high up over head. I tried it like Twox does with the dome on top of the T5, but I didn't like the amount of water that dripped like almost immediately. So I figured out a way to hang it over the side with the dome in the corner. This should be fine for a week or so. Been about 9 days since I started these, but I kind of half-assed it with the cloning solution so I didn't expect them to take very fast. Plus now I can tilt the T5 a little bit to compensate for the height difference on the plants.

 

[Twox]

What's up Fert... After pondering your leaves I'm guessing it's a slight under feeding. How many 5ml per gallon do you use of your grow nutrient?

Your grow setup is nice... I like how your venting, does it get hot in the other room? Your ac temp controller is pretty cool... I need one of those.. The only thing in your grow that I don't approve of is your ground plug adapter between your timer and your ballast. I'm guessing there's no ground plug on your timer. I Bought mine at harbor freight and they have dual plugs with grounds and were like 6 bucks each.

Trick for the humidity domes , I lightly mist the dome and soak the tray. The moisture will build up and a very fine mist will build on the dome naturally. I've had a few drops here and there but it's never caused any issues..

Hope everybody had a great weekend..

 

[TheFertilizer]

What's up Fert... After pondering your leaves I'm guessing it's a slight under feeding. How many 5ml per gallon do you use of your grow nutrient?

Your grow setup is nice... I like how your venting, does it get hot in the other room? Your ac temp controller is pretty cool... I need one of those.. The only thing in your grow that I don't approve of is your ground plug adapter between your timer and your ballast. I'm guessing there's no ground plug on your timer. I Bought mine at harbor freight and they have dual plugs with grounds and were like 6 bucks each.

Trick for the humidity domes , I lightly mist the dome and soak the tray. The moisture will build up and a very fine mist will build on the dome naturally. I've had a few drops here and there but it's never caused any issues..

Hope everybody had a great weekend..

No the problem is that my outlets aren't grounded so even with a 3 prong socket the ballast will not work without the adapter. I tried to get my landlord to install grounded outlets but he said something about having to install grounds on all of them if he did one so that he stayed code compliant.

The other room doesn't get too hot from the light, since it's a 400 w it doesn't really heat up too much, but because it gets hot here in general I have to keep the ventilation very high. I have actually found the fan setup like that helps circulate cold air around the apartment.

The lack of grounded plugs really bugs me but there's not much I can do about it. What's most annoying is the "open ground" sensor in the ballast makes the adapter necessary even with a 3 prong outlet.

Oh forgot about the feed info

I am using

15 mL/Gal earth juice grow
5 mL/G earth juice bloom
5 mL/G earth juice meta-k
5 mL/G earth juice catalyst
5 mL/G earth juice microblast
5 mL/G earth juice oily cann (calmag supplement)
5 mL/G Armor Si
5 mL/G molasses

I bubble for 48 hrs and ph to 6-6.5

Earth juice grow is only like 2-1-1 on the npk level, but I have been feeling like the leaves looked really dark so was worried about nitrogen toxicity

 

[Twox]

Ya, no grounds is ruff but if everything is working for you then i don't really see a issue. Your feeding schedule looks on point. Oh is good. I believe the earth juice is already packed with molasses so you might be able to cut that out of your freezing schedule. 5ml per watering seems like a lot.. i use molasses for the first week of flush only just to keep the soil happy.

The General Hydro silica is some ruff stuff... ever notice how crusty the lid gets. That's salt build up and my be causing build up on your roots.. 5ml is a strong dose too.. may be the cause of your minor issue..or I might be wrong.. lol... i just want to help I guess..

 

[TheFertilizer]

Ya, no grounds is ruff but if everything is working for you then i don't really see a issue. Your feeding schedule looks on point. Oh is good. I believe the earth juice is already packed with molasses so you might be able to cut that out of your freezing schedule. 5ml per watering seems like a lot.. i use molasses for the first week of flush only just to keep the soil happy.

The General Hydro silica is some ruff stuff... ever notice how crusty the lid gets. That's salt build up and my be causing build up on your roots.. 5ml is a strong dose too.. may be the cause of your minor issue..or I might be wrong.. lol... i just want to help I guess..

