Zero Tolerance's 2020 Multi Strain Coco Grow

[ZeroTolerance]

I'm a new cannabis grower (been growing regular veggies for a few years), so I've been documenting my grows pretty closely, and figured I might as well post them to keep things organized and get some feedback. My first grow of 2 x Pineapple Express Autos & 3 x Afghani Autos (both from Grower's Choice) is wrapping up with pretty mediocre results, so this grow is a redemption challenge for me.

I'm gonna be growing 4 strains from feminized seeds I popped within the last few weeks. I plan on vegging the plants out, taking clones, flowering most of the clones, while treating one clone of each strain with gibberellic acid to herm them and get some seeds.

My seedling / early veg setup is as follows:

- 4'x4'x4' insulated box with mylar sheeting positioned inside to form an ~2.5'x2.5' grow space
- 1 x Spider Farmer SF-1000 light
- 1 desk fan running inside the box for circulation, set high enough to cause gentle movement of the plants' leaves
Temps have been in the 70's with humidity around to 50%

I'm running Fox Farms Coco Loco soil, first in solo cups, then 1 gallon white pots, then 7 gallon smart pots. The fertilizer I'm using is Jack's Hydroponics at a 31 ratio, though I plan on playing around with adding MKP, Urea, Ammonium Phosphate, Potassium Silicate, and maybe Humic Acid. I'm also going to amend my soil with azomite in case the nutrient formulations I make are lacking micro.

Here are some pics of the plants as of today (1/15/20), the small ones poked out of the soil between the 11th and the 12th, so they're about 3 days old.

World of Seeds - Northern Lights x Big Bud

This guy took the longest to germinate at 3 days. All my seeds were soaked in ~ 50/50 R/O + tap water for 12 hours at about 80f, then transferred to paper towels in bags with the same water / temps. The seed for this plant fell out of the paper towel somehow, and stayed drier than the other seeds for about 12 hours, which I believe slowed it's germination.

Canuck Seeds - Do-Si-Dos

This one had the seed case stuck to it when it popped, and took a little damage as I removed it.

Canuck Seeds - Original Skunk #1

A little yellowing on one of the leaves there, not sure what it's from but I'm not particularly concerned.

Grower's Choice Seeds - "Mexican Haze" (It's a cross of a few different Mexican landraces, but don't think it has any actual Haze in it)

Day 1 for her was 12/26, and as you can see she's been topped, trimmed, and transplanted (not in that order).

This grow setup is definitely lacking in a few areas, and as such the plants are only going to be in there temporarily. My grow room is still under construction, as of right now I have a fairly operational flower room (I'll post some pics of that later when the lights come on), but there's still a lot of unused space I have plans for.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

A few pics of the flower room

2 Viparspectra 130w Leds and a 600w HPS. My super high tech reflective wall on the right is usually right next to the canopy.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Got a small update here with a few pics of the veg and bloom areas

Veg:
Mexican Haze

Seedlings (SS#1, D-S-Ds, NLxBB, Yellow Bell, Buttercrunch)

Flower (all afghani autos):

This is the start of flower week 7 after a measly 3 weeks of veg from seed. The breeder's website says these are gonna take 10 weeks to mature, so I'm paying attention of when I need to start winding things down / flushing. As of right now I'm feeding them Jack's Hydro nutrients at 3/2/1 g per gallon with 1g/gallon of potassium silicate, 1 g/gal of MKP, and 10ml/gal of molasses. I'll probably cut the supplements with my next watering in about 2 days, and use only the molasses and Jack's.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Another update, after two and a half weeks, there's been some big progress so I'll do this in two posts.

First, the three Afghani Autoflowers:
Here they are a little while ago, the one in the middle was chopped a couple days afterwards

Close-up on the one on the right/in the back

A little over a week week ago, after chopping the middle one. The one on the left was chopped on the 30th, and is now drying.

Bud Shots:
This first one was a little deficient going into flush, so it looks a little weird. I think that the bud quality may have been affected, as it doesn't seem to have produced as much as the first one I chopped. It smells really fruity though, and did end up purpling just a little bit, which I like visually.

Plant #3, still growing as of right now, just started to yellow a couple days ago, so it should be done soon. This pheno foxtailed more than the others, but overall looks healthier. It was also the runt of the litter, which may explain why it's taking longer to mature.

I've tried smoking some of the first plant I chopped, and it tasted terrific, despite not being cured at all. The flavors are very herbal, and remind me of cardamom, thyme, and maybe even star anise.

