Blackberry Kush 400W MH/HPS 4x4 & Maybe More

TheFertilizer

Well-Known Member
Well, I had to start over, and I wanted to wait until I actually had some established clones and stuff before starting up this journal.

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This is Blackberry Kush. It's from a bagseed, but I'm pretty sure of the pedigree because the last time I grew Blackberry Kush it was also from bagseed, and it looks just like the same plant. It's a great strain, I sometimes worry about working with bagseed of a strain that seems to go hermie a lot, but so far it's been a great one to work with. It's heavy on Afghani genetics, but there's some dispute about the exact lineage, but it's definitely an indica dominant. I have been harvesting it at 9 weeks into flower and like the result. I did a little review on it in the strain review section.

Anyway, the thing is, I really like the taste and the bud structure, plus it makes great concentrates. I have looked around for seeds online but it seems like a clone-only specimen ( except with it self-pollinates ) and so I want to hang on to it. That being said, I have some other genetics I'd really like to try, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do to preserve the strain but I am pretty sold on using collidal silver to make some feminized seeds.

Well, first things first, and I just barely got these clones established. I planted them in clear cups, sleeved in blue ones, that way I could keep an eye on the root development. Today they were reaching the bottoms so I popped them into one gallon containers of Fox Farms Happy Frog.

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One of them I don't think is going to make it, and I'm actually going to need to cull some out anyway, but for now they're all in their 1 gallon homes for now. Eventually I need to end up with 6 total, and I'm going to keep the mother alive, but I'm not sure what I want to do with her.

Basically my options are...

1. Put the mother in a corner under some 85W florescent and veg it out while the clones finish up and just keep taking cuts off it as needed

or

2. Flower the mother and put the clones under the florescent so that way I get some medicine before a full veg/bloom cycle

Each option has their draw backs, with 1 being the obvious that I have to wait longer to harvest, and I'm almost out of meds, so that's a big factor against it. On the other hand, if I flower the mother out and then the clones as well, then I'm going to have to take more clones at some point before I flower, or try to do it after they've flowered... I haven't had very much success with the second.

Anyway, for the mean time I accidentally let the mother develop a magnesium deficiency, so I need to let her recover anyway. She's going to be 3 months old in two days, and hasn't even rooted into the 7 gallon pot, so I figure I should give her some more veg time anyway. Plus I just did some FIM'ing and topping on her branches... She's had quite the life.

I WAS training her to be kind of a mainline/manifold setup...
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The rest of the plants around her were Platinum Girl Scout Cookies, still not really sure what happened to them, you can follow that in my other journal. Anyway, I decided on culling them and using all these branches off the Blackberry Kush to start over.

I think this picture says it all... It was like the one healthy plant in an oasis of dying ones. It had the same treatment as the others too, but like last time this Blackberry Kush always stayed strong. I'm not really too prideful to admit I'd like to keep a strain that's hard to kill around.
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In the next couple weeks I'm also going to be getting a second tent. I'm not sure what size, thinking about another 4x4 since I have the room. I'm probably going to try to find a nicer light so that it can be a veg/nursery tent though. So in the meantime, I'm just basically letting these grow.

I also ended up toping and FIM'ing the tops on the mother too. So now there are two branches with two growing tops, and two with three growing tops. I think it will be cool to see what that looks like while flowering. Kind of hard to see the 3 new tops on the FIMs. I think doing them all at once probably stressed her out, so I'm expecting her to start growing more in the next week or two now that she's got new tops going.

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Anyway, that's all for now. Still wondering if I want to get a 4x4 tent or something smaller. I remember the one I have was a real pain to put together, and I can't imagine it would be easier with another one already in the room...

Leaving this last one up just to see how much she improves by my next update...

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Black berry kush is a very good strain very good I love it personally especially the smoke the vault has auto BlackBerry kush seeds

Sent from my SM-G935T using 420
 
Well, things took an interesting twist. I realized that the donor plant was getting too big to flower in my tent without some kind of training, so I decided to scrog it up. Unfortunately I misinterpreted some wilting signs yesterday as it needing water and over-watered it, so I am still waiting for it to bounce back before I flip it.

