Missty80's Grow Journal: Hey Guys I'm Back!

missty80

missty80

Well-Known Member
hi again everyone, misty is back :)

so, my last grow i ended up with about 4 oz of "ok" stuff...it was still leafy and kind of light, though. tbh i'm not very happy with my progress so far...i've done several grows, and i still can't get the tight, dense nugs i'm going for....

just as a reminder, i'm growing plants for my mom. i'm her caregiver and she's a cancer patient. this time around, i really want to pull off an amazing grow.

so this is my rig for this grow:

1 LSD autoflowering seed
315 CMH
3x6 tent
2 clip fans
1 205 exhaust fan w/ carbon filter
1 5-gallon plastic air pot
Coco Loco medium
Megacrop nutrient
PK Bloom Booster
ph up/down liquid
liquid cal-mag

so this time around, i'm going to try this:

1) a tiny pinch of MC in the water once the plant is about 2-3" tall.

2) 1.5-2g of MC + about 2 mL cal-mag once the plant sprouts its third set of leaves.

3) topping out at 3.5g of MC + about 3 mL cal-mag when the plant is mature. i ph the water to about 6.0 - 6.2, this seems to keep the plants dark green and happy.

4) reducing MC to 1.5g + 1g Bloom Booster and 1 mL cal-mag as soon as the plants show their first white pistils.

5) stopping all nutrients 1-2 weeks before buds are ready.

6) keeping the lights about 18-20" above the canopy--my last grow, i moved the lights to about 15-16", and the buds ended up kind of crispy and they had NO aroma, i think i literally "cooked" the terpenes off the buds =/

7) leaving the tent's door open to keep the tent cool. last grow, the temps were reaching 88f, and for a few days it reached over 90f...waaay too hot, i think that caused the airy, looser buds with no skunky scent >.<

8) watering whenever the top 1" of the coco is dry and the pots are light.

9) this time i'm NOT "topping" or "fimming" the plant at all, and i'm not doing any pruning of branches or leaves. this time i'm leaving EVERYTHING natural. i've topped/fimmed all my other crops, and i still don't get tight, dense, aromatic buds x.x

10) i give them 1 gallon of water each time, which seems to leave about 10% runoff in the pot trays. they seem to need water about once every 3 days when they're little, and about once every other day when they're big and mature.

11) chopping the plants, hanging the whole stem together for 2-3 days before trimming. then i trim off the big leaves and hang-dry the plants in about 60% humidity, then chop them down to small chunks and jar cure them for 2 months, opening them each day for about 10 minutes and monitoring the humidity inside each jar. i don't "flush" the coco, as i've read many reliable sources that says this has no benefit...but i do deprive the plants of nutrients for the last 1-2 weeks, because i believe that makes the plant "eat up" the nutrients left inside the plant (so the leaves start going yellow and falling off).


some folks suggest i use more nutes, but when i do that, the plants get burnt tips. it seems like a max of 3.5g of MC in 1 gallon of water is pretty good...any higher, and the plants get burned with yellow tips.

i welcome ALL suggestions and advice. my mother really needs good bud medicine, and lately i feel like i haven't been giving her good quality stuff...it weighs on me, you know? =/ this is supposed to be saving her $$, but she needs the bud to be high quality....not this airy loose shit i've been passing off as "good weed" =(

thanks guys!

<3 misty
 
Dump the Coco and go with FFHF until you perfect your skills. Coco and Hydro are much less forgiving that soil.

Light airy buds is usually light but with 315 cmh you should have enough.

I'd say Top and LST but LST the limbs flat to the edge of the pot. It opens the center to light and breaks the dominance of the top bud. The plant releases a hormone that goes to the top of the plant and makes a huge bud, topping it and LST allows all the top to get huge bud.
 
PE636 said:
Coco plus megacrop is ridiculously easy. Toss all the additives and pk booster, especially for an auto. And don't let it dry out no light pots with coco if you want coco results. Otherwise just get some soil.
Click to expand...

thanks for your advice!

i have a couple questions....

the grow weed easy site says "water coco when the pots feel light when you lift them, and/or when the top 1" of the coco is dry." that's what i've been doing. i'm worried about getting root rot otherwise :3

so, i used only MC for my first grow, but the prob is, it has full-strength nutrients, including Nitrogen...and when they start budding, that will make the plant keep growing branches and leaves.

the PK booster great reduces Nitrogen (i think its "2" in the NPK) and increases Potassium and Phosphorous, reducing plants growing branches and leaves and making them focus just on increasing bud size.

i have a big problem with leafy buds. in fact, my buds look, feel, or smell nothing like commercial-grade weed.

they're light and leafy and they have NO skunk smell. the plants smell skunky right after i chop them, but within a few days it disappears. and when it's done curing, it has almost no skunk smell, let alone any terpene aroma.

i literally have to hand-roll them during drying to get them to clump together into compact buds. even last winter, when the grow tent temp never got over 78f, it still produced pretty light buds with little scent.