Finished Bud Shots:

 

[ZeroTolerance]

cont.
A selection of buds:

And some dry sift:

As I wrap things up with this round of plants I'd say that the results aren't too bad for a first time grow, though I have plenty of things I plant to improve upon for next time.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Now onto the plants this thread is actually about, the multi strains coco girls. The exposure on my camera was a little low in these pics, but they're still pretty clear.

Here's the Grower's Choice "Mexican Haze" mexican landrace mother plant:

It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but it's now in a 5 gallon grow bag, and has gotten pretty large.

Here are the other 3 mother plants (Do-Si-Do back left, Super Skunk #1 back right, NLxBB front left, Yellow Bell front right)

The NLxBB was showing some strange warped /wrinkled leaves which you can still kinda see if you zoom in. Not sure what the cause was, but after topping, transplanting, raising the temp from ~63f to 72f, and bumping up the nutes to full strength it is recovering, and isn't too far behind the others.

Nutes for week of 2/3/20 (notes largely for my own sake)
Base:
Jacks Hydro Part A @ 3.6g/gal
Epsom Salts @ 1.2g/gal
Calcium Nitrate (jack's part B in this case) 2.4g/gal

Supplements:
In 1 gal of R/O water:
General Hydroponics pH Down (added first to balance the highly basic silicate, and allow it to dissolve into solution) @ 2.5 ml/g of silicate

Potassium Silicate (potentially caustic in dry and concentrated forms, careful) @ 1g/gal of nutrient solution (I was mixing a 9 gallon batch so I used 9 grams)

The procedure for a 9 gallon :
1.) get two 1 gallon jugs, fill one with your r/o water, and keep the other empty
2.) add the ~23 mL of pH down to the empty jug
3.) fill the jug with pH down in it ~1/3 of the way full with r/o water, and mix
4.) very carefully, while wearing eye protection and gloves, weigh 9 grams of potassium silicate, ensuring that any spills are wiped up immediately
5.) using a funnel (i use a borosilicate glass funnel, but plastic or paper would likely work), add the 9g of silicate to the partially full jug, and mix well
6.) Add the rest of the r/o water to the partially full jug, and mix again, the silicate will not be fully dissolved at this point (at least with the ~60f water that I use) so you can either wait until it dissolves fully (which will take at least an hour), you can heat the solution, or you can do what I do:
7.) Using an airstone, and a circulation pump, get the water in your nutrient reservoir circulating quickly.
8.) Slowly add the silicate solution / mixture to the reservoir, mixing it as you go to ensure undissolved particles are in suspension.
9.) Rinse the jug that contained the silica solution with the reservoir water to get any dregs out
10.) allow the water to circulate for a few hours to get everything dissolved, then adjust pH as needed, keeping in mind that the silica and ph down will act as a really strong buffer that will require you to use more pH adjuster than you otherwise would. It is important to pH the silicate solution BEFORE adding it to the nutrient reservoir, as adding it straight will jack up the pH and cause your base nutes to precipitate out of solution (though the precipitate will mostly dissolve again if the pH is brought back down).

For the batch I mixed:
pH: 5.8
PPM / EC: 850 / 1.7

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Update 3/9: looks like it's been over a month since the last update so I'm overdue for an update.

The Northern Lights x Big Bud, Super Skunk #1, and Do-Si-Dos have all been doing well, though their growth is behind schedule due to a ventilation / CO2 issue.
Here they are a week or two ago:

The small plants in the middle are Mexican Haze clones

Here's the Mexican Haze mother plant around the same time:

She got moved over to my newly build flower room about a week ago. I lollipopped her and gave her a top dress of Alfalfa, Kelp, equal parts nitrogen and phosphorus bat guano, azomite, and humic acid.

I took clones off the NLxBB/DSD/SS#1 on 2/28:

They're in a homemade incubator/clone box which sits at around 70-73 f constantly. For some reason they still haven't rooted after 10 days. My Mexican Haze clones were rooted in about 7 days, but I gave them weaker nutes which caused them to yellow, so I theorize that the more recent clones have been devoting more energy to foliage development than root growth because of the available nutrients.

I transplanted the three mother plants to 7 gal fabric pots in preparation for flower, they should be ready to flip in about 1-1.5 weeks. The SS#1 is in 2:1 coco perlite mix, and the other two are in a mix of about 1 part promix from my last grow to 1 part 2:1 coco perlite mix. I added some alfalfa meal, kelp meal, azomite, epsom salts, and molasses to the latter mix to encourage beneficial microbial activity, and counteract any residual pests from the old soil that I mixed in. It should be noted that I had /have no insects or pests of any kind in my grow room, so reusing soil is less risky. If I do encounter pests in the future I'll likely compost or sterilize my soil before reusing it.

