Robbie B's 5th Grow

[RobbieBurn]

EC and pH outflow improved from yesterday with todays' EC nicely at 2.2-2,4 and pH5.4-5.5. Fed today with pH6 and EC1.3 (rainwater). No plant issues. Am slowly stripping the top leaves off to expose more buds. Here's the current pic:

The buds are fairly dense in the scrog.

It's a lot of work but yeah yield will be good. Was using string tonight to tie the branches to the top and away a little from the net. Pretty even, but still have a couple of holes. In 2 days it'll be 2 weeks since 12/12 and I'm thinking of going vertical at that stage. Any tips from other scroggers?? Also tips on leaf removal/ timing etc would be great.

Underneath is pretty clean. Here's a vid:
I'm just starting to re-establish the irrigation as this daily hand watering business is becoming a bit laborious.
[video=vimeo;210776438]

[/video]

 

[VexGrows]

Sub'd, as I am loving scrog setups more and more. My next scrog will be done right with proper netting.

Great grow, bud!

 

[BedroomFarmer]

Hey man your scrog is looking great! Nice and full! A day or two sounds good for vert. They should be close to finish with stretching.

 

[RobbieBurn]

Well today I got 110g of Sativa leaf and turned it into 3.48g of oil which is a yield of 3.2%. Low yes but it's what I was expecting using leaf. I'm using leaf at the moment to get some practice up. Ethanol as solvent.

Here's the Texas tea

This lot I decarboxylated at 110deg C for an hour. Thought this was an interesting photo

Sativa oil is pretty heady. Definitely does the trick though. Next batch will be indica as I think this lot turned out ok.

Here's the breakdown of the final product. I need to get better at scraping the last bits out of the final container, even though it looks so small amount!. The loss (11%) is too high. Next time. Better each time is the right direction lol

Total weed 110.3 g of sativa leaf input
Total oil produced 3.48 g oil
% yield 3.2%
Amount ready for use 2.25 g
Amount on buds (bud scraping) 0.18 g
Amount on spoon (knife scaping) 0.48 g
Amount still on knife (for later) 0.18 g
Total usable 3.09 g
Loss 0.39 g

 

[RobbieBurn]

@VexGrows the netting is great. eBay. Makes it a lot easier to tie down branches lol

 

[RobbieBurn]

Hi all. So changed the add-on feed tonight to BigBud (week 2 of flower). Inflow EC2 pH5.9. Outflow EC2.1-2.3 & pH5.6. I think the low EC and high pH feeds are paying off with EC and pH outflow heading in the right direction.

Tonight I also fitted out the last of the auxiliary lighting. I'm trying to mimic elements of the day. Here's my lighting schedule -

@7:00pm - 600W HPS + 4/ 130W (2700K) fluorescents come ON. Morning!
@9:00pm - Additional 4/ 24W Cool White fluorescents come ON. These don't put out a lot of light, but it does make a difference in the tent (day cranking up..)
@12:00 - Additional 4/15W 10.0 UVB lights ON. In a couple of weeks, I'll wind this on back to start at 11:00pm (whoa UV - make resin haha)
@2:00am - Additional 4/15W 10.0 UVB lights go OFF. In a couple of weeks, I'll wind this forward to turn off at 3:00am (heading into afternoon)
@5:00am - Additional 4/ 24W Cool White fluorescents go OFF. (Sun is setting)
@7:00am - Lights out. Dark. Sleep

Rinse.. repeat


Here's a current pic. Canopy is looking good. Small amount of maintenance required towards the back

The widow is looking good.

Here's a vid. I'm still picking off the leaves blocking light to the buds. Haven't done a mass defoliation yet. I've finished hooking up the irrigation now so watering should be a lot quicker. The buzzing sound at the end is the bilge pump, responsible for turning on by itself when the runoff water level gets high in the container and pumping runoff away to drain.

[video=vimeo;211178487]

[/video]

 

[BedroomFarmer]

Looking gorgeous!

