Phantom’s RDWC Cherry Cookies Grow Journal

Greetings,
I will be starting this journal on my grow that has been in progress for a few months already while I’ve been establishing my setup. This grow all started with a free 8th of Cherry Cookies from a local dispensary on 4/20 two years ago as a giveaway. The smoke was mediocre at best and had a very peppery taste. My assumptions are that this was a giveaway due to the loose fluffy buds and not-so-cherry flavor it was advertised to have. I’m assuming some of the other buds from this plant we’re probably better quality but we’re probably bought and not given away like the less quality I received. In the free bag of smoke I found a single seed. I stored away the seed for the last two years until this winter I stuck it in some soil on a wim along with an Animal Cookies seed I had found in some premo bud this fall. The Animal Cookies seed turned out to not be viable, which didn’t surprise me since it looked only partially developed, small and pale white.

The Cherry Cookies plant has been growing healthy all winter and spring just potted in a house plant pot and normal potting mix. It is under just some plain regular lights and a small fan. I water it with a cup or two of water every third day along with some general plant food mixed in once or twice a month. I topped “her” and have taken 4 clones. The clones are showing healthy roots, 2”+ in my cloning box now. I just gave them their first tiny dose of nutes last night and they responded well. I intend to flip my “mother“ plant in the few days to follow since I have finally received my new LED lighting. This would allow me to find out the sex of my clones.

If it turns out to be male thus making my clones male, I will abandon my clones but continue to grow out the potted plant to harvest pollen. The plant has shown strong growing genetics, borderline invincible to death by grower error, that would be great to hold onto down the road.

If does turn out to be female I will finish the grow on her in this journal along with the (4) clones. She, the mother plant, will remain in soil and the clones will move to my RDWC setup. My RDWC setup is made for 4 flowering plants in a 4.5’x4.5’ tent with (2) 240W 3000/3500k LED lights w/ ir & uv and an RDWC setup consisting of (4) 27 gallon grow buckets and a 27 gallon reservoir (might upgrade to 55 gallon) and an 800 gph water pump, no air pump just engineering. I use Mega Crop for my nutrients and am using straight softened city tap water at a pH of 7.6, no r/o or leaving out water overnight for chlorine. I pH down to 5.8 using my trusty pH/EC/TDS/co meter once my nutes have been added.

I have an order from Seedsman arriving on Saturday but will not be able to start any until August once out-of-state family have come and gone. At which point this will get fun, I will have (3) of my grow setups in operation to grow 12 very nice trees just in time for Xmas.

“You are going to get spoiled!”
 
Not much to report today...other than the fact that my seeds from @SeedsMan showed up 2 days earlier than expected! :yahoo: I’m really excited to get these strains popping off this September.

I would be lying if I said that was all for today without mentioning my 240W QBs also showed up and are now installed in my tent with my “mother” plant underneath sunbathing. I’ll change my timer to 12/12 tonight after lights off. I’ve been dying to find out if my clones will be female or not and decided to flip the mother plant regardless of her size.

This weekend I will get the plumbing for my RDWC finished and ready to accept the clones if all goes well in the weeks to come.

I called the local hydroponic store this morning to see the status of my Z7 and some other here-and-there items I had backordered. The Z7 was in but not the other items. I figure I’ll wait until the end of next week to go in and at the very least pick up the Z7 and pray the rest has arrived.

I really lucked out having such an amazing local hydroponic store within minutes of my home. I honestly thought they had messed up my order and had ordered me the 8oz bottles of Z7 instead of the quart bottles because of the low price on my invoice. I was mistaken! The price was for the quart bottles but for 2/3 what I was expecting to pay. Actually most of the things I buy there are cheaper in the store than what they have it listed for online, even more, their online prices beat at lot of competitor’s prices. Sometimes even beating what the manufacturer sells their product for in the case of my Z7.
 

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Day 1 of 12/12 lighting on the “mother” plant. Actually saw quite a bit of growth from the new LEDs. Here’s to hoping it is female and my clones are too.


I ordered a second and third 4.5’x4.5’ tent for my fall setup. All I need now is just a few more LEDs, buckets, and pumps and I’ll be set for my Xmas Tree Cannonball Run!

It’s hard not to pull the trigger early on the tents when I talked to the Amazon seller and I got a 15% and 10% discount on them! I paid just under $100 after the discount for the 10% off tent and $90 for the 15% off tent, both with free 1 day shipping.

That being said my one plant in the tent looks lonely and those Ginger autos I got are tempting me with their 65 day seed to harvest timeframe. I would be able to squeeze them in quick before my family comes to visit just after Labor Day!


Have a great weekend and for anyone remembering family members no long here, military or not, have a great Memorial Day.
 
I received and setup Tent #2 today.



I still can’t believe I paid under $300 for all three 5’x5’ tents. Yes, they are an extremely cheap ($$$ price-wise) tent but the quality does not match that price. I honestly expected holes, extremely cheap materials, etc. but that’s not the case, although the highest quality materials they definitely are not. I would rate it a 4.5 of 5, it would be a 5 if it was the highest quality materials. I give it a score of 4/5 on materials and quality and 5/5 on price point. I also believe that if you take care of your tent (open zippers slowly, don’t stretch fabric, be careful moving things) it should give you good years of service before needing to be replaced (even longer for those of us how cannot bare to throw something away that would be deemed perfectly good if it wasn’t for such-and-such needing to be fixed with some duct tape).

