PotChimp's Soilless Sativa Grow

[Twelve12]

Sounds good. What strain are you looking to add to your grow? I just acquired some C99, which said to be easy to grow, fast finish sativa, with great high and taste.

 

[PotChimp]

Sounds good. What strain are you looking to add to your grow? I just acquired some C99, which said to be easy to grow, fast finish sativa, with great high and taste.

I've got Wallyduck seeds that are crossed with C99; that should be an interesting grow when I get to it. I'm looking for the most intense Sativa and Indica I can find for myself, something that yields and smokes well for others (to recuperate some cash from all this), and some strain to keep me in smoke between grows, like a continual Lowryder crop I can grow with these CFLs. My next grow is going now. I planted 5 Tangerine Dream fems and 3 of them sprouted (the average success rate from what I am reading) so I added a Super Lemon Haze fem to the grow, which has the same height and flowering time as TD.

 

[PotChimp]

I started training the plants yesterday after I nuted them. The fussy Kwazulu did its little thing and wilted. The top of the Wild Thai wilted too, so I took a little of the bend out of it. Oh well, if I broke it I'll top it there. I am going at least another week before I start checking for signs of sexing to put them into 12/12. When I do so I am going to switch to organic nutes (Blue Planet Farmer's Pride). I'll post pics soon.

 

[Twelve12]

Looking forward to the pics. Anything cross with C99 seem to turn out great. Can't wait to grow my own. Got Black Domina in regular seeds hopping for a male. Cross that with C99 for the heavy indica and crazy sativa hybrid should bring out the circus. Good luck with your TD!

 

[PotChimp]

Day 49 from seed :

It's getting about that time.....

I'll probably hang the HPS's and tweek the tent for heat control over the next day or so.

 

[PotChimp]

Oops. T-W-E-A-K. Killin' the King's English here.....

 

[PotChimp]

Looking forward to the pics. Anything cross with C99 seem to turn out great. Can't wait to grow my own. Got Black Domina in regular seeds hopping for a male. Cross that with C99 for the heavy indica and crazy sativa hybrid should bring out the circus. Good luck with your TD!

Good to know about the C99. I'm assuming that the Wallyduck webbed strains aren't very potent or high yielding, because they all seem to be crossed with something. The TDs and the SLH are all sprouted and I will start a journal of them after they start looking like weed plants. I am going to do Lowryder #1 crops under these CFLs in the future. I hope to have 4 grow areas in the next 2 months to work with so I will get some use out of these CFLs. Good luck with the BD grow!

 

[PotChimp]

Day 51 from seed :

I bent the plants over the other day and the South African Kwazulu didn't take it very well, as you can see (front right). It has to dry out too; wilted from overwatering. I put its pot on top of a small can to raise it higher after this pic (to even it up with the rest of the plants and hopefully get it into the airflow more to dry the soilless mix some). I'm about ready to stomp on that ridiculous thing.
The rest of the plants show anywhere from mild to medium magnesium deficiency. I should have realized when I switched from distilled water to filtered tap water I needed to compensate for trace elements. I used the recommended epsom salts to correct the problem (if that IS the problem; I'll know soon I guess). I am going to put them all into flowering in a few days.

 

[PotChimp]

When I start 12/12 I will turn the tops of the plants towards the corners to try to even the center growth out.

 

[Twelve12]

Plants are looking good. Have you thought about moving the plants towards the middle? They're stretching for lights being in the four corners. Or have two in the middle and rotate them so each 2 gets their moment under the "sweet spot". Hope your plant recover from mag deficiency. If using distilled water add some calmag+ (50 PPM - 200 PPM depend on growth stage) before adding nutrients.

 

[PotChimp]

Plants are looking good. Have you thought about moving the plants towards the middle? They're stretching for lights being in the four corners. Or have two in the middle and rotate them so each 2 gets their moment under the "sweet spot". Hope your plant recover from mag deficiency. If using distilled water add some calmag+ (50 PPM - 200 PPM depend on growth stage) before adding nutrients.

Strangely, the plants didn't start showing this deficiency until I stopped using distilled water and switched to filtered tap water. The tap water alone runs at 200 ppm after filtering. Every time I try to pinch pennies I pay the price. I'm going back to distilled water.
I was hoping for a little stretch so that the buds have space to grow, unlike my first two grows. The first one hermied, partly due to my not hitting the books (I thought that if your plant didn't hermie out at sexing, you are safe), and partly because the plants grew short and stout, so I couldn't see through the leaves enough to do inspections well. The second didn't get good light penetration because of the same overbushiness, so I had about 5 or 6 inches down of half-sized buds (another disadvantage to low wattage and CFL lights), and the rest were popcorn buds. What I am going to do as soon as the plants hold this bend on their own is take the fishing line off of them and rotate so that the tops are in the four corners and the pots are in the center like you are saying. Kind of like a stadium seating effect. The beginning goals for me are to run through as many strains as possible in a short time, so my methods will probably make most of you think, "What a friggin' potchimp. What is this imbecile doing? He could get so much better of a yield and better results if he....." and to learn by experience. Every suggestion here is deeply appreciated and needed though; hopefully someday I will gain enough experience to return the favors to others.

