Jon's First Outdoor Grow: Sugar Breath Photoperiod & Strawberry Banana Autoflower

[Bill284]

It's complete insanity. Big, deep, troughs full of long-term living soil he's perfected over 40 years of growing, a variation on Subcool's mix. Four troughs per greenhouse, each one goes the whole length of the house. He grows with sunlight and augmented LED in veg - Gavita 1700e Pro's. So in veg, that whole greenhouse gets lights that come on a slider and all that and kick in when the sun gets to a certain level. Then in flower the lights go and it's all the sun. Light leaks you wonder? Me too. The outside of the greenhouse has the system where there's the entire structure is completely covered on the outside. The skin comes down either side from the roof. Not cheap. He's got water feeding containers on the outside that look like water towers - 1000s of gallons. Each greenhouse is 100% thermostatically/environmentally controlled in terms of temp and Rh, which is how he can get away with having such few fans up top. He puts out between 250-300 pounds a year with this setup. At least that's what he sells to the dispensaries. Lol.

Dude also has an entire indoor setup, like a 40x40 space, where he grows strictly Gavita LED's and saves that stuff for his friends and him. (I am lucky enough to be a very good friend of this person's, known him 40 years.)

I remember when our band was first starting out, he started to come around with his weed. He just started growing, closet in his bedroom kind of thing. His weed sucked all the time. We used to give him a raft of crap about it. But he's the kind of dude that once he gets pissed, he gets ultra focused. And us telling him about his chumpy ass brown tasting weed got him pissed.

Now, he does this.

He is also lucky and connected enough that he somehow at some point met and became friends with all the guys in Widespread Panic. He is to them as I was to the Dead. Only he's also their weed guy!!!! Jealous doesn't begin to describe my feelings on that.

He's also the only person I know personally who makes his own THC diamonds. Ever smoke a diamond? They're fun. Basically take everything you think you know about smoking weed and toss it out the window. Diamonds - REAL ones - are a different entity entirely.

There you go. A little Saturday story for you.

Hey Jon great back story.
I bought Stacey a G pen for the bong.
Check it out great device.
But she brings home Dimonds in turp sauce.
Feken knock you out in minutes this stuff.
I use it for pain at night, great stuff.

Those greenhouses are amazing though wow.
Best of both worlds sun and led.

Stay safe
Bill

 

[Jon]

Wow awesome and holy loaded full of information... To have a grow that big I would have to stop all other hobbies lol. And diamonds you say lol I have absolutely tried THC diamonds....only issue I see with the diamonds is that if you smoke them often it ruins flower as the diamonds give you so much THC that I stop getting high off flower...so now thcD are only for quick highs or when I'm low on flower.

Yeah, they'll tear your arse a new definition of tolerance that doesn't really work for every day. They're special occasions only for me.

 

[Jon]

Hey Jon great back story.
I bought Stacey a G pen for the bong.
Check it out great device.
But she brings home Dimonds in turp sauce.
Feken knock you out in minutes this stuff.
I use it for pain at night, great stuff.

Those greenhouses are amazing though wow.
Best of both worlds sun and led.

Stay safe
Bill

Hi Bill! Diamonds in terp sauce? God, we never stop trying to figure out better ways to get high and mitigate pain, do we? That sounds insane. Like RSO oil X 1000 or something.

 

[StoneOtter]

Good morning Jon and everyone .

 

[Jon]

Good morning Jon and everyone .

Hey SO - I got you on the good morning to me, but you're in the wrong journal if you want to say good morning to everyone. Lmao!!!

 

[BubbaKush909]

Morning Jon! What is that netting on the plants? Remnants of a SCROG? Pretty amazing sight.

 

[Jon]

Saturday Plant Porn
Apple Blossom, once known as CJS Apple Blossom
Flower Day 52
(Pictorial only)

Pictures 1-3:
The whole plant from left to right, featuring stage L, stage M, and stage R photos.
Picture 4:
The whole plant from afar.
Picture 5:
Closeup on a branch o' buds.

Wish to hell I had smellevision for you guys.

 

[Jon]

Morning Jon! What is that netting on the plants? Remnants of a SCROG? Pretty amazing sight.

Not netting in terms of scrog netting. Just support netting. Those plants are 18 feet tall and about 15 feet wide or more. EACH. He lets them grow naturally in terms of training other than pruning and removing bullshi-. Yeah, it's amazing isn't it?