as for topping/fimming, i think this might be hurting the bud yield with autos. a lot of places say not to do this with autos, because their short lifespan gives the plant very little time to recover before entering the flower stage.

i haven't really had trouble with bud sizes--actually i get some pretty good colas. my last plants gave me some that were almost the size of a soda can, but when they started drying, i saw they were shrinking down very small and were full of leaves inside.

last time, i topped/fimmed/lollipopped/LST'd the suckers...i basically did everything available. i removed all the lower bud sites, and i pruned the hell outta the leaves so all the bud sites were exposed to light and air.

no good. big buds...big leafy, airy buds i had to hand-compact to make them smaller and tighter, and they had almost no skunk or terpene aroma after curing. they just smell like...well...leaves. it just smells "planty" after 3 months in the jars. absolutely no "weedy" scent.

what are your thoughts on this? i'm planning on getting seeds planted by this weekend, and i really need to step up my game...it's a lot of work and expense, and i have to grow good quality stuff. i can't keep working at this and spending the $$ just to grow this shwaggy junk, you know?

i've read so many things and i've studied and re-studied, experimented and tried this and that...idk...it just never seems to come out right, the buds seem ok but then they dry and they're this fluffy leafy shit that i definitely don't feel proud of, and it's probably weak too...when my mom buys commercial bud, she smokes about 2-2.5g a day. now, she smokes at least 5g a day of the weed i grow.

so the stuff is weak, and i'm sad and angry about it because she relies on me...she's trusting me to help her, and i'm letting her down :confused:

thanks much for your advice. i appreciate you.

<3 misty
 
I've been using megacrop only for a while now. Full cycle right until harvest. Plants need plenty of N in flower... A plant grown in the ground doesn't get its N cut off upon flowering.
Grow weed easy had some good info and some questionable stuff. I can't speak to your coco loco, personally I'd get plain straight coco and not be worried about guessing what nutrients may or may not be available from the medium. But with coco generally you want to keep it fairly moist, once roots are established you can water daily or even twice to runoff with no worries about root rot especially in an air pot. Hugely faster and healthier growth than letting them dry out... I've found letting coco dry will result in burnt tips even at low doses of nutrients..
 
I ph mine to between 5.9 and 6.2. Mega has tons of calcium and everything else for that matter. Calcium is more or less immobile so it needs to be taken up as tissue forms, under watering (even without wilting) can lead to deficiencies because of this.
 
PE636 said:
I've been using megacrop only for a while now. Full cycle right until harvest. Plants need plenty of N in flower... A plant grown in the ground doesn't get its N cut off upon flowering.
Grow weed easy had some good info and some questionable stuff. I can't speak to your coco loco, personally I'd get plain straight coco and not be worried about guessing what nutrients may or may not be available from the medium. But with coco generally you want to keep it fairly moist, once roots are established you can water daily or even twice to runoff with no worries about root rot especially in an air pot. Hugely faster and healthier growth than letting them dry out... I've found letting coco dry will result in burnt tips even at low doses of nutrients..
Click to expand...

ok, so i can water each day even if the coco is still damp? that might also help it stay a little more humid in the tent, especially when the plants are bushy and reaching maturity...

grrr, yeah i was wrong. it isn't Coco Loco. it's Mother Earth 70% coco, 30% perlite.

in your experience, does MC have enough calcium so that the cal-mag isn't necessary? i've always used cal-mag, and my plants always seem to be a nice dark green.

i don't really have probs with plant health per se...it's just that the buds aren't tight and dense x.X

am i maybe leaving them on the plant too long? should i be chopping them when they get all white and crystallized? i've been leaving them longer so most of the pistils turn orange-brown...

thank you again...

<3 misty
 
Yes plenty of calcium in megacrop. I'd recommend dropping the calmag. Always consider that a plants actual food is light, not the "nutrients".
As @Marzbadrock said genetics plays a huge part in nug quality.
Yes water daily once you have some roots established and be sure to get plenty of runoff. You want to basically be rinsing out the leftovers of yesterdays feeding, totally refreshing the medium each time. It looks like soil but it's really a hydroponic method. Depending on the size of the plant it may be beneficial to water twice if it is drying the pot significantly each day.
 
Welcome back @missty80 :ciao:. To address a couple of other points, if your buds taste/smell leafy it could well be that you're drying them too quickly. That will trap in the chlorophyll. Proper drying and curing is as important as anything else. As for when to harvest, you really want to be going by trichomes. Pick up a cheap pocket microscope or jewellers loupe. All milky coloured trichomes will be max THC but it depends what effects you want as to how much you let turn amber. The more amber, the more CBN, which gives the couchlock effect.
 
