Dogwash's Triple Cheese SCROG

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Hi all

It's been a while since I made a journal

I've learned a lot since my last one & it's time to make another

Right now in my main tent I've got four El Chapo from The Plug Seedbank on week six of a ten week bloom
El Chapo is a Sativa dominant hybrid
I chose it particularly for the sour genetics (one parent is sour diesel) and for the high thc content

However, I'm not going to focus on El Chapo - it's a great smoke, very upward, tastes lovely

I'm going to journal what I've just popped in my veg tent - four triple cheese by Barney's Farm

I've tried growing from clones before but I prefer feminised photo period seeds - this is because you know what you're getting very soon - if they are gonna pop and you get conditions right then they will come up in a few days
With clones it's sometimes weeks before they show roots

Anyway clones are out of the question when you're trying a new strain

I've been into growing Sativa dominant hybrid for a while now but I've decided to switch to Indica dominant to see if that's better for my grow style

Sativas can tend to over stretch, you've got to time the flip well or they can get a bit too long quite easily

Also the El Chapo are ten week flower - I'd thought the extra time might lead to a huge yield but the yield has just been fairly average, six to eight Oz per plant

I've gone for triple cheese as the genetics are quite old school - original skunk S1 exodus cheese cut, crossed with blueberry, to make blue cheese - then back crossed again with exodus cheese cut

I prefer my green to stink - I go for more of a chem/sour/cheese flavour, rather than these fruity sweet flavours that seem to be popular these days

The flower time is only eight weeks and the indica are less stretchy and more short & bushy

I grow using a SCROG frame that I've made myself - I will put that into the main tent shortly after I transfer the small plants in there

The SCROG frame is designed to force the plants to stay low - I'll veg em low & wide, then flip when they've reached a good spread

I'm hoping this strain to be a better choice for SCROG - it should hopefully stay lower, have closer nodes, less branch stretch and bigger bud growth

Fingers crossed anyhow!

I've not grown this strain before so it's a bit of trial and error when it comes to timing the flip - I'm learning as I go here!

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

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Dogwash
Jun 25, 2019

Triple cheese seedlings in veg tent

Here's the babies in the veg tent - I just took one quick pic today - I'll try taking some close ups tomorrow

There's two triple cheese that are maybe a few weeks old - they are for somewhere else

There's four triple cheese seedlings that I put in to pop a week ago and are about 1 1/2 inches tall now

I have four blue led strips in the veg tent - rather than have em up top, I keep em down low - they can be pretty much right on top of the seedlings and it's all good

I'm aiming for a light bath that surrounds the seedlings so they grow outwards and have less tendency to stretch and reach upwards

What I'm looking for is a shorter bushy plants to put in the main tent and LST SCROG so I try to train them in this way from the very start

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

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Dogwash
Jun 25, 2019

El Chapo
Week 6/10 scrog frame & feeding tubes

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Dogwash
Jun 25, 2019

El Chapo week 6/10

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Dogwash
Jun 25, 2019

El Chapo
Week 6/10

Just out of interest, here's a few pics of the El Chapo girls who are in week six out of a ten week bloom cycle

You can almost see the SCROG frame and the feeding pipes - when I put the triple cheese in the main tent I'll show the frame in more detail

I made it from inch wide PVC tubing - cut the pipes to length with jigsaw, then went to mate's workshop and borrowed his fixed drill machine so I could drill holes every ten cm

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Btw I think I left the El Chapo a little late to flip, they haven't gone too bad but they are a little long really compared to other times I've grown this strain in different places

I was trying to delay flipping em to put some time between them and another grow lol but I wish I'd not done that now

Backlipslide · Jun 25, 2019

Very nice, looks great! I’ll be sure to follow along. Your veg tent looks a little dirty, a tent that isn’t maintained and cleaned through out the grow may attract bugs and insects. Just a tip from one grower to another

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Backlipslide said:
Very nice, looks great! I’ll be sure to follow along. Your veg tent looks a little dirty, a tent that isn’t maintained and cleaned through out the grow may attract bugs and insects. Just a tip from one grower to another

Thanks for following!

