Tokists' Soil Afghan Kush Grow HPS vs. CFL

[Tokist]

ooook, so the other day when i started flowering, it turns out i had left the closet light on all night even after making sure everything was off. so... today starts the official FIRST day of flowering. yesterday being day 0... again.

there're no pics yet, just an update for my own personal notes. in fact, unless something awesome happens, i probably won't be bothering with pics for at least a few more days. not much has changed since you saw them last.

lets see how long it takes for them to get hairs!

 

[gairbud]

7 to 10 days most strains will show flowers but 2 to 3 days of dark first will shorten your strech time on most strains and some acually do better that way. it can take up to 3 weeks for lowers in some starins true white widows do that. and they love a dark period more then long light grows. in a 12/12 from seed at about 10 to 14 days you will know the sex of every plant and can pic or kill off your males. i keep males around. almost always. in a sealed cabinet. they produce natual hormones that make the females go crazy without useing alot of supplements to do the same. in the long run way cheeper to seal off choice males for either seed grow or horny ass females.

 

[Tokist]

flowering day 3

i know i said i wasnt going to show pictures, but there plants are much bushier than they were a couple of days ago. well... at least, the ones under the hps are. the plants under the cfl stretched a bit more.

here's pics of the grow room from the outside in.

this here's the trash bag that i've got taped on the inside that keeps light from leaking through the door cracks.

​

here's a closer shot of the plants under the hps. you'll have to excuse the distortion. nothing i could do about it.

​

and under the cfl...

​

i'm probably going to end up defoliating both plants tomorrow after work to assist in more light reaching the lower extremities. i fed them some c-tea, and i put some ff nutes in the ctea so tomorrow, they'll have a hearty breakfast.

and now it's time to toke and hit the sack

 

[JB42]

Looking great tokist!
If I was you mate I would put them all under that hps, 2x2. Point proven on the HPS merking the CFL. No need to keep them there . If they stay there by the looks of things the harvest on them 2 will be smaller than the HID ones, no point really, might as well have them all big

 

[Tokist]

Looking great tokist!
If I was you mate I would put them all under that hps, 2x2. Point proven on the HPS merking the CFL. No need to keep them there . If they stay there by the looks of things the harvest on them 2 will be smaller than the HID ones, no point really, might as well have them all big

thanks jbc!

i would like to do that but i dont know that the HID gives off enough light to support all four plants. i'd have to raise the light about a foot in order for the lux to cover the entire area that both lights are currently covering. in doing so, i'd be robbing them of that many more lumens, wouldn't i? or am i suppose to have the HID farther away than i already have it?

what's your take?

 

[Tokist]

side note

i'm not sure that it matters, but at some point between 6pm and 8pm the lights went off because we kicked the timer when we watered this morning and it messed up the dial a bit. so... i'm not really sure how long they were off. could be anywhere from 15 min to 2 hours. i hope this doesn't mess with my flowering too much.

 

[JB42]

Easy mate, the lights off was only minimal so stress was probably minimal as well. Cant really help on the height of the HID's as ive done CFL grow's and only just switching to HID now. At least get them closer to it and keep the cfl as a sort of side cover then. Thats what i'd do mate

 

[Tokist]

flowering day 7

ok, so i've inherited some nice hardware, but i've gotta do some repairs to it before i can utilize it. it's a T5 light enclosure for 8 bulbs @ 5000 lumens a piece. which comes out to a hefty 40,000 lumens. that's more than double what my current hps is putting out.

​

my hydro supply guy has the bulbs in both red and blue spectrums for 13 a piece. i'd need to replace at least one of the tombstones in the fixture, as it's blown out. a couple more look like they could be shorting out, but it may also be the bulbs. i haven't bothered to really trouble shoot it fully.

i took my plants out today and as per heavy urging from an old grow veteran at work, i defoliated the shit out of my plants. here's a before and after:

​

and here's all of them back under their lights after a nice, healing c-tea bath.

​

i salvaged some of the cuttings and cloned 'em. i used rootech cloning gel.

​

i think i went a little hog-wild on the defoil, but i've been told from numerous sources that releasing the plant of the burden of all those axillary branches allows it to focus more energy into the buds at the top: which is where the light is hitting anyways. i probably set the flowering back a few days, but if that means bigger buds and less suckerweed then i'm all for it.

on a side note, i've also been urged to purchase bloombastic. it's an organic nute that's supposed to make your buds blow up and get real dense (lots of people says it makes their bud "foxtail" - what does that mean?). it's 30 bucks for 80ml which is a bit pricey, but if it does what they say... i just don't think i have the light setup to get the full benefit. any thoughts? this is what it's supposed to do to your buds. this was taken from another thread in this forum. i found the image via google:

g'night for now, all!

