Enough time to finish?

[sfhaze]

Hey,

I've been helping a medical patient friend in his greenhouse. He has extra HPS lights, but no way to block outside light. We backed the lights off to 10 hours at the begenning of February. Right now, they are getting just over 12 hours of complete darkness. He has some pretty fast mostly indica's that are already flowering and usually only need 7 to 8 weeks. There is also a mostly sativa haze that takes more like 11 weeks. That puts it in the middle of April. Is that going to be okay, or will they revert back to veg before we are done?

The greenhouse is just outside of San Francisco

Thanks,

 

[smokemagnet]

I believe the daylight hours in spring are pretty much the same as in fall so it will probably be in 12 12 till the begining of summer

 

[sfhaze]

Smokemagnet,

It's 12 12 right now, but by april... The light period increases a couple of minites each day. From lurking here it sounds like the chances of a hermie convert are increased but I think we are safe from actually reverting back to veg. I think April is a lot like September. Correct?

 

[MadameCrash]

One option is to cover the plants with black plastic bags at night and remove them in the morning to maintain 12/12, but you have to make sure and do it the same time every night.... kinda a pain, but it does work...

Peace
MC

 

[sfhaze]

So far so good, they are about 3 weeks into it now and they are flowering normally. Currently, we have about 12 hours 20 minutes of light each day.

I think this must be okay, since March should be about the same as October in terms of light timing. The only difference is that each day gets slightly longer instead of slightly shorter. I'm hoping the plants only really care about being less then 14 hours of light instead of the day to day change.

Also, I've read somewhere that once the budding gets past a certain point it cant revert back to veg. Does anyone have a description of what to look for if I'm starting to have a problem? IE what are the first signs that the plants are switching back to veg? Anyone that's cloned budding plants whould have seen it.

 

[Racefan]

Also, I've read somewhere that once the budding gets past a certain point it cant revert back to veg. Does anyone have a description of what to look for if I'm starting to have a problem? IE what are the first signs that the plants are switching back to veg? Anyone that's cloned budding plants whould have seen it.

The lack of light (ie..12 hours of darkness) causes the flowering hormone called flurol( I think that's the name) to flow.Once enough of this hormone has built up the plant flowers. Any light on the flowering plant stops this flow and it has to start over on the build up. The further into flower the longer it takes for a plant to reveg but it can happen at any time in the flowering period. I have cut and revegged clones from a plant at 7 weeks into flower before. The signs to look for would be lack of new pistal growth and new green vegetive growth. The new growth would end up twisted and malformed with twisted with odd shaped leaves at the beginning as well.
A famous man named Eddy Lepp uses a technique that allows himto get 2 harvests a year. He starts his plants indoors in the early winter and places them outdoors end of Jan mid Feb and allows them to flower and gets a small harvest, then he lets them reveg and flower normally and gets a big harvest come fall. His plants are huge come fall. You can actually see them from the highway. Search him out. He was the first person busted after the passage of prop 215 and he won! He's since been busted hugely with over 29000 plantson his property. He's still fighting it as we write this.

 

[sfhaze]

Great! That implies that we should be fine, at least I'll likely have something to harvest. We will just harvest the whole plant, if we did regenerate most of the plants, they would be way to big for the greenhouse by fall.

With this setup, I think we can expect 3 cycles / year. With the budding cycles in Feb & Mar and then Aug & Sept for the second and finally Nov&Dec for the third. That assumes a fast /early flowing variety to end by the end of September over the summer. We did our first grow last fall with a harvest at the end of December.

One cool thing about growing is getting in touch with nature including the timing of the sun and moon, etc. growing totally indoors under artificial light I think misses some of this.

 

[Racefan]

One cool thing about growing is getting in touch with nature including the timing of the sun and moon, etc. growing totally indoors under artificial light I think misses some of this.

You may be right about us missing the effects of the moon on plants and growth and such but one thing to consider is this...your hoping to get 3 harvests in one year. I can get 5 indoors.lol That is the main advantage to the lights.

 

[sfhaze]

Good point Racefan, I sure envy your control.

One problem here is that "over baseline" usage power is 32 cents per kwh. We need every free photon we can get. The summer grow is extra long and needs no extra light, making it very cost effective.

 

[Racefan]

I know what you mean about expensive electricity. My bill runs about $400.00 a month. A lot of us californians are stuck with high electric bills.

 

[RangerDanger]

I could have the kindest indoor growroom on earth, I'd never lose my love for outdoors.
Way more environmentally sound, not burning all that imported oil.
And I can grow a plant outside that more equal or surpass 4 indoor plants.

Outside in the fresh air with the breeze blowing, the birds chirping, the butterflys fluttering, the lizards out on patrol doing push-ups, squirrels chattering from the tree's--nothing like it.
I even like to visit my garden at night, sit out there and watch the stars & moon, listen to the owls.

 

[sfhaze]

lol, yes the $400 per month power bill must take a lot of the joy out of growing.

You can really see the difference in my friend's greenhouse since he has both natural and hps lights as backup/augmentation. Natural light doesn't fade with distance since it has already traveled so far from the sun, but artificial lights really drop off fast.

The greenhouse is a very pleasent place also, the weather is mild here so you can have lots of fresh air circulating, but it's also a secure building with less chance of thieves finding.....

It would probably cost Racefan a lot less to run his own diesle generator, the prower company is really a rip off at the high rates.

Still so far so good, the plants all continue to bud normally.

 

[sfhaze]

The faster, mostly indica plants are done, there are a few amber trichs. They are clones from a local coop, snow bud, ended up about 3 ft tall. Last time they yielded 2oz dried each, I think this time will be closer to 3oz.

It should be very nicely cured by 4/20 and that takes care of my friend for a long time.

The others are Arjan's Haze #2 and are about 8 feet tall, they stretched from only 30 inches when the lights were backed off. They look good and have stopped stretching, but have a couple of weeks to go at least. They wouldn't yield very much right now, but still seem to be budding normally.

Right now we have about 13 hours of light and 11 hours of darkness.

 

[Akornpatch]

sounds great! Can't wait for the 4/20 smoke report!

 

[sfhaze]

The snow bud plants are all dried and they did even better then expected, they yielded (dried bud) from 5oz to 8oz per plant. That's 3 times the last grow, there were dozens of improvements but a lot of it I'm sure was the longer hours of direct sunlight the plants got while budding. Last cycle, they were fininshing in december and they only got a little direct sunlight (they got a lot during Oct when they were in the veg cycle). The largest plants were clearly the ones getting the most light.

My advidse to people growing indoors is to hit them with everything you can while budding. It's even a good idea to bump the time out to 13 hours light/ 11 hours of dark after the budding has started.

It's still curing, but a sample was very strong with a nice mild taste. We used Liquid Karma along with a number of other improvements that clearly improved the taste over the last cycle.

The haze is still going, we are getting close to 14 hours of light / 10 hours of dark but the plants are still budding normally. The trics are mostly cloudy at this point, they really need 2 more weeks, but we may harvest them a little early.

 

[sfhaze]

The haze is still going and is budding normally but still no amber trics. The buds all frosted and I thought it might be mold, but nooo it's an unbeleavable forrest of trics at least 3 times as dense as the snowbud.

One hit from just a pinky nail sized piece of leaf dried on a table was enough....

I'm going ot let it go another week for a harverst on 4/20!

 

[sfhaze]

It did all finish - adverge of 5oz per plant of the haze. It has potentional to yield a lot more once it's all dialed in. They were all female, no hermis, no reversion anywhere on any of the plants.

We are trying to regenerate the best one to use as a source for clones on the next cycle.

 

[Smokin Moose]

Good job.