Hyena's Never-Ending Adventures In Growing

[MagicJim]

Re: Project 23 - Hydroponic Homemade Hybrids - Amnesia Haze x Blue Dream Plus Widow x

What a Blue Hyena Gen 3 sounds delish. I just harvested my first BD and I'm lovin' it. Your crosses sound so much better.

 

[Ditchweed242]

Re: Project 23 - Hydroponic Homemade Hybrids - Amnesia Haze x Blue Dream Plus Widow x

Glorious buds my friend.

Cheers.

 

[Hyena Merica]

Happy Sunday!

This will be the first post now that his journal has gone "live". I have a couple things to say.

First, I love this website. It seems like there are a lot of enthusiastic folks out there trying to grow dank buds. I say trying because some really know how to do it right and others are obviously learning. It has been interesting to see so many different approaches. My goal has been to learn more from others and also to help others. I have spent the last year reading just about everything on this site, and adding tidbits wherever I feel they might be helpful.

Hopefully some folks have benefited from the two long and very detailed instructional journals I have posted. As much as I enjoy writing there won't be another one like them because everything that needs saying has been said. I don't know if a more frequent and chatty posting style will be of interest to anyone since I have very little idea who actually reads anything I write.

So we will see if you're out there and if we connect.

I feel like I have evolved into a solid grower and that was my main goal. As a result of my dedication this past year I even have several new strains I am going to try to proliferate so yes my goals have become much more ambitious. Maybe now I can develop a relationship with a handful of you and do something more meaningful than just grow hobby plants. That will be my goal this year.

I am looking for a few people to grow out my new hybrids. I am in mid-grow right now and it will be several months until I can do so myself. I feel like these strains might be good enough for the Cannabis Cup and that's no joke. I will be growing them big time very soon but also I want to see how good they are in the hands of some others who have demonstrated they know what they are doing. That's the real test when one is considering offering something for commercial use which I am. If they are as good as their parents, the seeds of these 2 new strains will be going to seedbanks by the end of this year bearing the Hyena name. In the interim I am looking for a few folks with pro-level skills and setups who are interested in trying out a few of these juicy new crosses for free and prove how good they are.

Here is what I have:

1) "Blue Hyena" (Amnesia Haze x Blue Dream) x Blue Dream This cross turned out to be absolutely fabulous, super fruity, super frosty, super strong, very high yield...and now this backcross to the original Blue Dream mother might be even better. We need to know!

2) "Black Hyena" (Widow Mix x Blue Dream) x Blue Dream This Gen3 cross should be fat and frosty with that extra vigor that results from an F1 backcrossed with the original mother. Blue Dream is such a tasty strain double-crossing almost anything should produce ultra-dank bud but a White Widow great-grandparent with something else mixed in at the grandparent level gives the lineage some mysterious extra juice. I can't wait to see how frosty this pheno will be!

The thing is, genetics are quite predictable but not 100% predictable so even though science says these two new backcrosses should be awesome, until they hit dirt we don't know and I find that so exciting! They could be significantly more vigorous and potent than their parents according to Mendelian law. If your mouth waters at the idea of growing a strain that's never been grown before then you are just like me and this is a chance to do just that.

My journalistic purpose going forward will be to find some folks who want to participate in evaluating these two new strains, then exchanging data as the grows progress. I want to see my children go off to school, to have their little lives and futures molded by expert professors so to speak.

I am inviting anyone interested in evaluating two new strains for the first time to let me know. I will send three beans of each Hyena strain to a limited number of people in exchange for regular and detailed communication about the grow including pictures. I have developed them in hydro so we know they will grow fine there. Ideally I would love to have several different growers try them under a variety of conditions (outdoor, indoor soil, indoor hydro) because an ongoing comparison would be most instructive of all. It would take me several years to do all the different grows myself so let's team up and do this together! The reward will be advancing science and knowledge...and a couple pounds of the frostiest buds you have ever known.

So, I have put out the bat-signal...let's see what happens. You can PM me or post but I'm looking for serious growers with advanced setups, you know who you are. Thanks in advance, or you're welcome, whatever. Let's do it.

Peace, Hyena

 

[Rifleman]

I feel your pain Hyena. So many strains, but only so many buckets, and never enough time. I'll be 100 yrs old before I grow out everything I've got in stock.

