Ase's Perpetual Quadlining In Coco

My Indiana Bubblegum is a crazy grower too. Didn’t even sprout one of the fan leaves on node 4. So she’s got nodes 3,4 and 5 going. Lemme see if I can find a pic of her. She almost got culled but I think she will be fine now.
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Looking good Ase. The staggered node is interesting! When will you be topping? Once it reaches the 5-6th? I topped and stripped at the same time. Interested in how it turns out if you strip prior to topping.
I usually top when I see the plant moving at full steam after I have stripped and waited to make sure I didn't stress them out too much. I'd venture to say around that's likely when they've started pushing out node six but really I use their growth rate and not an exact node to determine that.
 
I had a busy last couple days so I didn't get around to topping until today. Both the Gorilla Glue and the Red Dragon could have been topped 2 days ago. Hindsight is 20/20 but I kind of wish I used the tops as clones even if I wasn't going to grow them out. I have some friends starting some grows and they would love to have a feminized seed clone. Oops. Anyways, here is a picture dump of the results today.

Green Crack probably a couple of days away from stripping the bottom nodes
Blue Dream before stripping bottom nodes
Blue Dream after stripped
Gorilla Glue before topping
Gorilla Glue after topping
Red Dragon before topping
Red Dragon top. The Gorilla Glue top was a little larger and I could have stripped the bottom nodes and then cloned these but I just tossed them. Oh well! I will have other chances to clone if I want but the tops are ideal for cloning.
Red Dragon after topping
Tent before any work being done
Then right after. The girls are thirsty a bit and they are angry from the topping/stripping. Once I see the Gorilla Glue and the Red Dragon picking up the pace again I will defoliate the big leaves but I want them to have them for the time being to use them to get as much energy as possible into the 4 remaining branches that will be the support of the quad.
This was a few hours later. The girls all look happy again. So much perkier and even a little shine to them.
 
I took some pictures yesterday but was unable to find the time to post them. I work grocery retail and we've been working a lot of OT with this whole Coronavirus thing. Pretty scary stuff! The girls needed some work done though so I had to make sure to squeeze enough time in for them before I headed off to work yesterday.

The first girl up is the Green Crack. She finally got her stripping done and I will top probably tomorrow or the next day.


Last post I updated that I had stripped the Blue Dream and now this post I had just topped her.


The Red Dragon was ready to get some ties on her to start pulling apart the 4 main branches and start getting those branches to grow more horizontal.


The Gorilla Glue looks so great and I may have to clone this one at some point now that I've seemed to of found a steady grower.


This is what the girls looked like after the training and then the second picture is what they looked like a few hours after that. You can see how quickly they like to turn to the light. I will probably have to adjust or add more ties daily to both her and the Red Dragon.


Everyone stay safe out there! I told someone today its a good thing I can grow my own weed because if this whole Coronavirus puts everyone on lockdown I have my own supply to last me. I'll try to get another post up tomorrow!
 
Just a small update. The Green Crack (bottom right) was not ready to be topped yet so I'll check again tomorrow. The Blue Dream (Upper Left) got some ties put on it today. The Red Dragon (bottom left) got her ties adjusted and 8 leaves removed. The Gorilla Glue (Upper Right) got her ties adjusted and she lost 16 leaves.

This is what they looked like after training but no defoliation yet.
This was the result of the defoliation. At the rate the Gorilla Glue is going I don't expect to see much of a slowdown at all. The Red Dragon is moving a tad slower which is why I only took 8 leaves.
 
Looking good Ase. Working in a grocer must be nuts right now! Hard to keep stuff on the shelves? I know my wife has been going nuts with buying “3 weeks worth” of food supplies. Bless her heart. No TP in any town around me within 30 mins.

I luckily have employees that are very veteran and know when push comes to shove they will just work whatever is needed to keep up. Our store is actually not in too bad of shape except for the TP (if course I mean for a pandemic standards, we haven't looked like stores that you see in all the news and pictures). We are still getting some in everyday but its gone about 15 minutes after we are open. I'm pulling 12-14 hour days as well as most of the management crew. Employees are offered to basically work as many hours as they want in addition to everyone getting 40 hours. It's wild. We are doing numbers that are double that to a holiday.
 
