CannabisMan420s Perpetual Grow 2022

CannabisMan420

Well-Known Member
Info:

Strains:

Gelato - 9 weeks flowering
Jack Herer - 2 weeks flowering
Seeds: montrealcannabis-seeds.ca

Info:
Soil grow
400w HPS
Botanicare flowering feed
Alaska Fish fertilizer (veg)



Above are pics of my Gelato Plant (to be harvested tomorrow at 9weeks flower) and my Jack Herer plant, which is 14 days into flower.
She got a bit out of hand, I had to keep her in veg for 39 days since my flowering area was full. Many of the lower leaves are nice and purple as advertised, but the buds are not as dense as my usual plants. The higher leaves are just burnt from being too close to the light. As she flowered, I was able to pull the buds off to the sides to lessen the light burn, but some of the leaves were still too close.



This is my Jack Herer plant at the beginning of flower, about 15" tall

The above two pics are of my Jack Herer plant after two weeks of flowering stretch.


For some context, I still consider myself a new grower, as I finally bought a 4x4 tent instead of growing in a small 2' x 3' area I had before. I've been growing for a few years, but have recently started getting average yields of 3 to 4 ounces per plant while learning a bit about training and topping. My soil is now mostly compost and yard waste from my backyard. Its been a long process, producing some crappy weed in the past, but its my favorite hobby now that I am producing some decent quality smoke.

What I've been doing recently is topping center most branches of my plants twice, trying to create an even canopy without too much work or stress on the plants. Usually I remove the bottom 2 to 4 branches, and let the others grow, and top when I have 4 to 6 main branches. Then as they grow, I pick off all the new, small branches, leaving just the leaves, right up until flowering. This way I don't have any real small crappy buds to trim. This method has produced the most consistent and largest yields for me, but I'm hesitant to do much in the way of defoliation. I know I probably should clean things up a bit, but its not too branchy, and I'm getting some nice nugs.

I seem to have some problems with veg, since my plants don't seem to grow very well until the flowering stage. Maybe that's just how it goes with cannabis? I don't know. Should I be growing shorter plants, because I am vegging for 5-6 weeks to get 15" plants with an even canopy and about 10 colas?

I've been considering going with LEDs, but since I already have the 400w HPS, I figured I'll spend the $10 per bulb that it costs yearly until the ballast burns out. It costs about $20/month for power, so its still pretty cheap to grow with.

Edit: I forgot to add my temperature and humidity monitoring are being handled with an ESP32 and a Raspberry Pi running Node Red. It seems I'm close to having the correct VPD, but I'm a bit too humid at night and a bit dry in the day. I think I need a bigger ventilation fan...


Next seeds up are some OG Kush that have previously produced some of the best weed I've grown so far, but my perpetual grow is a bit behind schedule so I don't have anything in veg right now. I think that is it for now, any tips or suggestions are very welcome.
 
A 400-watt HID is way too small for a 16 square foot garden, IMHO. It's arguably too small for a 3'x3' space (although some people seem to use it for that, instead of getting a 600-watt one for that space, or getting a 600-watt light and a slightly larger one square meter tent), and your garden area is nearly 80% larger than the nine square feet of a 3'x3'.

You're probably going to want a(t least a) 600-watt HPS if you stick with that size garden. Or to add another 400-watt one, assuming you can find a couple of (preferably air-cooled) reflectors that will, together, give you the same shape of light footprint as your garden. Or, if you're interested in switching to autoflowering strains, you could just add roughly 135 watts or so of good light, and run them 18 hours per day, I suppose.
 
Yeah, I had the 400w light handling a 2x3 area before I got the tent, so it was just about enough for that I think.
I don't plan on filling the tent up, since I'm doing a perpetual grow I should only have 2 plants flowering at any given time, (3x4?) but even then the 400w is a bit small. I'll have to think about this now that I have the tent, and appropriate some cash for a new light and maybe a bigger fan. As of today, I'll only have 1 plant flowering, so I've got some time.
 


As stated, I chopped the Gelato plant today. It was a bit brutal, getting resin all over my arms but at least now I smell nice. The Jack H. plant is living up life now directly under the light with a fresh watering.
 



Alright, here we are, after 21 full days of flower for the Jack Herer plant, and she is putting on some flowers now. I think I let her grow a bit too tall in veg, but she should deliver a nice quantity of flowers. She is about 3 feet tall at the center buds, with the side buds being a bit higher. The canopy stayed pretty even, but I pulled the highest side branches out to the side a bit more to make room for light to get through.