 

[mouser]

I feel your pain Hyena. So many strains, but only so many buckets, and never enough time. I'll be 100 yrs old before I grow out everything I've got in stock.

lol you just have to grow bigger But I feel your pain...Ive caught myself looking at shipping containers for sale and wondering how I can bury one

 

[Rifleman]

lol you just have to grow bigger But I feel your pain...Ive caught myself looking at shipping containers for sale and wondering how I can bury one

Don't. They won't take the weight the soil exerts on them for very long. Especially if you don't water/rust proof it somehow. You'll waste about $3000US trying to make it work before you give up.

 

[mouser]

Don't. They won't take the weight the soil exerts on them for very long. Especially if you don't water/rust proof it somehow. You'll waste about $3000US trying to make it work before you give up.

Well shit

 

[Hyena Merica]

That was a great idea for about ten minutes bro

 

[Hyena Merica]

Project 24 is coming right along. Going to post an update very soon.

Plush Berry, Cheese Berry, and Blue Dream x Blue Dream...

Peace, Hyena

 

[Hyena Merica]

OKAY, here we go, it's all Project 24 from here!

"Not being heard is no reason for silence." -Victor Hugo

I think I'm being heard so I'll keep writing.

Here's how it's going...

The current group of girls are exploding in full veg-stage fury. I ended up with 12 plants so with only 9 pots available things have been necessarily crowded from the get go. Because of the extra bloom time I gave project 23, these girls got really big (too big!) and so they were ready to aggressively Scrog almost immediately.

These girls are now seven weeks old since they were seeds dropped in water. They are some dense little sweethearts, with thick stems and huge fan leaves.

Time to string the Scrog...I use a frame and heavy cotton twine (which does the least damage to stems) and simply string it taut. Two of the plants are already too tall to Scrog. One I will bend viciously and the other I will top like hell and also supercrop the branches down.

A couple aggressive Scrog rips since the above shots were taken, the canopy mass is forming nicely and with the three middle pots all doubled up, it looks like a hot mess right now. I want loads of branches to develop but the fat Indica leaves are blocking out any light to the middle of the canopy already. I have to do something but with twelve plants there's not enough room to do much. In only ten days I have already nearly filled the Scrog.

Because my plants include Plush Berry and Cheese Berry they are squatter (80% Indica for the PB and at least 50% in the CB) so we have a lot of relatively huge fan leaves all creating a solid floor of green in the middle. The aforementioned Indica varieties are in the center row with Blue Dream x Blue Dream F1 plants on the ends. F1 hybrids can produce three different phenotypes and usually they come out 25%/50%/25% meaning half will be like the parents, one out of four might be a little bigger, and one out of four a little smaller. The plant on the front left is BD x BD and it's small and dense. Seems plenty healthy but we'll see what it does, not much yet. Yet the two others in the row are also BD x BD but one is normal size and one is huge! If the giant stays that way I might induce a branch to flower and make another cross, which I believe would stabilize the offspring into one reliable phenotype and those seeds would be awesome. Might even pass on the huge size thing. I mean look at that plant! That's what is so fun about this, it's like being Victor Frankenstein without many of the negative consequences, such as your creation killing you or angry, torch-bearing mobs.

This calls for trying something I have been wanting to try...defoliation on a serious scale. I have read a lot about aggressive defoliation with logical support for the technique and okay right now I'm buying in so let's defoliate!

The almost miraculous ability of properly healthy cannabis to recover/regrow is something I appreciate more and more as the years go by. It is probably the aspect of cannabis that can be most highly leveraged to obtain higher yields because it allows us to literally weave the branches, strip them of their leaves, even break them and with reasonable technique everything recovers, fills in, and grows even stronger. Like magic.

So many are afraid to hurt their plants and that's understandable. To maximize an indoor yield we must get over that. The next few weeks I'm going to show how aggressive you can truly be and we will see what ultimate density can be achieved. Sorry, I feel myself slipping into professor mode and I'm trying not to sound that way. I hear it will increase the overall yield to do it so let's set a goal. Let's go for 2.5 pounds from this grow. Never quite got there yet but with about half Indicas and a concentrated defoliation and supercropping program I can see it happening. I BELIEVE.

Scrogging and bending the hell out of these girls. They love it.