All three plants:

Do-Si-Dos

NLxBB, still looking a little weird:

Super Skunk #1 with a double stem on one of the branches in the bottom left:

Mexican Haze clones:

The clones been growing really slowly, not sure if they got transplant shock, deficiency, or something else, but I hit them with some foliar spray today so hopefully they'll take off soon.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Picture of the newly build flower room with Mars Hydro TSL-2000's:

Mexican Haze is in there doing pretty good

 

[captainhowdy]

Looking good, I am also running a World of seeds Northern Lights X Big Bud in my LATEST grow! I'll be following! Stop by my journal!

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Update 4/5:
The Northern Lights x Big Bud, Super Skunk #1, and Do-Si-Dos have all been moved into the flower room, defoliated, and flipped.

After 10 days in the flower room, here's how they look:
Back Left: Mexican Haze; Front Left: Original Skunk #1 (I may have mistakenly written this as Super Skunk #1 in previous posts)

Back Left: Northern Lights x Big Bud; Front Left: Do-Si-Dos

They're all gonna need another round of defoliation, which I'll probably do today.

Nutes have been Jacks 3/2/1 @ 1100 ppm (x700 conv. fact.), 1g/gal Monopotassium Phosphate, and 10 ml / gal blackstrap molasses. I also top dressed about a month ago with: kelp meal, alfalfa meal, nitrogen bat guano, phosphorus bat guano, bone meal, azomite, humic acid, and epsom salts, all mixed at ratios based on the recommended application rates.

The Mexican Haze is in week 4 (day 29) of flower, so I took some bud shots. The pics didn't turn out that great though, so I plan to get some better ones tonight.

For a pure sativa bred entirely from landraces it's pretty frosty at week four. The breeder (growers choice) says it'll be a 9 to 11 week flower, so by that time I should have some pretty fire buds.

As a side note, here are a few pics of my clones that I treated with Gibberellic Acid:

They're growing in strange and mysterious ways, but I'm starting to see some male flowers forming so I should be able to harvest some pollen soon. The plant in the back right is a female mexican haze, which I'm gonna pollinate.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Improved pictures & defoliation update

Before:

After:

Might have gone a little more aggressive than some people prefer but the plants are still growing fine.

Bud shot:

 

[Backlipslide]

No effing around!! Gettin right into it!

welcome to

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Quick update here, plants have been growing along steadily. I had a little growth dip after defoliating (i think i went a little too hard), but the plants have bounced back. At this point I've got everything growing through the scrog net and bent into position, so now it's just time to sit back and wait for the buds to develop.

Original Skunk #1

Mexican Haze (about 4 weeks ahead of the others):

Top down shot:

NLxBB (a little blurry):

Do-Si-Dos:

The mexican haze trichs are starting to turn amber on the top buds. It's supposed to be a 9 to 11 week strain, and im currently on day 57 (week 8 day 1) so I'm gonna start flushing with r/o water. It's a little early, but as you can see in the pics it had / has some deficiencies that I wasn't able to correct, which likely caused the early maturation. Not a huge loss though, it was a bonus seed that came with another order, so I wasn't too set on getting to quality buds from it.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

Post-Harvest / Final Update​

It's time for the (long overdue) final update to this grow. Due to coronavirus complications / mental health reasons I haven't been super motivated lately, but as things have stabilized a little I'm feeling better, so here we go. I'm gonna break the post up into two parts, the condensed version with the best pictures and summary of the rest of the grow, and the technical version with all the data and specifics.

I only took pre-harvest pics of the Do-Si-Dos:

Looking nice and frosty

Here's how it looks trimmed and dried

Interestingly the Do-Si-Dos stretched the most out of all my strains (including the supposedly 100% sativa "mexican haze" I grew) AND had the most sativa-y looking bud structure despite being an indica dominant strain. I cut the plant on 6/3 at day 78 (more on that in the technical section) and had a total yield of 86.7 grams (~3oz)

Next up is the Original Skunk #1

It's a nice hybrid, I can definitely feel the sativa buzz initially, but after that wears off it's somewhat calming. Overall it's pretty similar to the Blue Dream that I've tried. The smell is primarily lemon, with less of a strong skunk smell than I was hoping for. The first weed I ever smoked was Sour Diesel, and I thought this would be pretty similar in terms of skunkiness, but it's not. Maybe it's missing the gas / diesel smell, or maybe I'm misremembering what Sour D smells like, regardless it's a good strain, although not the highest yielder in my setup, coming in at 85.7 grams (3 oz) of about half good nugs like those in the pictures, and half small/popcorn buds which aren't that appealing.