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Meanwhile, I moved the clones out of the tent so they could get some more intense light closer to where it needs. These CFLs really seem to be well liked by plants any time I use them, their leaves always get very perky. Honestly I think they probably do a better job than my MH bulb until light requirements increase. I am going to be looking into getting some 6400K T5 flourescents for the veg tent if/when I get it.

I think I need to top these soon as well. They're already about 4 or 5 nodes on.

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Well I ended up getting another 4x4 tent for veg phase. I meant to get a 3x3, but a 4x4 showed up. I also got a 8 bulb T5, but I don't really think it's even as bright as the other CFLs that I was using before.

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Meanwhile, the scrog plant still looks pretty bad. I don't think it's too frequent watering, I've been letting it dry out, but maybe too much water at once. I gave it about half of what I have been giving it this time. I also just went ahead and flipped it to 12/12, because I'm tired of trying to let it recover before flowering and just wasting time.
 
Well, I'm pretty confident that it was over-watering, but not frequency wise. Just too much water at once. I let it dry out, gave it half a gallon only, and the leaves stopped looking so droopy the next day.

I think the smart pot kind of threw me through a loop versus normal watering. It dries along the outside edges of the pot very quickly, but the inside center stays moist for much longer. I'm going to focus on watering along the edges so that it "pulls in" towards the center and the roots must seek out to the sides.

I'm not seeing a lot of run off with only a gallon, but I don't really feel confident in increasing the volume of water just yet. I'm using EarthJuice though, so at least salt buildup shouldn't be too much.
 
Well, I decided to up-pot the clones today. I've been trying to find the right timing on when to transplant, and I think I've got it down to a point where I can get them right as the roots start to circle the bottom of the pot. Anyway, I put them all into a 3 gallon pot, using Fox Farms Happy Frog. I'm not really sure if this light is really that strong for them, but I have 8 weeks to veg them out anyway.

The scrog plant is showing pistils now, so I hope it's not too late to spray it with CS to get pollen. I think I might sacrifice one of the 5 clones to spray with CS and make sure that I get some pollen, because I really want to play with some other genetics I have lined up, but need to make seeds of this one before I stop running it. I'm going to have to take a generation of clones off of this current set, and then pollinate them.

I feel like these things might be ready for flower sooner than 8 weeks, so I kind of feel like I'm wasting my time with this plant in the scrog. The light doesn't really show the discoloring issues very well, but I really am not expecting it to yield very much, and probably not very good bud. If it comes down to it, and these clones are ready to flower before this one is done, I might flower it under the T5 while flowering the clones under my HPS instead.

I think I'm pretty far off from running any kind of perpetual setup. I have too many different strains I want to try anyway. Right now this is more or less a matter or preserving this one, and I'm kind of losing my enthusiasm for it. Especially considering the different varieties I have to try...

Platinum Girl Scout Cookies x Cherry OG
Panama x Malawi
Gold Tiger F1
Bangi Haze

Haven't really decided which of those I want to start next. The Golden Tiger has a lot of possibilities for different phenotypes too because it's a F1. The Panama x Malawi is said to be a very heavy yielder, and the Bangi Haze finishes flowering much quicker than either. Meanwhile the Platinum Girl Scout Cookies x Cherry OG is a total unpredictable cross I made. In any case, it's going to get kind of complicated figuring the timing of things, all these breeding goals, but on top of that I just simply need to get more meds.

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Well I got my colloidal silver in the mail today and I decided to take one of the veg plants out to spray and throw into flower. I figure I don't really need an awful lot of pollen, and checking the little plant for pollen sacks will be easier than carefully checking the scrog plant, plus I can isolate it once it does start to show pollen, keep the scrog plant as only bud, so on and so forth. So it's just a better idea. Only problem is that this time instead of spraying too late, I'm worried I might have sprayed too early, as I basically sprayed and then put it into the 12/12 tent. Since it's a clone though I think it's perfectly ready to flower. Kind of wish i didn't have to sacrifice a whole plant, but I just want to get some pollen and be able to make female seeds with the plants I currently have vegetating. I'll take clones off of them right before flower so that I should have another crop ready to go when the fem. seed crop is done, and then I can move on to other genetics.