The fat Indica stems are colorful and stronger than I expected. These are the first mostly-Indicas I've ever grown and I am learning.

It's so dense in this underneath view, I think I simply have to rip a bunch of fan leaves out.

Tomorrow I think I will pluck a bunch of the fans and we will see how that goes.

Talk to you then, I will do a before and after. Might look a little scary.

Peace, Hyena

 

[Verbal Kint]

What a great journal and very entertaining. It had me in stitches laughing around your Christmas time antics...hilarious...good man..keep it up. I look forward to seeing your beans in commercial form over the next couple of years. Bravo!

 

[Hyena Merica]

Hello.

I just defoliated my grow for the first time as a technique. Wow, that was weird...

First, here's how it looked beforehand. The place is getting green.

Growing Stuff 101 has always assumed fan leaves should be left on mostly, because they produce food and such. Like many I always assumed there was no net benefit to removing them and allowing a lot more light to reach the center of he canopy, but results described by those who have tried indicates it might allow more bud growth overall and I'm all for that.

I love to learn so I started removing leaves. Most of the larger fan leaves were snipped off, as long as the associated branching site had developed to the point where it had its own leaves.

After 30 minutes I couldn't believe how many I had taken. A 5 gallon bucket was almost filled when I was done.

The defoliating, combined with the most aggressive Scrogging yet, made the entire grow look like a war zone.

Only experience would allow someone to do this, confident that no matter how bad it looks, within a week the entire thing will be completely dense again. And there will be dozens of new bud sites and branches revealed. I now get the principle of maximizing the light penetration into the canopy, and how the plant will re-prioritize its growth to the branches resulting in increased branch development in a zone previously kept pretty much in the dark. If this works we will get a lot more top-shelf nugs from what we have previously expected to be popcorn.

As a side note, the branch below was snapped completely off. I put some gorilla tape on it and reattached it. It never even lost turgor pressure which is amazing to me but it didn't skip a beat. How can this plant be so resilient?

So, here's the final picture. Looks like shit I know. But in a week it will be lush again! I am letting the very back wall grow taller to give a sort of cup to the canopy. I also left larger fan leaves attached if they were at the edge and not shading anything. I could probably have gone a lot crazier even though hundreds of leaves were removed. In the end it was kind of fun now let's see how fast it bounces back.

My guess is, this might add a week or two to the veg period because ordinarily I would be flipping this right now (tomorrow marks eight weeks) but I want to give this entire biomass the chance to thicken and all those little branches to grow.

On we go.

Peace, Hyena

 

[Lazarus13]

Your girls look beautiful as always. I have read and learned a good many things from your journals and have to say they are full of top rate info.
Your strains sound mouthwatering and i would love to grow them out to experience them first hand. But, while more than a competent grower, pro i am not. Mayhaps i will be able to buy them online some day and i more than look forward to seeing the folks that get them grow them.
Keep em green...

 

[Triggle]

Subbed up!

 

[HiddenGrow]

I am very happy to see that you are continuing the legacy. I can't wait to see how you do. Amazing plants. Amazing pictures. I tend to grow outdoors during the summer months and indoor during the cooler days.

I hope to see if I can impress ya with an outdoor grow. I see a real super strain in the making. Reminds me of a Blue Nightmare Bud I tried when I first moved to Cali. I bet it would come out really dark purple with the cold temps.

Amazing work! it was a pleasure to read your spy story

 

[Hyena Merica]

It's Thursday. Hello.

Another early visit with my 24/7 beauties who are unbelievably thick considering only 2 days ago I tore them UP.

So this is how it works...all the leaves that seemed too small to nip two days ago now look huge so I take off another 100 of them.

Then, Scrog the crap out of the whole thing again!

Look how this girl is tucked. I should be a weaver.

Now my goal is to fill the remaining area with branches, regardless of whose they are. I have to admit, I have somewhat lost track of who is who, at least a couple of them i am not sure about but they all have an identifying tag in there somewhere and we'll find that when we chop. I don't regard them as individuals but as a hedge and it's liberating to just mess with this ever-more-delightful biomass. Every grow, I get better at something (probably many things) and I'm really getting into longer veg while I utilize the Scrog technique and weave a magic carpet of tiny shoots that will all soon be mighty colas. Compared with raising individual plants in moveable containers the yield is at least triple.

