Pot of Gold, Pineapple Punch, Sensi Star, Cindy, Now a grow log with pics!

Hi,

Great Forum!

I am also growing in Coco Coir, handwatering. This is my second grow.

Maybe you can help me with a problem?

My Major Problem now is figuring out which plants are what strain. I know that there are 2 pinneapple punch plants, two pot of golds, and one sensi star and one cindy 99. The plants are over 3 weeks into flower, and some of them are supposed to finish in 55 days, others could take up to 70 so figureing out which plants to start flushing in a few weeks and which plants to feed could be a problem.

Should I just look at different leaves under a microscope and see which has the most "mature" resins, to try and figure out which plants need to be harvested earlier?

Also, how long do you flush in coco?

Pics from about 3 weeks in flower, now they are 4+

some more info...

I am growing in Coco Coir, mixed to about 35% perlite and 10% Hydroton (I would like to bring this amount up next time).

For nutes I am using GH's FloraNova two part system: Grow and Bloom. In addition to these nutes I add between 1-2 teaspoons of Calmag Plus.
During the flowering stage I also add Carbo Blast, "Bud Start" and Ton O' Bud", part of the Trio-Pack. I ph the water/nutes to 5.5-6.

Has anyone used these nutes? I am still burning the crap out of my girls on occasion.

The biggest pest problem I have had is Fungus Gnats, they are everywhere and seem to do just fine in Coco. Fly paper along with a fan blowing under the cannopy along the soil has helped keep things under control along with some fly paper and no pest strips. Since I am 4 weeks into flower, I am not going to do any more treatments with safer or neam oil.

Overall I am impressed with the visble resin production. All of the plants seem to have a healthy frosting on the buds for being only 3 weeks into flower. 2 of the plants are in 5 gallon pots, the rest are in 2 gallon.

my friend you will be able to tell when its almost finished...hairs will start dieing
(turning red) it will start to look kinda fuzzy...get your self a handheld microscope to no when to harvest exactly

very nice grow

very nice grow

Very nice grow Herb!

Sorry to hear you forgot to label your plants. I'm growing out some sensi star. Mine are very uniform, almost a christmas tree shape. It looks sort of like your in the back row, far right, but I could be wrong. They also seem a little short and quicker to finish than some recent grows.

Why would you want to increase the hydroton or perlite? I'm using hydroton only as the bottom layer in my pots and then 100% coco. I'm curious.

Thanks!

looking good so far man. it just looks incredibly dry to me, lol. but i suppose you have been treating them like earth? so you should keep doing the same thing, but when you water give them a lot, so the coco gets a good soaking.

you are exactly at the point where the lockout has just begun, the red stems and burned tips, as well as the dry looking coco, makes me think that one thorough watering with just ph'ed water and cannazym might do a lot of good to keep those plants on track.

if you are using the canna nutes, which are mostly water-soluble, with many ingredients in gel-ate form, you can get away with a very short flush. if i'm not sure when a strain is done i'll wait till the first of the trichome heads start going amber before i start flushing. first i will pump a whole tank of plain ph ed water through the system, throwing away the return. this normally makes my return ec go to below 0.9 at this point i refill the tank with another 3 days worth of water add some zym and ph correct it and then leave it to be drip fed to the plants normally for the last 3 days. then i will chop them down and trim them up. i have found with coco it's a waste of time flushing for more then 7 days and with my system of a big flush in one go, i can reduce it to 4 days. you don't want the plants starving for too long, just enough time for the N to be used up and for all the plants own smell and taste to develop. i know plenty folks that don't flush their coco, but their bud is never as tasty as mine. the most important thing about flushing, is that you don't start too early. the last weeks in the plants life can be very important yield and quality wise, so one has to be sure not to cut that time short by starting the flush before you see some of the trichome heads going amber. that's in the ideal case. if you are in a hurry to harvest you can start flushing and force the plants to finnish up early. but thats definitely not ideal.

the added benefit is that i can plant my new plants in RW cubes right on the old coco and the medium is nice and empty ready to start a fresh.

The big problem with not labeling the girls is of partiuclar importance because of the wide difference in recomended flowering times

pp 75 days 8-10 weeks

ss 56-63

PoG 60-65

cd 50-55


Thanks for the help everyone!

fonda: I want more hydroton so that I can put a layer over the top of the coco, the top does dry out quickly even when some moisture is heald in the rest of the coco. Right now the hydroton is just a small thin layer on the bottom.


gaius:
Thanks for the detailed information. I water by hand once a day (sometimes every other day if I get busy or lazy) I use about a gallon per feeding, the plants are in a total of 18 gallons of coco.

These pics are a week old. Since then I flushed, and then started feeding with weaker nutes. I had been using ph up since the strong mix of nutes was too acidic. However, I think the contiuned presance of ph up evetually leads to a build up of salt in the soil, by cutting back on the nutes i was able to hit a good ph without the additives.

Updated pics set up

Updated pics set up

So these are pics of the garden about 1.5 weeks older. Starting with the setup... you can see its a tight space, too tight to really grow efficiently with a 600 watt hps, its about 3 feet by 1.5 feet. I also have to physically move the plants out of the grow space to water them. That might cause some stress.

I threw in a few floros for side lighting.


The hps bulb is 22 inches from the top of the canopy. This may be a little too much distance but my exhaust fan hasn't been great. I also have a small 6inch blowing below the canopy and a large fan blowing along the top. Temps are around 50-80. This is too big a fluxuation but thats about the best we can do right now. Generally the high temp doesn't get above 78.

now for show and tell... although I know little to tell about the girls

up first

This girl has nice long buds, without much dense leaf. Its really responded well to lsting, with a relatively even canopy and great tops. Somewhat sweet aroma. I am excited about the resin production

As you can see there are alot of ugly leaves towards the bottom.

this girl was a runt, and struggle quite a bit at the begginning, because of that I didn't lst it... now its tall.

It has fatter buds than the rest, but very little resin by comparison, and no odor.

So, I wanted to experiment with different pot sizes and see how it impacted growth and yield. 2 of the girls were put in 5 gallon pots, the others in 2 gallon. This is one of the 5 gallon girls. This has really showed me what you can do with LSTing and a large pot. There is a medicinal limit of 6 plants in flower in my area, so while i would prefer doing a straight sea of green, it seems like you can still get a large yield off of few plants with proper training. I am sure my results would have been better with a screen and a bigger grow space.

Slightly sweet/slightly skunky oder. Sucked up all the N it could get. Nice resin production

This one was a strange duck in its youth... really weird growth pattern, very lanky with few leaves. Its really come along way, and looks pretty good now during flower, I just re arranged a few of the tops with some gentle pressure. This plant reminds me very much of the first one posted in the show and tell. Maybe they are both Pineapple Punch or Pot of Gold?

Another 5 gallon girl... this shows lsting gone wrong. I could never keep the top down, I trained every day and it still got the best of me. The main top is a head above the rest of the canopy... kind of reminds me of a dinasour or something.

almost bonzi

almost bonzi

so this is the last of the 6 and the only other girl not to be trained, i almost killed it in its infancy. The stem was chopped in 1/2 and all that remained was a small side shoot. Well its been a beautiful plant since, really organized and uniform growth.

It has the fattest buds in the garden.

so I really was close do killing these girls off by accident. here are some of the early images of the garden, ugly... The second pic is what they looked like right before switching to 12/12

yeah it's amazing to see how they can really come back in early flowering if treated right. it's all looking nice in there, a few dead leaves at the bottom of the plants is pretty normal at this stage, as long as it's not spreading like crazy, which it doesn't seem to be.

as for the strains, you will be able to tell as they get riper when they are finished. best way is checking the trichome heads, you should have some 10% amber trichome heads before you chop. also as the flowers get ripe people might recognize what is what, those that have grown the same strains before that is.

thanks for sharing, keep up the good work.

trichome heads

trichome heads

I am really bad at checking the trichome heads, I looked at 5 leaves per plant under a 30x scope... they all looked pretty much cloudy to me, no amber, I need a better scope to view with.

yeah that's because your buds are not that near to being ripe yet, give them time. before the trichome heads change color from see through to milky and then amber, the pistil hairs have to change color too. only once some 80% of the plants hairs are brown or red is there a chance of finding the amber trichome heads.

MedicinalHerb said:

I am really bad at checking the trichome heads, I looked at 5 leaves per plant under a 30x scope... they all looked pretty much cloudy to me, no amber, I need a better scope to view with.

Click to expand...

They got radio shack where you are? you can get a handheld 60 - 100x microscope pretty cheap. Then just snip a little bit of bud leaf and check em out....ya get an awesome look at em under 100x