Hey Everyone! About 10 months ago I started a journal with the intention of it being a long, ongoing journal. Even to the point that I thought it would be the last one that I would do no matter if it was one year or ten years later. I was finding doing journals on every grow that I did made for a lot of different journals so I decided to put it all into one. When I made that journal I never anticipated how big it would get. With the 420 Magazine Forums upgrade it switched pages numbers around and it would be very tough for new followers to find the key information that I had listed in the past. Since the forum did a revamp, I decided to do one too. I needed to update some small tweaks in my feed schedule and the way I do things now anyways so this new journal will reflect all that! Not a ton has changed so if you followed me before it will probably be along the same lines. I'm always thankful for the people that follow me and I look forward to seeing some new faces around here. I have always said that if you have any questions, please ask them. Chances are other people have the same questions as you and just wont speak up.

My History
I have been growing now for just under 2 years total. I started with 2 Mars Hydro Reflector 96s and one tent. I grew in soil and I grew all the same strain, Nirvana Aurora Indica. After this grow I decided to give coco a shot because I really liked what @TheBlaze did in his grows. I had a few hiccups to start but nothing drastic and was using a very basic feed formula, the Lucas Formula. I had good results for my first coco grow but was not thrilled with the quality of the bud. It was good but I felt like I could do better than the Lucas Formula was giving and I was right. I did some research on coco feed schedules and really learned about nutrients and put together my very own schedule. It seems to really work and a few people like @DobeWan are using it and having really gorgeous plants. I also came up with my own training method called Quadlining. This training method has quite a few people trying it out and having great results. It has landed me 3 Plant of the Months in a row here on 420Magazine. The best part is I was a total rookie when I started growing. Everything I have learned has come from this website and I'm thankful to be able to give back to this awesome community.

Feed Schedule
One of the most frequently asked questions in growing is about nutrients. You could constantly chase your tail trying to find the right way to use nutrients. In my opinion nutrients are necessary but not as important as environment or light. Both environment and light can change the amount of nutrients your plant needs but the nutrients can't say the same about effecting the other two. It is still important to get the nutrients schedule correct but the hard part is everyone's grow area is different, requiring different needs for the plants. Learning about nutrients is something worth doing. It's eye opening. I tried to follow people's schedules and realized I never fully understood what I was giving my plants and at what stages they needed boosts or decreases in certain nutrients.

With that being said I use GH products for now. It's the 3 part series as a base with cal-mag. I run a few additives as well. I might add one or two more to the lineup but am really happy with all these. They are affordable and I get very good results.


Here is my feed schedule. If I decide to veg longer then I will just follow week 5's veg nutrients until ready. With that being said, you have to learn how to read your plants. different strains use different levels of each nutrient. Some of them drink more than others. This is just my rough guide. Currently I really don't use exact measurements anymore to get the perfect ratios. I kind of know if I put certain amounts in what my end PPM will be and I haven't had to use PH up or down in a long time with this schedule. It is almost always right at 6.0.


I also pre-treat any coco that I use with a soaking of 1-1-1 N-P-K and a PPM of around 350 with cal-mag being about 150. Aways pretreat your coco and soak it. Coco is a medium with nothing in it. If you give your plant nothing it will not like it! This is one of the most common problems when transplanting or even from growing the seed from the beginning. The plant needs calcium and it can't get any unless the coco has some sort of nutes loaded into it. I also sprinkle Great White on the roots when I transplant to help the roots not miss a beat and hopefully causing very little stress when transplanting.