I also got around to sprouting an OG Kush seed, shown in the top pic.

My other OGK seed looks like a dud. It seems to happen every now and then, so I'll probably give it another day or two then pop another one. This is one of my fav strains so far, so I just ordered another 10 seeds in a 2-for-1 sale.

The Gelato plant should be dry enough to trim in the next few days, so I'll see about the final result soon. The whole plant has been hanging in a ~50% humidity room at 20 degrees Celsius for almost 7 days now.

Right now I'm smoking on some Fruity Pebbles v2.0 which came out pretty nicely as one of my most recent harvests.
 

Finally got to trim the Gelato plant after about a week of drying. Above is a pic of one of the bigger buds from the harvest. She totals 137.74g or 4.92 ounces of crystal covered sticky goodness. I'm pretty happy with the result, I blazed one of the smaller nugs and it was real nice for no cure and being this fresh. The smell is quite odd, I'm not sure how to describe it, but it is a nice light smell with some dankness in there and some spiciness. The buds are not as dense as what I'm used to, but they are not overly fluffy either. I'll consider this a success!
 



Whew, things are lookin good. I managed to sneak in just before the light went on and capture some pics of the JH plant in more natural light. Buds are starting to form nicely on JH as can be seen in the pics, and its looking like they are starting out nice and dense, with lots of hairs. The OGK seedling is coming along nicely, starting on its 3rd set of leaves.

I think for this next OGK seedling I will do some more defoliation as the last one was pretty thick with leaves and light couldn't get down to all the bud sites. It still produced a good quantity & quality, but I think it can do better. Also will be growing a bit shorter plants I think, since I don't think I need the height to get the same amount of weed the way I've been training em.

I also started another OGK seed which is now 2 days old, for a total of 3 plants in the works.
 

OG Kush seed on day 12 of growth was just topped. The branching on this plant is pretty nice, usually I take off the bottom 2 branches, but on this one they are growing nicely, so I decided just to top it here and see how she grows.
I have two other OGK seeds started for a total of 4 plants now, because I might give this one away, to be grown outdoors.
 


Looks like the Jack Herer plant is putting on some nice buds. The sugar leaves don't seem to have a lot of crystals, so lets hope the buds do. She is starting to develop a nice light fruity/flowery smell.


The first OGK plant is doing well, with very nice branching happening and fat leaves.


It looks like this 2nd OGK plant is not growing as fast as the first OGK plant, but we'll see how big she gets in the next week or so I guess.

Had some troubles with the 3rd OGK plant, so popped another seed. The plant came up and grew two leaves that went yellow before it died. It was in the same batch of soil as the 2nd one, so I don't know wtf happened.
 

So the delivery man showed up bearing gifts today. I had to test it out to make sure it works, so here it is in all its glory, my new 600W HPS. Now I just need to up production a little bit and get some more plants in there. The one small plant looks so lonely under the new light. With the glass covering and the venting pulling air through the reflector, I'm not expecting the tent to heat up any more than with the 400W light, but we'll see I guess. It seems the more plants are in there, the lower the temperature.

Instead of using the triangle metal hanger that came with the light, I had to use the extra hangers from the 400W light in order to get the light high enough not to burn this plant. I'll definitely have to start growing shorter, bushier plants. Thanks to @TorturedSoul for the suggestion to get a bigger light, I think this will work out nicely.

I seem to have had an influx of spiders into my tent. I would consider this a good thing, but they all keep dying fairly quickly. I don't think its a well suited environment for spiderbros. I guess they must have crawled through the incoming air ducting. In addition to the light, I picked up another fan to move air into the tent, while the first air pumps it out through a carbon filter, so we'll see if the spiders can still get in.
 
Good luck to the little predators!

You might be able to purchase an insulated covering for your new light. They make them for some reflectors, but I do not have a list. That helps, a bit. If you've got the light on a completely separate exhaust run (outside---reflector---fan---outside) then you won't need a carbon filter for that run (heated air doesn't smell any different than cool air). You can get by with a less expensive fan because, with no restrictions, you won't need any particular type to move a good volume of air. Assuming that you have the traditional (outside---tent---filter---fan---outside) odor control setup, with not having to move the 2,047 BTU (600-watt HPS without the ballast) of heat through it, can probably be ran at a significantly slower speed and still be able to do its job of controlling odor and refreshing the air in the garden space. This - again - could mean that you don't need as strong as a fan (although you'll still want a type that can move air through a restriction). The air that is moving through it won't be HOT. These two things will mean that your carbon filter should last noticeably longer. And, due to generally moving less air through the actual garden space, it should be easier to control the environment. For example, you might even be able to run the fan only part of the time - which would allow you to add supplemental CO2 (if you so desire) and not end up wasting it when it gets sucked out as fast as it leaves its tank.