 

[Twelve12]

The plant is used to the distilled water and its fine calmag. Tap water often contain larger particle size of calmag and other trace minerals, and may have caused blockage to other finer size for roots absorption, results in deficiency. Going back to distilled water is a good call. Do you buy them or have a machine at home?

Good to see you doing experiments on the lights. Experience is the teacher. It will engrave the lessons in our minds and we'll learn from it.

 

[PotChimp]

Wild Thailand and Panama : Day 56
Raspberry Cough : Day 48
South African Kwazulu : Day 46

A close-up of what I diagnosed as the mineral deficiency (this is on the Raspberry Cough).

 

[PotChimp]

It's a little difficult to see, but top left - Panama, top right - Wild Thai, bottom left - Kwazulu, bottom right - Raspberry Cough.
Man, that Kwazulu. I bent it pretty hard though (as opposed to slowly training it like I should have). If it lives, it lives I guess. I just flushed all of the plants with Sledgehammer flush and started the 12/12 cycle today. When I see all of the plants showing hairs I am going to switch to the 2 150w HPS lights and see if I need to up the airflow to lower temps.

 

[PotChimp]

The plant is used to the distilled water and its fine calmag. Tap water often contain larger particle size of calmag and other trace minerals, and may have caused blockage to other finer size for roots absorption, results in deficiency. Going back to distilled water is a good call. Do you buy them or have a machine at home?

Good to see you doing experiments on the lights. Experience is the teacher. It will engrave the lessons in our minds and we'll learn from it.

It could be the larger particles but I use a fine micron charcoal filter under the sink, and my guess is that the filter takes out almost all of the trace elements with the impurities. I was buying distilled water but I want to cut costs so I started using filtered water and now I'll add Cal-Mag to it (I thought about your suggestion and magnesium isn't the only thing that's being taken out of this overfiltered water, so I should just go with an all round trace element replacement with calcium and iron in it too). If that doesn't solve the problem I will have to switch back to distilled.

If I read info or get it from someone else it helps, but I tend to forget it in time. If I experiment and learn from the mistakes I make it will stick with me for life. I guess that's the best way I can explain my crash-my-head-into-it-to-see-if-it-will-break method of learning.

 

[Twelve12]

This is the chart that often good for a quick glance at what's going on with the plant's health.

Looks like potassium deficiency.

 

[PotChimp]

Wow, thanks for posting the pic. I like the books I have, but one area that they are lacking in is good illustrations. They don't show the progressive stages of a deficiency either. Cool, now I have an image I can print and put in my records that clearly shows differences in magnesium, manganese, and potassium deficiencies (they all look the same in these books I have). When I get a chance I'll give a :MoreNutes: of Fox Farms Beastie Bloom (0-50-30) at full strength (1 tsp./gal.) to all of them except the Kwazulu and see what happens.

 

[PotChimp]

Flowering : Day 2
The Kwazulu is recovering from the stress of bending. It sounded like someone put a folded towel on a nacho chip laying on the floor and stepped on it when I 90 degree bent it I won't try to put an extreme bend in a woody stocked plant again.

The Raspberry Cough is showing some hairs.

Not the best pic, but there's not much to see either. The Panama is just showing a little.

 

[PotChimp]

Going to give them a :MoreNutes: when the pots are dry enough. I'll lay off full nutes on the Kwazulu because of something I read on one of Mandala's strain ads. I just ordered 10 Satori reg seeds (THC 23-28% woohoo!) from that company, and the ad states that their strains require little nutes; some can go without in fertile enough soil. I'll keep my eye on the signs of deficiency just in case.

 

[PotChimp]

Flowering : Day 11
Here's a pic just before I put the Kwazulu in a bigger pot, cleaned up the floor of the tent, adjusted and watered them all.

The Raspberry Cough

Wild Thailand

Panama

South African Kwazulu

In a few days I will switch the lights to the 2-150w HPS ballasts. I transplanted the Kwazulu to a larger pot (just in case rootbound is part of the the reason for the wilt). Gonna be a long run on these.....