Nicky Goes To Mars: Test Of Mars Hydro FC4800 & Mars Tent

[nickeluring]

Cheers guys. I'm away in the snowy mountains over Christmas and I have a baggie of each of my harvested gold to put an extra star on the holiday.
Hopefully my current plants will make it on their own that long....if my feeding system would fail, they'll die.

 

[stinker]

Enjoy the snow.

 

[Modest Grower]

Congrats on the harvest and the new. Start! Enjoy the mountains and the buds. Sending good vibes to the ladies while your away. Mine are on an auto set up as I am away and I know the worries. Your ladies will be fine!

 

[nickeluring]

Wow, beautiful buds. Congratulations on the harvest. I agree, the MxOP is very potent.

Thank you. MxOP kicks butt!

Congratulations on a great Christmas harvest, well done

Cheers, mate. The timing was perfect. Cured just in time for the holidays.

Enjoy the snow.

Cheers, bro. I haven't seen snow in 9 years, and it's great!

Congrats on the harvest and the new. Start! Enjoy the mountains and the buds. Sending good vibes to the ladies while your away. Mine are on an auto set up as I am away and I know the worries. Your ladies will be fine!

Cheers, mate. What setup do you have? I have drip feeding for both my tents, feeding 3 times a day. 2 systems running at the moment, and I had to upgrade the nute container for my larger tent to a bigger one so the nutes will last until I'm back.

 

[Modest Grower]

Thank you. MxOP kicks butt!


Cheers, mate. The timing was perfect. Cured just in time for the holidays.


Cheers, bro. I haven't seen snow in 9 years, and it's great!



Cheers, mate. What setup do you have? I have drip feeding for both my tents, feeding 3 times a day. 2 systems running at the moment, and I had to upgrade the nute container for my larger tent to a bigger one so the nutes will last until I'm back.

I have two tents a 2x4 and 4x4 running 12 hours light for flower. A 25 gallon resevoir with two pumps set to run 5 minutes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They are in soil though

I also have two air stones in the reservoir to help keep things mixed and add oxygen

 

[nickeluring]

I have two tents a 2x4 and 4x4 running 12 hours light for flower. A 25 gallon resevoir with two pumps set to run 5 minutes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They are in soil though

I also have two air stones in the reservoir to help keep things mixed and add oxygen

Sweet soil setup. I've been looking at octopuses like that, but always ended up making my own.
I use a circulation pump in my reservoirs, but don't worry about oxygen since I'm in coco.

 

[nickeluring]

This morning when checking on the plants I saw Larry Bird Kush is starting to throw out some balls. I'm a bit miffed about that and Larry has been removed from the tent. I'm keeping it for a few days in a window to study its balls growing. All balls were eaten straight after the pics were taken.

 

[nickeluring]

The other 3 plants will get plenty of space in the tent.
Biscotti Mintz is growing new shoots everywhere - like crazy. It looks like she'll be the beast of this batch. I'm guessing she'll pack on the most buds. I tried to take a picture of her, but it's hard to see.

 

[nickeluring]

We are now at day 7 after the switch, and the girls are loving it! The plan this time was to not use any ties, but rather use softer ways to shape the plants. I defoliate loads and do soft supercropping to get the branches to where I want them.

At the left we have Lemon Tree. She is 60 cm tall and very stiff and tight with thick branches that are hard to bend. This is the only plant I've had to tie down a bit. Two of her branches are being pulled slightly outwards to widen her better.

To the right is Biscotti Mintz. This baby is also 60 cm tall, and she is popping new shoots all over the plays. I have to keep removing low shoots. Two of the shoots sit below all the fan leaves just above the ground, and they have reached the top of the canopy and are as thick as any of the 8 mainlined branches. These branches also have a lot of triple nodes.

At the back is Bruce Banner 3. She is very compact at only 40 cm tall, but she spreads out beautifully. She is the best shaped of the 3 plants.

 

[nickeluring]

Lemon Tree

 

[nickeluring]

Biscotti Mintz

 

[nickeluring]

Bruce Banner 3

 

[nickeluring]

The girls have been flowering for 14 days and they are filling the tent out nicely. Here we have Lemon Tree at the left, Biscotti Mintz at the right, and Bruce Banner 3 at the back of the tent.
I have kept working on them with supercropping and defoliation. They are spreading out beautifully. They have done a fair bit of stretching and measure:
Lemon Tree: 80 cm, Biscotti Mintz: 86 cm, and Bruce Banner 3: 58 cm
All three of them look very strong with thick branches. We should se some fat buds in a few weeks i think.

