Forest Skunk & His 'Sweet Tai' Girls Performing on Soil - 2011

[Forest Skunk]

Hi there

and welcome to my first grow journal.

This is not my first grow and I've gone from 1m² under a 400w HPS without any ventilation to now 2m² (1,5mx1,6m) under a 600w HPS with a 420m³/h exhaust fan. I would like to have 1000w but with that here in Germany my electricity bill would kill me.

Everything happens in my 39m² Single-Room-Appartment so if you think you have no space in your one and only room to grow weed - just watch!

At the moment I have 10 plants going, they are already flowering for 12 days now. I would have started the journal earlier but had to secure my computer setup and to buy a camera. This is now done, so here we go ...

What strain is it? Sweet Tai from Sweet Seeds

Genotype: Hybrid with Sativa predominance.
Region: Thai, Holland.
Lineage: Super Tai x Early Skunk
Indoor flowering: 61-65 days
Outdoor flowering: 1-15 October
THC: 10-18%
Yield indoor: 300-400 gr/m2
Yield outdoor: 400-600 gr/plant

Is it in Veg or Flower stage? Flowering

If in Veg... For how long? They were vegged for 3 before

If in Flower stage... For how long? 2 weeks

Indoor or outdoor? Indoor

Soil or Hydro? Soil
If soil... what is in your mix? BioBizz Light Mix

If soil... What size pot? 10l as I inserted the bottom of my Air Pots too deep

Size of light? 600w

Is it aircooled? no

Temp of Room/cab? 28°C Day / 20°C Night

RH of Room/cab? 50-60%

PH of media or res? dont know

Any Pests ? I catched one ant some days ago and already applied DE in my garden to keep them away.

How often are you watering? every 2-3 days, when the pots are light enough

Type and strength of ferts used?

Veg Stage: BioBizz Grow in 2-4ml/L
Flowering: BioBizz Grow 2ml/L + BB Bloom 5ml/L


Here are some pictures ... they probably will get better when I learn tu use my new camera ;-):

This is the entry to my grow area

Here you see the Air Pots. Even though it may be unnecessary I raised them from the floor to prevent cold feet.

And now some plants in more or less detail:

This one and some of the others too has a problem which I diagnose as a Mag def. Already bought epsom salts and will apply them today.

Please feel free to comment or ask if you have any questions. I would also like to hear from people who have experience with the BioBizz nutes.

 

[afganred]

other than the minor problem looking good im in

 

[Bandit420]

Very nice grow FS!
I'll be watching this one for sure!!

 

[HempRocket]

I'll be following your grow if that's OK.

 

[BassPlayer]

Off to a great start for sure

Bassplayer

 

[Forest Skunk]

Update

UPDATE 14th day of Flowering

back again for an update. thanx to everyone who stopped by.

@bandit ... i feel honored when u say that yesterday i read your thread from last year and i´m impressed, i like your style of trying things out and experimenting.

@HempRocket ... u are very welcome

@bass player ... yes they look very healthy.

in my last grows the plants were fine too at this moment (2nd week of 12/12). problems normally started after 4 weeks of 12/12. this time i bought a ph-meter and an ec-meter and now i know that ph was slightly too high (7.0 with nutes). if my ec-meter is correct then the biobizz feeding scheme, which increases in strength over the flowering period, results in ec-values of up to 2.45 which - of course - is way too high.

a friend of mine didnt care about their feeding plan and gave them 2ml/L BB Grow and 5ml/L BB Bloom (without Alg-A-Mic or TopMax) over the whole flowering period. he ended up with 440g of buds under a single 400watter. i saw buds on his plants that i´d expect under 1000w.

so let´s see what his feeding plan will produce under 600w and in air pots

here are some pictures i took today

that is my "control leaf" for checking if the epsom salts helped:

 

[White]

Looking good !!

 

[Pop Kulture]

I am just starting grow with BioBizz so I am looking forward to hearing your experience.

Regarding the light - if the grow area is rectangular then you might want to consider a light mover. I use a light mover to cover 8'x4' (1Mx2M) with a single 600w-1000w light. The down side is you lose height. Just a thought.

 

[Forest Skunk]

Update 18th day of flowering

Hi everyone,

it's time for an update.

Thank you White

Yeah, Pop Kulture, light movers are great but my room is 1.5mx1.6m so iḿ thinking about adjust-a-wings. i hear only good things about it, but it's quite expensive. Regarding BB Light Mix soil ... i think i won't buy it again but will switch to a richer mix, which would be for instance Compo Sana here in Germany.

I'm watering now every other day and with my tap water the ec of my nutrient solution is around 2.0, the pH is 6.5. Didn't measure the runoff yet. They're looking great and maybe i should not overrate the deficiency which is to see in the lowest leafs on most, but not all, of the plants and as long as it not progresses too fast i won't care.

The girls are around 80-90cm in height now and nearly all of them were supercropped to achieve an more or less even canopy.

They were also sprayed with neem every week up until now to prevent most of the pests.

Ok, here are the snapshots of today:

remember my name?

Thanks to all who watch and comment ... bye ...

