Doc Bud's High Brix Q&A With Pictures

[Duggan]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Growing like mad, but only the older leaves have the shine?
What are the stems like? Petioles?

What phase of growth are they in?

You might just need to give them a good dose of Growth Energy. That's our main source of calcium and that's where the shine comes from.

Growth Energy is our "must have" drench. I've grown fantastic plants with nothing but Growth Energy. You can't do without it.

Mornin Doc!Yes ...most of the older leaves are shiney but not all. They have been vegging for about 8weeks and are about 2 more weeks away from when i'l flip em. I will up my energy slightly next feeding and watch what ,and if that helps. Otherwise they are growing like crazy,like i said. Don't forget ,they are in BIG pots (10.5 gal's.)Thanks Doc.

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Mornin Doc!Yes ...most of the older leaves are shiney but not all. They have been vegging for about 8weeks and are about 2 more weeks away from when i'l flip em. I will up my energy slightly next feeding and watch what ,and if that helps. Otherwise they are growing like crazy,like i said. Don't forget ,they are in BIG pots (10.5 gal's.)Thanks Doc.

I think you'll be fine....give 'em a week and that shine should return.

 

[Duggan]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Thanks Doc...have a great day pal! Cheers!

 

[thecanuck]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

While it won't hurt, there's no reason to use distilled water. Tap water will work fine if the PPM is under about 200, and it might even work BETTER if the PPM is between 60 and 100.

But you're fine with distilled too.

When you say 200 or between 60 and 100 what parts of the tds are you referring to?

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

When you say 200 or between 60 and 100 what parts of the tds are you referring to?

If the tap water is below 200 ppm it will likely be OK to use, because the Total Alkalinity will be low enough to be offset by the buffers in the soil. Bicarbonates will form in the soil which will ruin everything if the TA is too high.

The best thing to do if you're worried about using tap water is thus:

Test it. PPM's over 200? Don't use it without filtering or RO.
PPM's under 200? Test for Total Alkalinity. If that's below about 120 you'll probably have better results with the tap water than with RO.

Total Alkalinity is a measurement of Calcium Carbonate in the water. We like calcium....

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

More signs of rising brix.

Here you can see the plants undergoing their transformation from 10 brix in veg to hopefully 15+ in bloom. Notice the stems losing the purple streaks, the petioles losing their purple, and the leaves looking lush and vibrant. We're at 12 brix on the young ones and 13 on the older ones. The older plants are my helpers GDP and Grape Ape....his second grow ever and hitting 13 brix and rising.

If you have purple petioles and it's not time for the fan leaves to drop, brix isn't where it should be. Same with stems, they should be green. If it's the latter half of bloom, it's normal and desirable for the fans to yellow and drop off, so don't worry about purple petioles at that time. But they should be all green for the first 4-6 weeks of bloom if you're in the zone.

These all got a really heavy watering the day before yesterday and a heavy brix application last night. Purple is fading away to green and the plants are rockin.

 

[Duggan]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Great info Doc...thanks.Hey Doc...i believe your "teaching" skills have improved greatly over the past few months!!With so many questions flying at you all the time , it must just come naturally eh? Cheers.

 

[NorCalRider]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Hey Doc, I have been reading a lot about your kit and would like to see about getting a setup from you that would grow about 50 plants. I don't have enough posts to pm, but could you send me one with info or email address to talk with you on pricing and what all I need to do? Thanks in advance.

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

More signs of rising brix:

These plants are losing purple petioles, getting a brighter shade of green, shiney, waxy leaves, etc. This is what it is supposed to look like, but maybe a bit more green, which should happen in the next few days. Getting DeStress tonite, Brix on Wednesday.

Some veg room pics as well.

 

[thecanuck]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Always a treat to see what you can do masta!

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Always a treat to see what you can do masta!

I'm cheating! I use this kit thingie....the plants pretty much grow like this if you get out of their way and let the 3M's do all the work:

Minerals, Microbes, Magic. (referring to the life-force of the plants and biota working together to bless mankind)

 

[thecanuck]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Refractometer and tds meter on their way

 

[medmanmike]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Doc, I'm in week two of flowering gearing up for a Cationic drench in week three as per the directions. However, I'd like clarification on a couple of statements you recently made regarding this: "when all the bud sites are in place and pistils are forming. That's a good time to do it!" and "Well, it's a matter of personal taste. Too early and you'll wreck yield. Too much and you can burn the plant. Some people like a later Cat Drench, others like me prefer it earlier and like to finish on Growth Energy, which bulks and makes it sweeter, but milder in flavor. I recommend a bit of experimentation! Just remember that too early will negatively effect yield."

