JoJo's Hempy SCROG Bucket C99 Grow Journal - 2015

Ha ha. No need on my account. Actually I read the first three pages of your journal the other night when I was out wandering. Sorta interested in hempy. I haven't gotten around to looking seriously at it- but would like to do some version of hydro type grow. Every time I sweep and try to mop up my grow I feel more like switching away from peat moss.
Why don't more people do hempy? I seem to just see it for small grows of a few plants. Is there some sort of drawback to it?

This is a good hempy sog journal that I would recommend, Come SOG with Me - 112 Plant - 2 Liter - Hempy SOG, of course there are many others but this is the one that got my interest.
 
Update (48 days old):

Time for a quickie. I fed the plants with 1/2 strength of the scheduled nutes, as the large one was looking a little droopy (not sure why, looks like overwatering?). The runoff was about 650PPM, but I didn't measure the input.

I like the comparison between the last few days, so I'm going with that again. Here's another 3 days:

3 days ago:
1_3_23.jpg

1_4_23.jpg


There's not a lot of growth change underneath the canopy, just how I want it! pretty much all of the tops below 1" of the canopy have been removed, except for a few branches that didn't quite make it. They'll make fine clones when I prep for flower. Here's an undershot:

1_3_24.jpg


As for the small Hempy, she's still growing great. I really need to flower her soon, as she's just going to get way to big for that 1 gal pot.

1_5_14.jpg


The big update is probably on the breeding plants. I've been collecting pollen for the last few days (not much each day, I'd recommend waiting 3-4 days between gatherings), and most of it is coming from the C99. I got just enough from the NL to pollinate 2 of the branches of the other NL. I also did some cross-breeding on one branch.

Since I read that the first pollen may not be viable, I've labelled each branch with the date it was collected and applied. I mixed the pollen with about 3 parts white flour to stretch it a bit further. I found the best way was to use a q-tip and tap it lightly over the pistols to dust them. I didn't feel too comfortable applying it directly to the pistols as I didn't want to damage them.

I really want to chop these plants, but I'm not sure if the pollen is viable. Any opinions? I also think I need to let the NL go longer since I had hardly any pollen.

The first picture is pretty cool. It shows how the flowers open up and little strings are attached to the "nanners". They hang down, dry out in a few days, and release pollen.

1_1_27.jpg


1_2_27.jpg


1_6_8.jpg




Side note: I'm still battling these damn gnats. I'm still using neem oil (2x as strong as before) 1-2 times/day, but still seeing adults around. I dug in the Promix a bit, and saw tons of babies hopping around! Looks like I may have to get some sand to cover the surface as well as some CV-80D.

Does anyone know if gnats can live in the Perlite/Vermiculite medium? I don't see many by the Hempys, but it doesn't mean they aren't there..

That's all folks!
 
I read through this awhile ago. It's an AWESOME grow!

Yeah thanks HH. I'll read through that the first chance I get :thumb:
I'm liking this pollination experiment. I'm going to try this later in the summer, when I have a bit more time. I'll be able to keep the hermied plants outside somewhere so I can control the pollen situation a little better.
 
So... I'm a neem user... probably already mentioned that somewhere. Love the stuff.
I'm just not so sure it's your answer to gnats. They're living and feeding in your medium. They don't eat your plants directly.
Neem is not a surface insecticide. It's absorbed by the plant and then absorbed by buggins that eat your plants. The soap used to cut the neem in the spray mix will have a negative effect on any hard bodied bugs you spray it on, but that's really because soap breaks down their armor shells.
So, since neem is an ingested insecticide, and the gnats are feeding off the medium/water instead of the plant directly.... well.... you get the idea.
Have you tried applying your neem mix directly to the medium? This has been my application method lately as I'm just amazingly lazy find it easier than spraying. I usually do a neem treatment every month around the 1st as a preventative measure. Perhaps it will have more impact on the gnats.... perhaps gnats just don't feel the impact of neem for some reason.
I have seen some threads about controlling gnats with simple sticky insect strips.
 
Yeah thanks HH. I'll read through that the first chance I get :thumb:
I'm liking this pollination experiment. I'm going to try this later in the summer, when I have a bit more time. I'll be able to keep the hermied plants outside somewhere so I can control the pollen situation a little better.

Have you considered using Colloidal Silver to produce feminized seeds instead of using pollen from hermies?
 
Some users have good results using powered neem to deal with the gnats, just dust the soils surface, you can also use Diatomaceous Earth dusted on the soil surface.
 