 

[Azimuth]

Not netting in terms of scrog netting. Just support netting. Those plants are 18 feet tall and about 15 feet wide or more. EACH. He lets them grow naturally in terms of training other than pruning and removing bullshi-. Yeah, it's amazing isn't it?

So, ladders and chainsaws are necessary at harvest I imagine.

 

[Jon]

So, ladders and chainsaws are necessary at harvest I imagine.

Lol! He sent me a video of it one time. Think what you said X about four or five people, with substations dedicated to each part of the chop - the cut, the strip to dry, whatever that is, and the placement on the racks in the dedicated and perfectly controlled drying room that is HUGE. He uses like the door to a chain link backyard fence like a lot of folks have as a rack. Then each is on wheels. When its full, every branch is perfectly up and down, front and back layer of the "fence door", and the racks are spaced perfectly for air flow and such in row after row, like in a large industrial baking oven if you've ever seen that with rack after rack of bread. It's an incredible sight, I'll try to get him to send me a pic of a drying harvest in that room. I haven't seen a video yet of the trimming, but I know that for his dispensary weed he uses the super expensive, gigantic, top of the line roller/tumblers to do a partial trim and then his people finish them by hand, and for his indoor (the connesieur's stuff) he entirely trims by hand. Only him on that. A 40x40 room's worth of plants. He says that takes him a week where he has to get a babysitter to stay with his son even though he's right there. Lmao. I've learned a lot about the scale of things from dude. Ha.

 

[Jon]

So, ladders and chainsaws are necessary at harvest I imagine.

So here's a couple bud shots he sent me (don't know the strains) and more importantly, a night time shot of his greenhouse. You can see the outer covering of the thing in place. This is nighttime in flower. That big cola in the middle of the shot is about four feet long and as big around as a 2 or 3 liter bottle.

 

[Moto258]

Saturday Morning Bud Porn SUPREME
(not mine)

For my first salvo today I'm going to make you guys shake your heads and say WHOA.

This is my Yoda in Oregon's place. Since it's sunrise here, it will soon be sunrise in Oregon. Here's what Yoda's place looked like yesterday morning as the sun is coming up for a bit.

He has four of these greenhouses.

FOUR.

Oh............my..............GOD.

EDIT: Those two gigantic round bulges on the right, beginning in the foreground? Those are each ONE plant.

I jealous!! Killer view man seriously I bet walking into that jungle makes nips hard!!

 

[Jon]

AB Trichomes on Day 52

EDIT: Please ignore my permanently compromised scope lens spot at around 11 o'clock. The new scope will be here this week. That is obviously unacceptable, especially when I'm already laying sub-par trichome pics on you.

 

[Azimuth]

EDIT: Please ignore my permanently compromised scope lens spot at around 11 o'clock.

Thanks for pointing that out. Otherwise I might not have noticed.

 

[Jon]

Thanks for pointing that out. Otherwise I might not have noticed.

Lol. It's so painful and so obvious I figured I'd head off some smart ass calling me out on it ahead of time!

 

[Jon]

Sunday Joke from our ever-expanding Autoflower joke file:

How many autos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Only one, but if you can get three they'll do it as well as one photo!

 

[7Dust2]

Looking good Jon.

 

[Jon]

Apple Blossom
Grow Day 114
Flower Day 54
A Fairly Comprehensive Late Assessment

I retract my earlier assessment of this plant as a hybrid pheno. At this point she looks and is acting like much more of a sativa. You can see the sativa-esque bud formation in the pictures. She's also now close to two weeks past the 45 days Humboldt lists for this strain's flowering time. The buds are long and productive top to bottom. She's going to be kind of a pain in the ass to trim, I can already see that, but hey, she's the only thing I'll have to trim for a change. One plant is a dream!

The buds are starting to take on their final shapes it seems and some of them are tightening up to where they almost look like finished buds. Won't be long now - three or four days maybe? I'll check trichs later on, but I'm sure we're not ready yet.