 

[Forest Skunk]

Update 23rd Day of Flowering

nothing new under my artificial sun. buds start to grow and and everything looks fine to me.

some new pictures:

that's all for today. if you have any quaestions, feel free to ask

 

[MadMardo]

Thats a friken jungle in there... Nice Work

 

[Pop Kulture]

Update 18th day of flowering

The girls are around 80-90cm in height now and nearly all of them were supercropped to achieve an more or less even canopy.

Nice!

Can post any close ups of some supercropping?

 

[Forest Skunk]

Update 28th Day of Flowering

back to report and post some new pictures.

thank you MadMardo .. i'm amazed myself and more and more i think that sweet tai is a great strain in every aspect

buds grew a bit larger in the last days and i think for supercropped (and 3 of them also topped in their youth) plants the bud size is ok for end of the forth week of 12/12.

some of the lowest leafs still develop necrotic tips and die off eventually but those are the ones that get no or little light anyway.

ok, here are the photos of the day:

this one leaf on one plant shows a deficiency. i'll have to flush her if that progresses:

Pop Kulture here are two cluse-ups of supercropped stems. the first one was done one week into flowering:

and this one was sc'ed in the 2nd week of vegging:

i tried to mark the point of the 'elbow' here so you can set this in relation to the plants overall height:

i never tried this before and it resulted in more branching and stronger shoots. the canopy nearly looks like a scrog grow without the net. can't wait to see how it yields.

thanks to all who watch and comment and ... happy growing!

 

[Pop Kulture]

Thanks - I have never supercropped so please forgive my ignorance. I thought the supercrop is supposed make that portion of the plant grow at 90 degrees to the stem. Your pic shows it of growing normally - so that is what your striving for? Just curious.

 

[IGrowGrass]

Nice and green, looking very happy

 

[Forest Skunk]

Thank you IGrow Grass

Thanks - I have never supercropped so please forgive my ignorance. I thought the supercrop is supposed make that portion of the plant grow at 90 degrees to the stem. Your pic shows it of growing normally - so that is what your striving for? Just curious.

Pop Kulture, as i understand it, you do it to increase branching (significantly). You bent the shoot above a node until it reaches an angle of around 90° and afterwards - within a few days - it goes back up and in most cases leaves a slight elbow. But in general it returns to vertical growth.

The procedure lets a certain hormone (auxin i think), which normally is only/mostly found in the main shoot, flow into the other shoots too - which lets them grow more and stronger than before. Itś like they all think they are the main shoot. As now more bud sites are closer to the light, yield should be increased.

Topping achieves the same thing, but with supercropping you're not loosing the main bud and do not set the plant back by removing bio matter.

So to say it in short, i strived for the SCROG-look with many mid-sized buds that have an equal distance to the light.

I first saw it in a youtube video series named "soma speaks". you may want to watch that too. i like the guy and instantly bought his book.

 

[Pop Kulture]

Thank you IGrow Grass

Pop Kulture, as i understand it, you do it to increase branching (significantly). You bent the shoot above a node until it reaches an angle of around 90° and afterwards - within a few days - it goes back up and in most cases leaves a slight elbow. But in general it returns to vertical growth.

The procedure lets a certain hormone (auxin i think), which normally is only/mostly found in the main shoot, flow into the other shoots too - which lets them grow more and stronger than before. Itś like they all think they are the main shoot. As now more bud sites are closer to the light, yield should be increased.

Topping achieves the same thing, but with supercropping you're not loosing the main bud and do not set the plant back by removing bio matter.

So to say it in short, i strived for the SCROG-look with many mid-sized buds that have an equal distance to the light.

I first saw it in a youtube video series named "soma speaks". you may want to watch that too. i like the guy and instantly bought his book.

I been skooled and thanks for the tip. I will check out the video ASAP.

Yeah, its all starting to make my head spin between Topping, Fimming, LSTing and Supercropping...which one to do when and why? I just marvel at the stoners that figured this shit out in the first place. That's a long line of growers!

 

[Forest Skunk]

I been skooled and thanks for the tip. I will check out the video ASAP.

Yeah, its all starting to make my head spin between Topping, Fimming, LSTing and Supercropping...which one to do when and why? I just marvel at the stoners that figured this shit out in the first place. That's a long line of growers!

I think that (within certain boundaries) you can only try, what works best in your situation. All of the mentioned methods aim at getting more bud sites close to the light, which - hopefully - should increase yield. You don´t need them if you have a SOG setup. But they are very useful, if you have only few plants, like i do - especially when they grow in large containers.

I came to it after i realized that my Sweet Tai always had a large top cola and not much more. All of the lower buds were to small. This was the same for a friend of mine who has a different setup. Topping and/or Supercropping seemed to be necessary in this case.

 

[Forest Skunk]

Update 36th Day of Flowering

I dont have much time lately, but the show must go on ... so here's an update. The plants are now in their 6th week of 12/12 so they have ca. 3 weeks to go.

One or two of the girls are showing signs of deficiency (i think) in the middle leafs, but i'm not sure what it is and what to do. Are they over-/underfed? Could this be a hotspot? Because the affected plants/leafs are the ones directly under the lamp, while the outer plants look nice and green from top to bottom.

Looking at the following pics, what do you guys think goes wrong here?

 

[HempRocket]

You're right, it could be heat related. How far away is your light? Maybe you should also install a fan that blows air just underneath your light to distribute the heat. Just a thought.