I water with nutes everyday and I usually mix up 5 gallons each time and then use that to water for a couple days. In the beginning I try to keep the coco relatively damp and not saturated. I am a firm believer that roots want to go exploring and if they are have enough water then they won't. A larger root mass means a larger plant and more bud potential. I run a drain to waste system by hand feeding but I don't always want to see runoff, in fact most of the time I don't want runoff. In the first weeks of veg I get very little runoff ever. As the plants get larger and enter vigorous veg I start to get runoff every few waterings. After stretch in flower I begin watering twice a day. The first watering I don't want runoff and usually if I give the same amount a while later it will cause just a little runoff or none at all. This happens daily, by now the roots have filled the pot and the plant should be focusing on bud swelling. The biggest key to watering is knowing how heavy your pots are when full saturated and how light they are when dry. You can judge how much each plant is drinking according to that and it's the best way to do so.

Once a week I water to runoff of about 30% just to flush out any buildup of salts. I usually will only water once the next day to keep things from over-saturating. You will not kill your plants by overwatering in coco but you can do damage to the roots if they are constantly soaked. It can also cause algae buildup and bugs love that. The very last two-ish weeks I flush the plants (about 12 days before I want to pull them) and use Florakleen and ph to 6.0. I measure runoff until it is the same as what is coming out and then from there on I water as needed with regular, unPH'd water until the end. The Florakleen breaks down any remaining salts and the water flushes them out. By PH'ing to 6.0 it allows the plant to grab anything else it needs before I lock it out with regular water so it can finish.

The best way to determine how much to water is to pick your whole plant up right after you give it a full watering (with some drainage coming out the bottom). Use that as your gauge for how much the plant needs. I like to keep my plants to where they are asking for water a little bit everyday. The pots are usually pretty light when I pick them up. I noticed in my last grow the saturation of roots happened at the bottom of the pots mainly. I am use Hydroton now to prevent that. My water is a ppm of 34, which is great. I make beer as well and we are known for having some of the best water. In coco it is essential to always keep cal-mag levels at a certain base. Plants in coco use a lot of both. I fill my 5 gallon bucket with water and then add cal-mag until my PPM is 200. After that I add nutes to hit the PPM for the week using the N-P-K ratios listed in the table. These ratios are based on what the plant needs at given points in the 10 week flower lifecycle.

I will focus a lot on quadlining and training when the time comes. The girls I will be training are Chemdawg, Purple Envy, Super Iced Grapefruit and White Rhino. All plants who either won me an award or I've had great results from. I will do a separate post on those later. Thanks to all that come along for the ride this time! To all newer people, please ask questions if you have any!

Click Here to Jump to Quadline Training in Detail
 
For any of Ase’s readers, I would vouch for the feeding schedule 100%. My plants have been loving it, and this grow will easily be the best I’ve done. I’m sold and will be sticking with it.

Ase’s training also inspired mine very closely and I continue to learn from it as I try things out. The quadline approach is a fantastic way to reliably shape a plant to maximize training.

Looking forward to the all-star grow!
 
I like to follow grow journals but dislike the perpetual threads. They get long and I find it hard to go back and catch up. I plan to personally make a new journal every time. That way if someone wants to see a specific strain grown they don't have to wade through 150 posts.

Glad to be here...... cause I like to watch :cool:
 
Day 15 Veg Girls - Day 21 Flower Girls

I basically have 4 different tents that I use for growing. I have one 2'x4' tent for drying alone. I have one 2'x4' for cloning and early veg as well as starting outdoor vegetable garden seeds. Then I have 2 4'x4' tents that I use for mid veg until harvest. This basically allows me to be harvesting every 10 weeks. I run 2 Mars Hydro Reflector 144s in one tent and I run 2 Mars Hydro Epistar 160s in the other tent. I have one Mars Hydro Reflector 96 in the veg 2'x4'.

Tent with the 144s. These are finishing in my other journal and getting flushed currently.
Tent with the 160s. 3 weeks into flower. These girls are ones I was growing in my other journal that will be coming over to this one. I don't want to keep up two ongoing journals so just keep in mind that my methods allow plants to end up looking like this. You get a preview of the final product ahead of time!
Veg tent. These are the girls this journal will focus on to teach quadlining and other processes during the grow cycle that I do. Every time I do something major I will showcase it and explain my reasoning on doing it.