Argh I hate them bugs crawling around. I have some flying ones from time to time, but I'm taking strict measures as well.

Nice PVC scrog design there! Interesting.

Looking great. Did you check on your ladies right after lights were turned on? They take a bit to readjust to light and start "waking up". Anyways I don't know much about Soil, so I'm probably wrong on this one.

Good luck there!:Namaste:
 
Yeah thanks HH. I'll read through that the first chance I get :thumb:
I'm liking this pollination experiment. I'm going to try this later in the summer, when I have a bit more time. I'll be able to keep the hermied plants outside somewhere so I can control the pollen situation a little better.

That's true. I carry the box of "hermies" out of the room to collect pollen each time. It sucks. I'd bet the outside air would dry the sacs out way faster too. You can propably just use a bag to collect pollen!

So... I'm a neem user... probably already mentioned that somewhere. Love the stuff.
I'm just not so sure it's your answer to gnats. They're living and feeding in your medium. They don't eat your plants directly.
Neem is not a surface insecticide. It's absorbed by the plant and then absorbed by buggins that eat your plants. The soap used to cut the neem in the spray mix will have a negative effect on any hard bodied bugs you spray it on, but that's really because soap breaks down their armor shells.
So, since neem is an ingested insecticide, and the gnats are feeding off the medium/water instead of the plant directly.... well.... you get the idea.
Have you tried applying your neem mix directly to the medium? This has been my application method lately as I'm just amazingly lazy find it easier than spraying. I usually do a neem treatment every month around the 1st as a preventative measure. Perhaps it will have more impact on the gnats.... perhaps gnats just don't feel the impact of neem for some reason.
I have seen some threads about controlling gnats with simple sticky insect strips.

So I've always sprayed the top of the Promix with neem oil (diluted). I also pray it in the drain holes, as that's where the adults seem to hang out. I also noticed these little, like REALLY little bugs that *hopped* around under the soil. They seemed like lice or something? Then I saw a larvae crawling around, which I assume was a gnat. I even flushed with diluted H2O2 the other night! I bet the gnat larvae are just feeding off of whatever those tiny bugs are. That's a lot of good information too, thanks Tead!

Oh, and I looked at two big box stores and Wallyworld, and couldn't find ANY yellow sticky traps.

Some users have good results using powered neem to deal with the gnats, just dust the soils surface, you can also use Diatomaceous Earth dusted on the soil surface.

I didn't even know they made powdered neem?! I'll have to look for that.. I know I could get some diatomaceous earth though!

Argh I hate them bugs crawling around. I have some flying ones from time to time, but I'm taking strict measures as well.

Nice PVC scrog design there! Interesting.

Looking great. Did you check on your ladies right after lights were turned on? They take a bit to readjust to light and start "waking up". Anyways I don't know much about Soil, so I'm probably wrong on this one.

Good luck there!:Namaste:


Thanks bud, I hate these bugs so much right now!

Thanks for the PVC comment. I can lift up the plant and rotate it however I want, feed it easily, and the top pops off if needed.

I never see my ladies until after about 8 hours of sunlight, and all these pictures are at least that late or later. They are looking better today though. Leaves aren't bending anymore, and I attribute it to the 1/2 feeding.


I think I'm going to have to flip the switch soon. How long do you guys recon?
 
I think I'm going to have to flip the switch soon. How long do you guys recon?

on the bucket? I like that thing too by the way.
 
on the bucket? I like that thing too by the way.

Thanks man!

Yep, I'm thinking I'll prune off a lot of low leaves here fairly soon, let her recover a bit and then flip to 12/12. I've read to let the screen fill 75%, then flower, but this strain stretches like 2.5x it's height, so I don't know...
 
Thanks man!

Yep, I'm thinking I'll prune off a lot of low leaves here fairly soon, let her recover a bit and then flip to 12/12.

Sounds like a good plan to me. You've got time. I was pretty anxious about the stretch when I started growing sativas, but I haven't had any I couldn't tame with the scrog so far, even the ones that I thought I had way overgrown. I just keep weaving the branches back down through the squares. I also use thicker string now than I used to, stretched a bit looser, which makes it easier to tuck the branches through without breaking them. Or sometimes I tie them down to the string with pipe cleaners, when a tuck under isn't quite working. After the stretch I remove the little buds under the screen and try to trim it down to an even spread of budsites instead of a big sticky mess. Which it sometimes is if I had to weave branches back and forth all over the place
 
That's some solid growth for 14days. Hell yeah to that. I usually try to flip them when the top of the canopy is just peeking through the trellising, but another week of veg time won't hurt as long as you keep the canopy in check. For how much it grew in the past two weeks, it'll probably grow half as much again - if not more so- in the next week. just keep it in mind. I think you'll have a nice full screen and light foot print in at least 7 more days.

