Cottage420's Pepetual Grow - 2nd Grow in Progress Organic Soil Indoor

[Icemud]

Hey Bobrown! wanted to stop by your journal and say hey! plants are looking really good I agree with CoOrganics that another 10 days would probably be perfect

 

[bobrown14]

Hey Bobrown! wanted to stop by your journal and say hey! plants are looking really good I agree with CoOrganics that another 10 days would probably be perfect

!0 days???? I'm afraid!! Wow yeah man I was about to chop ... thanks to CO man I'm holding off and feeding them water - molasses/water - water - molasses/water. After the first molasses/watering the buds plumped up over night wow that was HUGE. They look thirsty all the time and the pots get light fast now so I've watered them 1/2 water then full water with 1 tbl per gallon every day now and the buds are fattening up big time ... so here's some bud porn, I just cant get enough of this. Growing buds I found in addictive. I'm going to be sad to see them get chopped .... errr maybe not.!? My only issue is all the fan leaves are being eaten up but I think it's a strain thing. I was sleeping the other night and was wondering if someone just threw some goodie seeds in a bag to keep the strain going and they were shutting down. I started passing some of my previous grow around to my friends and got "that the best weed I've ever smoked" from a few of my friends that I trust with a smoke review. Not bragging but it's good, I'm going to give out to my friends the rest of the last grow for gifts for the holidaze and by the new years I should be fairly close to getting these buds on fi-ya, puff puff.

Pics are taken in full light I've got a 600w HPS and a 900w TopLed side lighting pointing into the grow tent. The big girls started to lean in toward the LED light but the main colas are all reaching up to the HPS. I think next grow I will do a combo LED/HPS/LED top light and get another side LED light.

I just love going into the grow room in the am and rubbing the buds ... go to work and smell like dank. haha.

Bud porn:

under the skirt shot here - big bud on top these are the shade buds and they dont look any different than the big'uns

fatty bud

Sea of buds

Cola heaven

 

[J189RFC]

Ya the last 2-3 weeks can be killer. Looks like they are done, but they aren't. A 20-60x magnifying loop would help determine that. Also you should hold off on the molasses. Some people swear that it doesn't affect taste but nutes are nutes are nutes and molasses has a fair bit of ooomph to it. Almost there man, almost there good job!

 

[bobrown14]

Ya the last 2-3 weeks can be killer. Looks like they are done, but they aren't. A 20-60x magnifying loop would help determine that. Also you should hold off on the molasses. Some people swear that it doesn't affect taste but nutes are nutes are nutes and molasses has a fair bit of ooomph to it. Almost there man, almost there good job!

I hear that - I dont use any nutes just ACT (aerated compost teas), the girls are looking like they needed a boost since all the fan leaves are dropping off/loosing color which is fine. I gave them some molasses the other day with water and all the calyxes got fat swollen over night so I got a good result with the first try. I've been reading up on the molasses thing cause I dont want to mess anything up specially the taste, and from my readings seems a lot of the old timers (folks that have been growing long time) use it right up to harvest specially in an all organic soil grow so went ahead and tried it. I got a bud swell yah so good with that. I gave them some straight up RO water then a 2nd feeding with RO water and a few tablespoons in 2 gal again last night, took a peak this am before work and they are all looking good. We will see what happens after another day under the lights to see if there's some more growth. As long as I keep seeing changes to the calyxes and pistols I'm going to hang in there. Been looking at the trichomes with a loop and camera, I'll take some more pics again tonight. I haven't looked at them for a few days up close but I can see the trichomes are getting larger without a loop and you can see that in the pics - just keep getting frostier and fatter so gonna hold off as long as I can... must resist must resist.

The buds can barely stand up now they are way top heavy... with some that already fell over and I had to rope them in.

 

[bobrown14]

Ok chop minus five - in day 66 after flip! buds are fattening up and long as I see more new white pistols and the calyx are getting fatter I'm going to hold off on chopping. Starting to see a few fox tails. The last grow I cut the fox tails and used them for clones which these are the product of.

One of the girls looks like she's turning purple, I should let her go and see if that develops more. She's the largest plant, the other large plant is getting ripe and loosing leaves. The purple one is doing fine lots of new pistols and calyx fattening up and turning purple....

Bud porn!

 

[COorganics]

BB, the fact that your plants there are still very thirsty is a sign they are not finished. As they near completion, water uptake will slow down. You will notice it. That and there are new white pistols shooting out all over the place. I agree with what was said about cutting out the molasses above. Best would be just water from this point.

You're on the homestretch, hang in there for a bit and put your scissors back down.