My GS Cookies are showing bud sites and pistils. The Catatonic has female pre-flowers, but no pistils yet. The Jilly Beans are just showing pre flower bracts - not clear yet if their male or female.

So, based on your quote above, it sounds like I could Cat drench the GSC next week (3rd.) for sure. Suggestions for the Catatonic and Jilly Beans? If they don't show until week 4 or later, should I wait? Thanks.

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Doc, I'm in week two of flowering gearing up for a Cationic drench in week three as per the directions. However, I'd like clarification on a couple of statements you recently made regarding this: "when all the bud sites are in place and pistils are forming. That's a good time to do it!" and "Well, it's a matter of personal taste. Too early and you'll wreck yield. Too much and you can burn the plant. Some people like a later Cat Drench, others like me prefer it earlier and like to finish on Growth Energy, which bulks and makes it sweeter, but milder in flavor. I recommend a bit of experimentation! Just remember that too early will negatively effect yield."

My GS Cookies are showing bud sites and pistils. The Catatonic has female pre-flowers, but no pistils yet. The Jilly Beans are just showing pre flower bracts - not clear yet if their male or female.

So, based on your quote above, it sounds like I could Cat drench the GSC next week (3rd.) for sure. Suggestions for the Catatonic and Jilly Beans? If they don't show until week 4 or later, should I wait? Thanks.

Wait till the buds are small and forming and things will be "normal." No Cat Drench at all will produce really nice product as well.....while early Cat Drench will produce different product.

It really is a matter of personal taste.....but most persons don't appreciate a 20-30% reduction in yield so they don't like to Cat Drench too early, although some nice produce comes from such a practice, despite the lower yield.

 

[Graytail]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Ah, you already posted, Doc - good. I've been composing a post before I saw yours ...

I've been running the kit for several months now, getting into third run territory with my soil. I do individual plants and strains - 17 harvests so far - and each one has different requirements for each feed/watering. I haven't done the sort of experimentation that Doc and Curso have, but I've begun to get an understanding about how the pieces of the kit work. I've made some loadie mistakes reading the correct line on my calendar or simply fuzzing out, and overdosed or otherwise totally screwed things up. So I've done some experimentation by accident.

I've always cat drenched my plants late into flowering - just started that way and kept it up as a habit. I ran some plants in mineralized soil before I got the kit going and the drench pretty much ruined those, so I have a healthy respect for it and am always a little hesitant to do it. I even ran a couple plants without it and they did really well. A few times I've also done a third drench 2-3 weeks before finish. After all of that, I've come to my own workable understanding of what it is and what it does and what that's good for.

Cat drench releases nutrients that are currently locked up in ionic compounds unavailable to the plant. These compounds always exist in the soil. The nutrients released by the drench and the drench itself are tilted to blooming energy, so when the plant gets that surge it will put those resources into blooming. The approach to high brix that we're using relies on plant growth regulators and other hormones to regulate and enhance vegging when we want it and blooming when we want it. We cycle the plant between veg enhancers and bloom/root enhancers. In the process, we cycle the soil and its biota, too. We encourage it to grow roots, and then foliage, then more roots, more foliage, then flowers, fatter flowers, more flowers, fatter flowers, chop.

So, that's why you can drench the plant at wildly different times. It's another one of those arts of the grow. In my case, by drenching later than most do, I realize/think that what I'm doing is extending the bloom. My blooms are fully set and almost mature when I drench, and they always pause and brown-up before restarting with big fat sticky calyxes. I don't necessarily recommend it. I'll probably start drenching earlier now that I'm getting a better feel for what happens. I want to try to catch the bloom surge before its peak instead of after.

That explanation fits for me. It explains why an early drench gets you small tight buds - you encourage the plant to exhaust everything in one big surge. It the dench comes a little later, the plant will grow more calyxes but the soil might not have enough oomph to fill them out completely, so the yield is higher but maybe not fully ripened. If you drench late, you interrupt the finish and bulk up everything the plant has made, provided the soil can handle it. I run at the limits of my soil/biota the way I do it. I need to see how the soil supports plants that peak earlier in bloom.

If I'm advising someone, I'd say to consider the arc of the bloom, and decide when you want to give them that boost. My plants typically show budding pistils at about 10 days after the flip, so that's the first 1.5 weeks. They're in "full bloom" at about 3-4 weeks. That's the time frame the instructions are pointing at. You're looking for what you think is peak blooming time, and then you smack 'em with a bunch of fun new stuff to eat. But the timing is art.