I want to ask about your RH record. Big bounces in temps need to have a bounce in RH in the environment.
Seems there is a predominant problem with light puffy buds with no maturation. I keep seeing about flushing etc..when close to harvest in dwc. The energy to grow buds, is in the plant. Whacking off plate leaves, pruning.. when that's food the plant will use later to mature flowers.
Now, add more nutes, doesn't work building flowers. Plant is to large to take nutes, build leaves for food later on and recover from each one of those 'pruning' stunts. There's no time for that.
LST is probably going to be your best bet to open up the canopy and spread it out evenly, no popups. Sticking to an organized schedule for doing things can do wonders. I thought I had the same issue on my last grow, fluff bud, but I cut one in half this morning and was surprised. Good luck and GG
20200929_080914.jpg
 
A few thoughts / questions for you. Take what I say with a grain of salt as I am only on my first grow (about to harvest) but thought I'd share:

  • From what I've researched, it's difficult to overwater in coco and you shouldn't let the medium fully dry out. I suspect you're underwatering your plants
  • Building on the above, if they're underwatered, they're likely not consuming enough food either, hence your grow may be suffering
  • What are you PH'ing your input at? As coco is basically hydro (as others have mentioned), you're PH should be lower than that of soil
  • Not sure on runoff or not, but you may want to look into testing that (even though for soil, it's not necessarily an accurate measurement of medium PH
  • Did you do any rinsing of your coco prior to planting? I believe what you're using is pre-rinsed vs. buying coco bricks, but I would look into rinsing it and confirming ph runoff to ensure it's all up to spec...I've learned with FFOF to not exactly trust the medium and validate yourself to save headaches down the road
  • Genetics appear to play a large role so even if everything is up to spec, that could be a big factor. Keep in mind some strains are more / less consistent with each phenotype so there could be variation from what the strain is intended to be
  • I am not too sure on this point, but I believe Indica's are more known for compact buds vs. sativas, so you may want to try a full on indica

As I said, take my advice / comments with a grain of salt as I am new but have done a ton of research so hoping I can maybe give you a few things to look into that you might not have already.
 
Morning Misty, lots of good advice above, but I will make a suggestion concerning the “grow” part. Drying and curing is another matter that can be dealt with when the time comes.

I am going to suggest using hempy buckets for your grow and only Mega Crop for feed. Using 5gal buckets and just MC can produce great plants like this:

3D3363C8-370A-4970-9EB0-3C730B48B679.jpeg


granted, growing indoors you will want to train them to keep an even canopy.

To set it up this way, drill holes about 2” from the bottom of the bucket, fill the bottom with perliteup to just above the holes, and fill the remainder with coco coir, nothing else.

Water your plant with Mega Crop until you see it coming out the holes. In full veg and most of bloom, it will take about 1 gallon a day. Add no other supplements unless you see signs of deficiency.

Reducing nitrogen during bloom is a BroScience misinterpretation of the fact that in bloom they use more P&K, Nitrogen levels should be maintained throughout the grow from start to finish.

Additionally, feed them right up to harvest day, starving them and/or flushing them does nothing to improve the smell/flavour but will hurt both yield and density and may be part of the reason the smells disappoint you.

BTW, that plant above was harvested yesterday and had a wet weight yield of 693g trimmed bud and another 549g of smaller bud and trim for making oil or hash.
 
The Celt said:
Morning Misty, lots of good advice above, but I will make a suggestion concerning the “grow” part. Drying and curing is another matter that can be dealt with when the time comes.

I am going to suggest using hempy buckets for your grow and only Mega Crop for feed. Using 5gal buckets and just MC can produce great plants like this:

3D3363C8-370A-4970-9EB0-3C730B48B679.jpeg


granted, growing indoors you will want to train them to keep an even canopy.

To set it up this way, drill holes about 2” from the bottom of the bucket, fill the bottom with perliteup to just above the holes, and fill the remainder with coco coir, nothing else.

Water your plant with Mega Crop until you see it coming out the holes. In full veg and most of bloom, it will take about 1 gallon a day. Add no other supplements unless you see signs of deficiency.

Reducing nitrogen during bloom is a BroScience misinterpretation of the fact that in bloom they use more P&K, Nitrogen levels should be maintained throughout the grow from start to finish.

Additionally, feed them right up to harvest day, starving them and/or flushing them does nothing to improve the smell/flavour but will hurt both yield and density and may be part of the reason the smells disappoint you.

BTW, that plant above was harvested yesterday and had a wet weight yield of 693g trimmed bud and another 549g of smaller bud and trim for making oil or hash.
Click to expand...
Have you ever bagged your fresh cut plant?
 
The Celt said:
bagged???
Click to expand...
Yeah, place your fresh cut plant down to individual branches, so you can hang it normally later. Then let it sweat in there for 24 hrs. Keeps the moisture in the bag let's the plant cells finish up without shutting down and leaving extra stuff in it. I haven't seen it done in decades, but it seemed to help get rid of the chlorophyll coughs lol
 
I'm happy with your way, getting the scissors and the everclear ready myself for a bit of the trim, let it get a little limp and then turn it upside again, all the big leaves just fall over snip snip snip..and same on the cure, never really had that green taste and just simple cut n hang..welp its weed30 time for some meds ;)
 

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