Lol what a coincidence I ended up cutting my hand on the bottle of stuff when opening it today

I didn't think about what that may have done to the roots good point. I have read only been giving it very recently as they have got larger though

 

[Skybound]

You can build your own ground. If you have copper inlet plumbing in the basement where the water comes into the home, you can ground to it as it is already below the frost table and "grounded". Otherwise, you can get a grounding rod from a home improvement store and some bare copper wire and beat the rod into the ground and anchor the wire. Then just connect the ground to the neutral lines in the circuit.

Edit - I too use Armor Si and agree that 5ml/gal is too much. I start at week 3 of veg @ .5ml/gal and walk it up to mid/late bloom at 2-3ml/gal. Also, too much silica will jack the pH way up.

 

[TheFertilizer]

You can build your own ground. If you have copper inlet plumbing in the basement where the water comes into the home, you can ground to it as it is already below the frost table and "grounded". Otherwise, you can get a grounding rod from a home improvement store and some bare copper wire and beat the rod into the ground and anchor the wire. Then just connect the ground to the neutral lines in the circuit.

Edit - I too use Armor Si and agree that 5ml/gal is too much. I start at week 3 of veg @ .5ml/gal and walk it up to mid/late bloom at 2-3ml/gal. Also, too much silica will jack the pH way up.

Yeah I thought about doing something like that but I don't have a basement and don't think the landlord would like me doing modifications like that. Could probably run a wire into my bathroom to attach to something in there though.

One reason I was trying to to use the armor si in such large amounts is because earth juice is so super acidic, but yeah I guess I didn't really know how much of that stuff was too much.

 

[TheFertilizer]

A look in the flowering tent today. Still not getting much pollen out of these sacks even though they look like they're opening.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well I wonder if I should start my clones over. I don't think that I got the solution pH'd right when I soaked my cubes. lol That sounds funny. Anyway I got a bunk pH meter, and plus I use distilled water and Azos instead of RapidStart for the solutiont his time. Been almost two weeks and there's like, no sign of roots, so I don't know. I might take some new cuts and start new ones tomorrow, I wanted to put perlite on the bottom of the tray like I did before anyway.

But, more importantly, I am thinking about harvesting a little early... I don't think I've ever not harvested this strain early and have always been happy with it, and I'm having to beg and borrow for medicine, so I don't know. I think I'm gonna take some testers tonight, but at least wait until the weekend for a full 8 weeks.

 

[Skybound]

For ¢2, I say take a few samples and let her give you all of her potential in the end.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well a couple of the clones have started showing roots, also some pretty yellow tops. I gotta do some thinning out on the veg plants before putting them into flower, so I might just take some new cuts anyway but I wonder how much longer I should really give these ones. The cuts I chose weren't really that great anyway; not too uniform in size, pretty small, etc.

The veg plants are pretty ready for flower. I'm wrestling with whether I wanna scrog them up or not. I need to go get some more wire grates and stuff to sit them on to keep them out of run-off for the scrog but then I figured that might save my back some trouble either way, so I'm going to go get those this afternoon then put them in the flower tent and decide if I wanna scrog later. They're going to be sharing the space with the plant I sprayed with CS and I'm getting kind of anxious about that because I still haven't really seen it shedding any pollen and I wonder if it's going to start right around the same time these plants become sexually mature. At this point it almost seems like it might pollinate itself because the flowers on it are not all that old. *shrugs* I don't know, I'm just going to have to stick with this strain for a while longer yet until I get some viable pollen and can make some seeds of it.

Either way I went ahead and harvested because I just didn't really have the luxury of waiting around for it anymore and what I had was good enough. It smokes pretty good, I trimmed and washed it up and have it drying now. Hopefully the trim dries up quickly too so I can make some hash with it.

 

[Twox]

Glade to hear the clones finally took... I've noticed that some strains root faster than others.

Looks like your going to fill your flower tent this round.. Your veg plants look like they want to flower...

 

[TheFertilizer]

So I found something interesting today while moving the girls into the flowering tent. Apparently the way I've drilled holes in these pots is allowing roots to seek down into my drip trays. Should I get down there and try to cut these off or just let them air prune?