I took the littles one in the upper left hand corner.
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Welcome to the party man!

Kind of curious to see how well this scrog plant actually yields with how abused she's been. Curious if potency or yield will be more effected, or both.

Depending on how fast those veg plants grow under the T5, I'm not sure if I'll really even want to let the scrog plant finish flowering. it's just barely starting to bloom now so it's got 8-9 weeks, and even though it's not a lot of light, I have a feeling the veg plants are going to get really big in that time. Time will tell, I think they're finally actually coming back from my flopped FIM attempt. I can tell it really drove a lot branching growth, which is a good thing.
 
Yeah I am hoping she will have some kind of second win, but I figure it should also give me some practical experience using these new EarthJuice nutrients I'm trying out. I kind of hate to try "new" things, all the trial and error, but I feel like the nutrients I was using just weren't working out. I'm not sure why other people don't have as much problems with it as I do, but Flora Nova builds up salts in my pots super quick, and I think excessive flushing is just counter-productive when trying to run pro-biotics. So I think it's probably for the better that I'm biting the bullet and learning to use the organics now. Of course, still not "off the bottle" as the real soil growers would say.

But yeah, she's been given...

EJ Tea
3 Tbsp Grow
1 Tsp Bloom
1 Tsp Oily Cann (Cal, mag and humic acid)
1 Tsp Catalyst ( All sorts of probiotic goodness)
1 Tsp Meta-K
1 Tsp Molasses
Bubbled for 48 hours

Then in addition to that, also running Superthrive foliar and root feeding, as well as Azos root drench. The clones all have mykos inoculations taking too; I gave them some on the first transplant, but then I used my synethic nutrients, and the wive's tale is that kills mycorhiza--so I'm rebuilding them. All the more reason to not want to flush my pots out.

I also realized that there's not much sulfur in the EJ line-up and I think that's what I'm noticing on the scrog plant. I picked up some epsom salts and have been foliar feeding her while she dries out for her next feeding. Aparently the "sulfate" part of the magneisum sulfate will give it the sulfur it needs. Meta-K is supposed to be potassium sulfate, but I don't want to risk building up a potassium toxicity trying to use the sulfur in it.

I'm kind of wanting to try out Earth Juice's "Amazon Bloom" soil too. About the same price as Ocean Forrest; though I didn't care for Ocean Forrest much. I might just stick with Happy Frog, I'm kind of "figuring" it out. It seems a little deficient on Calcium, Magnesium and Sulfur from the runs I've used it in so far. So I might look up how to amend some stuff into it. I really like Happy Frog for the most part, it's really great for sprouting seeds.

Anyway damn I'm rambling tonight. I'm glad things are starting to fire on all cylinders in my garden again. Hoping this second tent turns out to be a good investment. I'm thinking I'm probably going to up-pot those veg ladies again at least once, into 5 or 7 gallon pots. Since I'm down to 4 and have the time to wait, I figure I might as well let them get real big. Just concerned if that T5 is putting out enough light.

Wow that all didn't seem as long when I was typing it out...
 
I've heard good stuff about EJ and I almost started my first grow with it but switched to General Organics last minute. I have a feeling your going to like running organics. They seem a lot more forgiving and it's tuff to over feed. I also have some super thrive that I don't use because I can't open the damn bottle when I need it.. needs a pair of pliers everytime.

Also, don't be scared to get that t5 close to your plants. Mine is only a inch or 2 from the tops. As long as the plant doesn't actually touch the bulb the t5 wont burn them.. i was a little uncomfortable at first getting my light to close but they can take anything the t5 can throw at them..
 
