Fuzzy & the Hempy Bucket - Chrystal F1 Hybrid

[Fuzzy Duck]

Rapidly approaching the end of the 3rd week of flowering...


The hempy girls have shown a mild P-phosphorus def over the last week on the lower leafs nothing to serious to be concerned about... with a slight increase in lower leaf drop, no real discolouring to leafs which drop tho !

So i have started to add the P/K supplement to every feed from now on following the HESI HYDRO feed guide.

Still going to follow a water/feed/water/feed regime at present in till other wise concern on plant health.



Soil girls look pretty normal, lower leaf yellowing & seems as expected from past experience with soil grows...

All in all looking 98%



Here's a few pic's

Soil girls on the left hand side & hempy girls on the right.

Hempy girl.

Soil girls.

 

[Conradino23]

How's the density of the buds in comparison?

 

[donpaul.p]

plants look great mate well done,

lets discuss taste and quality soil vs hydro/dwc, i was always told soil plants tend to produce a better quality product, but when i grew the same strains in soil and dwc i found their was no difference at all, i could not tell with the taste, how harsh it was or even how it looked, to me the difference is to small to notice, you may find out in a lab but for the average person i couldnt tell which was which, i guess if you didnt flush the soil or flush the hydro or dwc then you may tell the difference but i stop using nutes in my soil plants 2 ish weeks before harvest and my dwc gets plain water for the last week ish, if i took the lables off my jars and mixed the buds up i couldnt tell which came from dwc and which didnt.

so i think as long as you use organic nutes or at least flush or stop feeding nutes with the soil plants and the same with the dwc or hydro then chances are you wont notice much difference,

the only difference i did notice was after harvest, the dwc buds took longer to be ready to go into jars, the soil grown buds dried quicker and went in the cure jars a bit quicker.

hydro and dwc does grow at least twice as quick as soil plants and they dont really slow down in growth after you defol like soil plants do, soil plants do take time to recover after a defol so you do need to factor this in when you defol if you defol,

i found if you defol 2 or 3 times in veg and not take leaves every few days then the plant dont stay stunted for as long, the same with flower dont defol during the first 21 days then defol and again around day 45 of 12-12, i find that seems to work ok, i usually defol all my plants to some extent, i dont do a heavy defol on all my plants but if the fan leaves are blocking light then i do defol and you can see the improvement after a few days.

im still not sure on what grow method im going to go with but hydro and dwc does grow much quicker than soil but its a bigger risk to me as it means ive had to put time and effort into a hydro type grow so look more pro if anything bad happened, where as soil i can say i just planted seeds and watered them.

my room is as full as yours now mate and im only a few days into 12-12. so looks like i need to set up a second flower room as the plants are growing much quicker this time round,

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

How's the density of the buds in comparison?

At present i would have to say the soil girls look better formed bud wise at the moment

I may put some of this down to closer internode spacing on the soil girls making the bud appear more fuller but appear marginally larger over the hempy girls.

Also phenotype between soil/hempy girls may play a slight role...



I'll do my best to get some close up pic's of main colas for comparison over the next few weeks

 

[Light Addict]

Good great greenness to you my friend, glad your girls they be a thrivin! Looking forward to comparison shots as we all like a comparison on growing. Green and pleasant thoughts to your garden!

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

plants look great mate well done,

lets discuss taste and quality soil vs hydro/dwc, i was always told soil plants tend to produce a better quality product, but when i grew the same strains in soil and dwc i found their was no difference at all, i could not tell with the taste, how harsh it was or even how it looked, to me the difference is to small to notice.

Pretty much an open ended debate soil vs hydro & quality of bud, i believe their can many variables to which effects end smell/taste of the bud

Such as drying to fast, length of cure process, nutrients used or whether a suitable flush was applied before harvest etc



Over the past soil organic grows i messed around with soil amendments some of these amendments produced a different intensity/aroma of the cured bud with a mild taste difference... bit more noticeable to when i cooked with it !

So i kind of think its a bit like grape growing for wine making, grapes are grown in different regions around the world in vastly different soil composition this all effects taste of grapes in the wine made as their is a big difference between french to south african to california wines...

So in my belief soil type, nutrients used over hydro etc should result in a different aroma/taste, bit like why do super market tomatos taste so bland... coz they are mainly hydro grown when compared to home grown tomatos from the back yard !



