Ase's Multi-Strain Quadlining In Coco

[Asesino85]

I think your point about nitrogen is well-written and really got right to the core of the one nutrient dilemma because it does seem like a paradox. If a plant can just take up what it needs when it needs it during different phases of growth like Mega Crop’s website claims then why do plants burn from being over fertilized? Good point.

And I want to emphasize that I give Asesino a lot of credit for the plants he is producing and for his groundbreaking work with quadining because the only way to improve things is to experiment and obviously he is an admirable avid experimenter.

Obviously, everyone wants the biggest most potent buds they can get but in the real world, there is a cost both financial and timewise and I am really trying to get to the bottom of if these very involved intricate feeding systems are worth it so I wonder what kinds of increased yields are people getting with them as opposed to a Mega Crop kind of single supplement?

I really believe that you should essential have a base nutrient (3 part, 2 part whatever part) plus a root booster and a PK booster. Certain additives might be overkill or not worth the money to people but these should be in every growers arsenal. Hard to measure what each additives does and to what effect but molasses is a great example. Ever since I've used it the plants have had more frost. I can see it but I can't scientifically measure it. Silica makes them stronger and I can feel the difference in my fingers between how much harder they feel and flop over less. A lot of the additives have just come through trying them out and noticing a difference between a prior grow without them and the new grow with them. If I can actually see the difference then I keep using it. I think for 4-5 grows I would buy an additive at a time so I didn't fork out a ton of money at once and just try them out and eventually this was the lineup I use.

 

[Asesino85]

Better?

Stirstick, I’d give them a tiny bit more slack on the pipe cleaners. You want the branches angled up slightly, not quite horizontal. But otherwise you have it. Move the pipe cleaners as the branches grow to keep growing them out to the side.

You’ll want to get pipe cleaners onto the other node as well, the node formerly known as node 3. Same idea, you want the branches out to the side. It’s these branches, and not the fan leaves themselves, that form the “x” of your quad line.

What Dobe says about the giving them a bit more and leave like a 10% angle instead of completely flat. Also I would let the 3rd node branches grow vertical now up to level with node 4 and then start training them out. You could also get that going a bit earlier like Dobe suggests but I'd let them get a tad larger first as node 3 is still pretty small right now. For node 4 you have to start training them but node 3 you will be more guiding the vertical growth outward a bit rather then training them until they are big enough.

Glad to see that while I am away that people can give the correct responses to these questions for people. The #Quadsquad is one of the best groups of people around in my books!

 

[Asesino85]

Day 14 Veg

Tonight was supposed to be transplant night but my new Coco wont be here until tomorrow so the girls are going to have to wait just one more night. They really need to be in new homes but still look really healthy and I'm not worried. I will get more detailed tomorrow but I've got a lot to catch up on from this trip I took so here is just a quick look at what they look like. I discovered that my Girl Scout Cookies will end up being a Tri-line since apparently I accidentally ripped one of the 4 branches off when defoliating. That's why I recommend waiting a little longer when they are small like that but I had to get it done. Tri-line is no big deal. I think I noted that I did the Double Berry and GSC before I wanted to but the Double Berry looks just fine.

This is a good idea of what the Quadline should look like about now. This was the Tangerine Dream.

C4CC3BC9-F918-4D0C-B4F4-27C0363CC999.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 11, 2018

Purple Trainwreck (all the way left) is the tallest now followed by the Tangerine Dream (upper left). The two ATFs (next to each other on the right) are the exact same height and the Double Berry (Upper right) and GSC (Lower left) are still the smallest.

5812D3D5-4F76-49EF-9262-377E8DD546EF.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 11, 2018

 

[Homer Simpson]

Absolutely no offense taken, I am not that kind of person. You are obviously coming at this as wanting to learn and not trying to "bash" my schedule so no worries at all. I applaud you for sticking your neck out there and asking.

I will say this, I have only been growing for a few years now but I've probably got about 20 grows completed. My first grow was soil and then I switched to coco and have gone that way ever since. Because coco is hydro, you need to know about nutrients like in DWC or anything that requires reservoir changes. When I did research on it a few years back I came across a Youtube series that I can't find anymore from a guy who owns a hydro shop. He compared a few of the lines to each other and the conclusion was that they all had the same ingredients in them, they just had different amounts. Basically the only difference was marketing and if you know how to calculate N-P-K then you can indeed use different products from different lines.

