Well I did the deed today. My plants are 3 weeks into flower and the stretch is over. I went in and trimmed up all bud sites that weren’t showing a decent bud already (say 15-20 pistils). This ended up being all but the last 2-3 buds on a lot of branches. It felt so wrong to be tearing all of those little budlets off, but I knew it was for the best. I even got a bit on resin on my hands from it. I found a toothpick works really well for scraping out the ones that are still just a small stub. On Wednesday I’ll come back and do a nice leaf strip, and double check for any small buds I missed the first time.
I realized this has another benefit I didn’t think of until I was actually doing it. It gave me the opportunity to clean up all of those little preflowers at the base of every node. I’m an outdoor grower, and on many occasions those little bastards have been an open door for botrytis. I always have the best intentions to clean them up, but have never implemented it into my routine. Thanks again for that little tid bit!
Hey Bro.....I gotta say that as many yrs that I`ve been around all the forums , your threads are far more than just ….threads.....jus sayin......blow by blow , in depth tutorials on howta actually do it with results of each procedure documented and pointed out.....no wonder you got so many rep points Ick.....Respect.....now.....
Since I`ve preached for yrs and yrs about stretch being scientifically proven to be 40% of the flower cycle , when I saw you tag the plants on the 18th of Nov thru the 16th of Dec/today , I knew you`d run this strain before cuz look where the wire is after 28 days stretch on a 70 day strain , as in 4 weeks stretch on a 10 week strain , as in 40% stretch almost to a T......now.....
The swellage begins......and hey….wanna work the plants ?.....slide lights back on the pipes.....stoner ingenuity.....aight....nuff outta me this day.....Keep strokin and thanks for your time...…
Peace.....DHF...… ……..
I hope that works out for you. I very rarely take buds in flower. I do it at the beginning and have very little to do during flower.
Yeah sorry I forgot to mention I realize this isn’t exactly what you recommend (pulling them after flower instead of before). However in my case. I didn’t have a lot of the little starts to trim before flower, so I took them after. It would probably work better if I take them a week or more earlier than what I did. Now that I have the confidence to do it, I can work on refining my technique.
hey mister crane, thanks for all the updates...
i have some questions regarding coco, nutes/ppm and your stems; would like to know your insights, if you don't mind... =)
* how do you get those trunks? how old are these plants? i have never grown anything that "woody", it really impresses me and with that strength i bet it can support a lot of weight!
I have no idea how old they are. I just grab one from veg that is ready and flower it. I can have 72 plants but only have 9 in flower right now.
* i saw you are doing dtw with runoff; have you ever tried drip systems?
I have but never got them to work right for me.
Everytime I did that it would drain all my nutes and then I would run out of RO water and it had a real bad impact on my other plants.
do you think that perhaps ppm/nute strength should vary according to the irrigation method in coco, mostly related to its efficiency?
what i mean is; if one irrigates through "flooding", and gets 20-25% runoff volume, this is 25% of nutes lost to the trash (maybe less if some captured by the coco, but you get my point).
if this is so, then by doing more runoff, one should increase ppms?
and in the other way, drip system should run lower ppms?
same NPKCaMg ratio?
I am not sure since I do just one watering per day.
Like I said I never was able to get the drip system to work right.
Something I will work on again at some point but have not yet.
my question comes from my own small orchard tent, in which i could only play between 1.25 and 1.4 ec (at full flower) before seeing real burnt tips, by using blumats. but i have another plant which i do DTW, and can feed her with 1.3 at veg stage with no problems whatsoever, and it even seems weak green.
other growers report feeding at 1.8, some 2.0, and at one point it begins to be confusing.
I have not run the Blumats. Again like my drip system I could not get them to run correctly so I stopped using them.
That said I did have to up my feed EC under the LEDs. I think part of that is because I am short on calcium.
* another thing i've noticed is that led light (or at least my light's spectrum) can show some things that even sun does not show...
could perhaps led light "exaggerate" some defects?
i say this because some seedlings under my led seem weak green, but they got kicked out of that tent and went under the sun, and look perfect green, within the 3 seconds trip from the tent to the balcony...
Yeah I can see that. LEDs are not the same as the sun. So yes I can see them showing up a little different for sure.
sorry for the boring questions,
thanks a lot again for sharing with us
and stay high
As for feed cost I am not worried about the cost. Lets do a quick cost break down on my feed cost.
I got the Jack's at about $60 for a 25 pound bag. I just bought 50 pounds of calcium nitrate locally for $16.57. My Drip Clean cost $32 for a liter. And the potassium silicate is$38 per gallon.
So I pay in order from above per gallon this
Jacks $0.017
CN $0.0016
DC $0.032
PS $0.01
For a total of $0.06 per gallon. I am feeding the plants in this thread about 4 gallons a day. That comes out to $0.24 per day. Or for 70 days $16.80. If I loose 25% of this it is $4.20. I will get about 3 pounds from this room. So the cost per ounce is 9 cents per ounce of wasted nutes. The cost of feeding is 35 cents per ounce.
But my lights on the other hand is 0,96 KW per hour at $0.155 per KW. So a total cost for my lights for 70 days is $124.99. That is $2.60 per ounce. SO my lights cost 7.5 time more.
So while the cost is important for the nutes it is one of the lower cost items.
If I didnt answer all of what you were after ask again.
You do have to store them specially. I use a rubber seal plastic bucket. In the bucket I use a plastic bag. The bag allows me to reuse the bucket with out worrying what was in the bucket before. I dont want to cause a precipitate by mixing the different nuts.your nutes cost is very cheap compared to mine in $/gal;
*is there some special care/storage feature you have to keep your salt nutes without sucking moisture?
*in cold times, do you heat your water to mix the nutes? if so, how? (accounting that you are not heating a cup of water for coffee)
*how much do you mix at once?
*and this mix, how long does it last? (in terms of pH stability and precipitation)
thanks again bro,
cheers
Hey Ichy,
You got any recommendations for PM, and pest prevention? I have been running nothing but seeds and clones from them for years. Haven't had any issues.
I have had a bunch of crazy shit cut short the last 3 grows, so I am running some lemon drop og clones, don't have 6 weeks to wait for seed plants. Learned my lesson in the past, and want to make sure these clones are in good shape.
Any ideas are greatly appreciated.
That’s some pretty impressive growth. You have made some great plants for this method. I wrestle back and forth what way to go. Veg a few big plants or just put a bunch of small ones and your set up is pretty productive and it would certianly be easier to worry about 12 plants instead of 36. People debate veg time like weeks matter, if the lights are always on it doesn’t really matter. Slowly vegging and selecting the very best most ready plants has some advantages as well. Oh and the giant bud part, you can grow decent size buds on small plants but to grow baseball bats you need a trunk.
Growing horizontal is definitely a pain in the back. What is your screen size now? 6 high by 6 wide with 5 lights about a foot apart? A trash can with a little giant pump, an art dne cycle timer and 3 blackhole drippers should go on your list. Starting about now feed them to runoff 3-4 times a day.