Yeah you're right about the floor of the veg tent

I'll clean the main tent after every grow but the veg tent gets a bit more constant use and i do admit it needs a wipe - plus I don't use drip trays when the pots are really small, kind of on purpose

There's two small plastic tubs with water in to slightly increase humidity but when I feed em I let the run thru go on the tent floor and evaporate too rather than clean it up

It's a bit messy but serves a purpose

I don't think dirt on the floor will attract insects as how would they know?

I do get some small black flies from the Coco substrate, which were a bit annoying at first but they don't do any damage so I just hang fly papers and let em be

I suppose I better say what I'm growing in, what lights etc!

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Ok here's some technical specifications

In the veg tent I've got 4 x 26w blue LED strips, one in each corner

In the main tent there's 2 x 315w Philips Daylight plus 2 x 42w red LED strips

I use Coco 60/40 (Coco fibre mixed with small pebbles, which allow a good amount of air to get to the roots

The 60/40 substrate is called Charge, and it's got an organic booster in it which really helps the plants when they first get potted up - the leafage gets a lovely warm green colour and it's easier to keep the EC down

I mostly use gold label nutes, with several other nutes added at different times - I've got a feed chart i made myself to integrate more than one manufacturer

I've been working on getting the nutes bang on as I've found this can be one of the most tricky elements to get right

EC wise, when I pop seeds I soak a peat plug in 0.4 EC feed, put the seeds in the top of that and leave em at 20°C for a few days

I'll step the EC up, second feed is at 0.5 after a week maybe, taking it easy and not flooding em

The bigger seedlings in the veg tent are a few weeks old and up to 0.8 EC now

I'll take em to 1.0 EC and leave em vegging at that level until flip

Up to flip all the nutes (roots, A, B, mag, Cal mag plus) will be equal measures

pH I stick to 6.0

Backlipslide · Jun 25, 2019

Dogwash said:
how would they know?

I don’t know, I just like to keep things as clean as I can. The dead leaves are normally what attract the bugs, I saw (what looked like) a few dead leaves on the floor, thought I would mention it. Your in complete control so it’s really just mumble jumble lol

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Yeah I'd generally side with you on the clean tent front

Definitely

I like to keep things clean and tidy, my rooms don't have anything but what's needed, don't like clutter at all

I have let the floor get a bit dirty in the veg tent tho for sure

Main thing is dirt absorbs light so that needs to be avoided - I'll give it a clean out when I've got time

I took six triple cheese out of there two weeks ago into another tent somewhere else and have been on a full on trim fortnight, hardly even lifting my head up to see anything else but bud

I've not even taken the dead leafs off the floor that came from the previous six lol

Slack bastard eh

Wait til these night shifts are out of the way

Backlipslide · Jun 25, 2019

Dogwash said:
Yeah I'd generally side with you on the clean tent front

Definitely

I like to keep things clean and tidy, my rooms don't have anything but what's needed, don't like clutter at all

I have let the floor get a bit dirty in the veg tent tho for sure

Main thing is dirt absorbs light so that needs to be avoided - I'll give it a clean out when I've got time

I took six triple cheese out of there two weeks ago into another tent somewhere else and have been on a full on trim fortnight, hardly even lifting my head up to see anything else but bud

I've not even taken the dead leafs off the floor that came from the previous six lol

Slack bastard eh

Wait til these night shifts are out of the way

Lol no Worries man! I completely understand how life gets busy. No judgment here!

Your flowering plants by the way, are looking fantastic! :yahoo:

Did You build your own scrog? You did a great job with that :high-five:

Dogwash · Jun 25, 2019

Backlipslide said:
Lol no Worries man! I completely understand how life gets busy. No judgment here!

Your flowering plants by the way, are looking fantastic!