I had 2 things influence coming up with the N-P-K values on a weekly basis. The first was from a different forum where a guy who was an agricultural major (I dunno the specific major but he majored in growing normal plants). He had turned to growing weed and used a lot of the same concepts that he learned when growing normal farm crops. He then made a schedule and it just made sense to me, although it only changed the N-P-K values once every 3 weeks. The 2nd thing I did was to take a couple different manufacturers recommended schedules and to average out what the N-P-K was by week since most of them have weekly changes. When I used this new schedule I came up with my plants yielded nearly double and I've just stuck with it ever since. Call it lightning in a bottle but I feel like my plants are almost always looking healthy in terms of the way the leaves look. I'm not saying it couldn't be a better schedule but it works for me and a couple people here use it and have increases in their yield. It's a small sample size but so far it's been all improvements for people that were just following the bottle or something basic like the Lucas Formula.

In the last couple years a lot of products have come out and I don't know enough about them. I also don't have the time to research them all out and I'm pretty stuck in my ways. I still very much believe that plants should get boosts at certain points in the lifecycle and they should happen on a weekly basis and not a monthly basis. Magoo already made a good point about nutrient burn and all that so I don't need to reiterate what he said but he took the words out of my mouth. If it isn't causing burn then you are also likely wasting nutrients because why give plants nutrients when they don't need them? Often times this will cause salt buildups and those salt buildups can cause roots to burn unless you flush the plant. I almost never have to flush my plants unless I let them get too dry and that can cause salt buildup as well.

The last thing I'd like to say is there is kind of a reason I decided to stop preaching about nutrients. In prior journals I talk a lot more about them but really this is a good schedule for General Hydroponics 3 part series in coco. That's all I can really vouch for. I think other people have had success manipulating the nutrients lines they use but really there could be a number of factors on why a grow is better and it's hard to attribute that only to manipulating a nutrient schedule. My schedule has just worked for me and when I change nutrients lines then I will have something better to compare to but it's tough to change when I keep having pretty successful grows. That's why I am backing away from pushing the whole nutrient schedule thing now in this journal in this new chapter.

Quadlining is what has benefited people the most and there is too many things I don't know about other nutrient lines to be a fair advocate for telling people to follow my PPM and N-P-K ratios with those lines. I did a lot of research on it initially and once I put it together and had much improved success I really just went with that and haven't looked back since. At the time I remembered the science of it all much better and I did tweak the schedule about 10 different times before I really finalized that one but it's more work than I've got time for to dive back into that. With nutrients I've gone the "If it isn't broke then don't fix it" route as nutrients really aren't even in my top 3 most important things. You can give plants a basic schedule and have great success and you can give it a more detailed schedule and have great success and maybe the only difference will be wasting less nutrients or no burn vs just a little burn. This is why I tell people to just keep the N-P-K changes in mind and see where I boost things and mainly just follow the bottles recommendations. If you do that and just adjust the bottles recommendations a tiny bit I bet mine and theirs are mainly similar. I just feel like mine wastes less and gives the plants what they need in the ratios they need it the whole time. Rookie growers really should just do what the bottle says for a grow and then try some different boosts on the next grow and see if you notice a difference, but I bet you will. Sorry that's probably not a good enough answer but it's really all I have for ya.

I was relieved to read your gracious reply because in retrospect I wish I had been a little more pleasant in my initial post in your thread because I admit I was a little frustrated when I posted it because there is so much contradictory information it’s hard to know which way to turn at first out here so I apologize if I did seem a little cantankerous.

It was also very generous of you to write such a detailed explanation of the evolution of your current system and I thank you for that because now I can understand how you got to where you are and it does make a lot more sense. I think I will take your sage advice and on my first grow continue to just basically follow the manufacturers recommendations and then in subsequent grows try boosting and see what is beneficial.

I also appreciate the recommendation of what the essentials should be in every grower’s arsenal and in my next grow I will include those. Again I appreciate you being so understanding and taking the time to give me so much great info and I know I will reread your posts several times.

 

[Bchris22]

Absolutely no offense taken, I am not that kind of person. You are obviously coming at this as wanting to learn and not trying to "bash" my schedule so no worries at all. I applaud you for sticking your neck out there and asking.

I will say this, I have only been growing for a few years now but I've probably got about 20 grows completed. My first grow was soil and then I switched to coco and have gone that way ever since. Because coco is hydro, you need to know about nutrients like in DWC or anything that requires reservoir changes. When I did research on it a few years back I came across a Youtube series that I can't find anymore from a guy who owns a hydro shop. He compared a few of the lines to each other and the conclusion was that they all had the same ingredients in them, they just had different amounts. Basically the only difference was marketing and if you know how to calculate N-P-K then you can indeed use different products from different lines.