Of course, I respect that many folks have a higher level of interaction with their little green friends...my first 20 marijuana plants were so incredible and special to me I wanted to hug them and play with them and take them to a movie every day I loved them so much. That gets you a friend, but doesn't get you a very big plant. So, much of what I say isn't applicable to smaller and more intimate grows since my setup is designed to maximize production in a space. I love on my plants plenty as you know, but like a farmer who loves his livestock, my love only goes as far as the slaughterhouse.

You can see the stunning number of new shoots that have popped up especially in the rear of the picture below. I never knew!

I'm anchoring certain branches to certain points in the grid where they will fill a space. I use Mini zip ties because they are a lot less abrasive to the branches than bare wire or thread. Many folks like grocery stoe twist ties and they aren't bad but again, their wire is thin and can cut into the stalks easily. Whatever works.

So now they look freshly mauled again, but 20% thicker. To my surprise I am suddenly thinking about the flip. This canopy will stretch two feet upward over the first 3 weeks after flipping and that's about all I have since these babies are growing so fast. It's also even stretching the Scrog net up considerably...plant power!!

The giant in the back left is out of freaking control. It was immediately too tall for the Scrog and I gave up trying to completely bend it, just LSTing it everywhere and topping the taller shoots so they thicken. I will end up supercropping everything that gets a little too tall eventually but timing the end of the stretch is a skill I want to dial in, lessening the need for a lot of late-bloom branch-breaking. I will probably flip within a week or less!

Here's what they looked like after today's Chiropractic adjustments and surgery. Look at those Scrog strings getting pushed up! And they are tight! Suddenly containing the mass is a losing battle. Just happy I have enough horizontal development to flip soon.

See you soon.

Peace, Hyena

 

[MagicJim]

I have a feeling you'll be flipping fairly soon. Crops are looking good.

 

[KingstonRabbi]

It's about time I stopped by your garden, way past actually.

But a good time nonetheless. I laughed all the way through your descriptions of wrestling plants into scrog. That's been the rule rather than the exception in my garden.

But I love seeing a big ungainly mass of foliage suddenly become an even canopy. Your garden looks amazing all around! I have a little back reading to do!

 

[Hyena Merica]

Your garden looks amazing all around! I have a little back reading to do!

Thanks so much my long-eared friend. :icon_cool

Hope you enjoy. A lot of delirious rambling in there but there's always something you might pick up in the twisted mind of a madman.

Stay in touch.

Peace, Hyena

 

[Hyena Merica]

Happy Monday!

Here's an update on the Scrogathon...

I seem to have found that sweet spot between the nute blend and the temperature because these chicks are growing over an inch a day and I'm Scrogging and weaving as frantically as I can and still losing the battle.

This shot from a few days ago

This shot today...unbelievable!

I do have them on 24/0 and IMHO that adds 20% growth or something like that.

There's a point you reach with any Scrog grow where the actual canopy mass is above the Scrog screen/net/whatever and that's good and bad. The good part about that is you have a zillion new branches all appearing and it's just about time to flip and get some buds going. The bad part is a canopy in my view NEVER looks developed enough to flip when it's actually time to flip. Only speaking for myself here but others have agreed, one's tendency is always to wait until it really looks packed to flip, and then by the time the stretch is finished everything is basically a little (or a lot) too high. No matter how many times I do this I always end a grow thinking I could have flipped a little earlier and had a little less supercropping to do late in the game.

That's why I am very close to flipping. Upon examination this morning I feel the growing area is pretty much filled. My goal regardless of whether I have six plants or twelve is to evenly fill the growing area (basically defined by the Scrog net and frame) keeping the biomass as low as possible until this horizontal filling is completed, then let the entire thing just rise.

The technique of weaving and shaping a canopy is now becoming second nature to me. I have become bolder in my manipulation (and sometimes borderline abuse) of the growing branches, knowing now that they will all keep growing and filling in no matter what I do to them if they have the perfect light, nutrient mix and temperature.

Many who read this are probably a lot more experienced than me. I ask your indulgence when I go into instructional mode which I am about to for a little bit because I want to pass what I know about this to others who are learning how we do this, that's a big reason I got on here to begin with.

Here are some thoughts on getting the variables right.

