BunkerMonkey's Soil Elephant Bud & Vanilla Kush Grow Journal 2014

[BunkerMonkey]

My cousin gave me a clone of Elephant Bud along with 3 vanilla Kush a couple of months ago that were rooting in 16oz Solo cups. I had only recently read of Elephant Bud on BC Seeds website and I was floored by their prices. BC Seeds is charging $50/seed for this Elephant Bud, which isn't unreasonable at all if the strain lives up to it's hype...and it does sound like hype. Permit me to quote the company -

"Elephant Bud

This is the BIGGEST MOST POTENT STRAIN ON EARTH. Elephant Bud has such a huge cola, you see it bending over to one side due to it's massive weight in bud. I've never seen a cola so large since upsate. She is huge right from germination, and so vigerous, you barely have a vegetation stage. Thankfully flowering this giant is FAST, REALLY FAST. If your a commercial grower you'll save money on electricity and your cusomters will be begging for more if you can keep it in stock. ELEPHANT BUD is our best creation, I seriously doubt we will be able to breed such a monster strain again. Elephant Bud raises the bar so high, nothing else will be able to match it for at least another 10 years. The smoke is so powerful and intense, and YOU MUST be careful if your not used to BC Genetics, as she is our most potent THC Strain Ever Created on planet earth. We have limited quantities and IT WILL SELL OUT, so order today and we will put a pack aside for you. Limited of 2 packs maximum order per person."

It's hard to believe, especially considering that BC Seeds sells a Thai strain for $20,000/10 seeds. I have never dealt with this seed company but their claims and even the comments all seem completely beyond the realm of credibility. For example -

"by Jeffrey Waite Date Added: Friday 20 September, 2013
All my girls made it through a tough summer, and wow, the weed is tall and strong and just plain gigantic. She really tips the scales, from the 8 females out of 11 seeds (thanks for the extra!) all my girls combined, harvested a slick 211 pounds of very dried (from strong Australian sun) buds. Nothing else even comes close..."

211 pounds from 8 plants? That's over 26 pounds per plant. Even growing outdoors with "strong Australian sun" I don't believe that. I would have never purchased these seeds simply because it seems like B.S.
So anyway, my cousin gave me a clone from one of his still vegging plants and I started collecting the gear I'd need to legally grow my own medical marihuana (that's how the State of Michigan spells marijuana) as a card holder allowed to grow my own weed under Michigan State law and I was very interested in seeing for myself if those claims were even remotely true, and if they were true then I was onto something HUGE! If this Elephant Bud (I don't really know if it came from the same strain that BC Seeds is selling) doesn't live up to the hype then I have 3 good old reliable high TCH producing Vanilla Kush girls (if that's what they really are...the finished bud looked identical to photos I found on the Web though) and I will do well with them, eve though I nitrogen burned them a bit a couple of days ago, but that story will come a bit later as I continue with this grow journal.

For now I'll leave you with a photo of some Elephant that is very near finishing that my cousin sent me. He said the buds really were almost as frosty as they look in the photo but the image is a little washed out.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

It's been 20 days since he last entry. I've been quite busy building the flowering room and getting the girls settled in. I suppose I'm a little late with all the specifications for this grow so here they are:

1 Elephant Bud(?) - unknown genetics
3 Vanilla Kush(?) Indica, from Afghan and Kashmir strains
Beginning Flowering - day 4
Indoors - basement grow
Soil - B'Cuzz HydroMix: Peat moss, Perlite, Dolomitic Limestone, Calcitic Limestone, Wetting agent and Inorganic fertilizer.
10 gallon Dirt Bags cloth pots
Lighting - four 1000w HPS in Cool Tubes with 26"x24" reflector hoods in 10'x10'x7' high room panda wrapped
Temp: 69F/87F
RH: 45%-55%
pH of growing media: 5.5-6.5
Pests: a few gnats
Watering as needed when soil is dry 3"-4" down. 3 gal each plant/watering.
Nutrients: RO water 10ppm pH varies adjusted to 6.0, General Hydroponics, Veg/Micro/Bloom/Florablend/Floralicious/Floranecter Plus at 50% of application rate on bottle.
Final ppm: 575
Super Cropping SCROG nets under construction.

