MisterFlora
New Member
This journal is absolutely for the inexperienced grower like myself, on account of some lessons and tricks I learned which were not clear to me.
Where do I even start?
So last summer we grew 2 strains for seeds. 1 green plant (A), and 3 purple plants (B, C, and D). Purple B was male and used to pollinate the rest, so we ended up with two purpleXpurple strains (C and D seeds), and a greenXpurple strain (A seeds).
Back in November '15, I constructed a DIY "grow room" out of zip-ties, Mylar, and an old grated wire bookshelf, the kind that is collapsable and held together with removable joints, about 3 feet high, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. Filling in the top 10 inches or so are 4 CFLs of varying spectrum and lumens, which are zip-tied to an old wooden broomstick. Since the whole construct is grated, I have Mylar covering the interior walls, and the wires coming out of a common hole near the top. Likewise, plenty of air holes were poked along the top and around the sides for desired ventilation. Laying face-up atop the construct is a common white box fan, which creates negative pressure by moving air away from the plants and into a layer of activated carbon sandwiched between two furnace filters duct taped to the box fan. On the floor of the grow area are towers of VHSs, which support a tray for the plants to sit on and can be removed in one inch intervals so the lights can be stationary and the plants can be lowered as they grow. (pictures all to come)
I germinated and planted a variety of our homegrown seeds, ultimately sprouting one A seed and two D seeds on November 12, 2015. These were in small containers with a combination of organic Miracle Grow soil, perlite, and peat moss, until they were transferred to 2 or 3 gallon pots. No nutes added for the majority of veg.
I kept lights at 24/0 and utilized LST and flux techniques to achieve 12-15 branches per plant. On February 1, 2016, with the 3 plants all looking like bushes, almost 3 months old, reaching about a foot off the ground, I flipped to 12/12. I destroyed A as it had turned male, and on February 4 was left with two female D plants, affectionately named Dionysus and Deinonychus.
This is where things get hairy.
About two weeks into their flower, I had been doing some reading about the controversial defoliating. I was not scared to try it, as the combination of research and instincts had allowed these 2 D plants to flourish already. So I plucked all but one fan leaf per branch, leaving the non-obstructing leaves for storage and photosynthesis. It was at this next step that I made the fatal mistake.
I had always watered properly the entire time, alternating plain water and Miracle Grow Bloom Booster feedings every other week. What I didn't know was that not only did I shock the plants with such abrupt defoliation (next time I would gradually remove the leaves over a week, instead of all at once), but I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT NEED AS MUCH WATER AS USUALLY REQUIRED.
In my regular and good-natured attempts at flushing the plants for the week, and despite numerous grow-veterans saying it's not possible to overwater in a single watering, I absolutely overwatered my two remaining plants in one fell swoop. Even with proper drainage, my newly, and heavily, defoliated plants seemed incapable of drinking all the water I gave them to flush, and by the following morning they (and me, a little bit) began to suffocate.
I'll spare you the gruesome details. Deinonychus made it. As of yesterday, Dionysus did not. It was a beautifully tragic experiment, I had checked Dionysus for root rot and transplanted to a dryer medium, but ultimately she died more and more each day. Deinonychus, always the bigger and stronger of the two, took a hit but did not succumb. It did, however, take almost 2 weeks to recover from it's shock. While it did dry out entirely, it did no growing during this time. The other day I gave it it's first watering since the incident, along with some nutes as it was showing new signs of deficiency, and as of yesterday it seems to have perked up and resumed it's growing.
So now, here I sit with a plant that is almost completing it's 5th week in flower, but has maybe 2 weeks worth of bud growth. Make no mistake there are trichomes covering almost every inch of this plant, and the smell is an intoxicating earthy sweetness, so I know this baby is producing resin. But the silky white hairs have almost all tuned orange during it's recovery, and I worry that due to the stress, the plant wants to "finish" early without proper bud production. I would love to be incorrect about this.
I also acknowledge that I may have missed a hermie and these orange hairs are indication of pollination. What seems the most likely is that the hairs are simply reacting to being 5 weeks old, it's just the buds themselves which seem more like 2 weeks old that makes this process disconcerting.
I hope to get pictures up soon, detailing my closet grow set up and and documenting the next few months of Deinonychus's life. It's going to be questionable - what should have been a plant yielding an ounce alone, it may be an experiment which yields poorly due to my mistake.
So this long winded grow journal serves as my written testament for the excited new grower, or the veteran grower who hasn't stumbled upon my specific brand of fuckup (I swear in all my amassing of information and techniques I never ran into any advice regarding a change in water consumption post-heavy defol, but I digress).
I hope it ends well for Deinonychus.
