Delps 8 Hydro RDWC Gelato Autoflower 2021

[Delps8]

Definitely happy plants! Look at those long pistils!

They ought to be happy — she has her own light!

There are a few stalks that are much taller than the others and their PPFD’s are 1100+ and 1200+. That’s the only way I can elevate the light levels for the rest of the canopy. I’d like to get everything at 900 µmols but the majority of the canopy is averaging about 800. The ViparSpectra is working out well.

Big contrast to the Gorilla Glue grow — all of Mary’s nugs are hard as a rock. Absolutely not the case with the GG’s.

 

[Delps8]

Plants are doing fine, going into the last week or two. Falling pH issue is over for this res, anyway. Mary will be done in the next few days. "rock hard nugs" were nowhere to be found in the Gorilla Glue grow but that's pretty much all that Mary has. She's a small plant so the yield won't be monstrous the she'll be easy to harvest and cure. Per the photo, some of her look clear in the photo but there is a fair percentage of cloudy and as well as a few amber trichs.

All the colas on Jeff's stalks are fattening up but they're not hard nugs like Mary has. Perhaps that will change. Some of Jeff's buds have only white pistils so they've suffered from too much light. That was a result of me cranking the X3 up to try to make up for the weird lighting that I did before I got the Viparspectra for Mary. I think the tradeoff was worth it - it looks like Jeff has a huge amount of colas on his stalks but they're still in the "clear trich" stage.That means another couple of weeks, I'd expect, especially since Mary isn't ready to go yet.

Temps are manageable but I'll need to use the heater over night and maybe continue to use my car as a heat source. I turned off the heater last night to see how cold the tent would get and got my answer this morning - 63°. I've shifted lights out to 0300 to 0800 to try to make the most of the warmth of the day but I need to run the oil heater and/or take the car for a drive and park it in the garage to get some heat into the tent. At $4.80 for a gallon of gas, it may be cheaper to run the heater at 23¢ kWh than to drive the car around.

The Jacks 3-2-1 ferts are here but I've decided against using them. The grow is in the last weeks so I decided to give their 7-15-30 a try. That'll be here tomorrow so I can do a new res anytime after that.

 

[Delps8]

Day 97 above ground.

Mary’s shaping up really nicely. Her nugs continue to bulk up. Trichs are in no rush to cloud up. Jeff is another story. Mary’s internodal space is fractions of an inch and has very dense nugs. Check out the attachments. First one is one is from Mary - looking good. The others show one of Jeff’s…growths. They’re not nugs. I guess they’re not nugs yet, is the key phrase. The key, I think, is that the internodal space on Jeff is about 1” so there’s little chance that they’ll grow together to form a dense nug. Given the difference in stem length between the two plants, I may just end up with some very strange weed from Jeff. Mary’s stems seem to be not much longer 24” . It would not surprise me if most of the stems on Jeff were double that length.

This is the second grow where the plant in right side of the res towered over the other plant(s) in the res. The only difference that I can think of is that the inlet from the water chiller is on the left and the sensors for the Bluelab are on the right. I used hoses from the humidifier to try to get an even distribution of mist so that’s a difference — could be a factor?

Weird.

Now that this grow is winding down, my mind is on to the next one. I’ve got seeds for Gorilla Glue autos, as well as “Original Glue”, Girl Scout Cookies, and Chem Dog, all three are photos. I don’t know the yield I’ll be getting from Mary but I’d be quite happy to have a couple of plants that are shaped like she is but three times taller.

The Chem Dog has a pretty high yield but, after a couple of grows, the light is going on that yield is not that big a deal for me. I’ve barely made a dent in the harvest from this summer and, even if Jeff turns out to have a poor yield, I suspect that the nugs from Mary will last quite a while.

I got a small packet of Jacks 7-15-30 which is a really interesting formulation with enough K to stun a mule. I might swap the res this weekend but, frankly, the plants seem to be on autopilot so I’m not eager to change things. Water consumption has been good. After not topping off for a few days, I added 3.5 gallons of RO last night. EC dropped from 1.2 to 1 and pH was 5.8. When I woke up this AM, pH was…6.0. Yup, finally, after 97 days, the EC is stable and pH is rising.

 

[FelipeBlu]

The Jacks 3-2-1 ferts are here but I've decided against using them. The grow is in the last weeks so I decided to give their 7-15-30 a try.

Hmmm..the old PK boost cliché..

I got a small packet of Jacks 7-15-30 which is a really interesting formulation with enough K to stun a mule.

Uh yep - save your mule.

 

[Delps8]

Hmmm..the old PK boost cliché..

And N is in the weeds, so to speak.

Uh yep - save your mule.

 

[Delps8]

Day 100

Had to add water but didn't have any nutes mixed and wasn't in the mood to change that situation. Added 3 gallons RO which brought EC to 0.88 but pH rose and the additional water covered the roots.

Still patiently checking the trichs. Mary is quite close - some clear, mostly cloudy, few amber. One attachment shows the amazing shape of the colas.

Jeff's another story. Huge amount of vegetable matter but not dense nugs. Really strange how the buds are growing. I'd love to hear about why they have grown like that. Is it just a huge plant with huge internal space? Really interesting. And an incredible scent.

 

[FelipeBlu]

I’m mesmerized by the amazing amount of trichs covering all the leaves in the first photo!

 

[Rexer]

Looks like some phenomenal smoke Delps, and a whole garden full at that
Hope you had a Happy New Year!

 

[Delps8]

I’m mesmerized by the amazing amount of trichs covering all the leaves in the first photo!