I also think of what nutrients are used in hydro... some may use just the grow/bloom others may use the complete line some may add finishing nutrients etc which may all effect end smell/aroma/taste

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

End of week 4


Hempy girls since the addition of P'K the P-phosphorus def has slowly been curbed only showing minor def now to which i have decide to add to every feed/water cycle... need to be careful & check EC now as the P/K spikes it a little causing nutrient burn so i have reduced Hesi bloom nutrient a bit to obtain EC of 1.8 aprox when including P/K with bloom nutrients.

Still getting lower leaf drop with minor discolouring at present but seems to have slowed down a little !

Hempy bud pic's.

Soil girls in air pots.

Looking pretty fine & have no real comment to be made so far...

Soil pic's.

Over all trichomes where noticeable some 2 weeks ago & now more prevalent on the sugar/bud leafs, a sweet, mildly floral & hashish with a touch of fuel like aroma fill the tent



The pic's are a bit hard to tell on bud development between hempy vs soil but i still feel soil girls are slightly better formed at present only time will tell !



Current plans with hempy girls are to continue feed/water with P/K intill end of 7th week... reduce nutrients by 50% for the 8th weeks & to 25% for the 9th week before the chop... no flushing is planned !

Soil girls feed all the way up to end of 7th week then use plain old tap water for the last 2 weeks.


Chop 'n' harvest... dry 'n' cure for xmas testing results

 

[Light Addict]

Mmmm! looking lush my friend. If they were my girls I'd be extremely happy with myself that's for sure! just simply: keep doin what your obviously doing so damn well!

 

[donpaul.p]

looking good fuzzy, looks like some very frosty bud,

interesting comment about soil/hydro buds, id have to try more strains and compare them to make it a more fair test, but i use the same nutrients for both soil and dwc plants, its just a lot of dwc and hydro growers say the difference is minimal if any, thats the results i got. i wonder if a fruity sativa strain would be a more fait test, something thats not as potent and has a stronger taste to it,

hmm ill have to see what seeds i got, maybe i got something that i can grow and clone

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Its just a lot of dwc and hydro growers say the difference is minimal if any, thats the results i got.

Fair point

Even after doing some looking around/research i get the same sort of feeling !


Mixed feelings at present... some seed breeders suggest soil/organic brings out the more complex flavours 'n' aroma...

But then again smokers are not really known for a sense of smell or taste

 

[Conradino23]

Mixed feelings at present... some seed breeders suggest soil/organic brings out the more complex flavours 'n' aroma...

But then again smokers are not really known for a sense of smell or taste

I think that here you're spot on the problem of evaluating the taste/smell value of your buds. I always thought it was less important factor than the high produced, but nevertheless quite nice to enjoy. For the sake of argument I'll refer to wine tasting again. For instance, my father-in-law attends wine-tasting courses, which are quite popular here in Italy. They have different methods of exploring the issue, but everywhere double blind is adopted. What you discover very promptly however is that most of the people will like the cheapest, the least sophisticated wine, cause it appeals to their taste buds, which are not trained enough for complex structure of the great wines... in other words if organic weed tastes better there are few able to appreciate it

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Nearly the end of the 5th week.... 4 more to go

Some minor bad news, some of which is to hind sight & should of planned accordingly.


2 days ago i broke a branch on one of the soil girls whilst removing a hempy girl for watering... the sellotape fix didn't really do the job so i removed the entire limb !

Bud trimmed off for the bubble bag collection tho

The limb break was partly due to the girls getting heavy with limbs bending all over the show, hence i should of staked in advanced to prevent this...

So i had to stake the hempys girls today !

Unfortunaly whilst trying to get the cane throught the perlite/vermiculite i was a tad forceful & busted the bottom of the hempy bucket making a nice crack.

Lucky enough i had a spare hempy at hand, the girl was successfully lifted out of old hempy with massive root ball & placed into new hempy with out further incident.


Hempy girls where staked with central cane & fasten with a good old fashion pipe cleaner to aid support whilst a length of string was placed around remaining limbs to em flopping about.

A quick pic of the soil girls, i'll get around to staking em shortly.

Over all pic of the girls in the tent.

The motto of this story is plan & prepare ahead to prevent accidents

 

[Light Addict]

Nice chunky looking buds my friend!

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Nice chunky looking buds my friend!