 

[nickeluring]

After 28 days of flowering, the girls have done a lot of stretching and are getting close to what my tent can handle. Lemon Tree at the left is the tallest at 122 cm, followed by Biscotti Mintz to the right at 114 cm, and Bruce Banner 3 at the back is the shortie of the bunch at 86 cm. The 3 plants are doing a very good job filling the tent up. They are spreading out nicely to fill all corners of the tent.
I keep defoliating the plants a lot and pick leaves daily but leaf growth should slow down shortly.

 

[stinker]

They look perfect. The Lemon Tree I grew out smelled so strong, I bet you will smell it.
My notifications dropped out on this thread.

 

[Stunger]

Looking great Nick! I missed notifications too. They're blooming! So you haven't used any LST, just supercropping to shape and contain them?

 

[nickeluring]

They look perfect. The Lemon Tree I grew out smelled so strong, I bet you will smell it.
My notifications dropped out on this thread.

I would love to smell it! So far Lemon Tree is producing most trichomes of them all. She's already having it spreading onto the fan leaves.

Looking great Nick! I missed notifications too. They're blooming! So you haven't used any LST, just supercropping to shape and contain them?

Yes, mate, no LST at all, apart from slightly holding 2 branches down/out for a few days on the Lemon Tree. They were topped 3 times to get 8 main colas, and then I have just let them grow by themselves as an experiment. The supercropping has been very mild, I've just bent the branches slightly outwards or the direction I wanted. I wanted to see if I could get away with no LST. In all my previous grows I have always done heaps of LST'ing with clips and soft ties, and I typically end up with at least a couple of broken limbs. This time my plants have no injuries at all - yeay!!
I will do it similarly in my coming grows. However, 6 weeks of vegging has proved to be too long for me and next time they will get only 5 weeks of 18/6 before the switch.


In about a week I plan to start my next 2 plants in my small tent. The 2 Bushmans currently in there should be harvested soon. It looks like it'll be a Tropicanna Banana from Barney's Farm and a Wedding Cake from Zamnesia. The Banana is one of very few strains I'm doing a repeat grow on. It is my favourite Sativa dominant strain I've tried so far. Very very tasty indeed, and it has a powerful Sativa effect. The Wedding Cake sounds like a very tasty and powerful strain as well, so I'm looking forward to grow them.

 

[nickeluring]

The Lemon Tree is displaying some strange but beautiful fan leaves. They have 3 extra smaller fingers, adding up to a total of 14 fingers.

 

[Stunger]

It's always great to have a winner, a strain that you're really pleased to be growing, and that Lemon Tree sounds like one of them, and I think you and @stinker have both expressed praise for the Mimosa X OP which also sounds great, and I looking forward to hearing how the Bushmens come out too.

It's a tricky to choose what is the best approach for training. I have struggled to prune weaker growth off any of my plants as I can't help imagining how it will still produce something smokeable. I have preferred to LST, but like you I end up with stem breaks and damage to deal with, especially with the shitty hard plastic garden wire I'm using. Next grow if I do LST again I will get some of the padded stuff so it's easier on the plant. But I may do similar to you and carry out some multiple topping or just prune off all weak stem growth which would probably free up a bit of space for maintenance. Cheers.

 

[nickeluring]

It's always great to have a winner, a strain that you're really pleased to be growing, and that Lemon Tree sounds like one of them, and I think you and @stinker have both expressed praise for the Mimosa X OP which also sounds great, and I looking forward to hearing how the Bushmens come out too.

It's a tricky to choose what is the best approach for training. I have struggled to prune weaker growth off any of my plants as I can't help imagining how it will still produce something smokeable. I have preferred to LST, but like you I end up with stem breaks and damage to deal with, especially with the shitty hard plastic garden wire I'm using. Next grow if I do LST again I will get some of the padded stuff so it's easier on the plant. But I may do similar to you and carry out some multiple topping or just prune off all weak stem growth which would probably free up a bit of space for maintenance. Cheers.

Yes, @stinker sounds like he's very happy with the Lemon Tree, and from how mine looks like so far I think I will love it. The Mimosa x OP is very good and highly recommended. I believe that's the strongest weed I've ever grown.

Yes, I'm with you regarding the weaker growth. I smoke that stuff all the time and it's the same quality as the upper buds, it just doesn't look so good. The main problem I have with the lower growth is when doing the harvest trimming. That lower stuff take forever to trim.
Since you have to stay low for stealth, I think you won't get away with not doing any LST. You'll find the soft ties being way better than the twist ties you've been using before. A problem being outdoors and LST'ing is the wind that can easily injure a constrained plant.