Did You build your own scrog? You did a great job with that

Thanks for the props bro

The flowering plants are only just past half way thru their bloom cycle - the one at the back in the right has gone a bit funny, something I've never seen before - I'd managed to accidentally snap one of the main stems off when it was still quite small - I'm not sure if this made the plant go a bit stiff but when I potted into the main tent and put the frame over, half the time when I tried to bend stems down in this plant they snapped off
Man I was gutted
Lost half a dozen good new stems from one plant over a week or two

Because it had less leaf than the others it was drinking less

When they are in full bloom I syphon off the runoff every time I feed to keep humidity down but in veg I was not draining the excess liquid off as it wasn't much & I didn't feed every day

Unfortunately I noticed after a week or so the rear right plant with less leaves had accumulated liquid in the drip tray to a level that it was still touching the bottom of the pot (I've got spacers under each pot in the tray so the pot sits 3/4 of an inch up and this lets excess drain off and keep the Coco from getting locked up with excessive nutes

The leaves went a bit curled and the white pistils on the top of the buds were not showing - the buds on that one are getting huge but look strange - and they aren't making much resin at all - the other three are covered with crystal but the rear right plant doesn't have much dusting at all

Am not sure what's going on but I'm just treating it like normal and hopefully it'll be decent bud by the time I crop

If not then I'll just make it into oil

I make the full spectrum Rick Simpson oil from my trim

Yeah I built my own SCROG frame - I first started SCROG with one of the shop bought elastic nets with hooks on the corners and I did lay that out about a few weeks into bloom

They were difficult to get on and when I cropped I'd have to cut em off so I rethought my approach

I bought some inch thick pvc tubing online and cut it to length to fit my tent - then I drilled thru the side tubes every ten cm

I made it just tall enuff so the string grid is about 20cm above the pot

I bought corner elbows to join it all together and then when the frame is installed I get some string and weave that thru the poles to make a grid

I do this as soon as I've put the plants in the main tent and use the grid to hold em down low and train em wide

Backlipslide · Jun 25, 2019

Dogwash said:
Thanks for the props bro

The flowering plants are only just past half way thru their bloom cycle - the one at the back in the right has gone a bit funny, something I've never seen before - I'd managed to accidentally snap one of the main stems off when it was still quite small - I'm not sure if this made the plant go a bit stiff but when I potted into the main tent and put the frame over, half the time when I tried to bend stems down in this plant they snapped off
Man I was gutted
Lost half a dozen good new stems from one plant over a week or two

Because it had less leaf than the others it was drinking less

When they are in full bloom I syphon off the runoff every time I feed to keep humidity down but in veg I was not draining the excess liquid off as it wasn't much & I didn't feed every day

Unfortunately I noticed after a week or so the rear right plant with less leaves had accumulated liquid in the drip tray to a level that it was still touching the bottom of the pot (I've got spacers under each pot in the tray so the pot sits 3/4 of an inch up and this lets excess drain off and keep the Coco from getting locked up with excessive nutes

The leaves went a bit curled and the white pistils on the top of the buds were not showing - the buds on that one are getting huge but look strange - and they aren't making much resin at all - the other three are covered with crystal but the rear right plant doesn't have much dusting at all

Am not sure what's going on but I'm just treating it like normal and hopefully it'll be decent bud by the time I crop

If not then I'll just make it into oil

I make the full spectrum Rick Simpson oil from my trim

That’s exactly what I was going to say to do with it if it doesn’t produce well by the time it’s finished. Either that, or make some edibles and have a bake sale :laugh:

I’m sure you’ll end up getting some regulars haha!!

It looks like you have a great amount of good colas left, so it’s not a wash of a harvest!