Another quick update since I really just need to eat, shower and sleep. I am basically working 12-14 hour days with no days off for the foreseeable future. That gives me about 3 hours of free time and 8 hours to sleep with an hour to get ready in the morning. Pretty crazy stuff going on right now. Everyone stay safe!

The Green Crack got topped today.


The Blue Dream got tied down fully and defoliated the 4 big fan leaves and leaves pointing to the middle.


The Red Dragon has made the most push I think in the last couple days.


The Gorilla Glue still looking strong and got more defoliation today.


The tent when I first got there and how I ended.

 
Yesterday I took a bunch of photos but went to sleep and forgot to do a post. I really tried to focus on my defoliation strategy and removing the "undernode". I will illustrate it with pictures but basically I remove this node because it gets covered up and never seems to grow well enough to keep because of its slow start. The reason it starts off so slow is because when you tie down a branch it causes a node to point down towards the soil. It gets covered up and not as much light gets to it and just never grows out well.

This is the Red Dragon pre defoliation of any sort.
Side view of a branch.
Undernode removal.
Changing where the tie down point is.
Defoliation of a leaf that faces towards the center of the plant and blocks a lot of light to the nodes.
This plant is now tied down all the way to the edge of the pot.
Finished product.
Gorilla Glue got heavily defoliated and also got the undernodes removed.
Finished product.
Tent before anything was done at all
This was the tent after all the defoliations and lsting was complete
This was the tent a couple of hours ago today. They are recovering well.
 
Looking good Ase. You make the critical stage of getting them quaded off look effortless. You also get real nice stem development at an early stage. My coco girls have pretty pliable stems but not the DWC's. For whatever reason the DWC's stems are thicker and will snap very easily in this stage.

Last couple grows I have taken your advice on concentrating on root development and it has paid off well. I even run Orca in the buckets and great white in the coco pots.

It sucks having to work that much but it's better than the alternative. We were all sent home to work through this. Being couped up in the house I get bored. If this keep up I might just have another tent going before too long.
 
Good morning Ase ☀️ I am watching your steps closely, since this is the time/stage I always (not exaggerating) screw things up by bending too much? I don't know. They don't rip when I bend them, but after some hours/a day, they look like this :(
One time, the shute then grew together with the stalk of the leaf, it survived, but still...
Has this ever happened to you? How can I try avoiding it? I have added a photo for you to see what I mean. Thank you
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Good morning Ase ☀ I am watching your steps closely, since this is the time/stage I always (not exaggerating) screw things up by bending too much? I don't know. They don't rip when I bend them, but after some hours/a day, they look like this :(
One time, the shute then grew together with the stalk of the leaf, it survived, but still...
Has this ever happened to you? How can I try avoiding it? I have added a photo for you to see what I mean. Thank you
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This does still happen to me a bit and realistically if this starts to happen you just have to ease up on the ties and let them repair themselves a bit. As soon as I’m done topping a plant I start to bend the nodes with my fingers. A couple days later I throw the ties on so in between the topping and the ties I’m essentially massaging the nodes so they don’t get too hard too fast and become nearly impossible to tie down without having that happen.

The thing you really have to keep an eye on while they are in aggressive veg is loosening the ties a little though here and there. The plant is still growing taller even though we topped them and if they are completely strained they try to “hulk” (yes like the comic character) themselves out their straps and that causes these little tears like you are experiencing. This is why I’m also partial to tomato wire with the stakes that use for training, they also naturally have a little give to them.
 
This does still happen to me a bit and realistically if this starts to happen you just have to ease up on the ties and let them repair themselves a bit. As soon as I’m done topping a plant I start to bend the nodes with my fingers. A couple days later I throw the ties on so in between the topping and the ties I’m essentially massaging the nodes so they don’t get too hard too fast and become nearly impossible to tie down without having that happen.