I hope you notice an immediate improvement. And, yes, you should fill that space ;) .
 
Thanks again! The tent seems to run maybe 1 degree C hotter with the 600W, but it was pretty warm in here yesterday, so I'll have to see how it is on average. It might have just been a bit warmer yesterday. I hate to say it, but right now I'm venting the tent indoors and relying on the furnace fan and open windows to move fresh air around. Yeah, I'm a bit of a hack when it comes to this stuff, but doing the best I can with what I've got. I'll probably get my shit together eventually lol.

I've currently got the bulb about 16" from the plants, and it seems about reasonable. I'm wondering how close should I keep it? It seems that there is a lot less heat coming down from this light compared to the open 400w reflector, so I am not sure how to gauge it. Some google sources say like 27" which seems way too far.

Wish I could afford more fancy things like a light meter, so I knew exactly what I was getting, but this new HPS set me back a bit.
 
Day 3 out of soil for this little girl. Hope she grows up to be big and fat.

Just topped this one after 12 days out of soil. The branching looks ok, but I'll probably take off the bottom two branches if they don't grow quickly.

Just starting training. Had to spread her out a bit to let the middle branches get some light. This one is growing pretty quickly now with all the top sets of branches being pretty even. The bottom branches are growing a bit slower, but she will be an outdoor plant, so they should get some light once outside and they've grown a bit.

I took some time to tie down the outermost branches, to spread her out a bit and give some of the lower buds some light. Trying to use up as much of the light footprint as possible. Again, I'm not sure how close to get this light to the plants, so I'll have to do some experimentation once I get a younger plant in there.
 
This little one is growing nicely in the same soil that the first one died in. The soil must not be the problem.

Getting bigger! She is a little purple around the edges and tips of the leaves. I think I had my LED veg light a little bit too close to her.

This lady is fat, with nice big leaves, and the branching is thick and strong. This should be a good candidate for an outdoor plant. I pulled the side branches out more to the side and the top two nodes took off on me. Might need to clean her up a bit.

Jack is still putting on weight. She is just now showing her first red hairs, so I'm expecting this one to go about 9 weeks, but we'll have to see how she ages.
 
This OGK plant is getting going a bit slowly, I think I have been a bit stingy with the watering, but she should be good now.

The above two pics are of my 11th attempt at growing an OG Kush seed. I've topped the plant once and let the branches grow a bit, then removed the top two leaves since they were covering up all the branching.

The above two pics are of my 8th attempt to grow an OG Kush seed. I've topped it, let it grow a bit, and the center two stems were growing out of control, so I topped one and trained the other off to the side at the level of the other branches. Hopefully the side branches will catch up to the center one. This is probably the last we will see of this plant, as she is ready to go outside, and I will be giving her away.

The above two pics are my first attempt at growing a Jack Herer plant. She is growing nicely, with nice looking buds, but the leaves are not very crystally. She smells nice, so hopefully she is smoke-able. I managed to get a shot just when the HPS was turning on, in the more blue light. The upper leaves are starting to yellow a bit, and I've been flushing her with nothing but water and PH-Down. She is still drinking up to 2.5Litres of water a day, but that seems to be slowing down a bit now, so maybe every 1.5 or 2 days soon.
 
Alright, time for my weekly roundup. Things have been going good, with some nice growth on my smaller plants in veg, and some fat buds forming on my flowering plant.

First things first, on the picture below, you can see something I've never seen before! On this plant I gave away, it was developing in threes. On some of the branches, there are three leaves/branches at the same level on the plant. It seemed pretty neat, so I took a closeup picture:

The next plant up is my 12th OG Kush, which is developing a littler taller, slower and skinnier than my previous OGK seeds, but at least its growing.

Next up is OG Kush #11 which is branching pretty nicely. I just recently topped her again, making two toppings for the middle branches. I've also done some light defoliation on the middle branches, taking out the biggest leaves, so I'm hoping the outer branches catch up and even overtake the center branches a bit.

Below is the Jack Herer plant that has been coming along for a while now. This is day 57 of flowering and she shows no signs of slowing down growth. One of the branches did a complete 180, but didn't break, so I propped her up with some wire.