 

[JB42]

Hey tokist mate, good to see the new update

Thats a cool new light. I been doing a little reading on them as I use CFL's but apparently they pump out a lot more luminens for little or the same watt. Might get one of them myself for veg when the funds are more stable.

Fox tailing is whats happening at the top of the buds, where they are stacking like foxtails. I think they look cool and have had small ones on one of mine before, Maybe my Tangerine Dream, cant fully remember. Not fully sure what causes it, I thought just some strains do it late in flower as one last attempt to catch some pollen they are looking for. If left I hear it will pollinate itself by turning hermi after. Not sure on the lata though.

How come you turned 8 or so branch tops into 2 or 4 mate? Thats where the buds are going to grow. I take the lowest to pass power to the more important heads like all the ones on the canopy. I dont care about number of branches as long as I can get as many as I can at canopy level.

 

[Tokist]

Hey tokist mate, good to see the new update

Thats a cool new light. I been doing a little reading on them as I use CFL's but apparently they pump out a lot more luminens for little or the same watt. Might get one of them myself for veg when the funds are more stable.

Fox tailing is whats happening at the top of the buds, where they are stacking like foxtails. I think they look cool and have had small ones on one of mine before, Maybe my Tangerine Dream, cant fully remember. Not fully sure what causes it, I thought just some strains do it late in flower as one last attempt to catch some pollen they are looking for. If left I hear it will pollinate itself by turning hermi after. Not sure on the lata though.

How come you turned 8 or so branch tops into 2 or 4 mate? Thats where the buds are going to grow. I take the lowest to pass power to the more important heads like all the ones on the canopy. I dont care about number of branches as long as I can get as many as I can at canopy level.

if i had stronger lights i would have totally left all those bud sites alone, but i dont. if ive got 8 bud sites but the light's only really hitting 4, then i'm robbing half of the bud from being all it can be. i hear it's best to have one or two large, denser colas than fix or six fluffy small ones.

 

[JB42]

If it was me mate I would of left them on but each to his own. They looking healthy anyway

 

[Tokist]

If it was me mate I would of left them on but each to his own. They looking healthy anyway

yea, i'm having buyers remorse. no refunds on this one, unfortunately.

i made a batch of ctea a few days ago and i was saving it for this morning. last night i figured i'd amp it up so i threw in a dose of big bloom and added molasses (i had forgotten to add it initially).

this morning, my lights turn on so i go grab the ctea. i give it a whiff like i always do to make sure it doesn't smell like dead or dying bacteria. if it smells like earthy soil, i green light it. today, however, was a new one for me. i hadn't smelled this smell since the last time i left pearl barley to soak in water too long.

folks, my ctea smelled faintly of beer. which, is also the smell of bacteria eating sugar and proliferating. i know that when yeast eats sugar, it produces carbon dioxide, which we all know is good for our babies. i'm assuming a similar process is occurring here. just to be sure, i googled it. my query was, "is beer good for my plants?". i found out that yes, yes it is. in moderation (just like humans). i found a link titled, "get your plants drunk on flat beer..." and it said:

Use a small amount of a flat beer just at the base of the plant. If you have a house with some roommates, and your yard is prone to ugly brown patches, you can pour flat beer on that too. The acids in beer kill off fungi and pests, and the fermented sugars feed the grass.

that was enough for me. i figured the faint, faint smell of beer was more than light enough. i'm sure there wasn't any real measurable amount of alcohol in there, so i went ahead and watered all my girls with it. in hindsight, i should have done just one. but you know what? who cares. it's all in the name of science!

maybe i'll be famous and everyone'll start putting beer on their cannabis grow!

 

[Tokist]

i've actually gone and found other sources that say a good compost tea smells a bit like "yeasty beer". it's supposed to mean that it's "teeming with life" or SUPER alive. so i think i did good here. apparently farmers been making yeasty compost tea for years. so much for being famous. but hey, at least i got something right on the money for once! and totally on accident!

 

[JB42]

Thats some great information tokist, loving your search for knowledge. Must be some great tea you have made, I made one but when I looked at my plants the really didnt need it yet , the Super soil is working great , no purple stems of and deffs yet. Even when I fed the biobizz root juice it seemed a tiny bit too much.

