Let's Find a Mother! Hiking Through a Field of Mary Jane

[Hiker]

thanks bassman! It's looking like I'm gonna just stick with the original plan and finish this round with what I have. I have an aversion to debt and I don't have the ash for the LEDs, so I'm gonna just order a bulb online. I found my same bulbs for $40.

I will be replacing the HPS with LED next round

 

[DrDankNstien]

beautiful upgrades Hiker and im stoked that your going all Led, that room is gonna be bangin!

 

[Hiker]

Thanks DrD

That's why I went looking for your thread to see how your custom lights were different from stock.

I've started making a list for the next round of upgrades.

 

[Hiker]

This poor neglected thread...



Guess what guys? It's almost time to harvest!
Today is day 56 since flip. Been watching hairs and crystals for a couple weeks. They are done and will start getting cut this weekend.

I'm hoping to get it all trimmed by Sunday evening, but that might be a stretch. We'll see.

I feel bad this journal has been so dead since the first harvest, but I have some good news. I have pictures!!!





Some of you might wonder about the neoprene discs. Those are from the clones. They tell me which strain is which, and was just an easy way to carry it through. In case you want to know, but keep in mind the colors are hard to distinguish in pictures. Orange and Yellow are AK48. Blue and Green are Blueberry. Purple is Bubba Kush.

I'm still on the fence about the LEDs. The negs are definitely smaller. Another grower was over last week. They have not used LEDs but they thought the nuggs were too small for "market". We'll see. They aren't that small. I have a feeling they are going to "shrink" less then the HPS nuggs. I know that the giant buds will shrink while they dry. Perhaps the denser LED buds won't shrink as much? I will know in a week or so.

 

[mcloadie]

This poor neglected thread...



Guess what guys? It's almost time to harvest!
Today is day 56 since flip. Been watching hairs and crystals for a couple weeks. They are done and will start getting cut this weekend.

I'm hoping to get it all trimmed by Sunday evening, but that might be a stretch. We'll see.

I feel bad this journal has been so dead since the first harvest, but I have some good news. I have pictures!!!





Some of you might wonder about the neoprene discs. Those are from the clones. They tell me which strain is which, and was just an easy way to carry it through. In case you want to know, but keep in mind the colors are hard to distinguish in pictures. Orange and Yellow are AK48. Blue and Green are Blueberry. Purple is Bubba Kush.

I'm still on the fence about the LEDs. The negs are definitely smaller. Another grower was over last week. They have not used LEDs but they thought the nuggs were too small for "market". We'll see. They aren't that small. I have a feeling they are going to "shrink" less then the HPS nuggs. I know that the giant buds will shrink while they dry. Perhaps the denser LED buds won't shrink as much? I will know in a week or so.

Harborside wants dense buds, super tightly trimmed, no smaller than a nickel...no bigger than a quarter..........period. We can look at this as to what the markets are demanding.............and expect for prices to diminish when products fall outside these parameters.

 

[Hiker]

Harborside wants dense buds, super tightly trimmed, no smaller than a nickel...no bigger than a quarter..........period. We can look at this as to what the markets are demanding.............and expect for prices to diminish when products fall outside these parameters.

McLoadie! Glad you stopped in!

That's really nice to hear. I'm not surprised as that's been my exact preference for decades. I never liked the monster colas personally, but I agree you don't want them too small. That being said, I end up smoking the popcorn mostly, and I gotta say, there is some convenience to being able to just grab a little nug and pack the whole thing into the bong.

I'm gonna have to come check out what's happening in your world. I thought I caught up, but all my subs reset recently, so my list is/was a mess.

I hope the "loadie" family is all happy and healthy

 

[mcloadie]

McLoadie! Glad you stopped in!

That's really nice to hear. I'm not surprised as that's been my exact preference for decades. I never liked the monster colas personally, but I agree you don't want them too small. That being said, I end up smoking the popcorn mostly, and I gotta say, there is some convenience to being able to just grab a little nug and pack the whole thing into the bong.