The thing you really have to keep an eye on while they are in aggressive veg is loosening the ties a little though here and there. The plant is still growing taller even though we topped them and if they are completely strained they try to “hulk” (yes like the comic character) themselves out their straps and that causes these little tears like you are experiencing. This is why I’m also partial to tomato wire with the stakes that use for training, they also naturally have a little give to them.
Thank you makes a lot of sense with the hulking and matches with what I found in my tent :D I will think of it next time. Happy day ☀️
 
The grocery stores are finally starting to go back to normal a little bit which means a day off for me and a much needed one. The girls really needed some attention and for the first time this grow I opened my tent and thought that I could probably flip them soon. I would really like the Green Crack to be a bit bigger so instead I did a mass defoliation and will probably wait another week or so to flip. A lot of leaves came off for the other 3 but the plants all looked healthy and green. I adjusted some of the ties as best as I could but most of the girls are really starting to get strong and less flexible. This will probably be my last adjustments anyways, the Blue Dream, Red Dragon and Gorilla Glue #4 are all trained to the edges of their pots.

The first of the bunch is the Green Crack. This is before I did anything to her.
The aftermath. She is not flexible at all and I see a little tearing on the branches so I will pretty much just let her grow from here. The tearing is minor so it'll repair itself but I'm not pushing her anymore.

The Gorilla Glue #4 has just been steady. The Blue Dream and Red Dragon are catching up with her now but she is way bigger than my last Gorilla Glue #4 so I am happy for that. This is the before pic.
After

The Blue Dream is acting like my last Blue Dream that I grew. Out of nowhere it just starts growing like crazy in veg and very vertical. I have some old journals with a Blue Dream grow but basically I was barely even able to train it and instead it just grew 4 main shoots straight up and got really tall. I'm trying to keep this one as horizontal as I can for now but I can tell it's just going to follow along the same lines. I think I got to this one just in time to keep it from really going completely vertical.
After

The Red Dragon has the best natural spacing of them all. She didn't need any adjustments to the ties and all the branching was pretty even. I was surprised a little bit. She is pretty even with the Gorilla Glue #4 now but I'd give her the nod on the best overall girl in the tent now. We will see where they all stack up in about a week. Irregardless I am probably flipping them anyways.
After defoliation.

The whole gang before.
The whole gang after. I decided to switch the Red Dragon and Green Crack due to how fast the Blue Dream is growing. I am going to need a little more space for her and since the Green Crack is the smallest, it won't feel intruded on.
 
Yesterday I decided that the girls were ready to be flipped. The Green Crack is going to be small and I’m pretty much going to just leave the 4 main colas and let it go. All of the other girls were ready and the Blue Dream is moving very fast so it was time to get them going into flower. I’ll take 3 regular sized plants and a small one rather then an overcrowded tent. I’ve been bending the Blue Dreams main stems every day to get the middle parts to catch up and it’s worked pretty well. Knowing this strain though the mains are going to take off and I will likely have to do this all the way through stretch so it doesn’t get too vertical. The Gorilla Glue and the Red Dragon will both likely end up like my normal quadlined plants do. I also want to add that because of how busy I’ve been I never ended up using the Remo Nutrients. I just haven’t had time to even read them since this virus has exploded and work has been crazy so I just have been using what I know with the General Hydroponic nutrients.

This was taken yesterday before flip.
This was taken today, the first day of flower. Blue Dream is upper left and Green Crack is lower left. Gorilla Glue #4 upper right and the beautiful Red Dragon is lower right.
 
What is some of things you can advise agaisnt doing or would do again in regards to quadlineing an auto ?

Read a few of your threads and have successfully done quadlineing once before but only on photos.

Sorry for the delayed response. I have done quadlining on autos and I just have found that it is a little tougher due to you not really controlling the plant so you have to stay on top of things and get all the training done pretty early so when the plant decided to go into flower, you aren't busy trying to catch up. After stretch you really don't want to be doing a whole lot of stress to the plant. Other than that everything else is just the same. My only tip really would be to not do as heavy of a defoliation at one time. Do little amounts more often.
 
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