Agreed, they look great but I'm not sure how things will turn out. The "flowers" are about 3" long, 1" wide, and maybe ½" thick. Assuming that they're not going to turn into nugs, what's the best way to use the harvest?

 

[Delps8]

Looks like some phenomenal smoke Delps, and a whole garden full at that
Hope you had a Happy New Year!

Yeh, big gangly plant. Some of the stems have to be ≈ 2 meters. And Mary is looks to be about 2 feet! Check the picture below - very interesting shape. LST worked. Gotta admit that I'd be more than happy if all of my autos looked like that.
You can see the velcro that I put on the res top but I wasn't able to use them. Turns out the fishing weights did a pretty good job.

 

[Delps8]

Day 101 above ground.

After a few days of checking Mary's nugs with the loupe, I chopped a few of her branches but then stopped because there just weren't enough buds with amber trichs to keep going. Some of the nugs had clear + cloudy trichs but I wasn't seeing any more that were cloudy + amber. I hung the branches that I'd chopped from a hanger in the bathroom and called it a day. I've been checking the trichs daily but that's just been frustrating. I need to "fuggedaboutit" for a few days and check back some time after mid-week. Not easy, seeing that the grow is > 100 days old there's a big payoff for waiting just a few more days.

Plants are taking up a good amount water. I added 3+ gallons of RO and EC is still at 0.8. That's not a lot of nutes but I guess I can be thankful that at least they won't get nute burn. ;-)

The weather has been cool and rainy here in SoCal but the Waykar dehu is dealing with it well. [checks Pulse to see the numbers] Hmmm - 76.3° (we had the car out for a shopping trip) and RH is only 41.5%. Good numbers!

If Mary won't be ready to chop until at least mid-week, that means that Jeff is, realistically, going to be ready…mid-month? Wow, that's 16 weeks seed to weed for an auto. My GG grow took a long time, too. There are a lot of things that I like about autos but one thing I'd really like is to have a grow that wraps up in 2 months instead of 4.

 

[Rexer]

fuggedaboutit

love that cartoon!!

 

[Delps8]

love that cartoon!!

OK, made me look.

How can you not love a sitcom set in Saskatchewan? ;-)

 

[Rexer]

OK, made me look.

How can you not love a sitcom set in Saskatchewan? ;-)

Honestly if you never watched it you should- load up a smoke, sit back and prepare for some good laughs. One of the funniest cartoon shows I've ever watched.

 

[Delps8]

Honestly if you never watched it you should- load up a smoke, sit back and prepare for some good laughs. One of the funniest cartoon shows I've ever watched.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check it out.

 

[AdaminCO]

Agreed, they look great but I'm not sure how things will turn out. The "flowers" are about 3" long, 1" wide, and maybe ½" thick. Assuming that they're not going to turn into nugs, what's the best way to use the harvest?

Make butter… (edibles)
Or with the abundance of trics, make some bubble hash.

 

[Delps8]

Make butter… (edibles)
Or with the abundance of trics, make some bubble hash.

Wow, I've never really thought about making hash — that takes me back to college days and memories of Thai sticks.

[checks out a few web pages]
So, "decarboxylate" means put it in the oven for a while then grind it and mix it into chocolate. I had no idea it was that easy.

My thinking is that I'm not going to end up with "nice dense - smile for the camera" - nugs but will have a lot of what, frankly, looks like a mini-Thai stick coming out from the stems. If I think about it in those terms, there's a shit ton of trichs in there. I was trying to figure out how many linear feet of stems there are and I think it's in the 80' to 100' range. That's a lot of chocolate!

Thank you!

 

[Delps8]

A couple of of items - no pictures, though.

I ran out of one of the Kind nutes that I was using three weeks ago so I switched to Jacks 3-2-1 instead. I've put off swapping the res, thinking that Mary and Jeff would be chopped "real soon now" so I didn't want to spend the time swapping the res and I didn't want to have to work through the new process of mixing dry nutes.

Another reason to not take the time to do a new res is that many growers flush their plants. My thinking there is that if giving plants zero nutes is an accepted practice, how bad can it be to just keep adding RO to this grow?

My conscience got the better of me and I decided to do a new res using Jacks 3-2-1. Well, it wasn't actually 3-2-1 but it was Jacks. Thanks to some education by @FelipeBlu and some quality time with a nutrient analysis spreadsheet, I decided do a slight variation on the stock values. Felipe advised me that there wasn't a real need for Epsom salts, which make up the "1" of the 3-2-1 and bumped the amounts of Part A and Part B slightly. The EC for the res ended up at 1.5. I don't know if that will help the plants but it eases my conscience.

Even with the change of nutes, I'm seeing pH dropping again. That's a PITA since it'll futz around like that for four or five days.

Hmm, that's quite a bit to write about a res change, isn't it?

The other item - Mary's showing more amber trichs but I don't know if she'll be quite ready to chop this weekend. I wish she would be. It seems like these plants have been in "late flower" forever.

 

[Delps8]

What time is it? It's time to watch pH fall!

Readings from today:

Time/PPM (500 scale)/pH (expressed in tenths of a unit)
1:54 AM 770 61
5:36 AM 770 59
9:56 AM 770 56
10:07 AM 770 55
10:50 AM 3 Up 770 60
That's 6 units in 8 hours or 1 unit every 80 minutes. Pretty much the same as before.

Santa Claus didn't send me the Bluelab doser so I've

 

[FelipeBlu]

Are you okay?