I was about to say the same thing. Very cool image and the plants look lovely.
Great tip! Thanks Carcass. @Stunger I like the cut paste for tree pruning too. Elmer's glue is waaaaay cheaper though! I am definitely going to be trying that one. Winter pruning on a bunch of fruit trees coming up soon.
Thanks Carcass! Do you mean to just 'paint' it on to seal the exposed and previously internal part of the plant? And what do you think for the hollow area that is exposed, would you 'fill it up' with the glue to seal it?
Cheers BA! I'll take another look at my tube of pruning cut paste tomorrow, maybe I can 'fill in' the hollow with it.
Hey VetSmoke85, Happy belated new year. So you agree there's a sweet spot depending on the factors you mentioned, which I agree with. So do you usually remove the second node growth? How about the third? Do you have any sense of at which node the buds begin to be more legit? I've gotten great buds from the second node, but there's always a ton of unused stem on it. I'm thinking fewer low nodes with long stems, and more upper nodes with shorter, but significant stems. Any thoughts on that?I don't know about the 'great'.But thanks mate. This is something I've thought a little about and I reckon it depends on many things. There will be a sweet spot I'm sure but it will all depend on strain, pheno, pot size, etc. That sweet spot will vary. I've found that fewer but denser colas is easier when it comes to trimming though. Ha ha. I did feel when I trained to have more colas they weren't as large or dense but it could have been several factors that caused that. It would be interesting to do a little experiment with clones one day.
Nice catch when you did, Stunger. I use the exact same things. Vigoro, right? They're essentially the same thing a loaf of bread is closed with, a twist tie. The Vigoro ones are a little softer, but even with them, I have experienced the exact same thing and thankfully caught it before I got a break like yours. But it does explain everything basically. I have learned to make loops with them that are created by twisting. That way I can simply untwist a length to open up the loop and I never have it twisted around the plant. I have yet to find the "perfect" product in this regard.Update - A Holy f%*k moment, and a further gender reveal.
Greetings 420 folks! There wasn't going to be an update today, it began like any other day. The plants are showing growth each morning when I check on them. We're going thru a nice patch of hot sunny weather. I even gave them them a dash of Kelp concentrate, fish hydrolysate, humid/fulvic acids into their usual water with worm wee added.
All quite uneventful until I looked closer...
The holy f%*k moment
I apologise for my use of the keyboard but I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and it suddenly explained the injury to the mainstem of the Honduras/Panama x Purple Honduras. The plastic coated garden wire was cutting into the mainstem as it grew. The previous spool of garden wire was notably softer whereas the current one is stronger in the wire. Each LST tie that I attached to the mainstem I wrapped around 1.5 times but without any twist to fix it, as my intention was that the plant could then expand it accordingly as it grew. I was shocked when I noticed that half the LST ties were actually sunken into the stem tissue, or rather, the expanding plant had clearly not expanded the garden wire but had simply grew around and over it. That explains the position of the break and the brown edges that occurred to the H/PxPH. The break was right at the apex of pressure of the restraining tie as the stem was bent forward by another tie. This occurred over some time as the plant grew around the tie until it cut itself in half. So I consider myself lucky that I spotted this when I did, Otherwise in by another few days, the other plant would have been similarly damaged. After this I'll go check my grape vine that has been growing nicely since I put it in in Spring, I have some ties on that too, so I hope they're not causing any similar damage. But hey when it comes to garden plants, I've got my priorities!
Honduras/Panama x Purple Honduras
I turned the plant around to show it's fuller side!
Following is a side on pic showing the damaged mainstem. I looked closely to see if there was anything that as assisting giving support to it's mainstem, but nothing (this was when I noticed the damage caused by the LST ties). I originally rested the damaged point upon the black plastic stake and wrapped a bit of garden wire above it to help it avoid being blown off in the wind, but it has surprisingly grown up and off the stake, to now be pushing upwards against the wire.
So anyway, I released/loosened all ties to the growing mainstems. There was some other damage but I think it'll be minor and the plants will rapidly heal themselves at those points. Of course with the main point of damage shown above, I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how it heals and maybe give it a binding of sorts if I can do so without causing my damage.
Well onto another gender reveal. I have spotted new pistils on the Honduras/Panama x Purple Honduras!
So that's great, 3 girls!
I will have to rapidly get on to their training because they're noticeably growing each day.