Next up is (in my opinion) the best of the bunch Northern Lights x Big Bud

It's a super calming indica, perfect for treating insomnia, which is what I primarily use cannabis for. The smell / flavor is very herbal with a little bite to it. I kinda thought the bite was lemon, but looking at Northern Lights on leafly it says that "peppery" is one of the flavors, so it's probably that. The strain was extremely productive, yielding 123.5 grams or 4.36 oz. Almost all the buds big were like the ones above, with a mix of green and purple from the foliage, and nice bright orange from the pistils.

Last up is the Mexican Haze from Growers Choice Seeds (specifying because it's not actually a cross of haze, or a single mexican landrace, but a mix of a bunch of mexican landraces)

It's nice and frosty, and is definitely a heavy sativa, pretty much a pure head high with some weird trippy feelings that I don't usually get from weed. I haven't smoked this one much because it feels really strong, makes me kinda anxious, and keeps me awake if I smoke it even close when I go to sleep. Because I haven't used that much, I'm not too familiar with the specific flavors, but smell-wise it's a mix between herbal and this interesting floral smell that reminds me of roses or rose water. Not sure if I'd recommend it medically, but if you like strong sativas you'll probably like this. It was a relatively low yielder at only 50.8 grams (1.8 oz), but it was grown in a five gallon grow bag instead of the 7 gallon root pots the other plants were in. This strain took 64 days to flower, which is probably indicative of how long the other strains would have taken under normal circumstances.

Overall this grow went ok, there were a lot of complications which aren't really relevant to most growers, so I'm saving them for the technical section. Basically the info above represents how this grow would have gone if I had been purely doing it to produce flower. In terms of strains, I can say that all four grew well, with the NLxBB being my personal favorite, winning over the others mostly because I prefer the effects. Thanks to everyone who check this grow journal out, and provided feedback, I hope I was able to share some interesting things with you all. If you're interested in more stats about lighting / power usage etc, or if you want to hear about my misadventures with gibberellic acid, I'll post more info in below this post.

 

[ZeroTolerance]

The Technical Section​

I'd like to think that I'm a scientifically minded person, so I've gathered and analyzed a lot of info from this grow. There's quite a bit of it, and it's mostly gonna be a way of getting my thoughts written down and saved somewhere, but I think it might interest some people (and might let them learn from my mistakes).

Part I: Materials and Yield analysis for this grows flower phase

The soil I used was a mix of peat based supersoil from my last grow, coco-coir, and perlite. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to say that it cost about as much as 70/30 coco perlite mix, which I calculated would cost about $9.7 per cubic foot. Between my three 7 gallon fabric pots and my one 5 gallon grow bag I used about 25 trade gallons (how growing containers are measured, 0.75 gallons or 3 quarts) or 75 quarts of soil, which calculates out to be $24.25 of soil for this run. I classify the soil as a non-disposable resource, as I reuse it after re-amending and letting it cook for a while.

I used Jack's nutrients with the 3/2/1 formula. Based on my roughly 10 gallon per week water usage, I calculated the combined cost of nutrients and water for the grow was roughly $43.66. However, this was using tap water costs, and I used R/O water for most of my grow, bringing the actual cost to about $58.29

Container costs were negligible

Energy cost for the lights (I didn't use a/c or humidifiers for this grow, so I saved a lot on energy there) ended up being $117.5 at 23c/kWh, thanks to my LED setup which only pulled 600w to light a 5x5. These costs are actually inflated, however, as my flush ended up going 2 weeks later that I wanted it to due to unforeseen circumstances.

My yields for this run were decent from a per plant perspective, but pretty bad from a g/watt perspective. My two Mars Hydro TSL-2000's pull 600 watts total, and my yields were 346.7g, giving me 0.578 g/ watt. I think that growing 6-8 plants in my 4x5 foot space instead of 4 would give me better yields, and lower veg times.

After considering a number of factors, the overall cost of disposables for this run was $215.86, which isn't half bad considering I pulled a little over 3/4 of a pound of flower, despite certain complications.