 

[bobrown14]

Got it - thanks man I would have chopped them already and the big buds on the larger plants are still getting fat and putting on weight. I just did a major tie up - all the big colas were falling down wow they are heavy! I'm gonna get a decent yield from the 2 largest plants. The other 3 smaller plants look good but they don't have very much weight to them. I'm not going to continue that strain but the big girls I will take some clippings. Should have done that already I know. Tonight I took a low branch clipping to do a smoke test and also to start a clone. So I've got my nest grow started.... These were pretty easy to clone but my wife did all that last time. Hopefully I can do what she did but to be honest I know absolutely nothing about cloning, maybe we just got lucky last time.

No bud porn tonight - tomorrow a friend of mine that grows for a living has grows in CO, OR and another state thats legal I forget where is going to come over (he's visiting for the holidaze) and check out my plants ... he uses nutrients and wants to see what I do organically. So I will walk him out to the compost bins.. haha... point in the bin and say:

"brew some tea with that (open the btm door to the bin), water your girls with the tea and make some soil with it and re-use". BOOM

I'll show him all my dirty little grow secrets, smoke some weed and hopefully he will take what he sees back to work with him. I just bought some weed from my regular guy the weed was mass produced and it was .. wow not even cured properly "looked" pretty tho.

I'm afraid growing for profit is going to be different that growing for quality sad to say. At least my experience recently. I was talking weed at shop with co-workers and I had one guy asking me to grow "pretty" buds as long as it has orange hairs it sells... wow. Really hahaha never saw any orange hairs, I like them big cheesy white nugz that get me stoned to be-jeebers. Puzzled looks... ah well talk to ya later!

Cheers


Damn I hear helicopters overhead again... that always freaks me out.
(copters supporting police chasing down gun violence - finally)

Since they made cannabis a misdemeanor, gunshot deaths in my city down 50% - results BOOM

Everyboy just take a puff and r-e-l-a-x like me!

 

[bobrown14]

OK today trichome pics. I take these with a USB microscope but I'm holding in my hand which is kinda crappy. I started going to the max 250X I think this one goes to and I noticed the pistols /orange and white hairs are packed with trichomes but they are much smaller than the trichomes on the leaves. Still not cloudy but there are a very few amber ones but are difficult to see or find. These are taken from the 2 largest ladies that have been packing on the weight the last few days. Also took a clipping from the other big girl I call Big Purple cause her bud leaves are turning darker like a brown color that looks like purple at a glance.


Here's some trichomes day 66 after switch to 12/12:

Here's a few pics of the orange pistols that I zoomed in on in the next 3 pictures - I can see the trichomes there and didn't know the hairs had trichomes - you can see them clearly in the last of the 3 pics they are microscopic and are packed on there - wow that's pretty cool

Sure is a purdy site here - I may get this one made into a print and hang it on the wall see it anyone recognizes it when we have visitors!!

This bud I picked last night for a smoke test - it's been sitting on my hot water heater overnight so trichomes have shrunk down a little bit.

 

[bobrown14]

Ok update with pics too... getting close to harvest well at least one plant is gonna get a chop tomorrow. What I've experienced this grow is the larger the pot the larger the plant at least growing organically. I suppose more soil more food!! That's an enlightening thing right there. Makes perfect common sense tho.

So I have one lady that will be harvested tomorrow that will leave 4 more and they are still up-taking lots of water and putting on weight at the buds so much so I really should be tying the buds to the ceiling just to keep them upright. Wow... that did not happen last run, not even close. I've started clones from the 2 large girls and one from the best short girl. All I've been doing the last 2 weeks is straight up RO water thats been sitting in our carboy usually over night.

Day 71 I damn man this strain seems to take forever! I think its going to be worth it from my smoke test the other day. Kinda got a little wiggly in my chair like I needed to get up and go which I like a lot. I've got another bud that I cracked off by accident the lady that I'm going to harvest tomorrow that I will smoke test tonight. I know its going to be good. A friend of mine showed me what finished buds are supposed to look like the other day - nice big fat calyx that I could see with no problem that I could separate from the bud individually and put em in a pipe and smoke em up. I'm not there yet but getting close.

No further bs here's the porn:

A little too much light here but you can see the calyx getting fat

]

Getting some purp on the bud - this lady is starting to show the purple in the sugar leaves I've got the window open all the time so the temps are in the 50ish to 70ish during the finish down the back stretch.

 

[bobrown14]

Just messin with my phone and making some art. Little girl in the new grow room in LED lighting. She's getting close to finish prolly 2 more days so Im doing an experiment with the LED at the end of the cycle and see if it does anything. Hopefully it wont mess anything up... prolly not going to make any difference but this room will get down into the 50s tonight there's no heat in there.

