setting sun's second lowryder grow

[Setting Sun]

First, I'll start with a little background. I had a few grows back in the 70's and now finding myself a medical marijuana user due to not being able to take narcotic pain meds for my back (post surgery for a ruptured disk 3 years ago), I decided to get back to growing my own.

I really didn't know much about what I was doing back then, but the few grows I did were fairly successful. I remember that I used some plastic restaurant bus trays filled with lava rock. I drilled holes in the bottom of the trays and it was a passive hydro system using the cheap soil ferts that came with the 400 MH light I bought back then.

Despite my complete ignorance and lack of guidance (no forums like this back then), I managed to grow some bud.

So, when I decided to get back to growing, I wanted a strain that was really easy. I lurked here and in other forums and read about how easy lowryder was to grow and decided to order some seeds.

I wanted to do a seed grow first so I ordered 10 regular lowryder seeds from a seed bank.

The seeds arrived in only a week but three of them were crushed. In any case, I planted the remaining seven directly in soil in a Tupperware tub.

I have to talk about my first lowryder grow a bit because my second grow is from the seeds I made from this first grow.

All seven seeds sprouted after 3-4 days and I did my best to water and feed them appropriately while I semi-patiently waited for them to flower.

Ok, this is where things took an unexpected turn. The plants were healthy and growing well, but they wouldn't auto-flower. They stayed in veg for over six weeks until I finally changed them to 12/12 and they showed sex in about another week.

By this time, they had grown much bigger than any lowryders I had seen on this forum and others. I had two males and five females. The two males and two of the females were pretty tall when they finally flowered.

There were three phenos. One female was a micro and yielded one bowl:). Two females were average in height for lowryders, and the remaining two males and two females were much larger at over 30" when they finally showed their sex.

The plants were in a tool cabinet until they outgrew it and then I put them in the outdoor shed. Temperatures in the shed during the winter months were colder than ideal and I later thought this might have been what delayed flowering as I had read somewhere that you can keep lowryder in veg with root temps below 60.






I pollinated the two larger females with the pollen from the two large males and they produced lots of seeds. The buds were extremely seedy but I got just over one ounce of smoke all together.

That's all for this post. I want to see if the pics load and then I'll start posting pics of my second grow.

[Setting Sun]

I did have one grow in between these two had I had to terminate at four weeks because I severely over-watered my plants and they got stunted and didn't recover.

My first mistake with that grow was that I completely drenched my potting soil and then packed it tightly into the pots. The roots were essentially in mud. At least I learned how *not* to put soil into pots.

This grow started with HPS 150 watt light, various different locally available potting soils, and in my Keter tool cabinet. For nutes, I've been using Alaska Fish fertilizer, seaweed extract, and Fox Farms Grow Big, Big Bloom and Tiger Bloom.

These are pics of my current grow when seeds sprouted:



One of my sprouts is a trifoliate that I will call Trippy from now on. I've never named a plant before, but I thought this one should have one:




I started some seeds in 3 gallon pots, a couple in two-liter soda bottles, and I also have some I started outside in a 10" pot.

[Setting Sun]

Here's some pics at one week.

Hoping these will auto-flower like they're supposed to.



Here's Trippy at one week:

[Setting Sun]

here's some pics of my current grow at week 2:








trippy at week 2

[Setting Sun]

here's some week 3 pics.

Still no sign of sex at 21 days and these plants have been at 68-80 degree temps since they sprouted.

[Setting Sun]

pics at week four

Still no signs of sex and I'm thinking at this point that these aren't going to auto-flower either. Did some reading on the subject and learned that the autoflowering trait is recessive. I'm now beginning to suspect that the original beans I got from the seed bank weren't very stable and that maybe my first grow not autoflowering wasn't due to lowish temps.

These plants seemed to be doing nicely and growing well, so I kept them at 18/6 to see if they would auto-flower.






This is Trippy at week 4 with a strange siamesed double side shoot. After this weird side branch grew out, the plant reverted to a regular bifoliate pattern.

[Setting Sun]

Week 5 pics.

Still not a hint of sex in any plant, so I got tired of waiting and switched them to 12/12.

[BigSmokie]

Looking good... + rep

[Setting Sun]

Originally Posted by BigSmokie

Looking good... + rep

Thanks BigSmokie!

My babies are movin' on up! I bought a Secret Jardin DR80 grow tent and switched from the HPS 150 to a 250 watt ceramic metal halide.

Here's some week 6 pics:






Trying to show Trippy's strange siamesed side branch. I've read that most of these trifoliate plants turn out to be males.

[Setting Sun]

week 7 pics:

finally some buddage!!!

These are some of the largest lowryders I've ever seen, just like the parents I made the seeds from. When I crossed the biggest plants from my first grow, I didn't think about how much work had gone into making this a stealth plant.

So, in one generation, I think the genetics have reverted from a small, stealthy, autoflowering plant to a not-so-stealthy plant that does not autoflower at all and is even somewhat reluctant to flower under 12/12 (took over a week at that light regimen to even show pre-flowers).

I had just over 50% males, including the few I was growing outside, so now I have 7 female plants left. I killed all the males and didn't save any pollen because I already have plenty of seeds from these plants.










Trippy is a girl!

[HazeSeeker]

Are you still running with MH , or you allready swithed to HPS?
Love that quick style ...
+reps

[Setting Sun]

Originally Posted by HazeSeeker

Are you still running with MH , or you allready swithed to HPS?
Love that quick style ...
+reps

I started with 150 HPS and when I moved them into the grow tent I switched to a 250 watt ceramic metal halide. CMH bulbs are very different from MH. They run on magnetic 250 HPS ballasts and provide a much broader and more even spectrum than either MH or HPS. I used the 250 CMH for my first lowryder grow and it seemed to work well throughout the entire grow. A 250 watt light is too hot for my cab, however, so I use a 150 HPS in there, which works perfect.

When I switched to a digital 150 Galaxy ballast on that light, I think the light output increased by at *least* 25%. The plants grew faster with that ballast.

If you search for "ceramic metal halide" here on the forums, I think there are a couple of threads that explain it well.

regards,

setting sun

[resinator]

great grow setting sun sweet lookin girls

[Setting Sun]

Originally Posted by resinator

great grow setting sun sweet lookin girls

Thanks resinator!

I just subscribed to your current grow to see how your girls turn out.

Here's some week 8 pics of mine:




This is Trippy with her two-headed side branch.


Here's the best pic I have of Trippy's side-branch.




This is my biggest girl. She measures 22" with very tight spacing between nodes. She grew in Sunland organic potting soil along with three other plants that turned out to be males. All four plants were a deep rich green color and grew more vigorously and larger than the plants I had in other soils.

[Setting Sun]

few pics I took today: