600W bagseed clone-from-flowers closet grow

[softyellowlight]

Hey folks I could not resist signing up to these wonderful forums recently in order to get a little diagnostic help during this grow and I figure I might as well get some practice doing a grow log as well! Here's the first picture I have of them, from when they were two weeks into flowering:


The bean used was a random choice from seeds acquired from kind bud, which I grew out once to a very limited success and wanted to hone my skills while keeping variables down by growing the same thing again. So I cloned three weeks into flowering in rockwool cubes, let those root and revegetate for a month, whereupon I chopped the mom (too early ) and left many bud sides to make an attempt at revegetation. I planted the clones into five-gallon buckets full of FFOF soil cut to nearly half perlite and then everything went under the always-on HPS.

After about a month of vegetation time, waiting to see if the mother could ever catch up to the clones, I determined that would not happen and I switched the light schedule on 2010/12/23 to 12-12 to let them rip! Pistil growth exploded immediately, but the stretch was short-lived and only grew them by much less than a foot. Stretch was clearly over before day 22:


Mom, of course, would have needed a lot longer in vegetation to try to recover in shape:


I've been battling some kind of deficiency, probably Potassium or Calcium, due to not quite getting proper water and feeding technique for soil until recently. I will have to head that problem off before it occurs in the next grow! As for now, I don't think the plants are devastated by it. Here's the progress on day 35 -- they are still VERY mild-smelling and I only get a small citrus scent if some trichomes get damaged.



And of course Mom has her own unique situation, I don't think one that actually involves any deficiencies this time. The bud formation is very different; this is basically a hedge now!



Thanks for sharing in my excitement so far! This is an incredibly fun hobby to learn thanks to this knowledgeable community Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the lineage of this plant, or how long it looks like it has left to go?

 

[sneakinman13]

it looks almost like u have root aphids to me... you should check your soil with a microscope and seee if anything is moving around.... ive had them befor and had the same deficiencies ur facing thats why i say this. good luck and happy gardening

 

[Duplicate]

Looks cool!

 

[softyellowlight]

it looks almost like u have root aphids to me... you should check your soil with a microscope and seee if anything is moving around.... ive had them befor and had the same deficiencies ur facing thats why i say this. good luck and happy gardening

I haven't seen pests this time -- but I do know for sure I watered and fed wrong (tried to avoid run-off... oops!) so my yield's definitely gonna suffer. Still, it's hopefully more yield than I actually need to keep myself supplied, so I decided to stop stressing and see what actually becomes of them, and next time start with known genetics and bake my soil before I use it. Thanks for sharing your experiences/well wishes!

Looks cool!

Thanks brother!


TRUNK PORN! I love the crown of thorns look that comes from a cloned bud.

 

[softyellowlight]

Day 40 of flowering, thinking of feeding tomorrow for the last time:


Think I will make my -- let's not call it goal, but hope -- of hitting half a pound at harvest time?

It seems to be taking forever for the soil to really dry out now -- is this perhaps my imagination? My hunch is that is a sort of a sign of full bloom having been achieved and the growth waning, since much water must be needed to make new growth.

 

[softyellowlight]

feed or flush, friends?



looks like my post count now lets me post higher resolution pictures or something? sweet

 

[softyellowlight]

bump, looking to feed or water this morning but I don't have an eye for when to cut off feeding during flowering yet as a newbie grower....

 

[softyellowlight]

The soil is pretty dry and I see a lot of what I think should be normal end flowering senescence so... I'm gonna drench 'em with water that only has molasses, Diamond Nectar and lemon juice for pH unless they look like they could go for another feeding before harvest??

oh, and CaMg+ too I guess because my tap water simply doesn't have it

 

[Duplicate]

I've never been as far as you are now lol. I wish I could help out. Looks like you've done well so far though.

 

[softyellowlight]

Haha I've never been as far as I am now, either! Looks like I am finally starting to see signs of things slowing down, and now I realize I chopped this WAY too early the first time I grew it out:

So to my untrained eye I seem to see a pause in the production of new calyxes, and I take it to mean this is the real end of flowering and that now I should start seeing everything fatten up. It might be my imagination but it suddenly seemed to have gone from very little, pretty much lawny, odor to starting to smell like actual flowers.

 

[teh_piper]

I'd maybe wait until around day 50-57 to start flushing, then flush for 20 days. That's usually my technique, but it depends on when the strain will finish and how much nutes are built up in the soil. I try to taper off starting around day 40 so it's not so much to flush out in the final 15-20 days.