Earlier in flower I was looking at the buds and thinking, man, what a plant, but apparently her one downside is going to be productivity. Now I don't at all think that. She's really packed on the weight in the last ten days or so. The lower interior buds are also getting great light for a change, and they are 20x more productive than my previous efforts. Amazing what giving a bud a little space and light will do. Many of the lower interior buds pictured are shoots that grew off the main stems. Many of these would, in my previous grows, be flarf. Not now. The differences in the training this time are really showing up in late flower:

- way better lower interior bud production
- way better top to bottom growth on each individual branch
- way less flarf/waste
- way more consistency bud to bud
- significantly better overall productivity
- much improved air flow
- much improved canopy spacing between the buds

A couple things I did this time that I never did previously that I believe really helped I believe were:

- trimming way more branch growth/undercarriage growth that wasn't going to amount to anything
- trimming way LESS fan leaves
- removing every other shoot/node set on the main branches as they grew out rather than leave them all and get a mess of flarf all bunched together - this way they had space and light and as a result the lower interior buds in particular are way improved and will be very productive
- did NOT mess around with additives to the @Prescription Blend nutes, just went with the plan start to (almost) finish, and never varied from the prescribed dosages
- maintained a more consistent and warmer temperature in both day/night temps in flower without ever letting it get below 63 degrees at night, so no ultra cold night temps, and up to as high as 83 during the day
- was able to maintain an RH in the high 30s to low 40s for all of flower, with no spikes as I've always had in the past, and I think the consistency of proper RH maintained all the time has had a significant impact
- used the @NextLight 420h in a 3x3, which is frankly too big for it to be honest, but which by using the dimmer effectively allowed me to maintain an extremely consistent footprint across the entire canopy, with much better corner and edge ppfd numbers than I've gotten in the past - more ppfd = more growth

So there's my late assessment of the girl. She's within a week for sure now I believe. Her smell....god you guys I wish I could share. I've never smelled a pot plant that smells like this. The green apple odor is just super predominant and super impossible to miss. The entire garage fills with the odor within about 20 seconds of opening the door to the tent. The terpenes are off the charts. It's like candied green apple dankness with a deep, natural, earthy smell to it. The only plant that compares out of all 20 plants in terms of how specifically and gorgeously STANKY she is was the Raspberry Parfait. You guys may recall me expounding on how raspberry she smelled and how strong the terpenes were in her. Another Humboldt Seed Company strain by the way. I do take note that my two best terpene plants I have grown yet both came from this breeder. I'll put Humboldt County, California, USA up against anything Amsterdam has to offer any day. Amazing genetics. I would argue it's where truly amazing pot was first produced in this country. My plant actually looks almost exactly like the pictures they show in their catalog for a change too, only they got these gorgeous purple and blue tips to the small sugar leaves. I have strictly green buds with orange hairs. Not really any other colors, but the green is such an amazing shade - it is almost is the color of green apples, which is kind of cool. I'm so glad I have 9 more seeds of this strain. I love plants that test your filter.

So enough out of me, let's get to the porn for god's sake.

These first two pictures are leaf pictures, one on the plant and one off. I show these to show how the fade has gone on this girl. Just a smooth, gentle green to yellow.

AB Leaf #1 cut off.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Leaf #2 on plant.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

This picture is the pile of crap I removed today.

AB Dead and flarfy leaf removal pile.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

These next three pictures show individual branches of buds from various spots on the plant.

AB Branch #3.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Branch #2.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Branch #1.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

Then we have a three photo set specifically designed to display what I was talking about with the lower interior growth. Much of what you see in these pictures would be flarfy in the past. As you can see, they are sweet ass legitimate buds.

AB Nice quartet of interior buds.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Lower interior buds #2.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB lower interior buds #1.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

And lastly we have the good stuff - BUDS. Heh. I love me some bud closeup shots. The first of these pictures is the one that captures the true colors of the plant the best. You can see they look more "finished" than they did a couple days ago.

AB Bud #2 close and closest to true colors.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Bud #1 close.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Bud #4 closeup.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

AB Bud #3 closup.jpg

• Jon
• Mar 14, 2022

Alrighty! That would be my final long assessment post on this girl. From here to the end we'll just do pictures mostly, there's not a whole lot else to say about her. Not that I won't comment. Not sure I possess that ability. Lmao.

I am guessing on yield that this plant will end up with between five and six ounces jarred. I always overestimate, but that seem to be reasonable. Too high? We will know soon enough. Worthy of note for me is that another improvement I made in this grow was committing to NOT take any "testers." I always do that, and it's a complete waste of time and 100% unnecessary. Not going to tell me a damn thing, no relation in reality to the actual end product. Heh. So whatever she gives me - I still have ALL of it.



Have a great week guys. Happy Monday.

 

[LKABudMan]

She is a beautiful plant and those buds look amazing. Great break down too. Really nice grow.

 

[Azimuth]

Great work, Jon. Sounds like you're getting your setup dialed in just in time to move