Today (tonight really as I'm running lights at night for temperature control) I noticed the first pistils appearing so I've started the countdown clock at T minus 60 days (plus or minus). I have several loose ends to deal with in this flowering room, number 1 being ventilation. Right now I'm just blowing the warm air from the 4 lights out into the basement and then using a 220 CFM 6" duct fan to blow the warm air in the basement up the unused chimney. I am in the process of building a plenum box to duct that exhaust air from the lights up the chimney but not before the air passes over a heavy duty ozone generator for odor control. Hopefully that will take care of the stank and then some so I can then use the Phresh carbon filter to scrub the air in the living area. It's all going to come down to playing the ventilation and odor control by ear as the grow progresses and temperatures increase outdoors.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Cooking soup for the girls tonight.

Something that I haven't discussed yet is that when the seedlings got too big for the Solo cups I transplanted them into 2 1/2 gallon containers with (don't yell at me) Miracle Grow potting soil that has a 6 month slow release fertilizer in it. At the time I thought I would have to go out of state for a month or so and I just wanted to preserve the genetics so I figured to take clones off these mothers to be and start fresh in a recirculating deep water culture system. If you want to hear the universe laugh make plans. Anyway, I didn't leave Michigan where I am legally permitted to grow up to 12 plants so I went ahead with a soil grow instead for this first indoor medical crop. I considered trying to wash the damned Miracle Grow potting soil out, not because I necessarily have anything against Miracle Grow since I've gotten a few nice outdoor crops with it back in the Olden Days when all we did was guerrilla grows. To make a long story short I accidentally nitrogen burned the crop but I caught it the next day and I did some wild flushing with pH 7 RO water because nitrogen is best soluble at pH 7 from the research I did. I shouldn't have made this kind of beginners mistake but I misread my new TDS meter. There was a little flashing "X10" in the right side of the display that I didn't see because of the angle I was holding the meter at so I accidentally mixed up a batch of nutrients at about 1900ppm heavy in the nitrogen department! Since then I haven't mixed the girl's nutrients over 500ppm.

Anyway...tonight I mixed up a new batch of nute soup since the soil mixture had dried out enough so that a little drooping of the leaves was apparent. Usually I would have watered a little sooner, but sometimes the world just gets in the way. I prepared 12 gallons of pH 6.0 RO water and added only the nutrients that only contained small amounts of N or none at all. Although the crop seems to be thriving in their new home, there's still traces of N burn. Until tonight I have never checked the pH of the soup AFTER I brewed it up, but because I had mixed a non-standard brew I figured it wouldn't hurt. THE pH HAD DROPPED TO 4.0!!! Apparently one of the G.H. Florawhatevers is somewhat acidic. I brought the pH back up to 6.0 and let it set for an hour with the bubbler going to make sure the pH had stabilized before going any further. Both the pH meter and the G.H. pH chemical drops agreed for once (when in doubt I trust the dye drops) so I proceeded with the soaking and the girls eagerly drank 3 gallons each leaving a little of the solution in the pans under the Dirt Bags.

Tonight (their daytime) to my pleasant surprise I found that the flowering is proceeding faster than I had anticipated since it's only day 5 into the 12/12 cycle. The Elephant Bud is out-flowering the Vanilla Kush plants! The Elephant's flowers are about twice as large as the Vanilla Kush's which surprised me a little since the Kush seems to be a hardier variety.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Day 10 of flowering and the "Elephant" Bud is outpacing the Vanilla Kush in bud development.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

"Elephant" Bud(?) Day 16.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Back a couple of weeks...Vanilla Kush(?) pre-scrog lollipop.

 

[Tamir]

Looks amazing. Skeptical of the elephant bud rumors hut her who knows might be something that will surprise u. I'm along for the ride. Happy growing

 

[Max Reefer]

nice looking grow.