I think I'm going to scrog again. So I had to find a way to keep the pots up out of water while letting them stay secured in a net, and I found these little plastic trays at the store. They look like they will keep them elevated enough, my only concern is if my drip trays will hold all the runoff. I also didn't really think of how I would actually drain that runoff, because before with my little rack I had a tub under it that I could take out from under the rack and empty. I think I may have to pickup one of those hand-pump siphon thingies at the autoparts store. I have a gravity siphon but since they're already ground level that won't really do me any good. I don't really want to leave the water in the trays to evaporate; even though the humidity in the tent is so low I think it would evaporate quickly, I just don't want to risk the stagnant water attracting pests or molds. Proper management of waste water has been a problem of mine I believe. Plus with these roots seeking down like this I don't want to give them anything to drink.

But, it looks like they will fill the scrog net quite nicely. I know I will probably get a much better yield scrogging than otherwise. It just makes things a little more difficult not being able to move the pots around, and also having to squeeze in through the sides. I'm not a small man. Not sure I really have enough air flow for this much scrog either.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Bah!

So, I was trying to get some pollen off of the reversal plant. Had it in the sink to water, two birds one stone, and anyway, I dropped the vile I was collecting in on the ground... I hadn't really gotten much except a light dusting around the rim of it, and had pushed the rubber stopper down in there to get a line collected on the rim of it, so I just decided what the hell, and spread the line from the stopper onto the pistills of the same reversal plant since it's got such formed flowers. So I wonder if it will make seeds itself... I'm almost wondering if this is really a CS reversal or just me having stressed the heck out of this plant.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Stuff was pretty dry today so I jarred it up and weighed it. 34 grams. Which isn't really that disappointing because that's about what I suspected, but I'm a little disappointed with how fluffy the stuff is. I wonder if maybe it's the difference in nutrients since in the past I've always used FloraNova and Fox Farms, but switched to EarthJuice for this. Also suspecting maybe it's not quite the same phenotype of Blackberry Kush that I had before. I don't think that the early harvest played into it as much because I've harvested this strain this early before and the nugs were always very dense. I don't really remember this stuff being as resinous or with as much sugar leaves either, so I don't believe I'm working with the same phenotype. This one probably needed a longer flower period but I"m still not sure if the buds would have been as dense as the last pheno.

I got some nice hash out of the trim. I trim super heavily so part of the low yield is due to that. Like, gotta remember I removed almost all fan leaves off that plant during the scrog, yet I still ended up with like 10 grams of trim, so most of that was sugar leaves off the fringes of the bud. I didn't bother to measure how much hash I got, but this isn't all of it.

Well, we'll see if this can last me 8+ weeks!

I'm running into a little problem with my veg setup and everything. I've still got this reversal plant in flower, plus the 4 girls, so that is pushing me real close to my limit. I am thinking about moving the reversal plant into the tent with the T5 and setting that on 12/12, and letting it open pollinate the two clones that have taken so far. I'm not sure if I should let the clones get a little established first though, they're very tiny right now.

Overall I've kind of lost my motivation to preserve this strain anyway since I now know it's not the same phenotype that I had last time. But whatever, it's still a quality strain and I've already got a plant putting out pollen, so doesn't make sense to give up on it now.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Had to take some better pictures of this to do it justice...

And of course as usual with this strain, she smokes great as soon as she's dry.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well, decided to plant these clones in an interesting way. Right into the old pot from when I flowered. I'm going to let them sink their feet in for about a week and flip to 12/12 and spray the two in the cups with CS. I Left them in the cups so that way the CS dripping off of the plant into the soil will stay mostly in the soil within the cup and the other plants won't be able to accidentally uptake it.

Also even though these clones I put in a "stasis chamber" in my fridge got all discolored, a few of them still rooted. Most in fact. So I took a few cuts off the big plants and put them in the tupperware and then into the vegetable crisper.

Also just decided to cut the scrog net down. I felt like it was going to be too much of a hassle.

 

[Skybound]

I stopped using a scrog after my first for that reason. Yoyos are a better option, or just trying off to anything to put the stalk in just the right place. Great news about your stasis cuts! Is there a difference between a veggie crisper and a typical freezer?