Part II: Growing techniques
The plants used in this run were grown from seed, and were topped twice during veg. I actually used them as mother plants, and took clones off of them during veg, which didn't seem to affect their growth too much. I didn't end up using LST or Supercropping, as the plants were actually too short to reach my bottom layer of scrog netting 3' off the ground. This is likely because I cut their veg time short (I got bored waiting for them to grow while my flower room was empty). I ended up having to boost them up by stacking short pieces of 2x4 underneath their drip trays. I lolipopped the plants once at about week one of flower, and made the mistake of taking off too much vegetation at once, which slowed growth for the next week. Going forward, I'm going to do smaller defoliations with a few days in between to prevent shock. I also left a lot of popcorn buds on the bottom of the plant, which ended up being useless, so in the future I'll trim those too.

Part III: Pollination
And now for the most interesting part of the grow, pollination. I had four clones, one from each strain I was growing, which I treated with gibberellic acid (GA3) in order to produce pollen. I had these plants on a semi-enclosed shelf next to my vent fan, but they were still in the flower room. My original intent was to wait until male flowers had formed, cut them before they opened, put them in some water/nutes, and collect the pollen as they opened. The problem, however, was that my clones didn't end up producing male flowers after the first GA3 treatment (the ppm was likely too low) and reverted back to weird looking females without actually having any male flowers open. This was frustrating to me, and at this point I was very busy and didn't have a ton of time to spend working on the garden, so I hit the plants with some more of the GA3 solution, and let them do their thing. This time they actually did produce male flowers, but I didn't see any pollen coming from them at first, so I thought they were sterile or something. As time went on though, I was able to see some pollen coming the flowers when I pulled them off, at which point I moved all the clones to a different room. I had heard that the pistils on a pollinated plant go orange/brown really quickly, and that it's buds would mature faster, so when I saw that my plants weren't doing that I assumed that they hadn't been pollinated.
Fast forward a few weeks, only the NLxBB clone is producing a visible amount of pollen, and the tester female clone which I had left with the GA3 treated male clones didn't have any seeds forming in it. At this point, I thought the GA3 thing was a total bust, chopped the males, and decided to try again later.
Things went smoothly in the flower room until flush, where the plants, despite yellowing / purpling, weren't having their trichomes cloud. I can think of three reasons why the trichomes didn't seem to be developing: one is that the plants were pollinated and that somehow interfered, two is that the organic amendments I'd added to the soil in week 2 hadn't broken down fully and were stopping the plants from flushing, and three which is that I might have been looking at the wrong trichomes, or thought that they were clear when they were actually cloudy. I ended up flushing the plants for about 3 weeks total before they reached the level of trichome cloudiness that I wanted. I think that the leftover fertilizer theory holds water, because I saw a lot of purpling in the plants even when some fan leaves hadn't even started to yellow. Maybe the fertilizer that was left in the soil had a high level of nitrogen and a low level of phosphorus, making the plants purple out, but not triggering the full end of life ripening cycle that makes the trichomes cloud up.
Fast forward again about a month, and the harvested buds are finally dry. I start breaking up the first bud of this harvest to put into my grinder, when I suddenly hear a tink, and see that a seed fell onto the table in front of me. As it turned out, all the plants except for the Mexican Haze (which got chopped a month early because it was older) had seeds in them. On further inspection, I saw that some of the buds had nanners on them, with two or three male hermie flowers having opened. This is where things get a little complicated, because I'm not sure if the hermie flowers caused the pollination, or the GA3 plants caused the pollination. I'm leaning towards the GA3 clones being the pollinators, as I am pulling a number of fully mature seeds out of my buds, which should need at least a month to form. I'm sure that there weren't any nanners in the first week of flush, so they must have formed during the plants' last two weeks of life, meaning that all the mature seeds should be from the GA3 pollen, and as such shouldn't be prone to turning hermaphroditic when they're grown out.
Basically what I'm left with now is a bunch of seeds which I know the mothers of, but don't know the fathers of. From a practical perspective, they're completely useless, but to me they're really cool because there could be any number of interesting crosses, which could produce some really nice phenos. Admittedly, the chances of a good cross are low, I'm gonna have a hard time growing out ~400 seeds 12 at a time with the plant count limits, and the genetics are probably unstable / degraded because of the GA3, but I'm a dreamer so I'm still excited.
With this post the journal is officially over, and I think I've learned a lot from this grow, and may have even created a new strain, so I think I'll end things here, and start back up with my next grow.

 

[Backlipslide]

Lookin great!