Today I decided to transplant the veg girls into their 3 gallon pots. Usually it's right around 15-17 days that I do this transplant. These will be their final pots and I think 3 gallon pots are the perfect size for my setup. At the bottom of the pots I put a layer of hydroton to help with drainage at the bottom. Water can hold at the bottom and not drain causing problems and I've found this has helped a lot.


I take my bricks of coco and mix them with a nutrient blend of 1-1-1 NPK and about 350 ppm. I also add liquid root enhancer. I then fill the fabric pots up until they are one inch from the top. I am fortunate to have a big drain table to do this all in but 5 gallon bucks would work. I've found that 2 full bricks of coco work well for me. I think it says 2 full bricks are about 10.5 gallons of expanded so it ends up being perfect for what I use for 4 plants. I run 4 plants in every cycle so makes it easy. Sometimes I re-use the coco and wash it and store it for later grows but it's good to change it out every now and again and this was a change out time for me. That makes the process a whole lot easier without having to really wash it out.

I then dig a hole out the size of the pots the girls are currently in. I place some Great White in the hole and then turn the plant upside down and massage the container until the plant releases. I keep the main stem firmly secured between two of my fingers and then slowly flip into the hole, using the off hand to make sure it doesn't go in too hard. I always love seeing a rootball like this. All 4 of the plants had roots that looked like this.

When I can see they are happy and perky again I will begin topping for training. They always get a little sad at transplant and once they move on they really start to grow fast.
 
Day 16 Veg Tent

I won't make it a habit to give updates back to back but I wanted to give a brief description of why I chose these 4 strains to grow. This is known to some as my "all-star" grow and here is why.

Nirvana White Rhino - The White Rhino by Nirvana was the very first plant that I won any awards with. It was grown under a Scrog net and I won because of the way it was trained. I had 4 main quadrants on it and it was a nice even plant.
The smoke was really great, as is most strains I've had from Nirvana, and I am interested to see how this will grow using Quadlining instead of a Scrog net. I also have modified my schedule as this was grown on the Lucas Formula so I am really excited to grow this one again.

HSO Chemdawg - The Chemdawg was the best single plant I have ever grown. It took 2nd in Plant of the Year. It is my 2nd favorite strain, only to Gorilla Glue, and it was probably the 2nd best bud I have ever grown. Hoping for the exact same pheno again. All of these girls I got multiple seeds of at the same time so I'm hoping for repeats. Also was quadlined but not held under a Scrog net.


Feminised Seeds Purple Envy - This is sort of a redemption plant for me. She was shaping up to be one of the best plants I ever had when I was growing her. I left the fan that blows on the canopy off for over a week and her huge buds developed some mold. I was kicking myself but was able to remedy the situation and still save the plant. I still yielded a few ounces off of her but it could have been a big number with the amount of colas I chopped due to mold.


Feminised Seeds Super Iced Grapefruit - I am finishing up with a Super Iced Grapefruit plant now in my other journal which I will end when that round ends. When I had to make the decision on which 4 to grow she wasn't all that developed yet. I just thought she had a good strong base and looked like she would bulk well. Luckily I was right. Because my 3rd Plant of the Month win was quadlining an Auto Cherry Bomb, I wasn't going to repeat that (I don't do Auto's anymore) so the Super Iced Grapefruit got the nod.


Currently the Super Iced Grapefruit is the tallest and had the most roots when transplanted. The Purple Envy was next largest followed by the White Rhino and the Chemdawg was barely last. Once they start really growing as they get used to their new larger homes, I think they will all be close to the same. Will be topping and removing nodes 1 and 2 soon to start the quadline process.
 