She is still pulling up 2.5L of water/day and most of the hairs are either white, or just starting to fade to brown. Hard to see the bud in the HPS light, but I'll try to get a some better bud shots in the future. I don't expect to harvest her for a little while yet, looking like 9.5-10 weeks of flowering is in order. So nice to have room in the tent for this plant to develop all the way, as I'm going to be putting an OGK into flower soon.

If you look closely, the top yellow leaves have developed some brown spots on them, and the yellow parts seem to be dying away quickly. I'm not sure if this is some sort of deficiency that didn't show up until late flowering or what?
 
Growing, growing and more growing!

Up first this week is my 12th attempt at growing OGKush, and she is growing OK. I did some defoliation a while after topping, taking the top two sets of main leaves off, as well as the side leaves of the tops and the next set of branches. This is intended to slow down their growth while the other branches catch up. I've done very minimal training, pulling the bottom most branches out a bit, but thats it.

Next up is OGKush seed #11, which was just put into flower yesterday at 36 days old and about 9.5-10" tall. I was previously letting my vegging plants get up to 15" tall, but I want to see if I can pull off the same yields with some shorter plants. In the undershot, you can see I've been picking all the branches off up to this point. From this point on I will let her branch and grow as she will, doing some training to spread her out a bit. This keeps me from having to trim a lot of small buds. I hate trimming, but put work into doing it properly, so that's why I lollipop all the branches but leave the leaves.

Last up is the Jack Herer plant, totaling 107 days old and 63 full days of flowering. Many of the bottom leaves have dropped off now, and the rest are showing nice fall colors now too. She seems to be drinking less water now, so growth is finally slowing down, with harvest coming in another week or two I think. All I see right now is bright clear and cloudy trichomes, no amber yet, and most of the hairs are still white. I might have started flushing a bit too soon, but I'm happy to let her burn off as much nitrogen and chlorophyll as possible.

That's all I got for this week, I'm really excited about these OG Kush plants and I've popped a Gorilla Glue seed too. The GG seeds have produced some of the best Cannabis I've smoked, looking just like the pictures on the sellers site, but the previous batch I popped wasn't so crazy good. Hoping this batch is the bomb.
 
Nice looking garden there, @CannabisMan420 ! :thumb:

Are you doing 12/12 from seed or do you have another space you are using for veg?

If you are open to looking at alternative training methods, have a look at Quadlining. it is a method that uses a single topping and then some LST to shape the plant. Gives a great structure and is faster than many training methods because it only tops once.

Are you doing an organic grow? You said you basically used compost and yard waste. Are you using a standard soil mix, and are you using any regular fertilizers?

I grow in a perpetual method as well, but I have two spaces, one for veg and the other for flower. In the veg space I produce clones rather than going mostly from seed as it appears you do.
 
Thanks! @Azimuth

I've got another space for veg where I use LEDs for early growth. I'm kind of lucky I have extra space for a growing area, because flowering 3 or 4 plants at once or going 12/12 from seed is not really my preference.

I'm going to be attempting that Quadlining, or at least very similar with my OGK seed coming up here! I'm going to LST her now as she gets into the flowering stretch, and try to grow her out a lot more sideways, to take up some space in this huge tent. I don't think it will be quite as impressive as the example you give, but I'll give it my best shot!.

It is basically organic, I'm using organic fertilizer (just Alaska Fish Fertilizer and Botanicare Flowering feed) and the PH-Down from Advanced Nutrients that is OK for organic grows. Its kind of neat, I basically re-use my soil, but give it time to rest and re-compost between grows, and I'm always adding to it. The plants literally shrink it down and use up a lot of it, so I have to add more compost each cycle.
I started with just regular potting soil and some yard waste w/tap water. It didn't do very well, but I grew some weed. Then I started using more fertilizer and added some sulfur pellets to bring the PH of the soil down, as it was a bit high. This as I started getting better and better compost material going, I started to use organic friendly PH down and really put things together, as I knew nothing about growing plants. From there I just built up my soil with more and more compost from the yard and it has been getting better and better over time.

I would do clones, but I'm not very good at it, and the market for legal clones where I live kind of sucks. I wish I could go to a dispensary, smoke some weed, then say, yeah, give me a clone of that weed. If I could only get my hands on that kind of quality, but yeah, I've been going with the inconsistency you get with seeds. I've been considering re-vegging one of my plants after flowering, I did successfully do that once before, and doing the mother/clone thing, but we'll have to see if I find a plant I really want to keep. These OGK seeds haven't let me down yet though, always producing lots of crystals and good smoke, so I'm fairly happy so far with the seeds I've gotten.
 
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