Going to be mighty fine budsFlowering: Day 18 (from flip)
Things are happening with the girls, just nothing overly interesting at this point.
Durban Poison is throwing little flowers, Strawberry Lemonade #2 (right) is doing the same. SL1 (left) is starting to. Blue Dream isn't quite there yet. SL1 is also partially shorter than the rest of the canopy, but not by a whole lot.
I took a handful of fans off of BD, DP, and SL2 last night (about a shoe box worth) to try and give their stretch a hiccup. They're all pretty evened out, so maybe that will give SL1 just enough of a hiccup to catch up a bit. It's not a huge difference, but 3" is still 3". In a few places on the very outer edges it might be 4"-5". I also bumped the light intensity up a bit more. I had it at 80% for the stretch, so they wouldn't burn as they get closer. Even as I raise the light, I'd hate to burn them up if they grew extra fast one night/day, and it seems to work. So I raised the the light about 4", and cranked the intensity to 93%. Once the stretch is over next week sometime (guessing, but should be) then I will get the light set at 22" and pop it to 95%.
Why not 100%?
To be flat out honest, this light at even 95% will be more than plenty (850-900) for most of flower. I'll drop the height to about 12" and the intensity to 80% for the last couple of weeks and end up with PPFD in the mid-upper 900's. Although I may go for 16" and more like 88%, depending on how the very edges look by then, even though with a 12" height, the coverage is still edge to edge with a pretty even (within 100ish) PPFD.
Taken from the back. So DP bot left, BD bot right, SL2 top left, SL1 top right. If you look close enough to the second pic, you can see about 15% in the back right corner where part of SL1 is a little lower. Light coverage is good enough that it won't be an issue, and once the stretch is over I'm going to take a good amount of fans to get things opened up.
Now a couple DP shots:
Yes, I forgot to filter the first image.
As you can see, she's already frosting up, and she's still stretching too!
Water params have been tolerable. EC is slightly dropping, pH is slowly rising. Water temps are OK, but not perfect. They're varying over the course of the day from about 70F at lights on, up to 75F (on occasion 77F) later in the daylight cycle.
The "chart" tells me that this is good, and bump the EC a bit. The last feed was at 6g/gal, and I'm skeptical/nervous about increasing it much considering the issue with the change before last. The leaves look pretty good, although in a few places there might be a very slight trend towards a very slightly lighter green. Nothing to really catch my attention much. That being the case, the drop in PPM could be from the top-off res since the mix in there is more like 2g-3g/gal, which could potentially be influencing the EC/PPM to drop slightly. The drop has been maybe 20-30 PPM, which is negligible really.
I may try a bump to 6.1g/gal, but honestly the more I type about it has triggered me to recall that the first couple days they drank the res down a bit before the top-off kicked in (I need to re-adjust the float) and the EC was static. It wasn't until the top-off started keeping up and its water level was dropping that I noticed the EC lowering.
(I'm saying EC, as that's what's on the chart. The Blue Lab is set to PPM [700 scale] just cuz. lol)
Anyway, the bump to 6.1 may not be terrible anyway, if the EC/PPM is steady, that's fine. If they weren't eating the EC would be rising. I may bump the top-off up a hair, but at this time doesn't really seem necessary. Maybe 3g/gal is fine on that. (50% of main mix.)
Beautiful specimens!Day 108 - Flower Day 47 - Day 54 from Flip (Week 7, Day 5 of Flower)
Went ahead and completed the weekly water change tonight. Dropped the EC from 1.85 to 1.57 (1300ppm to 1100ppm on the 700 scale.)
The pH ended up at 6.3, and I bumped it with just a tick of UP and it settled in at 6.5 after an hour of mixing.
This res' recipe was 5g/gal of Mega Crop, 2ml/gal of calmag (remember, it's no nitrogen stuff), and for good measure on the pH department I took a gamble with 1ml/gal of ProTekt.
The silica did what I thought it would, and instead of 5.6, the pH was initially 6.3 after mixing up. Then the bump, and here we are.
Photo Dummmmmmmmpppppppp!!!!!!!
They're starting to close in on the end, and beginning to look a bit beat up. The Durban Poison and both Strawberry Lemonade are both prevalent with darkened pistils. The Blue Dream is just starting to turn. From the looks of things, I'm guessing the DP will be the first on the chopping block, with the SL's right behind her.
The Blue Dream is going to be bringing up the rear, but that's alright.
I haven't mentioned it in this thread, but I went ahead and picked up a Tom's Tumbler (TTT 1600, the baby model) that will arrive here Monday. I'm looking forward to that. Going to save a lot of time, and that's becoming quite a precious commodity around these parts lately.
Great yield mate!Flower: Day 77 (84 days from flip)
Both the Strawberry Lemonades and the Durban Poison met the hatchet man today, and the bounty filled the 4x2 I'm using for drying.
I have it set up with 3 "levels" that are 20" apart, and there are 4 rows per level. It looks awful touchy, but the buds aren't touching. No wet trimming this go, so it was chop and hang, chop and hang. Tried to keep each branch similar in size in hopes of keeping the drying somewhat even (yeah, ok...) and finishing up in the same time. I'm guessing a couple will be a hair more dry than others that are good to go.
Give it a week or two and the tumbler should finally see some action.
I was in a hurry closing up, and didn't get a pic of the wreckage of the tent. With 3/4 of the scrog net gone, that left the Blue Dream to flop herself open a good bit. Got her as situated as possible with some yoyo's and such, then lowered the light so most of her was 18" or less from the light. She had a good bit of the green larf in her center core, so maybe something good comes from that getting some more light. I may go ahead and chop her tops when they're done in a couple weeks, and let some of the under growth go a little longer. Not real sure yet, but we'll see how it goes and play it by ear. With the inner larf getting more light now, as well as UVB exposure, they may come around. I guess the worst thing that could happen is getting some more frost on them for making some good oil.
I'm guessing the Blue Dream is going to go another couple weeks. Her pistils just started to turn this week on the tops, so I'll keep an eye on her.
Thanks to some sales going on, I was able to pick up some of the next run (which will be in the fall) for the rig. So far I have 3 of 5 strains ordered, and hoping I can find a deal for the other 2 strains.
What's going to run?
From In House Genetics:
- Slurricane
- Deluxe Sugar Cane
- Platinum Jelly
From Barney's Farm:
- Morning Glory
- Mimosa EVO
I've purchased the IHG stuff, so that's a start. Will be hitting somewhere for the Barney's at some point. If I can find a 4/20 deal, cool. If not, there's still plenty of time.
With the IHG stuff being a lean to the indica side, I wanted to try and balance that with some more sativa lean. Having had good results from Barney's, that was a pretty easy choice. From there is was narrowing down what I was after, and these two checked the boxes.