 

[RobbieBurn]

So there's always questions about lighting. This is what I use:

LIGHTS
600 W HPS
520 W in CFL Large (red) (4 x 130W)
96 W in CFL Small (blue) (4 x 24W)
60 W in UVB (4 x 15W)
1276 W total

METRICS

Tent Size
1.4m x 1.4m Tent
4.59ft x 4.59ft

Imperial
21.1 ft2 (Area of tent)
60.48 W/ft2 (min is 50W/ft2)

Metric
1.96 m2 (area of tent)
651.0 W/m2 (min 550W/m2)

Minimums are the minimums that I've adopted. Seen those in a couple of places on the interwebs. There's 53W/ft2 straight up when the lights initially come on

SPECTRUM
Total RED Spectrum 87.8%
Total BLUE spectrum 12.2%

LIFECYCLE
2nd week of flower (at time of post)

LIGHTCYCLE

@7:00pm - 600W HPS + 4/ 130W (2700K) fluorescents come ON. Morning!
@9:00pm - Additional 4/ 24W Cool White fluorescents come ON. These don't put out a lot of light, but it does make a difference in the tent (day cranking up..)
@12:00 - Additional 4/15W 10.0 UVB lights ON. In a couple of weeks, I'll wind this on back to start at 11:00pm (whoa UV - make resin haha)
@2:00am - Additional 4/15W 10.0 UVB lights go OFF. In a couple of weeks, I'll wind this forward to turn off at 3:00am (heading into afternoon)
@5:00am - Additional 4/ 24W Cool White fluorescents go OFF. (Sun is setting)
@7:00am - Lights out. Dark. Sleep

Rinse.. repeat

 

[spiralout]

Looks great. Like the scientific analysis. Im not prepared to work that hard myself haha. Keep up the good work.

 

[RobbieBurn]

So I think I'm coming to the end of tying back branches. Definitely past the stage of being able to tuck the branches under the net. Now vertical/ horizontal control is obtained using string. Lots of string. Did I tell you about the amount of string I've been through?? I need to own a string factory.

Anyway feeding and outflow EC's, pH's have all been good lately. Daily feeds, inflow EC of about 1.9-2.0 and pH 6.0 and outflow EC 1.85-2.3; pH 5.4-5.6. The pH 5.6 plant also had the low EC. No co-incidence there.

So I've got a bit of maintenance to do in the back left hand corner. Other tops are within tolerance. Here's the canopy

A Screen of Green

Widow doing nicely too

 

[BedroomFarmer]

Gorgeous! Great canopy man!

 

[RobbieBurn]

How much do people vary their plant's diet day to day? I'm trialling a system where I give full concentrations of some nutes over others, over a 7 day period. Something like:

1 - Additive
2 - Silica
3 - CalMag+Amino
4 - Additive
5 - Molasses
6 - A&B
7 - Light feed (Low EC)

All feeds receive at least low doses of A&B and the additive, but (for example) on day 1 and 4, 100% of the dosage for the additive is included and only 50% of A&B (used to make the solution up to the required EC). The silica, CalMag, Amino and Molasses are only added once per week on their respective days. Anyone else do this?

 

[spiralout]

In your experience does using all those extra nutes make much of a difference to the final product? All I use is Canna Coco.

 

[RobbieBurn]

You mean just A&B? Then yeah. Definitely the CalMag & Silica make a difference. I'm happy to dial down the A&B in favour of an additional P&K additive in flower too. Difficult to say that it makes a difference as I haven't done any controls (with and without) but all the literature I've read supports additional P&K in flower. Canna's PK13/14 is one of them. The key is watching the EC.

 

[RobbieBurn]

Hi all. Been a while since last post so here's an update. Apologies - been busy.

All EC/pH going fine. Plants healthy

Tonight did some maintenance (daily occurrence actually, but tonight more intensive) and also put on the 2nd scrog net. This has wider holes and is used mainly to stop the mature buds from falling over. Some of these flowers are going to be very heavy at about day 56 and I'm pretty sure that without support, they will fall over. Had this happen in the last grow and it wasn't good Extremely difficult to get to later in the grow. The hard part is going to be harvest. Not really wanting to destroy the top net. We'll see how we go I guess.

Another advantage of a top net is that it's easy to do some last minute flattening of the canopy. I've just started week 3, so this will be the last week of the stretch growth. In the last 23 days, I've fed them 19 times. It shows I think. Here's an overview vid below.

In it, you can really see the UVB lights! These lights are now up to 3hrs per night. Next week is the final increment to 4hrs per night. I'm pretty certain that the resins on the flowers under or near a UV light is developing faster than in say the middle of a few lights. Time will tell on this.

[video=vimeo;212586960]

[/video]

The girls have just started week 3 of flower. Tonight the bottom was cleaned up properly and the lights were raised. I actually had to turn a couple of them off yesterday and day before because the light was too low and the plant was touching. I've worked out that this isn't a huge deal if a leaf touches. Experience though says to NOT get a bud to touch. That part of the bud dies and tries to get enveloped by the new part of the bud, which results in a weird end result.

So here are some pics. It's getting hard to get a full canopy shot. Will try for one tomorrow. The video tells the story.