Happy growing, all! Will be back soon.
~MisterFlora
Where do I even start?
So last summer we grew 2 strains for seeds. 1 green plant (A), and 3 purple plants (B, C, and D). Purple B was male and used to pollinate the rest, so we ended up with two purpleXpurple strains (C and D seeds), and a greenXpurple strain (A seeds).
Back in November '15, I constructed a DIY "grow room" out of zip-ties, Mylar, and an old grated wire bookshelf, the kind that is collapsable and held together with removable joints, about 3 feet high, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. Filling in the top 10 inches or so are 4 CFLs of varying spectrum and lumens, which are zip-tied to an old wooden broomstick. Since the whole construct is grated, I have Mylar covering the interior walls, and the wires coming out of a common hole near the top. Likewise, plenty of air holes were poked along the top and around the sides for desired ventilation. Laying face-up atop the construct is a common white box fan, which creates negative pressure by moving air away from the plants and into a layer of activated carbon sandwiched between two furnace filters duct taped to the box fan. On the floor of the grow area are towers of VHSs, which support a tray for the plants to sit on and can be removed in one inch intervals so the lights can be stationary and the plants can be lowered as they grow. (pictures all to come)
I germinated and planted a variety of our homegrown seeds, ultimately sprouting one A seed and two D seeds on November 12, 2015. These were in small containers with a combination of organic Miracle Grow soil, perlite, and peat moss, until they were transferred to 2 or 3 gallon pots. No nutes added for the majority of veg.
I kept lights at 24/0 and utilized LST and flux techniques to achieve 12-15 branches per plant. On February 1, 2016, with the 3 plants all looking like bushes, almost 3 months old, reaching about a foot off the ground, I flipped to 12/12. I destroyed A as it had turned male, and on February 4 was left with two female D plants, affectionately named Dionysus and Deinonychus.
This is where things get hairy.
About two weeks into their flower, I had been doing some reading about the controversial defoliating. I was not scared to try it, as the combination of research and instincts had allowed these 2 D plants to flourish already. So I plucked all but one fan leaf per branch, leaving the non-obstructing leaves for storage and photosynthesis. It was at this next step that I made the fatal mistake.
I had always watered properly the entire time, alternating plain water and Miracle Grow Bloom Booster feedings every other week. What I didn't know was that not only did I shock the plants with such abrupt defoliation (next time I would gradually remove the leaves over a week, instead of all at once), but I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT NEED AS MUCH WATER AS USUALLY REQUIRED.
In my regular and good-natured attempts at flushing the plants for the week, and despite numerous grow-veterans saying it's not possible to overwater in a single watering, I absolutely overwatered my two remaining plants in one fell swoop. Even with proper drainage, my newly, and heavily, defoliated plants seemed incapable of drinking all the water I gave them to flush, and by the following morning they (and me, a little bit) began to suffocate.
I'll spare you the gruesome details. Deinonychus made it. As of yesterday, Dionysus did not. It was a beautifully tragic experiment, I had checked Dionysus for root rot and transplanted to a dryer medium, but ultimately she died more and more each day. Deinonychus, always the bigger and stronger of the two, took a hit but did not succumb. It did, however, take almost 2 weeks to recover from it's shock. While it did dry out entirely, it did no growing during this time. The other day I gave it it's first watering since the incident, along with some nutes as it was showing new signs of deficiency, and as of yesterday it seems to have perked up and resumed it's growing.
So now, here I sit with a plant that is almost completing it's 5th week in flower, but has maybe 2 weeks worth of bud growth. Make no mistake there are trichomes covering almost every inch of this plant, and the smell is an intoxicating earthy sweetness, so I know this baby is producing resin. But the silky white hairs have almost all tuned orange during it's recovery, and I worry that due to the stress, the plant wants to "finish" early without proper bud production. I would love to be incorrect about this.
I also acknowledge that I may have missed a hermie and these orange hairs are indication of pollination. What seems the most likely is that the hairs are simply reacting to being 5 weeks old, it's just the buds themselves which seem more like 2 weeks old that makes this process disconcerting.
I hope to get pictures up soon, detailing my closet grow set up and and documenting the next few months of Deinonychus's life. It's going to be questionable - what should have been a plant yielding an ounce alone, it may be an experiment which yields poorly due to my mistake.
So this long winded grow journal serves as my written testament for the excited new grower, or the veteran grower who hasn't stumbled upon my specific brand of fuckup (I swear in all my amassing of information and techniques I never ran into any advice regarding a change in water consumption post-heavy defol, but I digress).
I hope it ends well for Deinonychus.
Happy growing, all! Will be back soon.
~MisterFlora