Cant wait to make my first brew, it may be in first 2 week of flower the way my soil working.

Reps on beer info mate!

 

[Tokist]

Thats some great information tokist, loving your search for knowledge. Must be some great tea you have made, I made one but when I looked at my plants the really didnt need it yet , the Super soil is working great , no purple stems of and deffs yet. Even when I fed the biobizz root juice it seemed a tiny bit too much.

Cant wait to make my first brew, it may be in first 2 week of flower the way my soil working.

Reps on beer info mate!

thanks for the reps, jbc!

let's not get too excited just yet. while i did find a couple of sources stating information that works in my favor, the left side of my brain is shaking his head clicking his tongue. the right side says, "bro, finish the bowl and relax. shit's gonna turn out awesome. watch."

if this turns out and you want to try to recreate it, here's exactly what happened.

i had had a batch of ctea going for the better part of a week, maybe week and a half. i check it every day to make sure it hasn't turned. every day it smells just fine - which goes to show that ctea is good forever so long as you're aerating it. when it would get low, i would just add more water and a bit more soil to the mix. here's where things went wrong...

the bucket i mix my ctea in is 3 gallons. last night, i was so stoned, i did the math for a 5 gallon bucket. i thought i had two gallons in there, when in actuality i had approximately one. maybe one and a half. my plants hadn't been watered in a couple days, so i figure i'll treat them in the morning to a hearty breakfast. i put two tablespoons of molasses and 8 tablespoons of big bloom (both double the amount required for 1 gallon). i stir it all in real good and adjust the airstones for max aeration distribution.

this morning, it smells of yeast. i exclaim, "fuck! i have to throw this out." i think for a moment. i remember the pearl barley i left to soak overnight, but ended up being two nights. it was foamy and smelled of really, really light beer. back then i googled how beer was made to see if perhaps i could turn this into a glass of beer, perhaps. just for an experiment. for fun. and science!

the info about how yeast eats sugar to make more good bacteria and produce carbon dioxide made me think, "shit... this might actually be really good, or really bad." the first google search i posted earlier clinched it, and on a whim, i watered the plants before i changed my mind. i even took some of the compost at the bottom of the bucket and topped the soil with it around the stem of each plant.

i think that the overdose of molasses wasn't really an overdose at all. i think what really happened is that the bacteria in the ctea were ALL able to get a piece of the action, whereas a single tablespoon only allows for perhaps half of the bacteria to flourish, and then it's gone. the bacteria's bacteria's offspring were able to enjoy the leftovers and i bet that's what led to the smell. or, the "teeming of life". i've gotta be careful though. if i produce a mix that actually HAS alcohol in it, i'll end up killing all the bacteria (both good and bad) in my soil and it'd ruin the entire organic environment i've created. i imagine it would be very difficult to get to that point, but still. something to be mindful of should y'all ever try this.

so... we'll see how this turns out.

on a side note, the wounds from last nights trimming are already healed nicely. the ctea foliar spray did its job quite well. the plants already have new growth and the leaves are lookin fine.

 

[Lester Freeman]

I disagree with the heavy defoliation going into flower, you'd want them to bush up a little before going in from what I've read/heard. Also, that was more of a debranchiation rather than a defoliation if you ask me lol. But you walked away with a bunch of clones, if those all root than I might withdraw my disagreement, lol. Keep us updated on the clones mate.

And I agree with the other post to try get more out of the lighting, possibly putting 2x2 under the HPS, I don't know if you could have the CFL mounted to the side - if that would work or not. Just my two cents mate, best of luck~!

RL

 

[Tokist]

I disagree with the heavy defoliation going into flower, you'd want them to bush up a little before going in from what I've read/heard. Also, that was more of a debranchiation rather than a defoliation if you ask me lol. But you walked away with a bunch of clones, if those all root than I might withdraw my disagreement, lol. Keep us updated on the clones mate.

And I agree with the other post to try get more out of the lighting, possibly putting 2x2 under the HPS, I don't know if you could have the CFL mounted to the side - if that would work or not. Just my two cents mate, best of luck~!