Also check your trichome color before you chop. You atleast want them cloudy and a few amber. If they are all clear, it's to early. But alot of that depends on the grower and the type of high your looking for. Clear= Up/Energetic/Cerbral and more Amber= Down/couch lock/pain killing/numbing

BTW you check the trichome heads, and you have to have a 30x microscope. I don't know if you know this or not, you said you were a new grower

 

[softyellowlight]

This is the very beginning of week 7 for me and trichomes are all in the process of turning cloudy. I do have a pocket scope, but I don't know if I should base my clear/cloudy/amber estimation on the trichomes from the tops of the colas or... middles? I assume not the bottoms that are getting relative partial shade.

I am going to harvest one of these with mostly cloudy and one of these with mostly amber so I have a mix, unless that sounds silly. Cheers

 

[BigGreenAL]

Looks good for a first time grower with bag seed thats how I got my start. I think you may be having a Ph lockout problem instead of a deficiency problem. FFOF is a pretty hot mix most people do a 50/50 mix of FFOF and there light warrior product because its so hot, so if anything you should have a nute burn problem. I would chech the ph of your runoff too high or low can cause nutrient lock out, your plants are showing a textbook Ca deficiency and maybe a little K problem too. This may not mean that your soil is deficeint just the ph is not in the proper range for the plant to uptake those nutrients.

Regardless it looks like your gonna pull off a nice harvest.

One more thing. using rockwool to clone to organic soil is not the best method IMO. Rock wool can hold too much moisture and cuase mold or stem rot problems. I use an aero cloner and at the first sign of root they go into an organic soil plug, works great.

good luck, cheers

 

[softyellowlight]

Yeah, it could be a pH lockout problem -- I think the soil might have had way too much lime in it straight from the bag? I'm seeing a runoff of 7-7.5 even though I've been making sure to pH my water to 6.5-7. Maybe I should have been targeting a lower pH to water with or checking the soil run-off pH at the start.

Agreed on both parts that it looks like Ca and K issues; I have a Ca/Mg supplement now for future use but Potassium may have definitely been an issue from the pH alone.

Thanks for the rockwool tip; I haven't really been checking but because my cubes are mostly in the air they seem to dry out faster than even the soil. The rockwool usage for cloning was mostly just to learn the medium a bit. I have a bunch of compressed peat pellets that I'm going to use for sprouting and try to use directly for cloning (specifically I want to air-layer the clones off to streamline the process). Have you tried that method before?


Oh, and have any particular ready-mixed soil suggestions, stuff that I would find at a standard hydro store? For my next grow I want to do 1-2 gallon smart pots with soil over a layer of [some drainage fill], and I want to be able to plant the peat pellets into them without burning, so I need to have something very light on nutrients.

peace

 

[BigGreenAL]

Heres my method softy. I use an aero cloner, at the first sign of roots I plant in a solo cup consisting of a mix of 50% perlite 25% EWC and 25% mushroom compost. Once the roots have fully colonized the soil I plant in 1 gallon pot of my veg mix consisting of high N guano little blood meal, bone meal and a bunch of other stuff. Once they fully grow into that pot I transplant into 3 gallon pots with my flower mix. that mix consist of higher P and K guanos and a bunch of other stuff. I run a 3x3 9 plants total under a single 600. I flower at around 10 inches, this mothed fills the 600watt light footprint very nicely.

You could do the peat pellets then transplant to 3 gallon pots with a 50/50 FFOF/light warrior combo. I don't think you'll get burn and it should carry you through flower just fine.

My method yields around 14oz per grow. You should be able to pull off something similar. As for your current grow I would start flushing now don't add any more nutes at this stage.

 

[softyellowlight]

Looks like week 8 or 9 will be when one of them comes down (so I can also have a late-harvest one for variety). I definitely don't see brand new calyxes forming and I'm starting to see really tiny curled-sugar-leaves coming in, maybe to replace my other leaves that died from nutrient issues?

Love how each one fills an entire half of the closet perfectly now!


Found baby pictures that I thought I had deleted ages ago, too!

These cuttings had a full month of revegetation before they had switched to real serrated leaves again and so it was at the beginning of December that I actually stuck them in the soil and under the HID to actually grow out. I absolutely love what cloning from three weeks into flowering did for the trunk structure.

 

[softyellowlight]

Changed my mind about not seeing new calyxes -- it is still growing calyxes and pistils but they're stacked now! Really cool because it's only happening after well over a month of flowering... I really must not have been even remotely close when I harvested the mother. I guess that's an indica sort of trait? As far as I can tell the plant mostly grows like a sativa except then the formation of individual buds. Oh, and the tips of calyxes seem to be starting to purple. Good old bagseed...

 

[softyellowlight]

Day 46, odor seems to have lessened again and the indica-style slight foxtailing is more visible. I took a picture with the HPS on because otherwise the trichomes are not nearly as visible.

 

[Fire On High]

Good structure on those plants. I just took clones 15 days in to flower and I hope they turn out like that. Good luck on the half p.

 

[softyellowlight]

Thanks! Make sure to let me know when you make a thread for those clones as I would love to see how yours develop, as well!