As for defol, I know the jury's still out on it around here, but I just trim everything up from the bottom until the canopy is roughly 9-12" thick. Never grown with LED's so the light penetration might be suited for a different thickness of canopy.

This is what it ends up looking like:

IMG_042527.JPG
 
@Weaselcracker - I was curious about getting a giant sticky mess. I figured the fuller it is, the more likely that is to happen. Though, I don't really have much growth under the screen, so hopefully it doesn't get too bad. It's good to know I can just keep filling her up though!

@iwltfum - I think I'll be set back a bit due to pH issues (I'll post pics soon), but I still took your recommendations on the defol. I hadn't really looked into it, but I was thinking it'd be best to leave SOME layer of fan leaves under the net to soak up that extra light. I went with about the thickness you recommended, so we'll see how it works out!
 
Update (52 days old):

Alright, so I've had pH problems the last few days. I don't know how I didn't notice eariler, but I've been a bit busy lately. Some of the lower fan leaves were getting nutrients sucked from them and dying, and growth has been somewhat slow. Here's the 3 day comparison (pictures taken last night):

1_4_23.jpg

1_3_25.jpg


Color has been off, the edges of the leaves are curling up (showing potassium deficiency, if I diagnosed correctly), and the slow growth are what tipped me off. I tested some runoff yesterday, and it was at ~5.35! I recalibrated my pH meter, and of course it was off ~.2. That means I've been watering at around 5.6 pH. I mixed up a new batch of 6.0 nutrient solution, and ran it through until runoff was better.

I also went ahead and stripped the lower growth, or "lollipopped". There are still some smaller branches at the bottom, but those will be my clones.

1_4_24.jpg


1_2_28.jpg


1_1_28.jpg


I also went ahead and stripped lower growth and a few leaves from the little Hempy. I don't even know if I can flower her under the 4 ft. fluorescents anymore, she's too big!

1_5_15.jpg


Side note: I leave my fan leaves in a bin in my grow room to dry out. I've heard some nasty bacteria can come from this, but haven't had any problems yet. Any input?
 
What kind of a pH issue were you having? I think alot of fan leaves is a good thing, but there is also a point where some of them just aren't getting light and they eventually die because of that. My goal is to get the fan leaves that will eventually die before they do because those are the ones that aren't performing photosynthesis as efficiently as the others. And they end up being kind of a drain on the plant in the long run because the plant tries to keep that leaf healthy for as long as possible, when it really isn't giving back what it is taking.

I think you will be happy with that style of trimming (as you can see from my picture, I left some fan leaves on under the netting as well. Usually the canopy ends up covering them pretty well after the first 3 weeks of bloom, but it's good to have them on in order to have nice growth and less stretching during that time). When I started doing it this way, I noticed that I would get alot less trim (still more than enough), but the yield actually went up, so that told me that the buds were growing more efficiently this way...
 
Those 'leaves in a bin' tend to grow a weird dust/mold after a while which freaks me out. Not sure what it is - but I take them out after they are dried. The longer they sit the more 'dusty' they get. I toss them in my freezer
 
Those 'leaves in a bin' tend to grow a weird dust/mold after a while which freaks me out. Not sure what it is - but I take them out after they are dried. The longer they sit the more 'dusty' they get. I toss them in my freezer

Yeah I try to keep all dead and dying growth out of the grow space. It will only raise humidity and create places for pests and mildew to hang out. If your worried about them being in your trash, then you could just start a compost bin with them (not in your grow space) or burn them, if those are viable options.
 
On the leaves in the bin - I don't like leaving them in the room too long, and try to take them out when they dry up. I haven't noticed any 'dust' yet, but I'm getting them out today anyway, as I just chopped the C99 hermie and need to dispose of it. I never let them build up too much, I was just curious if you guys knew of any possible issues. Better safe than sorry!

@iwltfum - The pH issues were the leaves curling up or "canoeing", slow growth, and dying off lower leaves. The leaves dying may have been due to little light, but I KNOW my pH was off. I can tell a difference in growth over the last 12 hours, it's crazy!

Thanks for the continued help guys!
 
Back
Top Bottom