Ye looking alright for untrained plants

I do enjoy watching em grow from seed naturally before applying lst & topping when i have a few clones spare !


The next few weeks should show extra bud mass & i must admit i'm looking forwards to seeing end results

 

[donpaul.p]

very nice fuzzy, looks like some very frosty nugs to me, well done mate.

not good about the breakages but it happens to all of us at some point, i know ive dont it once or twice just moving the plants out of the room to clean, its just one of them things that growers have to put up with, no matter how good you are your going to snap a branch at some point in your growing career, looks like you got plenty to replace it with though, you certainly got some very nice plants

@conradino, your right mate, i guess its just like wine tasting, but we all know bad weed from good weed, we all like certain strains and certain pheno types so we do know what we like and dont, ive had harsh bud in the past that ill never grow again and ive had really fruity woody strains that i wish i had more seeds of, the main difference i have found with soil vs hydro/dwc is that the soil buds take much less time to dry and go into cure jars, where as the hydro plants seem to have much more moisture in them,

last grow i was tempted to just feed plain water for the last 7 days then leave the res empty so the plant has to use up the nutrients in the leaves plus with no water uptake it is only going to lose moisture so makes drying a bit quicker, not saying quicker drying is better but compared to soil grown plants i find my dwc plants take a good week or more longer to get to the cureing stage.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

End of the 6th week... time for the flush

Due to plant development i am now looking at harvesting at the end of the 8th week... pretty good a i thought for a strain which takes 8 to 10 weeks to finish with the original plan of 9 weeks !

A number of the fine pistils have turned a bright orange, under microscope the trichomes are some 30% cloudy with a majority turning cloudy the odd amber tric is present & the rest are clear at present...

I suspect be the end of 8th week i will be near 70% cloudy tric the rest will ripen up during the drying & curing process, hopefully leading to near 100% cloudy tric bud


Over all pic of of the girls in the tent... soil on the left, hempy on the right.

The better performing hempy girl, she's inline for a comp next month

One of the nicer soil organic girls with a reasonable fat cola

The bud has really bulked up over the last week being quite dense the colas on average are aprox 8 inch at a guess & may get mildly fatter over the next 2 weeks...

The soil girls have pretty much remained problem free with out any real noticeable defs, staying leafy green through out the entire grow with some minor yellowing now occurring...


The hempy girls have had some minor problems partly due to myself being new to inert growing mediums & hydro style nutrients PH/EC along with feeding regime...

In the past i have mentioned about leaf drop whilst in flowering using a feed, water, feed, water regime... i have corrected this over the last week or so to feed every 2 days this has reduced leaf drop by some 90%. I suspect leaf drop was due to old feeding/water regime !

I'm still tweaking EC levels tho to prevent nutrient burn which has happened only twice now.



I may also move away from a standard hempy bucket as the run to waste style of growing is some what nutrient intensive... which may lead to a hybrid hempy bucket on a dripper/recirculating sort of system in the future.

 

[Light Addict]

Awesome my friend well chuffed for ya!

 

[donpaul.p]

very nice fuzzy, its great to see a plant as frosty as that, ive only grown 2 strains that produce trichs like that and its the ak47 x uk cherry cheese and critical sensi star, so its always nice to see something as frosty or more frosty.

luckily i took clones of the sensi star and its covered in trichs in early flower so should be as good as the parent it was from, so im keen to see how the different nutrients affect the end results,

what strain is it mate? i know you probably said on page 1 so ill go back and have a read, certainy looks a very nice strain,
id be very happy to produce something as nice as that, its got to be high up on the frosty list

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Nirvana Chrystal is a White Widow hybrid that has been re-back-crossed with Northern Light. Two world-famous marijuana strains! Its big sticky buds give off an almost kerosene-like aroma and produce a quick-hitting high. An F1 hybrid, Chrystal produces outstanding yields of top quality grass. Its plants are much easier to manicure than White Widow. Chrystal was a first place winner of the Dutch Highlife Cup ( a renowned marijuana competition) in 2002.


At the time i was looking around for the Snow White strain by Nirvana another F1 hybrid, i was certainly after an F1 for this grow... but the local shop only had Chrystal in stock at the time which took my liking.

Nirvana has a few trichome frosty strains available here's a link Nirvana Seeds Weekend Whopper they are also a sponsor of 420

 

[Light Addict]

Nice strain Info my friend thanks for the next beans Idea for me!