J's 1545W CFL Test Grow - Multi Strain - Wilma

[jimm14]

Well problem found with the yellow plant, after checking the root zone it was starting to rot. Very dissapointed, I can't leave it in the wilma or it could infect the rest of the plants.

So I have removed the plant and given the pot it was in with two other plants a wash out with 5gal of water with half a capful of bleach. I'm hoping the bleach won't harm the two plants remaining too much, I always use bleach to clean my res so I'm sure it'll be OK.

Now then, the plant is soo close to finishing I just couldn't waste it or hash it and it'll be used as my daytime smoke once dry. It has some dense buds so it shouldn't be too bad......

42g Wet weight. not bad for a plant taken 2 weeks before true harvest, I can only hope the other plants don't get effected.

Also This was the smallest white berry, visually it is smaller and less dense then the other plants. I think my target of 16-17g per plant dry mite just be within reach.


I have now turned off my res heater, I think it was getting a bit warm during the day and causing the root rot or it was the gnats eatting at the roots.

 

[donpaul.p]

nice vid mate, i manged to reps you on my journal plus i put a link up for some cheap trich bags, have a look see if they are the ones you tried or not, they look ok, nice looking buds mate, so glad you caught the rot early, so you managed to stop it spreading and by the looks of the vid your going to have some very nice buds when you come to harvest

 

[jimm14]

replied to your thread but forgot to add i would use a single 120 micron bag for the hash

 

[donpaul.p]

k thanks mate

 

[jimm14]

Well I'm getting ready for the next round and next journal. It won't be started yet but here's a little preview.

Mothers ready for some cuttings.

After taking cuttings and trimming anything you don't need. I had about 15 good cuttings I throw away.

The 20 chosen clones. 4x Super Haze, 2x Chocolate Haze, 2x Sour Diesel 6x Pineapple Express, 6x Cheese.

The best 16 plants will be kept, I'll start the new journal once I have a empty wilma.

 

[geturgrowon]

nice man looking goood ill be watching

 

[jimm14]

LA Diva all orange hairs cloudy trics ready to go. i gave it 3 days beings flushed with canna flush, I just use it like water but only flush 3-7 days depending how long the plant lasts.

The critical auto, She is getting some fat buds growing and she's only just started really making buds, before it was just hairs.

pics were taken 4? days ago.

Waiting on white berry to finish to do a real update.

 

[jimm14]

Lets get some updating done....It's fathers day and I'm sat on my lonesome with nothing but a homemade fathers day card and a bottle of Jacky D to keep me company. typical goddamn kids.....


Right it's closing in on the focus of this grow, The white berry, and testing my CFL's. I'm just waiting on the trichs to turn amber a bit then I'll flush and harvest.

Under the CFL it has been different from what i expected, The yield is less then I wanted but the plants were 3x shorter then I expected them to grow. I'm using high power 300w CFLs what seem to be too much if left close and the plants get lazy looking for light and just spend there days bushing out. During flower the plants grow maybe 3-5 inches taller so nowhere near the expected stretch of a flowering plant.

The buds are great, Just with how dense each bud feels, I feel it dismisses the myth you will get nothing but airy bud under CFL, on a more general thing, the plants that got topped produced the biggest buds and the plants with LST got more buds but not as dense or large. There's plenty of ice on every bud and they look better then my friend's buds and his grown this strain over 10 years!

Right, there has been downsides to the CFL's... the amount of power used with all my CFL's was just as much as using 2x600w HID's. I thought it would save some money since i wouldn't need my big extractor fans or AC unit but to be honest the RH was getting to high with only one small 4" 180m/h extractor fan running so I throw my 6" 680m/h in instead and used the 4" to push air in. I did how ever not use my AC or any other cooling, it just wasn't needed. the extractors wern't really needed for heat just to get the damn RH down. If i was growing in soil it wouldn't have been a issue, Since hydro with airstones/heaters/pumps using flood drippers makes a lot of RH.

So if I could start again or any one thinking of using CFL's I would....

1. buy smaller watt bulbs. the 300w bulbs just seem too efficient for the amount of space they light, they would be excellent for a grow with limited height however.Such as a small cupboard. For a tent a few 150w bulbs should have been enough. too many of the small watt bulbs makes a lot of heat since each bulb has it's own ballast built in stick with less bulbs at high watts.

2. Veg with a lot of stretch, get them nodes spread nicely before you put the lights close. I'm going to get a good stretch under my flo's before I put under the CFLs next time. you want nice gaps between your node, I try'd to move my CFLs higher to promote stretch but it just didn't happen after I had allowed the plant to grow with such close nodes.


I'll add more about getting better yield with these types of lights at harvest, I'll compare bud weight between LST/Topped/Untopped, Bud denseness and whatnot.


I didn't really expect any problems over the grow since I've grown for years and using the Hollands secret's range has never let me down. following the nute schedule, as you can see perfect green plants till the late 10 days of harvest. my only mistake was not adding hydrozyme since I ran out and just didn't have it in my budget to buy any. I paid for it by losing a plant early and risking root rot for my other plants.