I've heard good stuff about EJ and I almost started my first grow with it but switched to General Organics last minute. I have a feeling your going to like running organics. They seem a lot more forgiving and it's tuff to over feed. I also have some super thrive that I don't use because I can't open the damn bottle when I need it.. needs a pair of pliers everytime.

Also, don't be scared to get that t5 close to your plants. Mine is only a inch or 2 from the tops. As long as the plant doesn't actually touch the bulb the t5 wont burn them.. i was a little uncomfortable at first getting my light to close but they can take anything the t5 can throw at them..

Ah good call, yeah I was trying to decide if I should have the plants spaced further out, but to do that the T5 had to be further above them to distribute the light evenly. Think I'm going to keep them as close together as I can for now so I can keep the T5 right on top like you're saying.

I think mine is about the same output as yours. You have a 4 x 4' bulb one right?

I haven't really noticed anything with Superthrive yet. I was astounded that a 32 oz bottle was $70. Luckily I found a 4 oz bottle, and the directions call for, literally, a drop per gallon. Should last a while...
 
Some good growth on these clones, really happy about it. Number 1 is a little taller than the rest, so I strapped him down to try to even the canopy out. I'm really hoping that the length of wire I used won't come loose, it was a little too flexible to push straight down into the soil, so I kind of had to push it down with my index finger and bury it down. Worried because if it comes loos, then the top of the plant will go right into the light. Well, I guess I trust it enough to gamble on it. I want to try to keep this canopy nice and even though.

I can't figure out why they started putting out 3 finger leaves instead of the usual 7 fingers. I think it has something to do with the fact that I took the clones right after I had flipped the mother to 12/12 to sex it--well a week after. Anyway, I've been doing some researching, and it seems that plants that have been flowered take about 6 weeks to snap out of it, and that seems about right for how long ago I took these clones. So I think that it's doing kind of a "reveg".

Which brings me to the next point... Lots of branching growth going on. Seriously there's not a lot of vertical growth, but looking at the side-branching growth from 3 days it's clear the plants are putting on more growth on lower branches. Not sure if this is because the possible reveg situation, or if it's because I top/FIM'd the plants.

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3 Days Growth
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Plants look good Fert.:thumb: I love the green padded wire, I use it to. I noticed you were sticking it into the soil.. I actually hook it under the lip that goes around you pot... works really well..


Happy 420

Oh thanks, I didn't even think of that. Going to have to give it a try.

Yeah I've been wondering where people get those things for a while. It's a little late to do a mainline project on these clones now, but that's what I was originally going for with my scrog plant. Maybe next go around.
 
Well I think I noticed an early start of magnesium deficiency on my clones? Not really sure. Could be that they're a little over-watered from the transplant. Sometimes it seems like Happy Frog is short on the magnesium. I'm not really sure, but I foliar fed with some Epsom salts just to be on the safe side. I've been suspecting sulfur defeciency too. Otherwise, they didn't seem that happy with the lights that close to them, so I raised them back up to about 6" above.

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My scrog plant is blooming away.

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Meanwhile, the plant that's getting reversed...

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Kind of concerned about the mutations occurring on the leaves. Wondering if it could be related to the super thrive.
 
Great journal man! You've got a great strain to work with. I'm jelouse, as I'm an indica head and LOVE Indicas! I'm Currently fighting with a Dakini Kush(pre 98 bubba x Hindu Kush). It's been through literal hell and stunted big time. Its 2+ months old in my biggest pot(3 gal) and I found out it's a VERY sensitive strain. I also use FFHF soil. I tried to put it in flower to try to determine sex as I can't clone. it's got some odd looking preflowers on a few different places. Mostly elongated and long but not much roundness. Some look like yours in the last pic but not 1 pistil and I'm not talking about stipules. So idk what to do myself but I want to see how yours bounces back! I just got my first tent and I love it!. I'll be checking back on this as I love BBK. Great job so far man! I've been curious about smartpots also. Great job so far! :thumb:
 
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