You will notice every leaf looks about perfect. Not a single yellow leaf in sight nor a single discolored leaf tip anywhere. Leaves don't lie. That's the only way you really know you have everything within the ideal range. Of course 100% green leaves can really only be achieved during the veg stage because once we switch to flower we are deliberately aging the plant but the difference between perfect and almost-perfect makes a huge difference in overall metabolic rate and maximum rate of growth during this crucial stage. I also believe from my own experience that a small but crucial imbalance anywhere can set the plant back quite a bit everywhere. However, if they are getting everything they need, (meaning light, nutrients and temperature/humidity all consistently within the good zone), they can spend all their energy just growing like insane maniacs and that ability when fully functional is astounding.

I always talk in terms of a "zone" and here's why. I don't think this is an exact science. I don't think it should be. I believe it is better for the big 3 things (light, nutrients, and temperature) to stay within a certain range, rather than to be an exact number. For example, ideal PH for hydro is 5.8. I know my nutrient solution PH varies weekly from 5.5 up to 6.2. I think that is better. Why? As the plants use the solution, it gradually concentrates the nutrients and the PH gradually drops. When I need to replenish I add fresh dechlorinated water to bring the level of the reservoir back up. The higher-PH fresh water brings the PH back up well above 6 but I don't adjust it down to 5.8 because it is better in some ways for the PH to be at 6.2 for a couple days, then 5.8 for awhile, then drop to 5.5 or so, all within about a weeks time because some important nutrients are better absorbed at the higher PH range and some others at a lower range.

So, since math says a controlled but regular fluctuation in PH should allow a greater opportunity for adequate overall nutrient absorption, I believe my plants are more reliably getting everything they need (and thus healthier) by having the PH vary widely but regularly. I measure and keep aware of the whole cycle every week. I never let it above 6.3 or below 5.5. But I would go nuts trying to keep a 40-gallon bucket of water at one PH number, it is a lot of unnecessary time and effort IMHO. As always, judge everything I say by my how plants look. Plus I'm a hobby grower, if I was responsible for a giant commercial grow I would of course be much more attentive to exact numbers but nobody is paying me...yet.

I only change the reservoir twice during an entire 16-week grow. I reboot the thing at the flip and then sort of dilute it down the last several weeks (not a true flush but does enough). When I top off each week I don't add very much new nutes, because most of what I added initially is still in there (the plants uptake only what they need and that isn't much). A lot of hydro problems come from gradually overconcentrating the nutes because the assumption is that the same amount of nutrients proportionally are absorbed as the water used and that isn't so. I just make sure I add a little cal/mag to new water by volume.

I don't measure the nutrients anymore either (after the first carefully-measured amounts when I start a completely fresh reservoir), I just add a little of this one and a little of that one as we go to keep things in the zone of concentration where I know it should be. Perfectly perfect-looking leaves are the only true measure of these things and my leaves are telling me my judgment is sound. I just emphasize more of the grow nutes during veg and more of the bloom nutes during the late stages.

I use the basic 3 GH nute blends plus CalMagic and I think that's fine. Is adding all the other things folks use, especially late, any better? I don't really know because the branches on my plants usually couldn't hold fatter buds if they had them. Again, there's a million ways to do this but the trick, for me anyway, is to find the zone and keep things simple, not be too much of an independent thinker. I see a lot of people getting 25%-75% of potential out of their plants and that's often the result of way too much messing and feeding and stuff when they really would do much better if they just worried about really providing a lot of light, simplifying the feeding, and leaving them alone. Once you find a way to get solid results you are better to stick with that and get really good at it rather than chase that phantom "extra ten percent" that we all talk about but usually results in doing more harm than good. If your plant is simply allowed to flourish with minimum required nutrition without a bunch of unnecessary bullshit the results are always going to be great.

I grow hydro but I have a lot of soil grows behind me, and soil is even easier to manage as long as you start correctly. A healthy plant with perfect leaf tips everywhere is telling you it has what it needs and that's easiest if it's done right from the beginning.

So remember:

-Keep light, nutes and temp within a good range but don't sweat exact numbers.
-Judge everything you do by the health of newer growth leaves...they don't lie.
-It is often 10 times more difficult to remedy a problem, than to prevent it.

Hope that helps some newer people. That is how it is intended. Have a great day.

Peace, Hyena