I had 2 things influence coming up with the N-P-K values on a weekly basis. The first was from a different forum where a guy who was an agricultural major (I dunno the specific major but he majored in growing normal plants). He had turned to growing weed and used a lot of the same concepts that he learned when growing normal farm crops. He then made a schedule and it just made sense to me, although it only changed the N-P-K values once every 3 weeks. The 2nd thing I did was to take a couple different manufacturers recommended schedules and to average out what the N-P-K was by week since most of them have weekly changes. When I used this new schedule I came up with my plants yielded nearly double and I've just stuck with it ever since. Call it lightning in a bottle but I feel like my plants are almost always looking healthy in terms of the way the leaves look. I'm not saying it couldn't be a better schedule but it works for me and a couple people here use it and have increases in their yield. It's a small sample size but so far it's been all improvements for people that were just following the bottle or something basic like the Lucas Formula.

In the last couple years a lot of products have come out and I don't know enough about them. I also don't have the time to research them all out and I'm pretty stuck in my ways. I still very much believe that plants should get boosts at certain points in the lifecycle and they should happen on a weekly basis and not a monthly basis. Magoo already made a good point about nutrient burn and all that so I don't need to reiterate what he said but he took the words out of my mouth. If it isn't causing burn then you are also likely wasting nutrients because why give plants nutrients when they don't need them? Often times this will cause salt buildups and those salt buildups can cause roots to burn unless you flush the plant. I almost never have to flush my plants unless I let them get too dry and that can cause salt buildup as well.

The last thing I'd like to say is there is kind of a reason I decided to stop preaching about nutrients. In prior journals I talk a lot more about them but really this is a good schedule for General Hydroponics 3 part series in coco. That's all I can really vouch for. I think other people have had success manipulating the nutrients lines they use but really there could be a number of factors on why a grow is better and it's hard to attribute that only to manipulating a nutrient schedule. My schedule has just worked for me and when I change nutrients lines then I will have something better to compare to but it's tough to change when I keep having pretty successful grows. That's why I am backing away from pushing the whole nutrient schedule thing now in this journal in this new chapter.

Quadlining is what has benefited people the most and there is too many things I don't know about other nutrient lines to be a fair advocate for telling people to follow my PPM and N-P-K ratios with those lines. I did a lot of research on it initially and once I put it together and had much improved success I really just went with that and haven't looked back since. At the time I remembered the science of it all much better and I did tweak the schedule about 10 different times before I really finalized that one but it's more work than I've got time for to dive back into that. With nutrients I've gone the "If it isn't broke then don't fix it" route as nutrients really aren't even in my top 3 most important things. You can give plants a basic schedule and have great success and you can give it a more detailed schedule and have great success and maybe the only difference will be wasting less nutrients or no burn vs just a little burn. This is why I tell people to just keep the N-P-K changes in mind and see where I boost things and mainly just follow the bottles recommendations. If you do that and just adjust the bottles recommendations a tiny bit I bet mine and theirs are mainly similar. I just feel like mine wastes less and gives the plants what they need in the ratios they need it the whole time. Rookie growers really should just do what the bottle says for a grow and then try some different boosts on the next grow and see if you notice a difference, but I bet you will. Sorry that's probably not a good enough answer but it's really all I have for ya.

I think I speak for everyone when I say replies like this are why we follow your journal. I know I am new here but I am glad I am here. That was as honest and non egotistical as it gets. Good info!! I am giving your training a try, but I am growing multiple strains from clones so it has its challenges, but I'm digging it so far

 

[Asesino85]

Transplant Day and Recovery

I got the time to transplant two days ago and managed to get it all done. The two DTFs (middle and left) were placed in small plastic pots because I don’t know their sex yet. I also put the Tangerine Dream (top left) in a hard pot this time before it gets another transplant into a 5 gallon pot.

00FAC6D3-327D-4921-8F9D-30073329C354.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 14, 2018

Today, about 36 hours later they looked like this. See all that fresh green growth in all the nodes? That shows they are right on track and have bounced back. Normally I’d start training them today because that fresh growth is a sign they are over transplant shock but I won’t have time to do it today or tomorrow. It’ll have to wait until the next day. I did bend the node with my fingers and I’ll likely do that again tomorrow and then the next day the stakes and tomato wire come out! So far I’m a pretty happy with how this grow is going.