So says Graytail. Whaddy think, Doc?

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Ah, you already posted, Doc - good. I've been composing a post before I saw yours ...

I've been running the kit for several months now, getting into third run territory with my soil. I do individual plants and strains - 17 harvests so far - and each one has different requirements for each feed/watering. I haven't done the sort of experimentation that Doc and Curso have, but I've begun to get an understanding about how the pieces of the kit work. I've made some loadie mistakes reading the correct line on my calendar or simply fuzzing out, and overdosed or otherwise totally screwed things up. So I've done some experimentation by accident.

I've always cat drenched my plants late into flowering - just started that way and kept it up as a habit. I ran some plants in mineralized soil before I got the kit going and the drench pretty much ruined those, so I have a healthy respect for it and am always a little hesitant to do it. I even ran a couple plants without it and they did really well. A few times I've also done a third drench 2-3 weeks before finish. After all of that, I've come to my own workable understanding of what it is and what it does and what that's good for.

Cat drench releases nutrients that are currently locked up in ionic compounds unavailable to the plant. These compounds always exist in the soil. The nutrients released by the drench and the drench itself are tilted to blooming energy, so when the plant gets that surge it will put those resources into blooming. The approach to high brix that we're using relies on plant growth regulators and other hormones to regulate and enhance vegging when we want it and blooming when we want it. We cycle the plant between veg enhancers and bloom/root enhancers. In the process, we cycle the soil and its biota, too. We encourage it to grow roots, and then foliage, then more roots, more foliage, then flowers, fatter flowers, more flowers, fatter flowers, chop.

So, that's why you can drench the plant at wildly different times. It's another one of those arts of the grow. In my case, by drenching later than most do, I realize/think that what I'm doing is extending the bloom. My blooms are fully set and almost mature when I drench, and they always pause and brown-up before restarting with big fat sticky calyxes. I don't necessarily recommend it. I'll probably start drenching earlier now that I'm getting a better feel for what happens. I want to try to catch the bloom surge before its peak instead of after.

That explanation fits for me. It explains why an early drench gets you small tight buds - you encourage the plant to exhaust everything in one big surge. It the dench comes a little later, the plant will grow more calyxes but the soil might not have enough oomph to fill them out completely, so the yield is higher but maybe not fully ripened. If you drench late, you interrupt the finish and bulk up everything the plant has made, provided the soil can handle it. I run at the limits of my soil/biota the way I do it. I need to see how the soil supports plants that peak earlier in bloom.

If I'm advising someone, I'd say to consider the arc of the bloom, and decide when you want to give them that boost. My plants typically show budding pistils at about 10 days after the flip, so that's the first 1.5 weeks. They're in "full bloom" at about 3-4 weeks. That's the time frame the instructions are pointing at. You're looking for what you think is peak blooming time, and then you smack 'em with a bunch of fun new stuff to eat. But the timing is art.

So says Graytail. Whaddy think, Doc?

I think it is spot on.

Think of NPK as your primary colors.
Organic gardening adds a few more.
High Brix invents new colors AND has all the old ones.

NPK is going to paint simple pictures with bright colors, while High Brix can look like a photograph, or an Impressionists acid trip....it's a matter of personal taste.

Once you're in high brix territory and you comprehend the difference in taste and effect that we all talk about, from there each grower is expressing their own individual efforts. We all start off learning what stuff does, and then we put it together in a way that makes us happy.

Most people could amend the soil, foliar feed weekly and use nothing but Growth Energy the whole time and blow their minds with quality. Adding the other stuff like we do is like seasoning the steak, or adding some lemon juice to the eggs, or bacon to the baked beans....personal taste.

Get the brix up over 12 and keep it there and there really is no right or wrong.

 

[VonDankenhoek]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Wow what a coinkydink

Last week I showed my harem just as they were getting their first cat drench. Here they are just after receiving their 2nd shot of cat. Like GT last time i used cat it stalled my girls. This time they reacted very positively. I hit them at week four of pistils with cat drench #1. 5 days later I hit em again.

post 2474 shows the plants before first drench

 

[Doc Bud]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

those are pretty! ^^^^

 

[VonDankenhoek]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

THANKS DOC! I'm proud of my fine, sexy ladies. I've certainly made some progress.

Thank you very much for the guidance and support you provided.

 

[DrZiggy]

re: Doc Bud - High Brix Q&A With Pictures

Vondanken, I am unable to access link..anyone else?