RL

it's easy to disagree when you're not working with shitty lights what you don't see in my pictures is the uneven axillary growth. one axillary shoot will have a giant leaf pair and perhaps even two nodes of its own while the adjacent side has two tiny leaves and nothing more. to rectify this initially, i would turn the plants every day so all sides are getting light, but that gets old quick.

the growth directly beneath the top two leaves barely gets any light. the stuff below that is even worse off. the way i see it, letting the plants bush up a bunch more would enable them to grow a bunch of bud sites that would never grow to their potential. furthermore, alleviating the plant of all that excess growth allows it (deja vu) to focus more energy developing the bud sites that DO get light. if i were running a thousand watt monster or even growing outdoors, sure. let em bush all to hell and do what they want cuz they'll get all the light they need. we do the things we do to get the most out of our plants after all. some people bend and fold their stems to enhance light absorption, some people defoliate. it's all gravy.

as for doing 2x2 under the hps, unfortunately, there's no way to get all four of those plants under the one hid light. that light barely has enough lux to support the two plants its got. what i really would like is to get that T5 enclosure up and running. then i can put all those plants under it and more than double the lumens they're all getting. even triple.

i wasn't going to debranch them like i did, but my buddy needed clones and i needed a reason to cut those branches off. so there ya have it all those clones are doing fine. a couple already have some nubs sticking out, even. once the plants i got them off of show their sex, i'll feel a bit better. i'd hate to have cloned a buncha sausage.

 

[Lester Freeman]

It all depends.
LST in combination with defoliation is the ultimate way to increase yield (besides scrog). If you want one big cola, thats fine but, the point of LST - to trick the plant into sending more growth hormones to the "bud sites that would never grow to their potential" and forming what it thinks is a new top of the plant. In my opinion your lights are not shitty, and they're worth the hundreds of dollars you spent on them. 450 watts (HPS/CFL) is more than enough light for 4 plants of such a small size. if you started LST early on you'd have plants that instead of being tall with few tops, would be short with multiple tops. You could harvest 2 ounces per plant (each plant being 14 inches tall and 24 inches across ) potentially...

Not sure if you've checked out my small ghetto grow, I'm using 156 watts of CFL on two plants and they're loving life, and about to flower! Not trying to argue with you mate just saying you could get a lot more out of your lights with LST. Hell, atleast you'll have those expensive lights forever!

 

[JB42]

Yeah man Leester right. I have grown bigger plants with Just crappy house adjacents or whatever they are called. You have more than enough light for them and they would of caught up, seriously.
I have done some mad grows with the worst set-ups and the lower buds were better than the main cola. IME the lower buds are always best anyway , not sure why but the buds right below the main cola are always my heaviest and tastiest buds. The main cola will always try to keep growing but at a certain point the lower ones just fatten up.

Go on my jounral and look back a page or 2 and see what I grew with a few 30w cfls's. You can clearly see the lower buds with less light are so compact. Its wierd but they stop stretching in week 6 and just go solid. They are the best , main cola's always grow up whereas single top buds pack on weight.

 

[Tokist]

It all depends.
LST in combination with defoliation is the ultimate way to increase yield (besides scrog). If you want one big cola, thats fine but, the point of LST - to trick the plant into sending more growth hormones to the "bud sites that would never grow to their potential" and forming what it thinks is a new top of the plant. In my opinion your lights are not shitty, and they're worth the hundreds of dollars you spent on them. 450 watts (HPS/CFL) is more than enough light for 4 plants of such a small size. if you started LST early on you'd have plants that instead of being tall with few tops, would be short with multiple tops. You could harvest 2 ounces per plant (each plant being 14 inches tall and 24 inches across ) potentially...

Not sure if you've checked out my small ghetto grow, I'm using 156 watts of CFL on two plants and they're loving life, and about to flower! Not trying to argue with you mate just saying you could get a lot more out of your lights with LST. Hell, atleast you'll have those expensive lights forever!

well poop. at least i know this for the next attempt. i guess in my mind i was just so focused on the big main cola.

as far as LST goes, i understand the purpose but when it comes to actual application i find that i'm completely lost. i see others doing it all the time and i think that's great, but when it came time for me to apply it to my own grow i had no idea what to do. what exactly was the goal?

man, i knew that defoil was a bad idea. but i just couldn't get it outta my head that it needed to be done. i suppose y'all coulda said ANYTHING and i probably still would have done it. it was one of those lessons you don't learn til it burns you. like getting married at 18! i'm a stubborn dumbass that way. at least the clones are doing well!

so i suppose what i need to do is read up a couple journals that are very lst-centric. sigh.... live and learn, folks.

checked on the girls today, as their lights come on 1000CST and i'm still not seeing any hairs. it's day 10 today, so from what i hear i should start noticing within the next few days. i'm getting to a new stage for me in weed growing and my excitement is almost palpable. i've never taken a grow into flower before!