I'm gonna have to come check out what's happening in your world. I thought I caught up, but all my subs reset recently, so my list is/was a mess.

I hope the "loadie" family is all happy and healthy

We're good hiker, I'm a thousand miles closer to you now...LOL....got the break I was waiting for......I'm full time now...LOL!

 

[Hiker]

hehe i just went back and reread your thread. I DID catch up but had forgotten. Now I'm even more excited you stopped by

I gotta admit, the business side of this thing is already starting to get to me. When I grew 'back in the day', that's what pushed me out of it. I LOVE growing, but I HATE dealing with the money part. With all the law changes going on, especially here in WA, I'm getting less comfortable about the legal climate. It could work out for me financially, but the uncertainty is troubling.

Are you in NorCal now? That seems like ~1000 miles closer LOL
I still have a lot of family and friends down there. I was in Weott for Thanksgiving.

TTYS McL

 

[B A R]

Looking very Foresty up in here Hiker.


Mac, I'm glad to hear the good news. I told you awhile back I'd find someone else for your gray cloud to follow.

 

[mcloadie]

hehe i just went back and reread your thread. I DID catch up but had forgotten. Now I'm even more excited you stopped by

I gotta admit, the business side of this thing is already starting to get to me. When I grew 'back in the day', that's what pushed me out of it. I LOVE growing, but I HATE dealing with the money part. With all the law changes going on, especially here in WA, I'm getting less comfortable about the legal climate. It could work out for me financially, but the uncertainty is troubling.

Are you in NorCal now? That seems like ~1000 miles closer LOL
I still have a lot of family and friends down there. I was in Weott for Thanksgiving.

TTYS McL

Yes sir, I am in the north of cali............everything is moving along nicely.

 

[mcloadie]

Looking very Foresty up in here Hiker.


Mac, I'm glad to hear the good news. I told you awhile back I'd find someone else for your gray cloud to follow.

Thanks bro, we take one day at a time...tomorrow will have it's own troubles!

 

[NorCaliwood]

Wow Hiker been awhile since I looked in. Plants look great. Congratulations on the flip. Looks like it paid off in spades. Keepem Green

 

[1grower]

Wow hiker! Its not a small garden you have. Its looking great! Wanted to Come and say thanks for the advice to use the string to hang the harvest on. Every one who helps other people should have an medal of gold. Reps to u!

 

[Hiker]

Thanks for checking out my journal 1grower.



Harvest is done! :yummY;
I will have weights next week sometime.

Now that this harvest is done, what did I learn?

First, I want to talk about defoliation. I've always been a big advocate of this technique. 'Back in the day', we all removed the "sucker leaves" or shade leaves. After getting back into growing again, I think I've taken it too far. I will continue to defoliate during veg growth, but I'm unsure about doing it in flower. This crop I think I was a little late (started around day 22 and it took a week to finish), so that could have had an impact. It may have been my fault, but in this next grow, I will probably not defoliate much, if any, after flipping to 12/12. While each of the 3 strains responded a little differently, I felt it added too much leaf material into the flower clusters. I think the HPS plants responded better then the LED plants. I know some growers here use LEDs and defol, but I'll have to do a little more experimenting with this. This kinda leads into the second topic...

So what do I think about my LEDs?
Honestly, I'm not impressed. The plants directly under the lights did OK, but they have a pretty small footprint and the penetration was definitely less than my 750W HPS. Maybe 5W diodes would work better? I'm actually a little undecided about whether or not I want to invest in more LEDs now. I haven't made the decision yet. I'm waiting to see how the buds look after they dry. They do feel denser. Even the popcorn seemed to have more substance to it. I can absolutely confirm the denser nugg characteristic of LED growing. Unfortunately, I can also confirm the smaller nugg trait. We'll see how the weights compare. There are way too many variables to make a direct plant vs plant comparison worthwhile. Instead, I am just testing the density difference. I will compare the weights of 1 quart of the plants from each (HPS and LED). This should be a valid comparison as I will try to grab only the main tops. The plants under my LEDS were the smaller clones to start with, but they just didn't seem to develop as well as the HPS plants.