I like to follow grow journals but dislike the perpetual threads. They get long and I find it hard to go back and catch up. I plan to personally make a new journal every time. That way if someone wants to see a specific strain grown they don't have to wade through 150 posts.Glad to be here...... cause I like to watch :cool:

Welcome bonsai! It's good to have you along and watch away,

this looks like it's gonna be interesting :)

I'm really hoping it ends up interesting in a good way! If I can get anywhere near similar results in veg I will likely be cloning these before I flip them to flower. I want to start keeping a hold of good phenos.
 
For any of Ase’s readers, I would vouch for the feeding schedule 100%. My plants have been loving it, and this grow will easily be the best I’ve done. I’m sold and will be sticking with it.

Ase’s training also inspired mine very closely and I continue to learn from it as I try things out. The quadline approach is a fantastic way to reliably shape a plant to maximize training.Looking forward to the all-star grow!

Thanks for the endorsement Dobe! Dobe does my methods almost as well as I do so if you want to check out a great journal than pop on over to his. You'll see very similar looking everything. Even sometimes I have to do a double take because it looks so familiar.

I'm in Ase. Thanks for starting this journal. I'll be following

No problem Derby! Glad to see you sticking around these parts.


Welcome back OG Blaze! Blaze got me into coco and the rest is history.

I didn't make it public that this thread was up other than posting it so lets see how long it takes some of the other crew to jump over. I did that on purpose to see if new people would join up without being intimidated by a ton of people coming over in a huge wave.
 
I also like the quad lining method. I just think it's a great size to start working with your plant and puts the plant in a good position to do numerous things with it.

I agree. It can be used to do many things with. I've seen people use it for soil and @GrowchyzGardenOfGreen just won Plant of the Month using his variation of it in DWC. I won January POTM by quadlining an Auto Cherry Bomb. I obviously use it in Coco so it's a great method across any medium and it even works with Autos and Photos. I will focus a lot of this journal and quadlining and how it shapes good plants so thanks for the endorsement Derby. You're plants are looking incredible!
 
Let's see what you pull out of the hat this round. I have my eye on the white rhino and purple envy. :thumb:
 
Those quadlines look insane brother! Subbed!
Thanks for stopping in Champ! Congrats on that win man. I had that thing called a while back ago as the winner. Just wasn't sure if you were going to submit it for February or March. Growchy and I both won plants of the months this year so right now it's the year of the quadline! The best part of the quadline is you can do so many different variations with it. Growchy tops each of the 4 "OG quad branches" and it had almost perfect structure to it. If you haven't checked out 420 Magazine's contests then there is a link in my signature. Get out and vote!

Let's see what you pull out of the hat this round. I have my eye on the white rhino and purple envy. :thumb:

I keep surprising myself with what I keep pulling out of the hat. You and I have our eyes on similar plants though. The Chemdawg I am just hoping gets anywhere near the last one did and the Super Iced Grapefruit I think will be about the same as the one I am taking down soon. That leaves those two left and I want to see how the White Rhino does without a net and the Purple Envy does without my stupid fan brainfart!
 
Thanks brother, and it was a no brainer in January as well! We did change it a little bit, the third level wasn’t as effective as we hoped but the top two quads were topped but since we grow in a rectangle I left the bottom node going off to the sides intact and let them grow up into their own colas.
 
Day 19 Veg Tent A - Day 25 Flower Tent B - The Quadline Begins!

I have two main tents in my grows. I call them Tent A and Tent B and the plants stay in those tents for the full flower cycle. My titles reflect the days that those tents are at. I do not keep a total day count but I do list way day they are in veg and then start the counting over when flipped. My other journal will shut down this weekend and this journal will inherit some plants I have that are almost done with 4 weeks in flower. I'm not going to talk a ton about them as they are already mature. This journal will focus mainly on from start to finish how I do a grow now. With that in mind, these ones in flower should give a good picture of what they will look like in the end. People can see what I am doing and kind of the result down the road at the same time.