Tent #3 will be here tomorrow. I think I need to name them like my work does with out conference rooms. All three tents will see some heavy action this fall will all three tents growing at once. After the initial grow in all three I’ll scale back, keeping two for flowering and one for vegetative growing.

I also peeked in on the roots of the clones.


They are coming along nicely. I will hopefully get to transfer them into their buckets in a week, once I find out the sex of their mother plant.
 
Well in a strange twist Tent #3 showed up today via USPS. Since when does the postal service deliver on federal Holidays? Just to show you how strange things have gotten!

Anyways I set up the tent to inspect it over, it was flawless. Here it is to the left of Tent #2.


Good news now I have all three tents for the fall grow and my perpetual garden for next spring. I suppose I can start gathering my RDWC parts for Tents #2 & #3.
 
All I have to say is dang you @SeedsMan it took me less than a week of receiving my first order for me to place my second order with you, this one even bigger than the first too I might add! I had to try some more autos after you sent me the Ginger Punch autos as 2 of my 4 free bitcoin seeds, plus you have some great 3 for 2 deals happening right now.

I bought some tasty fruity autos, some beautifully colored autos (reds, pinks, purples, and blacks), and even a CBD strain.

I’m still missing one strain I’ve been looking for ever since I bought a nice fat quarter of it for a 311, Dirty Heads, and some other band 4/20 concert. The elusive Juicy Fruit or Fruity Juice, you have it but I’m not paying $117 for 10 seeds I have no need for that many or intentions of spending that much. Man I remember the amazing taste it had of Juicy Fruit gum....maybe one day I’ll grow it. A man needs his Moby Dick to chase after or he won’t accomplish great things in his life I say. Anyway, I can’t wait and am so happy to find a reliable source for seeds!

Here’s the list of new additions soon to be on their way!



and it wouldn’t be Seedsman’s without some freebies!

 
Lights on a few moments ago (start of Day 5 of 12/12) so I had to pull her out to see if there was any signs of sex. I scoured the plant for what seemed like an eternity with no avail, checked from underneath and nada, I gave up, figured it was too soon, content with checking again in the morning just before lights off. I’m not sure what it was, probably the fisherman in me saying, “one more cast then we’ll go” that drove me to check one last time before retiring her back to the tanning bed for the evening. It must have been a spot so deep and inaccessible that I missed it the first couple passes (*cough* high AF *cough*). I looked at the branch and there it was in all of it’s glory...
Just before lights off in the morning I will look for more but this single pre-flower is definitely a positive sign of what’s to come.

My honest opinion is that what drove the plant to this outcome was purely the fact that last night I had too much to drink and smoke (finishing off the holiday weekend in style) and bought all of those additional seeds. I can guarantee you the results would be opposite if I hadn’t! :rofl:
 
You’re more than welcome to @Greenthumbs42019
I honestly felt like I was talking to myself for a minute there.

Tomorrow I’ll get my rdwc system setup in my tent and filled. I’ll drop the clones in either tomorrow night or the next morning.

I’m not sure what to do with the mother plant now that my clones will be underneath the only decent lights I have for the time being. I don’t plan on ordering the rest of my lights for the other two tents until this fall when I get all three tents running. I guess I could bring her outside each day to get natural light, then put her in one of my two unused tents during the night. Difficult thing is she is currently lights on from 8pm-8am. Maybe I’ll just stick her in my shade garden outside and see what happens. I wasn’t expecting anything from her but to simply provide 4 clones and determine the sex of those clones. She’s served those purposes so maybe I’ll put her out to pasture to live the rest of her days about amongst my peppers.

For now my focus now is to get these clones harvested before Labor Day.
 
Peeked in this morning before lights off and found 3 additional preflowers.




My apologies for the lack of zoom or focus in the photos, it was the best I could do with my phone. You’ll have to take my word for it that there are two pistils coming out of those calyx.
 
As far as training for the autos, I’ll go the LST route. I fear they will have a tough go at it in the heat already, that minimizing the stress on them is the goal. I also feel like by letting them go au naturel I will end up with some sad, scraggly looking plants because of the heat. I’m looking for the baby bear of the situation here!

I may try to experiment with STS on them and see if I can get a few buds to seed. They were free seeds so why not try something new to me. Plus being outdoors if things go badly I’m not having to wipe down a tent and equipment. I have the same attitude towards my Cherry Cookies bag seed, it’s a free seed so I decided it was a perfect candidate for my first RDWC run.

Make “happy accidents” with the free seeds not with the special ones. I feel like I have received some strains and have some on the way that are pretty special (at least to me) that I don’t want to mess up. I also feel like I need to preserve their genetics if they turn out in order to pass them on to my friends that can’t afford the same opportunities I’ve been afforded. I know a few friends that can’t afford much more than the free dirt in their yard and some basic fertilizer to grow with. Giving them a handful of seeds to grow with from any of these strains would make their year. I’m not one for really paying it forward. I do other things like shaving my beard and head for disadvantaged children and their families, Toys For Tots drives or donating to my local Marine Corps League. That being said and all, paying it forward to my friends with this great plant is something I can get behind.
 
Picked up some final parts for my DIY chiller tonight. Have to work late pushing out a project deliverable tonight so I won’t be able to finish up and fill the system. Tomorrow I’ll go pick up my Craigslist mini fridge for the DIY chiller, finish setting up, and hopefully get some water agitating by the end of the night.

Anyways I took a quick photo of the mother and clones before getting back to work for the night. Enjoy!

 
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