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• Asesino85
• Dec 14, 2018

 

[Lowded118]

Sexy Friday night disco!

 

[Pennywise]

Lookin right on track Ase.

 

[Dutchman1990]

Hello Ase!

Wanted to show you my start up of my very first Quads!

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• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

A7FA7559-0E95-4199-B18E-CEE21017001A.jpeg

• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

Critical+2.0 #3 and #4
Day - 24 from being cut
Quadline Example!

5895CABA-A754-4A45-A04F-24A91C1A181E.jpeg

• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

Critical+2.0 #3 and #4
Day - 24 from being cut
Quadline Example!

B9E14518-2833-448A-BF66-1A0CC3F48C00.jpeg

• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

Critical+2.0 #3 and #4
Day - 24 from being cut
Starting the Quadline Example!

E399351D-D4A9-4F69-B5B7-BD52C6716887.jpeg

• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

7FC70272-E0BF-49AF-96CB-051102E2528B.jpeg

• Dutchman1990
• Dec 14, 2018

I am doing a full comparison grow between. LST and quadlines on a few autos as well and these Critical+2.0!

Thank you for your information and inspiration and I hope to learn as much as I can from you to become a #quadgod! Haha

 

[Asesino85]

Sexy Friday night disco!

And two of the girls are DTF...

 

[Dutchman1990]

And two of the girls are DTF...

No complaints here haha! Party girls woohoo

 

[Heavenly Hybrid]

Transplant Day and Recovery

I got the time to transplant two days ago and managed to get it all done. The two DTFs (middle and left) were placed in small plastic pots because I don’t know their sex yet. I also put the Tangerine Dream (top left) in a hard pot this time before it gets another transplant into a 5 gallon pot.

00FAC6D3-327D-4921-8F9D-30073329C354.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 14, 2018

Today, about 36 hours later they looked like this. See all that fresh green growth in all the nodes? That shows they are right on track and have bounced back. Normally I’d start training them today because that fresh growth is a sign they are over transplant shock but I won’t have time to do it today or tomorrow. It’ll have to wait until the next day. I did bend the node with my fingers and I’ll likely do that again tomorrow and then the next day the stakes and tomato wire come out! So far I’m a pretty happy with how this grow is going.

0312D491-0E71-4D8A-ADAB-51427F0BABB1.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 14, 2018

Lol, I always worried that the bright green of the new growth was an indicator for a nutrient deficiency! Cool to learn that’s just the way its supposed to look! Glad you made it home safe. I hope you had a great vaca!

 

[Asesino85]

The Quadline Takes Shape

Well I am once again posting a day late but I did remember to take good pictures so just think of all this as happening 24 hours ago. The girls all got their 2nd defoliation (the first being cutting off nodes one and two and then topping) and also bending and being tied down for the first time. All went really well and no breaking or snapping of the branches! I tried to take good pictures and ended up with a chunk of them so I’ll show the process from start to finish.

First off the plants as a group looked like this.

6A78FC14-833E-474E-9079-DB4BBCAA1A4A.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

Now I slowly take and bend the 4 branches. Often times I am not even thinking of staking them down at this point. I’m just trying to shape them a bit with my fingertips. I think it might be breaking down the walls of the stems a bit by bending so when you do stake them down they don’t snap as often. I also use tomato wire and while it is more expensive, it has some give to it and it’s rubber so it doesn’t dig into the walls later on. Not a huge deal to use just string or anything but just my preference.

The next thing I do is defoliate the 4 big fan leaves the plants have at this point. They are the original fan leaves for the 4 branches of the quadline. I don’t want to do too much defoliation at this point causing them to slow down so that is good enough for now. After that I tie down the 4 branches by putting stakes into the coco that has tomato wire attached and then slowly bending down each branch and hooking it to the tomato wire. I create a little J hook in the tomato wire and it does the trick, no need to wrap the tomato wire around the branch 100% of the way. This way you are guiding the branches and letting them do their thing, just horizontally. Lastly when pinning them down leave them at like a 10-20% upward slope so the plant still thinks it’s growing vertically. It has something to do with hormones and still sending the right growth ones to keep it aggressively growing.

In the pictures I did below, I did my defoliation after pinning them down. It’s possible to do but it’s a lot harder to do once it’s all staked in place. I just forgot and I took pictures of the first one I did. End result is the same but didn’t want to take more pictures.