Starting off I kind of jumped into this journal with plants that were not entirely from the beginning. If you would like to see my germination method, it hasn't changed and is in my other journals. Pretty simple as it's the plastic baggie and paper towel method. Quickly soak a paper towel in very low nutrient (200ppm) 1-1-1 NPK solution where most of the nitrogen should come from the cal-mag. then I wring out that paper towel until it is just moist and not wet and put the seeds in it. Put that in a plastic bag and wrap in a kitchen towel. Then put either on a DVR or computer (something kinda warm) and in about a day and a half they will be ready to planted. I start in little pots and pretreat and wash the coco with a 1-1-1 NPK solution of about 350 ppm. Plant the seed with the root facing down about 1/2" down and into a veg tent and watch it grow! You should see roots coming out the bottom and usually about 13-14 days they are ready to get put into their 3 gallon final homes. Now we are all caught up and the last update was the transplant.

They had all recovered pretty nicely from the transplant so it was time to start the quadline. The first step into doing a quadline is to pick two nodes to keep and train as the 4 main branches. I top at the 4th node and remove the 1st and 2nd nodes and keep the 3rd. That makes the 2 branches that come out of node 3 and the 2 branches that come out of node 4 as my 4 quadlined branches. These 4 branches support the whole plant and grow mostly horizontal during veg. This allows other branches to grow out of these and become the main colas of the plant. If kept evenly with each other by adjust the training ties, the plant will stay relatively even with itself the whole way. Do this with 4 plants and you get a screenless scrog or quadline.

The line is where I top at. I had already taken off nodes 1 and 2 and had forgotten to take a picture but that is where nodes 1 and 2 were. The fan leaves are the ones with one leaf and 3 leaves respectively. The little cotyledons don't count as a node. I will top them in the next two days but I want them to recover from this defoliation a bit.

The end results of this method. This is on my Blackjack plant 25 days into flower.

I am a firm believer of guiding energy around the plant and not wasting it. I don't want things to grow that I know I am going to cut off. I don't want the plant to waste energy if it doesn't have to. That energy could be used to get other branches sturdier. My three most important factors in a good grow are:

Lights
Environment
Grower Experience/Training

You can't grow good plants with crappy lights. I'm not saying I have the best lights but they work very well. They aren't $50 lights and they aren't cfls. If you want to grow good stuff with a good yield then don't skimp here. The environment and keeping the temperatures in check is 2nd most important thing to me. I used to preach a lot about humidity but it really is more about temperatures and airflow. The quadline helps space the plant out evenly so you can get good airflow in the long run, even when the buds are fat. It gives each cola it's own space and keeps them all at the same height. Grower Experience so you can learn to read a plant and what it needs. Each nutrient does something for plant and knowing when a plant is begging for more or needing to back off is important. You'll recognize when certain things happen every grow and be able to see positive and negative differences when experimenting. It's also huge for when things go awry and you need to make the right decision and fix things. Things happen fast in coco for the good and the bad sometimes. Training is also a form of grower experience as you need to know when the appropriate time is to do things. If the plants are healthy all the time then you can train them and defoliate them as much as you like and they always bounce back.

Defoliation is key with my methods as I want the plant to get as much light penetration as possible. It also helps keeps the leaves from sitting on each other and building up moisture. It also opens up airflow to strengthen the plants. Amazing how all 3 of my top factors bleed into each other right? One always is effecting the other and the synergy is what creates amazing plants. The defoliation by taking nodes 1 and 2 of the youngest girls begins getting them used to getting nicked up here and there.

The girls that are 25 days into flower got a defoliation as well. This tent is Tent B and they have all been quadlined. All 4 are even mostly the same height at about 2.5 ft from coco to canopy. The BlackJack has a few taller colas than that but for the most part I would like every grow to look like this one.

Before defoliation.
After defoliation.
Sideshot.

Tutankhamon - Really better than I thought it would in the end.
Anubis - A little different but growing well.
BlackJack - Biggest.
Critical Cheese - Stacking incredibly.
 
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