 

[bobrown14]

Ok a friend and me did a smoke test last night from some lower down nugz I dried over a few days on top of a radiator covered dish version. WOW... yup still a little early the high was almost over powering heart thumping high - anyone that is an occasional smoker would have been FREAKED out. I was a little freaked for a second until I realized; hey it's early the high is WAY uplifting to the point my heart was racing... not quite medicinal yet!! But thats a very good sign. These girls are getting to where they need to be. One plant is probably going to get chopped tomorrow the rest are busy growing fox tails complete with new white pistols. Pics tomorrow I'm going to go and take a puff or 2 of the test buds....maybe I'll mix last grow with new grow so I don't hurt myself.

Misty mornings to all that happen by this way.

 

[Green Dreamz]

Hey Bobrown....just wanted you to know that i did see your question on my journal about the lights and to be fair i want to see what you got going on.........so i want to read from the beginning, but it is late and i am off to bed soon so i promise first thing in the morning i will catch up on here and then give you my thoughts.....one question.....are you in the US?....i ask as an unsponsored manufacturer in the US has some pretty cool stuff going on...but anyway buddy....tomorrow morning i will be back

 

[Green Dreamz]

Hey BB.....just got caught up on your journal....great job dude.....love all the pics and info......i do have a few things i would like to touch on......now i am no expert.....but i do have a lot of experience in errors that i have madelol.....not saying you are doing anything wrong, but just a few observations......now i know that it is a bit late for this grow, but i noticed that in almost all the pics the ends of your leaves are droopy....they look healthy enough in color, but i would say something is going on there that you can fix......on the same subject....your last grow and this one you are having problems with the fan leaves turning and drying up......these two symptoms are the same issues that i had my first organic grow.......i would mix my nutes up....and the ph would plummit....like high 3s to low 4s.....i would adjust with ph up....took quite a bit........veg cycle wasnt bad except the droopy leaves.....but mid way through flowering things started going down hill....had nice nugs that were frosty enough, but the rest of the plant looked bad with the fan leaves dying off......did a lot of reading and found that a lot of organic growers didnt believe in adjusting the ph.....that is what the microbes are for....organic living soil.....ph up or down is a chemical that works against the microbes......made sense too me but i couldnt wrap my head around pouring nutes in with a ph of around 4, but as nothing else i tried seemed to work i had to give it a go.....i ended up chopping a couple weeks early as they were to far gone, but my next grow....i didnt ph a thing before watering.....checked the run off and was always very low....ph of soil would go down to like 5.....but the next day i would check it and it would be right around 7....microbes doing there job......that was my last organic grow until just recently but it went great....not so much yield as i had training issues, but plant health....leaves remained green all the way till end....no yellowing what so ever like you would normally get....and the leaves were always perky and normally praying to the lights...just something to think about your next grow.....maybe just try one plant with no ph adjustments and see how it works out for you..i think you will notice a difference..........ok....sorry about the long post, but i am long winded and like to try explain what i am saying the best i can.......
Ok...next.....i have a 400 and a 700 mars ii........i hate to be the one to tell you this, but they do not use osrams.....i actually pm smokesara who is a rep for them and asked her if they had plans on using them and she said yes, but not till this coming year and they will use somme cree and osram.........our lights have epistar and i cant remember the other brand, but they are chinese and taiwan leds......they do a great job, but i am not competely sold on thier efficiency.....that is why i bought the XTE 300 from Advanced.......after watching icemuds journal with two of them for flower and also he uses the new Advanced veg one too....dont remember what it is called......i have only been running mine since last friday so i cant give you an honest review of it yet.....it does run 5 to 10 degrees cooler than my mars 700...fans are much quieter, but the footprint at the same height is better with the top led....but that being said it is not about how bright they appear to be and how big the footprint is if the par is different.....icemud does videos where he check the par all over his tent to show the where it is strongest....i think you might benefit from watching some of his video reviews....ie top led, intelligent grow, and advanced led........now beyond those companies......a buddy of mine on here sent me a link to a company here in the US that uses osram and has some really cool info on thier website about comparing leds with ppfd...which is the measurement of how many photons are actually going to make contact with the plant.....i have to read it again....but they dont use fans and their lights are waterproof........their smallest light is 3 x 3 and is too big for my flower room, but they also sell individual led bars that go from 12 in to 72 in.......so after the new year sometime i am going to get one or two of the singles for side lighting......i spent over an hour on the phone with one of the owners while he explained to me the difference in their company as opposed to some of the others.....he didnt talk bad aobut any one of them, but he did explain why thiers are better.....and it mmade sense.....no fans means when and if there is a fan failure and your not there.....the heat will build up and have an adverse effect on the leds being heat is a problem...hence the cooling fans.....second....waterproof.......dont have to worry about overspray from foliar feeding which i dont remember you doing that, but anyway.........they are cool as all get out.....and for efficiency they are more than what i paid for my advanced, but i will need another XTE 300 to run my 2 x 4 flower tray.......foot print is not big enough to run just one.......with this other one......if it would fit....i would only need one and it is cheaper than the price of two Advanced XTE 300s.......not saying the XTE isnt a great product.....i am sure i will grow some outstanding buddage with it, but had i known about this company before i ordered the XTE then i would have held off.....jsut my opinion.....since they are unsponsored if you are interested in checking out their website shoot me a pm and i will send you the info i have and the website........ok i think i am done........with my short or actually long story.......

