Stonedsalmon's Second Indoor Soil Grow: Crown Royale & Northern Lights Mainlining

[stonedsalmon]

The strains are Crown Royal from Crop King and Northern Lights (unknown breeder). This time I went for feminized seeds. This thread is somewhat posthumous as i'm currently at around day 20 of flower.

My setup:
3x1.5x5' Tent
2x 5 Gallon Fabric pots (Crown Royal)
1x 3 Gallon Fabric Pot (Northern Lights)
4" inline fan and carbon filter
260w Quantum board kit
Humidifier & dehumidifier
2x clip on fans + intake fan
Nutrients - General Hydroponics Flora Grow,Micro,Bloom

My first grown was a little disappointing in terms of yield so I ditched the lights I was using previously. Also due to the space constraints of my tent I decided to give mainlining a shot. To start I germinated the seeds using the paper towel method and once they popped and showed the taproots I placed them into solo cups (clear ones inside red ones, So I could check the roots), at this point I was messing with the dimmer on my lights trying to avoid the plants getting too stretchy (which they were):

After a few days I noticed some discoloration on the leaves (potentially due to me dimming the light too much). I transplanted them into 1 gallon pots as previously I had better success with them than with solo cups in the early stages:

You can see they were still a little yellow. At this point I cranked my light up substantially to see how the plants would react and to my surprise there were no adverse affects and they started to hit their stride:

Once the plants reached their 6th node they were topped down to their third node and had all the lower growth (nodes) removed, at which point they looked like this:

(Going to split this up to avoid a mega post).

 

[stonedsalmon]

After about 4 days of growing out they were transplanted into their final pots. After another day or two of recovery I started to tie down the new arms on all three plants, they were then topped again:

The plant in the last photo was a little more demanding.

 

[stonedsalmon]

These arms grew out for around another week at which point they were topped for the third and final time:

Shortly after topping all three plants I noticed I had some unwelcome guests. Spring tails and fungus gnats. I decided on a pretty non aggressive method of dealing with them (sticky traps) and dressing the top of my soil with sand:

The plants didn't seem to mind and seemed to be happy even after all that chopping

The sand and sticky traps made quick work of the few fungus gnats that were lingering and they were gone in a matter of days. The spring tails not so much, after quite a lot of paranoid research the consensus seems to be that they're harmless anyway? they still show up in my drip trays .

 

[stonedsalmon]

At this point most of all the hard work has been done and just some light LST was necessary to keep things growing evenly until the plants are big enough for Peony/Tomato rings.

 

[Tony Urban]

Well done, looking like a nice clean set up, dig the strain choice too.

 

[stonedsalmon]

Well done, looking like a nice clean set up, dig the strain choice too.

Thank you! I've never tasted Crown Royale, I'm excited.

 

[stonedsalmon]

I set my Peony rings around 13" from the soil line with the intention of flipping the plants once they reached it. The plants were getting very close at this point so they were lollipopped, here are the manifolds:

 

[EastCoastGhost]

I will sub up to this one, nice setup you have there. I love the QBs, they grow some awesome plants. I done some Crown Royale two grows back, turned out to be some great bud and I still have seeds so I will probably run another in the future. It’s a relaxing smoke great for the evening time, if you like indica you will like Crown Royale. I have lots of bud shots of her in the journal, the journal is in my signature if you want to take a look. Good luck though and hope your grow goes great.

 

[EastCoastGhost]

I see your using flora series, I just started using it in dwc and I’m really liking it. For my coco plants I use dynagro though.

 

[stonedsalmon]

I will sub up to this one, nice setup you have there. I love the QBs, they grow some awesome plants. I done some Crown Royale two grows back, turned out to be some great bud and I still have seeds so I will probably run another in the future. It’s a relaxing smoke great for the evening time, if you like indica you will like Crown Royale. I have lots of bud shots of her in the journal, the journal is in my signature if you want to take a look. Good luck though and hope your grow goes great.

Thanks I appreciate it, I do love Indica (almost exclusively give or take the odd hybrid)! I'll definitely check your thread out too.

 

[stonedsalmon]

At this point the Crown Royales were starting to get taller than my Peony ring. The Northern lights didn't quite get as tall but I didn't want to risk any size issues so it was flip time. Here come the stretching photos:

 

[stonedsalmon]

The previous photo was taken yesterday, the tallest seems to have finally stopped stretching it's around 30" tall from soil line. Now for a closer look at the bud sites:

 

[stonedsalmon]

Now i'm all caught up. Tomorrow will be day 21 in flower.

 

[stonedsalmon]

Northern Lights Muscle shot:

Crown Royale 1 & 2 Manifolds:

 

[Curiousnoob]

Wow, they look great! Can I ask apart from the sand did you use anything else to treat the fungus gnats?

 

[stonedsalmon]

Wow, they look great! Can I ask apart from the sand did you use anything else to treat the fungus gnats?

Just the yellow sticky traps you see In some of the earlier photos. I think the sand stopped them multiplying quite effectively.

 

[Tony Urban]

Nice work on the gnats, the sand and sticky traps are a nice non invasive solution that works most often. I had a large garbage bin full of extra soil that I also treated with mosquito dunks, eliminated the secondary source of the gnats, sticky traps took care of the rest.

 

[Curiousnoob]

Just the yellow sticky traps you see In some of the earlier photos. I think the sand stopped them multiplying quite effectively.

Ok cheers mate, will give the sand a try!

 

[stonedsalmon]

Did one last defoliation today, tomorrow will be day 28 in flower.

Here are some pictures starting with the bud progress:

These pictures were taken with a different camera than normal which makes them look a little different hue wise.

 

[stonedsalmon]

Coming up on 5 weeks in flower, plants all stopped growing and buds are getting fatter (some more than others):