Blue Dream In Hempy Buckets With Modified Light Schedule

They seem really green and the tips would make me conclude the nute burn.

Hi Billyjack, at this point I'd have to agree. I was initially hoping that the yellowish leaf margins were just an extension of the nute burn but I was also aware that it might have been a potassium deficiency.

But I fed them yesterday with a lower fert dosage, although I added some P/K, and the leaves today just feel better. I don't know if it means much, but when my plants are healthy the leaves feel slightly cool when I press them between my forefinger and thumb. They also feel a bit 'leathery' (I don't know how to describe that any better, though) when they are problematic. A little earlier today I gave some leaves the squeeze and I could feel the 'cool to the touch' returning to them and they felt a bit smoother, so I think that I'm on the right track.

Thanks for the input!
 
Flower/Day 41

Both plants continue to mature, although at different rates. The taller plant is showing many more amber pistils while the shorter plant is just starting to show this change. But both plants look good, though pretty much otherwise unchanged, so I did not bother to grab a picture today.

Now, although they look good, they do not look grrr-eat (yea, that's my Tony the Tiger impersonation) like they did on my last BD grow. I don't think that this is so much a Hempy thing, but a coco thing and how I've handled this grow differently. IMPORTANT CAVEAT: The following is all speculation based on my observations and a minimal understanding of coco.

I've only grown in coco, but I've always needed...or perceived the need...to flush the pots based on runoff ppm. When everything is going well, this might just be one or two flushes. I'm aware that this is not a popular position in the growing community, but it works for some and it works for me. Maybe this is due to improperly feeding them, but I'm also aware that coco possesses some ionic properties that might tie up some of the nutes. The flushing requirement was minimized on my last grow, but that was the first time that I used coco specific nutes. I don't know if that made a difference.

Anyway, back to this grow, I checked my runoff ppm today because it helped me resolve some issues in the past. It was over 1300 ppm even though lately I've been feeding a weak nute solution or plain water (varying from 170 ppm (pH adjusted tap water) to maybe 500-600 ppm nutes). So my conclusion is that I had nute buildup in the coco. Hence, I'm beginniing to think that perlite might be a better inert media to use if you want to avoid nute buildup and flushing.

But I ran around 4-5 gallons of pH adjusted water and some FloraKleen through each 2 gallon Hempy today and got the runoff down to about 550 ppm or so. In a day or two I'll get back to feeding some nutes. So essentially the reset button's been pushed and the grow can pick up without the background noise.
 
They seem really green and the tips would make me conclude the nute burn.


I'm with Billyjack. Plus, when you get to burning things, it can throw off absorption rates of other bits.
Heat can cause the leaf margin burning as well. I see similar damage along the leaf margins when I cook the garden.
The really dark color says over N as well.
 
Flower / Day 44

At this stage, despite the fact that these two girls were born at the same time, I find it difficult to refer to them as twins. They have been named Laura and Rhoda because I can associate the L and R for left and right.

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Laura is taller and lankier than Rhoda and is also further matured. It's probably just a pheno difference, although Laura was topped cleanly and Rhoda was probably unintentionally FIMmed more than topped. That might explain the height difference (I don't know) but I really don't have a clue why one is maturing faster than the other. But based on the pistil color change, there is probably about a 1 1/2 to 2 week difference between the maturity levels of the two.

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Laura's main branches stretched out a lot more than Rhoda's and it looks like it resulted in a less dense packing of the flowering sites on the main stems. It might be difficult to see in the above picture, but Rhoda's main flowering sites are packed in tighter and this has become more evident in the past week as they swelled up. I had always considered Laura the beauty between the two plants, but now that Rhoda's curves are filling out I'm thinking that she is ahead in this beauty pageant. She also has a more pleasant and cheerful personality.

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The closeups (thanks Tead for the lens idea) of a typical bud site for each girl show the levels of maturation as Laura has many deep, orange pistils while Rhoda's have just recently started to change color. I chopped a small bud from Laura and a look under the pocket microscope revealed that there were a few slightly cloudy glanular heads on Laura's trichomes. I had anticipated a mid-December chop date for these plants based on my last BD grow but it looks like Laura will probably finish a little ahead of that presumptive schedule.

Anyway, the sisters appear to be doing much better after the flush. There is a nice cool feel to their leaves now and the dark green color has backed off a bit. My stepkids are anxiously awaiting this grow to finish because they smoke more than me and have actually...gasp...been forced to buy their own pot.
 
Flower / Day 51

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At the point now where I need to practice patience and let the plants ripen. The above pics from the top sites don't show much change in Laura (left), but there are some more cloudy trichomes and maybe the rare light amber colored one or two. The bud sizes are similar. I still haven't scoped Rhoda (right), but there has been a dramatic change in the number of orange pistols from last week. Only other thing to note is the yellowing of some of the leaves, but that is expected at this point of the grow. Things have been boring inside of the tent, but that is a good thing!
 
Looking good G. :high-five:

Hey man didn't you do some backbuilding on some of those bud sites?

Thanks raz! I'm not sure what backbuilding means, but I did do some topping (once) and a little supercropping when the plants were in veg. But to be honest, I think that it worked out better on my last grow. I also think that before I may have done the supercropping early in flower...but I screwed up and it's not in the notes that I took on it. Duh...should have journaled it.
 
Backbuilding is a technique that LA (Light Addict) speaks about here its used to force the buds to swell up more and get denser. I must be reading to many journals cause I thought that you had said you were trying it on a couple of branches to see if it made a difference. My bad.
:Namaste:

But what you got going is :allgood:
 
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