once again you have somme beautiful buddage going on, but if i am correct abouut the ph....just might make them a little happier......
subd for the rest of you journey

 

[bobrown14]

Thanks for the tips GD - I hear ya on the PH thing and I've tested a few times this grow and everything was fine. I didn't really trust that whole deal about letting the biology of the soil do its thing and no need to PH anything so I did test a few times just to be sure I didn't mess anything up. The first grow thats how I got messed up but I was using bottled organic nutrients first run and the PH was all over the place and it showed in the plants health or lack of it. This run was pretty much all organic teas and everything was pretty good. I hear ya on the leaf droop, I thought it was from lack of water there but I don't think it was cause I was watering maybe a little too much.
My point here with this grow is to get my technique down so when I start into my seeds that cost me a fair amount of coin I'm not wasting my time messing up.

This run is just about finished. If it wasn't for the holidaze I'd probably be chopping today or tomorrow. Heck I may even chop tomorrow after hanging with family and such. I figured on Christmas to harvest and I'm right on target and the buds are heavy and dense, I should have a pretty decent haul. I'm kinda hoping the high kicks it down a notch (not really), my smoke test was great and wow very potent. I think I'm going to be spoiled, I wont be able to go back to commercial weed at all, and may be done with Cali med shop weed too, we will see.

Thanks for stopping by GD I've learned a TON from you and many folks here that do grow journals. Without 420mag I'd still be tripping over my bad self trying to figure this all out.

I'll take pics right before chop and weigh my haul and hang dry for a week then into paper bags for a few more days until they are dry then into glass jars for a nice month long cure. Then puff puff mmmm good. I've got clones already going and some seeds to crack next week and start all over again and grow my summer stash!!

I'm in the USA, I've got a 600w HID and a 700w MarsII TopLED and a 900w MarsII TopLED. Their latest lamps from this fall but I bought them off Epay used but they are new or very very close to new, they were used for one flowering cycle. I'm not sure what lighting I'm going with next. I still like my HID - pretty hard to argue with results. I started using the 900w light as a side light with this grow in flower and I'm not really sold on them as the plants that were close say 12-15" away some shade leaves were pale that were closest to the LED so I may use the HID and combo with one of the LED lamps next grow and see how it goes.

 

[maccamoo]

Merry christmas Bob

 

[Green Dreamz]

Sent the links to you Bob....hope you like what you see.....Merry Christmas to you and yours....if i can ever help just let me know

 

[bobrown14]

Thanks everyone for the holiday cheer!

Merry Christmas everyone - harvest day tomorrow!!

 

[Green Dreamz]

Looking forward to some harvest pics

 

[bobrown14]

Ok taking a break for breakfast... harvest day is here I may only harvest 3 of the 5 girls. I have the big girl thats turning purple and another little girl that looks like cheese and still has a lot of white pistols and some new as well so both of them can use a little fattening up. I'll make some room in the tent for them and let them go a few more days.
We harvested litle girl - she's all purpley and is the plant I almost wigged out after my test smoke last week, so she's potent meds right there. Today chopped all but the last 2 lower branches and this one is going back under 24/0 for some re-veg and clone taking. She was small and I mean runt small say only 24" tall tops and I got 200g wet after trimming, if I get 40g to smoke I'd be ecstatic. Thats about 20% yield from wet to dry.... these nugz are small but dense and they are finished. I have some amber trichomes and mostly cloudy say 60% at least....

Gonna get some eats and then back at the harvest.

so here's some pics of the little girl:

Look honey I grew a box of flowers for us!! Shazam! I'm excited.....

Ok - these next 2 pics I can see the 3 different types of trichomes which is pretty cool
You can see the mushroom headed ones in the next pic along with what looks like a cloudy sea of much smaller trichomes - those are 2 of the 3 types. The 2nd pic you can see what looks like a pimple or bump on the leaf which is the 3rd type of trichome - all you can see in the mushroom head on the leaf with no stalk. In the first pic the leaf is totally covered with trichomes. Later after drying we will take another look at those trichomes. I think I got high just trimming with bare hands, either that or my adrenalin is going just cause it's harvest day!

 

[Green Dreamz]

Great update Bo...........do you check your trichomes on the leaves or the pods themselves......i am just asking as i couldnt see any ambers on the pods....just the leaves....and from my understanding you go by the buds/pods not the leaves......its probably just my eyes fooling me again....either way looks like some Dank Bud my friend