420Legal first grow - indoor - Blueberry 2009

[420Legal]

My first time posting, so please bear with me. Only second grow, and the first one wasn't great, so I'm a NOOB in most ways.

Here are the basics:

Hybrid; Blueberry
Cloned from my first grow, regenerated
- Wow I suck and cloning, but more on that later
Currently in veg on her second week
Using FoxFarms Ocean soil
- Container is five quarts
Using FoxFarms nutes, Grow Big, Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom (later)
- First water was no nutes, second is .25 strength GB and BB
- I don't do PH testing yet
I water every several days doing the "lift" test

400w MH which is aircooled
Room gets up to 80 and down to 65 when dark

So far no pests

Ok, so please wish me luck!

 

[420Legal]

Meet Poly (no, not Polly) The name will make sense later, I promise.

She has been a clone for one week in these pictures

 

[420Legal]

Poly (multi) has joined an LST Yoga class. With the help of some romex wire, she is starting her second week of cloned life.

 

[420Legal]

Poly @ clone +12 Days

I'm starting to train down the "second" side (black wire). That second side really was the lowest flower on the plant when it was standing up-right. In this picture and the next one you can really see each of them trying to be the "dominant" flower.

Poly seemed bored, so we got her a little sister.

Mei-Mei @ One Week of clone life:

Mei-Mei @ clone + 11 days

She starting to look a bit healthier.

Lighting was a little unkind to this pic, but still Mei-Mei at eleven days.

Usually my clones are hit or miss, about 70% of them never take. I use rooting powder and want to switch to gel. I also don't PH test, but I'm using distilled water. They sit in fox farm light warrior and I just use water to start. I was giving them diluted grow-nutes before learning that you want to give them diluted flower-nutes for the first watering. I have them in a Photo-tron with an extra (5000k) CFL.

Does anyone have any advice on why my hit rate is so low.

 

[dgh420]

BEST OF LUCK!! Blueberry is a great strain to grow.

 

[KrissK70]

Looking the goods!!

 

[420Legal]

Thanks dgh420 and KrissK70, it's great to know someone is looking in no and then. I know I spent a lot of time just lurking and others are doing the same, but the posts are really appreciated.

Good info on the Blueberry's DGH420. I grew out the BB mother ("Maddie") but the quality was really not great. I can't wait to see what she will be like in a full healthy grow. She has only limited kick and is much more indica than I had hoped. I had a tiny Chocolope dominant-sativa/hybrid, but she produced only about a eighth in the tron and then died, so no clones.

Anyone know of any good smoke reports for Blueberry indoors. Would love to hear, and I'll do some more searching as well.

 

[420Legal]

Just some quick updates. I am still doing LST on Poly, but I wanted to do something different for Mei-Mei. In the fist pic below you can see how Poly is doing, and a diagram of which flower is being pulled where. After that are pics of my first try at the "FIM" technique.

Poly @ day 17 - more LST

LST was always very hard for me to see, so for this journal I labeled each flower that first grew. The first one out is #1, the second flower that grew is #2, etc. It looks odd because there are now flowers growing in-between one through four, but they all came out later. Follow the numbers and you can trace back to the original plant. Pretty cool, don'cha think?

Mei-Mei @ day 16

She is starting to look like a healthy clone. Color is getting better and her leaves are looking good.

This is a closeup of her top flower. It is about to get a FIM trim-job. Yeesh, wish me luck. Not really sure how to do it.

Before:

After: I think this will produce more than two replacement flowers, which a simple topping would do. Time will tell, and I'll post the results.

Damn, talk about your bad hair-cuts!

 

[Screwnuts33]

Nice LST work. Best of luck on your grow.

 

[Linkorien]

looking good man ++

 

[420Legal]

A quick update:

The LST (Poly) is going amazing, She has four big flower sites and about another five coming along nicely. We'll see if they all produce colas with solid bud.

The FIM (Mei-Mei) is also going well, and unfortunately is growing much taller than Poly. I hate to bend her over, as they were each separate experiments, just to see what I can do. Well see if Poly can catch up now that I've done enough LST for this first grow.

I added several other clones to just see what will take. Anna (as in "Poly-Anna" | Seriously, don't name your girls while enjoying your meds), Her Sister (yeah, Anna and Her Sister - all I can say is it was really funny at the time) and Baby Doe (I can't remember why that was funny).

I'll post pics of the whole girl gang in the next few.

Thanks Screwnuts33 and Linkorien! Really cool to have the pings to know someone is reading.

 

[Dain Bramage]

What's up there just looking at all blueberry grows befor i start mine.Don't you just love what the LST method dose for your plant's...peace

 

[420Legal]

Wow, I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. Time just got away from me.

I have some pics from the girls a few weeks ago, so I'll start with those. At the time of these pics each was drinking about 2cups every three days. In every gallon of distilled I am using 1t of FF GB and 2T of FF BB. I use that same mix every watering.

My LST (Poly) is doing really well. Here she is at about six weeks veg. As a reminder I cloned her from a cutting that was about three inches high (not my recommendation for those new to cloning - but that was all I had)

She is one happy camper:

My second clone (Mei-Mei) was my FIM experiment. She was also a blueberry clone fro the same mother, and she was also just a few inches when cloned.