MR

 

[danknessdude]

Sub'd. Like too see this through

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Just to keep things interesting I added two 2' Reptisun 10 UV-B lights on one of the Vanilla Kush. UV-B is supposed to increase the number and potency of the trichomes. Right now I'm running them for 6 hours a day and I'll take it to 12 hours a day if the plant doesn't get sunburned. I intend to have my bud lab tested for THC/CBD/mold ($30/sample) when everything has finished.

 

[Max Reefer]

can't wait to hear the results.

MR

 

[BunkerMonkey]

The garden as of 4-25-14. I have a nitrogen deficiency in all four girls probably due to my overly light feeding of them since the mild overdose of N last month and also because at the center of each 10 gallon Dirt Bag there is a 2-3 gallon mass of Miracle Grow potting soil that has slow release fertilizer in it. I have everyone back on the standard doses of GH nutes with some GH flowering enhancers, total ppm 1000. I explained above that I never intended to flower these plants but for them to be mothers for the DWC grow that I only got started about a month ago (and it's thriving) but I put the mothers under the 1000W lights because I needed to get a grow started ASAP.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Correction - that's 5 square meters of scrog that about 90% filled out so that's where the 4.5m^2 came from. Math when you're stoned, huh?

 

[BunkerMonkey]

The 40X magnifier I ordered came today and although I've been able to see some decent frostiness in the Elephant(?) for the last week or so, now I can really make the individual trichomes out.

(Side Note: I bought a seed pack of White Widow and White Rhino Fems at the Jackson County Compassion Club that come straight from the outfit that created the strain of White Widow - the Green House Seed Company, so all doubts are gone about the linage of these plants. I dropped one of each in water about an hour ago. If anyone lives in south central Michigan here's a link. They have an amazing collection of seeds for sale, just bring the paperwork with your doctor's name along with your card.)

https://jacksoncompassionclub.com/

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Just another WARNING about sending BC Seeds your hard earned money for seeds that are unrealistically hyped. I do NOT believe that the clone my cousin gave me can be traced back to BC Seeds. They also sell some landrace Thai at only $20,000 for 10 seeds so if you know someone who is a complete idiot....

 

[danknessdude]

Avoid candian hemo company to. Scam site.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

I'm lucky Dank, there's a dispensary about 30 miles away that has about 1000 seed varieties for sale. I just scored some Colombian Gold landrace from Gage Green Genetics and some White Widow direct from the seed company that came out with the strain - Green House Seed Company. I popped the beans last night.

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Since I am unsure of the genetics of the strain that I was told was Elephant Bud, I have decided to rename the variety "Epiphany Bud" so as not to encourage anyone from sending their hard earned currency to BC Seeds, a reported scam seed dealer.

Also kickin' it up a notch with the UV-B. I'm soaking the Epiphany with UV since its buds are twice the size of the Vanilla Kush(?) and they are all ready sticky as fuck before I started the supplemental light earlier tonight so I'll get much more THC bang for my buck, huh?

 

[BunkerMonkey]

All kinds of good UV-B science here. Don't be afraid of burning your plants with the stuff, they stay out in the Sun all day and don't burn and with the strength and distances of the lights here that I have set to approximate equatorial UV radiation rates using the charts and graphs I found on this site.

Never mind the lizard's problem, plants don't have eyes, but I wouldn't put those Reptisun10 CFLs any closer than about a foot away, they do put out some serious UV-B. And wear eye protection or you might end up with a little Welder's Burn if you stair into the bastards long enough. Your eyes will heal in a few days (probably) but it's nasty. Casual exposure is safe enough, but shut them off when you're in the room just to be certain. Please.

UV Lighting for Reptiles: A new problem with high UVB output fluorescent compact lamps and tubes?

 

[BunkerMonkey]

Here's a link to the thread all about the problems I'm having with the so-called Elephant and not the Vanilla Kush(?) -

Help! Deficiency or Lock-Out?