Malawi/Ethiopian x Mulanje
There is not much I can add about her. But she is growing strongly and thankfully I got those cutting ties off her before any real damage was done.
Mulanje female
She is growing nicely. I need to go over her training very soon as she's having a bit of a stretch at the moment.
Thanks for popping in. All the best!
I've usually kept nodes 3 & 4 but have kept the 2nd on a few plants. Depends how the plants growing and how I'm feeling about it. I've noticed too that the 2nd node you'll get a long stem with longer internode spacing and they have a tendency to want to fall over as the top bud fills out. On the upcoming auto grow I might do one with nodes 2,3,4 and one with 3,4,5. I'd say if I was growing a photoperiod I'd usually get rid of the 2nd node but with autos I might keep it depending on the growth rate.
Thanks Shed! To think I germinated 5 sativa seeds, lost one to a slug, and got 1 male Mulanje, and 3 females, it can't get much better than that! Altho I will look to do another update shortly with some further good news.
You're not worried too much pollen will get into the air? How about other growers near you?
Thanks Shed! I truly thought it had gone mutant and would not recover. I only wish I'd taken better pics to illustrate it's change, as it does make one realise that some of these mutants can recover,
No, not really. The male will be diagonally at the back of the property and the prevailing winds should clear it away.
Near me? Well that would be against the law if they were doing that (haha) and a risk they'd have to accept! But I have not had such issues on past grows so should be ok hopefully.
I should add, that my main aim is to make more Mulanje seeds, and secondary the other 2 sativa which are themselves crosses.
Awesome pics, Stunger. I have a question - that space near the back fence where you put the male looks super sweet and not exposed to passersby. How come you don't use that instead of the balcony? Also on that bad break, I cannot believe the plant did what it's done here. It basically has fixed itself despite never "straightening out" the main nute tube in the center of the stem. That rough patch of heal is bent almost 90 degrees, fgs! Yet somehow the nutes and water are getting fully up that sweet main stem, them taking a hard turn while the tube in the middle MUST get smaller in circumference, then back to the sweet, full stem again post break. Like, the fact that it can negotiate the inside of what must be going on in the break is just amazing, I would never have thought that could happen. Awesome. Bet you get a huge knuckle there and it becomes one of the strongest branches.General update
Greetings 420 enthusiasts! It's gone 11pm here, and I've just got back from drone fishing, no luck with the big ones tonight, the 7 we caught all got released back to grow bigger for another day, but nonetheless it is nice to be out and feel the fresh air and enjoy the views.
Anyway, earlier in the day I took a few pics of the plants but I didn't have time to upload them, so here they are.
Mango Sherbert
Honduras/Panama x Purple Honduras
I used some arborist pruning repair product to cover up the exposed break in the mainstem. She seems to have taken to it without protest. Rather astonishingly in spite of her damaged mainstem she is still trying to lift herself higher against the wire that is holding her down. It will be interesting how she responds to the damage, and whether it will make a big knuckle to strengthen itself, or whether I'll have to add some sort of bracing, we'll see.
Malawi/Ethiopian x Mulanje
Mulanje male
Mulanje female
Not much to add, mostly pictorial!
Thanks for dropping by, and wishing all the best to your own gardens!
Thanks Jon. After a lot of consideration I deemed the balcony to be the best available location that I had stealth wise, if the back neighbours eyeballed thru the fence gaps they could actually see that plant which I will probably move to another part out the back where it would get less sun but be harder to see.
Looking wonderful! Great to see your progress. I know how touchy it gets with Neighbors I though I was pretty good here with a tree lined privacy fence and several weeks ago there was a line man in a cherry picker trimming branches off the neighbors power lines! AAGGGHH! and last season i looked up to see a drone the power company was using to servail the power lines, I looked up at the humming sound 75 feet above my head and I almost swallowed my tongue.
Thanks tropics, I know what you mean with unexpected 'incursions' to your stealth efforts. Last week when mowing the lawn, I could hear the neighbour cleaning out his gutters. When I got to the back yard he was on top of his garage and he sees me and we had a 5 minute chinwag, the whole time I am aware the male Mulanje was just 10 feet behind me so I was trying keep his eyes engaged while hoping that I was blocking the view behind me, there wasn't much else I could do.
Gotcha. Just curious. That makes perfect sense.