I also have a pair of "tiny" clones from the same blueberry mother that I just planted to keep my odds of success up. The whole mini-clone thing was less than ideal. No close up of her in this bunch, but she is included in the group shot.

Here are all the girls in veg, ranging from about 5 to 6 weeks.

Poly is on the RHS, Mei-Mei is LHS in the back, and Anna & "her" Sister is also on the left, but up front.

Thanks for tuning in.

 

[420Legal]

IT'S FLOWER TIME!

New Year's Day seemed like any easy day to remember when the girls entered their 12/12 photo-period and starting vegging. The pics are not great as the HPS throws a really orange light and I was too lazy to white balance the camera. Better pics to come soon.

The Process:

Most of this grow is about experimentation so I can try and grow predictable meds. I tried variations in potting to see if anything makes a difference, just as I have one LST (Poly) one FIM (Mei-Mei) and one [well two] with no training but in one shared pot (Anna & "her" Sister).

Pot Sizes and Soil/Extras:

I had presumed I would use a 5 gal bucket for each plant, but several reads make me think that 3 gal is enough. So test number one was born.

Poly - is in a 5 gallon (Lowes) bucket. She has a mix of FoxFarm Ocean Forest (FF OF) at 3 parts to vermiculite at 1 part. I put in drain holes at the bottom and the OF/verm mix fills the whole bucket. Every few inches as we filled the bucket we sprayed in water to make it moist but not wet.

Here is a close up for you LST watchers.

Mei-Mei is in a 3 gal pot. Same 3:1 mix of FF OF to vermiculite. Same spraying of watter every few inches as we loaded the mix into the pot.

The next question was if their roots grow outward to the edge of the pots, and not downward unless they hit the sides, do we really need to fill the pot with soil? So the next experiment.

Anna & Sister - are also in a 3 gal pot with the same soil mix, but the bottom two inches of the pot were first filled with expanded clay balls (I think that's what they are called).

Moving into Flower (HPS bulb)
We gave them a week to acclimate, although they were VERY HAPPY right away. Poly was getting root bound and had a few bottom leaves go yellow before we transplanted. Each got one full watering with distilled only, no nutes. I doubled it from 2c per feeding to 4 cups. No water came out the bottom.

A few days ago I shut down the MH 400w and let them rest in total darkness for a day an a half (I just skipped one lights on period in their 16 light / 8 dark). This morning we swapped the bulb and now we have an eerie orange glow - ahh progress!

Ok I was shocked how crappy the pics look, so I will do some color corrected shots in a week or so to document any progress.

Thoughts? Am I doing anything wrong? Suggestions?

 

[420Legal]

Hi All -

I wanted to see some decent changes before the next set of pics. Now here we are at Day 23.

That's Poly on the left. The LST gave her lots of colas, but the bending makes them weak. She's on day one with her new wood splints. If I had more room I would angle the sticks outward to get light to the lower flowers. She is very loosely wrapped to the sticks with wire loops.

Mei-Mei is on the right in front. She was the FIM experiment. Overall, while I still expect the LST to produce more, the FIM is doing really well. Maybe I'll be surprised and which is the top producer. The twins (two in one pot) Anna & Sister are behind her. They have strong branches, but seem like they will produce a lot less than the LST or FIM.

Here are some close-ups of the girls. Sit back in your chair for a little
Happy Saturday Night - Bud Porn.

 

[CocoJoe]

Hi 420Legal, comin along nicely. Much continued luck.

 

[420Legal]

Thanks CocoJoe. I'm still going strong, and I'll post a few pics from end of week five. Still using FF nutes and distilled. Four cups, about every four days. I am starting to see yellowing on the edges of leaves of the two three-gallon pots, but not the five gallon. On the next feeding I'm adding some veg nutes as well. I just want to see a little color come back this early into flowering. Was this too late to add veg nutes?

 

[420Legal]

Some pics of the girls on Flower - day 37. All thoughts and suggestions welcome. This is all about trying different things. And since it is about new things I decided to try something with the girls. After reading great other blogs i decided to try adding two teaspoons of molasses to the gallon mix of nutes. (Heat molasses in quarter cup of hot water then add that to the mix.) I will owe this blog the link from the other user, but I believe they described the extra value is the carbohydrates for the plant to get "fat" from. -- Quite frankly if I ate a few extra teaspoons of molasses every couple of days I'd be getting fat too.

On to the girls...

 

[CocoJoe]

Hey where you be? I like the pics.

 

[420Legal]

FLOWER - DAY 53

So this seems to be the time for a newbie grower that is almost impossible to bear. Clearly I need to be doing something, because letting nature take its course is...well not fun enough. I wanted to do something.

These pics are before I gave them the haircut. Yep, pulled a bunch of fan leaves off. Seemed like a really good idea, until just after I did it and ready this: Do I remove fan leaves? I won't ruin the surprise for you, but the answer is "no" (grr what a nube mistake).

Day 53, pre-butchering