This is Widow. Probably my favourite.

And again

I like this photo even though the colour is a bit off. Can easily see the bud buildup

This is one of the Super Skunk buds. At the beginning of the 3rd week, they are coming along very nicely with good trichome development on the bud already. Looking forward to this!

And the closeup

After these photos were taken, I did a bit more cleanup of top leaves that were blocking lower buds. I haven't and won't be removing all the leaves. Just the ones that are obviously in the way of buds and also can't be bent down. There's heaps of info around on defoliation with many saying do it, and many saying don't do it.

My opinion is that if you're growing outside - don't do it. Shouldn't need to. Inside, don't pull all of the leaves off. Leave some down the bottom so you can see if there's any common deficiencies developing, leave some also for food storage. Remove the ones that are more than half dead and remove some of the ones that don't see any light. Remove the upper fan leaves when they block the light to adjacent buds - but it is preferred to bend it down and out of the way. Sometimes though, this can't be done without impacting other buds. If this happens, the leaf goes. I also take off all of the crappy bud underneath the bottom screen so that all attention is given to the top, and the little side buggers don't steal any food headed for the bosses.

I removed a bucket of leaves from the under canopy and the canopy and it still looks green and full with very little light penetrating the canopy.


Just reflecting and recapping:

1st week - (photo below) - scrog net fitted (2"). Light is 400W MH
2nd week - flip week (12/12). Mid week, change to 600W HPS. Set scrog up for growth spurt.
3rd week - 1st week of flower. Lots of weaving the scrog.
4th week - 2nd week of flower. UV on. 2hrs middle of cycle. Weaving getting hard. Tie down to screen
5th week - 3rd week of flower (now). Final week of big stretch. Fit 2nd stability and spacing net (4"). UV up to 3hrs

In the first week (4 weeks ago) these plants looked like this:

 

[RobbieBurn]

List night's pics below.

Canopy 04/11/17

The Scrog. No particular location

 

[RobbieBurn]

Hi all. Today is the last day of week 3 flower and the last Big Bud feed. From tomorrow, we're onto the PK13/14.

Current feed frequency is 1 feed every 1.22 days. Inflow EC's are about 1.9-2.0 to balance outflow EC's which are 1.8-2.4. This is a bit deceptive. The plant has probably eaten most of what she's going to, so the high outflow EC could very well be full of stuff she's not interested in right now. Dunno. Doesn't really matter so long as you have a reasonable amount of runoff. The EC is also high because the first and final flush contain the bottom pot runoff which is slightly more concentrated (this is what I'm measuring). So long as stays with a maximum of 2.4, I don't think there's an issue. If it goes to 2.6 which it has done, I feed wtih EC1.7 with an additional 30% runoff. If it does this again, I'll try molassas because that really seemed to buffer the pH and therefore control EC to a large degree.

Ph inflow is usually 5.9-6.0 (max) to balance what's going on inside the plant which is outflow pH 5.6. I want the pH in the plant to be about 5.7-5.8. The little higher inflow pH also is better for Mg and S absorption according to the interwebs. This drops further into the yummy range of P later on in the pot. The plants get a very small bit of S when I de-chlorinate the feed water.

Here are a few pics

Random canopy pics. Nearly impossible to get the full screen in.

A collection of nice buds forming

White Widow (wk 3 end)

Super Skunk (wk 3 end)

 

[BedroomFarmer]

 

[RobbieBurn]

Things that are working for me on this grow:

- daily feeding
- watching EC and pH like a hawk (in and out)
- selective defoliation
- varying diet (more P&K particularly at the right time)
- lower Ca & Si input (previously gave these in every feed, now only once or twice a week)
- scrog
- full tent access
- UV lighting
- blue lighting

Why?? >

Yesterday (end of week 3 flower) I needed to do some maintenance. I tried very hard to NOT touch the flowers. Only the leaves. After about 3 minutes, my fingers stuck together. Incredible amount of resin building on these girls. Yes it's more work, but man coming along real nice. More photos in about 12hrs

 

[RobbieBurn]

Hi all. Everything normal here. Lifting the lights a bit now to account for the growing buds. Changed over to PK as stipulated. All good so far. Girls are in the beginning of the 4th week now. I'm pretty happy with the trichome development. These are really sticky already and I've got 6 weeks to go! Just past one-third of the way there. In the next 2 weeks, the buds should fatten up nicely.

Here are a few pics as of 5 min ago.

Canopy

General of Scrog

White Widow (Beginning wk 4) flowers

Super Skunk (Beginning wk 4) flowers