I'm still likely to buy more LEDs, I'm just not as ready as I was. I've got ~6-7 weeks until I will really need more lights, so I have time to think about it. I'll be moving one of my LEDs back to the veg area to try again. Based on the penetration I was seeing, they might be OK vegging short plants. They just burned the tall mothers in my vertically challenged veg area by being too close.

What's next?

Starting my 2 cycle split flowering room today. I'm going to flower out my old mothers and replace them with fresh ones.

The next "phase" in the basement is building out a veg area. The flowering room is going to have one side hydro and the other side soil. Each side will be staggered ~5-6 weeks. I will have a 'perpetual' system, but it will also, sort of, be 2 separate alternating systems doing entire lifecycles (clone, veg, flower). They will share the same veg area. It should work out well. I plan to veg my hydro plants using net pots in flood and drain trays. These trays will also work great to catch the runoff from the soil pots as well. I haven't yet settled on counts yet, but I'm leaning towards 3 2'x4' trays with 8 plants each. This will give me 24 plants on each side of the flowering room.

I will be running a couple experiments in this grow as well. Obviously, this will be sort of a test for me to flower in soil. I haven't done this for a long long time. My outdoor experiment last year came out mediocre at best. At least they made it to the end, so I'm optimistic I'll at least not kill them. You guys might see me asking lots of soil questions.

I have one set of mothers that are the same genetics. I will be doing another LED experiment with these 2 plants. Similar to this last run, I'll have both LED and HPS, but this time I will only have one LED in the flowering room (one is going to veg area). The difference is I'm going to separate them. Last time I tried to gain the benefit of putting all the lights together. This time I will be putting space between them so the plants will only be growing from one light source. I have 11 mothers to flower, so there will be 2 under the LED and 9 under HPS.

I'm also going to try and avoid defoliating during flower. This 'experiment' has not had a lot of thought yet, so I'm undecided on details. I just know I will be trying something different from the last round.

I've got a lot of work to do still, but the hardest part is over. I need to look into some sort of mechanical trimming solution. It took 12 days to finish harvest. Granted, there was a full day of waiting for room on the drying rack, and I work, so it was just a few hours in the evenings during the week. I did pull 2 all nighters trying to get as much done as possible. I'm pretty tired.

I have some things to share related to the washing, but I'll save that for another post. I want to include pictures with a little bit of a how to. I came up with a reasonably efficient process I thought I would share. I also have some thoughts about my strains I will share, but some of those thoughts are still being resolved in my mind.

 

[nobodyYOUknow]

less than my 750W HPS. Maybe 5W diodes would work better?

I lost track here, what was the ACTUAL wattage from the LEDs?
per square foot? was similar? 2/3's?

I'm sold on the output POTENTIAL of LEDs, and light being light IF the color bands are right, all things should be equal.
Once the price comes down the power cost (including cooling) and long life should give LED's a big advantage usable light wise.



BTW I Agree, Do Not over defoliate at any stage, air circulation and leaving any HEALTHY leaf that gets usable light, without effecting plant shape should be the guide.

 

[KingJohnC]

I would like to invite everyone to my KingJohnC Lush Lighting LED Dominator 2x Soil Indoor Grow Journal and Review



KingJohnC's Lush Lighting LED Dominator 2x Soil Indoor Grow Journal & Review

 

[trichomes]

Happy 420 Easter w MaryJane

 

[ronnie6690]

happy 420 Hiker

new journal is in my signature, great to have you stop by.

 

[B A R]

OK, Dave's not here but I'm looking for Hiker.

 

[Hiker]

I lost track here, what was the ACTUAL wattage from the LEDs?
per square foot? was similar? 2/3's?

I'm sold on the output POTENTIAL of LEDs, and light being light IF the color bands are right, all things should be equal. the price comes down the power cost (including cooling) and long life should give LED's a big advantage usable light wise.

BTW I Agree, Do Not over defoliate at any stage, air circulation and leaving any HEALTHY leaf that gets usable light, without effecting plant shape should be the guide.

huh... I missed this post somehow. I'm sorry. Let me do some quick math...