This was also my first time growing auto plants, they were all free seeds since I never had any interest in them. I have mixed feeling on them. The LA Diva was just a waste of time, small, low amounts of trichs. it did however live upto the fast flowering I've heard autos are capable of doing, seed to harvest in about 7 weeks. harvested about 3g dry lol.... Now the critical auto on the other hand took forever to flower, it looked like crap for weeks then decided to truly flower...WOW the buds are soooooo big and i'm not talking small buds growing into each other but them giant solid single buds you get. I like this auto....but it took longer then my clones to flower and by the seed breeders description it should be done seed-harvest in 9 week flat. not going to happen it's already a lot older then that and just started. The critical was under 24/0 for the first few weeks then went 12/12 with the rest of the tent, the LA diva went 12/12 from seed.

So I'm gearing up to record harvest and whatnot, shouldn't be long now guys thanks for hanging with me.

Oh and I said I would tell my flushing/harvest process. I don't really put faith in leaving the plants under darkness for days or flushing 10 days with water.

1. I keep my plants in there super strong flowering mix till the end. I want them to have anything they want till it's 3-7day before harvest. Only really big plants get 7 days flush, small plants like this harvest i'm going to do will get 3 days.

2. I use either canna flush or vitalink flush, both are enzyme based flushing agents and they break down salts/nutes in the plant helping turn them to sugars. they also work very fast. You can also use them to clean salt out of coco or to clean your hydroton or to save a nute burnt plant.

3. When I flush, I simply replace the feeding with plain RO water with the directed amount of canna/vitalink flush. It's the only time I use RO water since it's pricey also I never PH my flushing water, I want nothing to go back to the plants.

4. After I've watered with flush for a few days the plants will be very yellow where it simpley has nothing left to use in it's leafs, then it's time to cut her down. I don't give them days in darkness, I go in the room at first light on and cut as soon as possable. So i only give them 12 hours darkness. If light degraded THC with the lights on when the plant still has roots and food supply just seems dumb to me. you would have amber trichs every where way before end of harvest. I do however dry my plants in darkness as after you've cut them down it will degrade the thc.

5. before I hang them, I do my full trim, all sugar leafs/popcorn/stalks/leafs get cut up and thrown in a cardboard box and I leave the good buds attached to a good length of stalk then hang them on fishing line (no hair/strands) in my cupboard where my boiler is (20-40%RH) depends on if i'm using heating/hot water etc. I try to take 7 days at least to dry them, the longer they have water inside the more chlorophyll break down, means less time curing before a great tasting smoke.

6. once fully dry and I can snap the stalk easy I put into big sealed glass jars i have and open/shake/blow into them once/twice a day. when you open the jars and it doesn't smell of chlorophyll you can stop opening them daily and maybe just let them air a few days later as a final airout. then you can shut them up for the long term.


I think i'm about down here, any questions just throw them up, I'll be doing yield and pics probably next saturday should be about done then. smoke long people!

 

[donpaul.p]

i had the same problems mate, i started with cfls and struggled to get the plants to get taller, i wanted to flower at 1ft tall but couldnt even get them that tall after 7 weeks, the nodes where really tight and the plants bushed out loads, cfls really do work and they got me into flower, i only switched to hps due to the watts i was using, but i got to admit im getting more stretch with the hps than i ever did with the cfls, i am using a clone from the cfl mom, and when i have it under the hps it stretched loads, so im thinking cfls keep the plants small and bushy, the best watt to lumin ratio is the 23 watt cfls, i was using a load of 23 and 30 watt cfls in my grow, i got great results,

so cfls do work and the results are pretty good, but i think cfls would be better if you was only growing 1 plant in a small space, or a couple of plants due to the distance the plant has to be from the cfls, so for a bigger grow 3 plants and more id go with the hps or mh ballast and bulb, but for a small wardrobe grow i would go with the low wattage cfls and stick with them

 

[jimm14]

Ok, white berry plants have been harvested. I tried to get wet weights by my scales ran outta batteries after only 3 plants. 87g FIM plant, 34g Untrained plant, 124g LST plant. all weighted fresh from trimming, no trim weight. I'll do a dry weight when I throw them in the jars.

Night before cut.

Right before the cut. notice how yellow they are after flushing with water/canna flush. not much left in them leafs at all.

Sorry I didn't do any harvest pics in my excitement, but I'll do a dry weight and pics next week.

Since I only have 4 plants to finish now I got the space to give the wilma it's mod's and a really good clean. Since I can't afford airpots right now the standard pots will remain for now.

The sides kept moving and letting the trays slip into the res so my first mod was to add paracord to the 4 side to strengthen them and stop the trays falling in. it also helps to mark the max level mark.

Right now with everything cleaned and strengthened. I added large holes under each pot spot(for roots), replaced the airstones with longer ones (16" instead of golfballs), and split each drip line into two then added a 2nd dripper for each pot.

All my clones have rooted so I'll be adding a new journal soon.

 

[jimm14]

I know I never added harvest pics but can this be thrown into completed journals

 

[Truth Seeker]

Thanks for sharing your grow with us.

Don't forget to head over to the 420 Strain Reviews forum and post your smoke report there too!

I'm moving this to Completed Journals now.

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