If your into it, come on down to my journal and have a read. It’s a bit long, but you use your own discretion to what you want to read I guess lol. It’s located under my posts called blue angel 2019

Dogwash · Jun 26, 2019

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Dogwash
Jun 26, 2019

Vegging nutes

Here's the vegging nutes I use

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Dogwash
Jun 26, 2019

Flowering nutes

Here's the flowering nutes

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Dogwash
Jun 26, 2019

Feed chart

And this is my feed chart I made to integrate more than one manufacturer

Gold label are a decent basic range but I feel they do better with some outside help

Ignore the ECs on the right side, I'm working to way lower strength now, that chart's a work in progress lol

Dogwash · Jun 26, 2019

I've grown for a few years now and I've found the nutes the trickiest to get right

I'm a bit obsessive about some things and I like to use this to my advantage when growing - I think I'm about on top of the feed situation now

When in the veg tent I use the vegging nutes at the same proportion as each other, equal measures of roots, A, B, mag & cal mag plus (which has all the micro nutrients, trace elements)

I'll take the plants slowly up to 0.9 EC from 0.4 over six weeks or so

When I put em in the main tent I'll keep it at 1.0 while I let them spread out until flip, up to two weeks

After flip I'll change the proportions but keep the EC the same initially - I half the roots nute but keep the rest the same - then start to creep the EC up, 0.1 increase every week approximately

I might modify this if the triple cheese are extra hungry but I've been working with the El Chapo going up 0.1 every week, maxing out about 1.9 on week nine of bloom cycle

As the triple cheese are an eight week bloom cycle I might need to push the EC slightly faster but I've been trying to give them the minimum strength, keeping a close eye on the plants to watch for any signs of deficiency - I've had several episodes of nute lock / over / under feeding in the past that I've had to get my head round and decode leaf markings so I'm fairly confident I can read the signs now and know when to increase and when not

My feed chart in bloom changes from week one to week six, hitting peak feed week six - I've designed this to respond to the fluctuations in the plant growth as buds develop and their needs change over the weeks

Once peak feed is reached I can leave it at max until the last week when I'll flush with water

As long as I have not overdone it with the EC then that's plenty time to clear out any nute build up

I could do with printing out a new feed chart as I've made quite a few scribble changes on this one and it's looking like a pirate's old treasure map

Which it kind of is anyway lol

Dogwash · Jun 30, 2019

Here's a few new pics

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Newly cleaned veg tent
Triple cheese

I cleaned the veg tent out, gave the floor a good wipe and freshened up the water tubs that I put in there to raise humidity a little

Young plants like it humid

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Triple cheese seedling almost a couple weeks old

This is triple cheese, between a week and two weeks old

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Triple cheese just over a month old

Here's two of the same strain but around a month old

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Triple cheese just before its first topping

At this stage I give seedlings their first topping - I'm aiming for bushy outward growth good for SCROG - it's good to start their training as soon as possible - so once they've got five proper leaf pairs established I will take off the sixth as soon as I can

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Cut here ...

Trying to show where to cut here lol

Try to avoid cutting the newly emerging leaf pair that's right behind the main shooting as they will turn into two main stems

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Triple cheese just after being topped

Here they are afterwards

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Dogwash
Jun 30, 2019

Freshly topped month old triple cheese

And a close up of the cut top

I've managed not to damage the newly emerging leaf pair, which is good

bluter · Jun 30, 2019

nice work. i like your side lighting.

Backlipslide · Jun 30, 2019

Looks awesome! Amazing the difference a clean tent looks! Great job man!

Dogwash · Jun 30, 2019

bluter said:
nice work. i like your side lighting.

Thanks mate

The side lighting lets me put small seedlings right next to it safely as the strips don't give out much heat

I find this is good to promote close tight growth in the smaller plants as they don't have a need to stretch and reach for the light

Dogwash · Jun 30, 2019

Backlipslide said:
Looks awesome! Amazing the difference a clean tent looks! Great job man!

You were right about that fella

always best to keep a tent clean inside

Dogwash · Jun 30, 2019

I decided to repot the newly topped plants today too, as they were a bit bigger than their pots so I knew the roots would have easily reached the side, which they had done

As I'm looking for outward growth rather than upward I like to give them the opportunity to reach sideways as much as possible

It's a good idea I've found to repot after the first topping if the space is available