I had 2 of these lights:
Reflector LED grow light 144x3w

I think the draw is 275W and they were covering ~5' x 5'. W/sqft=550/25=22
This compares to my HPS side which was 3 750W HPS covering ~9' x 9'. W/sqft=2250/81=27

I knew the LED coverage was not as good. I bought these lights to use in my veg area, but they are too strong in my limited vertical area. I'll stick with fluorescents there. This was just my first experiment with them. I am running another test this round. The differences are, I'm segregating the light a little. Instead of putting them next to each other and creating a middle ground with both lights, I'm putting them on opposite sides with some space between them. I'm currently not planning to hang any sort of curtain, but that could change. None of the lights have an effective range of more then a few feet, so as far as influencing growth, I suspect the affects from having the lights in the same room will be negligible. They are all on 12/12, so there is no issue with photoperiod.

Re defoliating. I think there is a happy middle ground somewhere. I KNOW that defolaiting can increase yield. I just think I let the pendulum swing too far this last time. I fully expect to swing a little too far the other way this time, but it will be another learning experience.

Happy 420 Easter w MaryJane

It was my birthday too.

happy 420 Hiker

new journal is in my signature, great to have you stop by.

Thanks for the invite my friend.
I'll come check it out now.

OK, Dave's not here but I'm looking for Hiker.

Open the door, I got the stuff with me! Oh wait, I'm not Dave, I'm Hiker!

What's up buddy?



Sorry for the lack of updates everyone. I got pretty sick for a couple weeks, but I've been feeling much better for a few days. After work and weekends have all been spent outside as much as possible. We're putting in a garden this year, so there is a TON of work outside. I also went a little nuts with my indoor starts. I literally have hundredS of tomato starts. That nursery (my guest bath) got upgraded from 2 shop lights to 5 sop lights last night (~160W -> 400W)!

This was because I got some new gear for the basement. I ordered 2 4' 8 lamp T5 lights for my veg area, so I moved a few of the old lights upstairs for a few weeks.

This round of upgrades is all about the veg area. Most of the stuff is here, but there are a few items I'm picking up this weekend when I go to the big city.

I'm going to have 2 2' x 4' flood trays (each with one of the above lamps over it). I'm going to use a simple gravity drain system with 2 fill pumps so the 2 trays can share a reservoir by alternating the fill cycles.

I haven't settled on what size pots I'll use yet. I'll decide based on what my grow store has and how they fit into the trays (trays are coming from the store in "the city" too). I have some standard 1g nursery pots that could work, but they are a little bigger than I would like. Whatever size I go with, I will be filling them with rock and putting them in the flood trays. I considered netpots, but then I have to deal with the roots being exposed. Also, my bucket system operates a lot like this, so it will be an easy transition for the plants. If it's unclear what I plant to do, you'll have to wait for pictures. I should have it all in a week or so.

I haven't used any of my trim to make hash yet. I've just been too busy, and/or sick. I have been doing some baking tests though. I've started to make notes and treat the butter making and baking a little more scientifically. I've taken to making cupcakes as my baked good. I change up the flavors, but it's always the same amount of oil. The experimentation has been with my infusion methods. Right now, the technical issue I'm working on is improving my extraction of the oil from the plant material. In the 2 experiments I've tracked, I only recovered ~50% of the oil (butter). I've been trying to find a press, but they are all too small. I have an idea how to make one for under $20 plus some materials I already have. I'm documenting these tests so I can share what I find with my friends here at

The mothers are still in an 18/6 photoperiod and recovering. I've come to the conclusion that coco needs more water than I thought. They are looking 100% better than they did before I harvested. They are healthy enough to take some clones soon. Then I will flip them to 12/12 a couple weeks after that. Taking the clones will be like topping them, so I want to give it time to develop those side branches a little before flowering. Although, these are old mothers, so they are already bushes!

Sorry for no pics, but nothing to share. I didn't take any giant pile of buds pictures this time. Seen one, you seen 'em all.