Before from above

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• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

After from above

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• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

Before sideshot

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• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

After sideshot

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• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

All the girls. Tri-line Purple Trainwreck in the bottom right. Tangerine Dream in the middle. DTF #1 is left and DTF #2 is kinda out of the picture in the bottom. Double Berry top left and Girl Scout Cookies top right.

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• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

Lastly I also noticed something with the DTFs. It looks like the sex is already showing which to me is crazy fast but I’m pretty sure I have one male and one female. I think the DTF#1 is a female and #2 is a male. That’s great news considering #1 is the only one that made it through my heat mat germination problem so I have high hopes it’s going to be a beast.

#2 Male. I’ll wait a bit to make sure but I’m almost 100% it’s a male with how detached and round the ball is. I didn’t defoliate or do anything to this because I think I’ll throw it out soon. It was also the smaller of the two and I know the other one grew a few more days longer because of the early start but it’s noticeably smaller. If it is male it will be the better of the two to lose.

5C1B3CDB-8F5E-427B-90F1-A5AE1A26D9CA.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

Hard to see with this picture but this has more of a teardrop shape to it and it’s not sticking out on a little stem like thing. That’s why I think it’s female and I’m pretty sure I saw a little tiny hair in one or two but didn’t break out the magnifying glass to check.

9A847635-72DA-4D93-857B-DC92732F66E8.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

 

[Dutchman1990]

Nice details on the spreading Ase I’ll be sure to keep that in mind as my critical girls are really growing now. I should be able to start tying down in the next few days!

 

[Mr. Magoo]

Lookin Great brother! Very healthy! I love that fresh green!

 

[Stirstick]

Awesome Ase, gonna take the original 4 fans as you suggest. My one was male and showed nice and early too.

 

[Pennywise]

Good tutorial Ase!

 

[Asesino85]

The Bounce Back

The two moments that can really slow a plant down when quadlining is when you top them and when you spread them out. The plants are still young enough to where if something goes wrong or they get too much stress that they can go into a defense mode and stop growing. Personally I like to be able to see my plants everyday but I’ve had a busy week and really haven’t been able to do that. In a way it is good though because it forces me to do work on them and then let them just sit for a day or two and recover. When you see them everyday you always want to adjust and do little things here or there but going a day in between is like a forced patience. Because they are still small and the roots haven’t filled out the pots I was also able to just feed every other day but that won’t be an option soon as these start really growing.

From here on out it will just be a wrestling match trying to keep these things tied down as they want to get larger. Pretty happy with the bounce back and really starting to see the 4 main arms taking shape. The suspected DTF male will likely get cut today and the one I think is female will get a transplant into its 3 gallon fabric pot. The Tangerine Dream will also get a transplant but into a 5 or 7 gallon (likely 7) pot for the one plant in a 4x4’ tent grow.

Once again I am a day behind posting from my photo so this was taken yesterday (Bouncing back). Also note as you are looking through the following pictures that now all 4 nodes are incredibly even. In the before pictures the bottom node has always been below the other node but now they have caught up. I will try to keep all 4 even from here on out but this is why I bend the nodes with my fingers early on and also only train the top branches until the others catch up. This is exactly what I was looking for.

FE62F999-E13F-4463-9D61-49329148F5EC.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 19, 2018

For a quick frame of reference this was 48 hours before the above photo (Tieing down and defoliation of first 4 fan leaves).

82F97469-C6FE-48BE-8982-95EF666EE44A.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 17, 2018

About 36 hours before the above photo (Spreading nodes just with fingers).

0312D491-0E71-4D8A-ADAB-51427F0BABB1.jpeg

• Asesino85
• Dec 14, 2018

About 36 hours before the above photo (transplant and topping day).

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• Asesino85
• Dec 13, 2018

A full week ago.

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• Asesino85
• Dec 11, 2018

Just some documented proof that these things really don’t miss a beat if you do things at the right time and are patient! Next update I’ll try to get some non blurple shots soon so you guys can really see the fresh green color coming out of the joints but they took their beating in stride and are still very happy.

 

[Pennywise]

You can see the lighter green growth shoots on top growing at warp speed!

 

[Asesino85]

You can see the lighter green growth shoots on top growing at warp speed!

Yeah I can’t wait to see them today. I think they are going to kick it up to that top gear of growth now that I usually talk about. Once they get to that point you can almost do anything you want to them and they don’t skip a beat at all. So happy to have my tent looking like this again and for these to be as healthy as can be.