Organic LA Confidential

Okay I am back to growing after take a break to straighten things up. This new grow is an organic soil base of LA Confidential.

Growing four plants in a 4x4 Secret Jardin DR120 tent, LumiGrow Pro 650, and a roots organic soil mix based on Subcool's recipe.

These first photos are of the plants ending their third week from seed and a day after being topped once just above third internode.

Looks great man! Can't wait to see these in flower, I've always enjoyed the LA Con I've received out on this side of the country.

Out of curiosity, why so much ducting with the scrubber and fan?

jd4083 said:

Out of curiosity, why so much ducting with the scrubber and fan?

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The tent in my basement barely fits. The top of the tent touches the gas line on my ceiling. Due to this low clearance I cannot run the ducting out the top vent like I would prefer, so instead I run it out the side which is closest to the exit point to ducting that leads outside. This vent is in the middle of the side of the tent. So the reason the carbon filter is not directly attached to the inline fan is to make the necessary angle out of the tent and not have the inline fan over the light. This allows me to raise my light to the highest possible position in the tent. Which is good because I had problems in the past with light bleached buds, due to the amount of light the LumiGrow puts out.

Also I use to have the inline fan mounted to the support beams under the first floor outside the tent, but this caused a lot of noise and could be easily heard on my main floor, even when I added a rubber gasket to the brackets. Putting this fan in my tent has cut down considerably on the audible noise upstairs. I built what I believe to be a very secure bracket with a sturdy chain for hanging inside the tent, as I was worried about it falling down on my plants. This caused the fan to sit a little lower then normal.

Hi iqlusion, That is the same size tent as the one i had' mine was called a budbx, I was always a bit dubious about hanging things in there aswell as they are a bit flimsy, I hung a grostar in my bud box and one day i went in and one of the plastic corner connectors had snapped of, I was lucky it never fell down all together' Anyway you are of to a good start the young plants are really healthy and i hope it turns out good for you. Good luck Crumpledtrumpet.

The Secret Jardin tents seem pretty sturdy. I also used two of the top bars to support the fan just in case.

The plants are finishing their 5th week of veg. I transplanted the cannabis from their medium size pots to 7 gallons pots with about the bottom half being Subcool's super-soil recipe and the rest of the pot was filled in with normal Roots Organic soil. Once again I topped the plants at both 4th internode section on the two main stems. Right above the previous topping site. Hopefully this will cause 4 main tops per plant. The bottom branches were removed because they were not stretching out past the upper growth and were not receiving much light.

Also I am trying low stress training for the first time and started tying the largest side branches back some using strings tied to binder clips attached to the side of the pots. Mistakenly I tied one too tight and tore a branch from the main stalk. I applied a duct tape wrap around the branch, which can be seen in the photo. Hopefully this will repair it, I did this mid day and before this evening the branch hasn't shown any signs of drooping yet. It would be a shame to lose the branch. Another thing, the Lumigrow must be putting out some serious light because the node spacing and the density of the growth is pretty amazing. The plant is just so compact. I raised the lamp to the top of the tent and their seems to be no stretching at all. Lastly I placed 4 bamboo sticks in each pot for future support.

A few things I have noticed is this strain is definitely a pure Indica strain. Of all the strains I have grown, these are the slowest to grow in veg yet. I was hoping to be flipping to flower soon but it seems I might continue the 24/7 light cycle for a few more weeks. I usually plan on the plants about doubling in height in flower but most of what I am reading on this strain that this might be unlikely. So I might wait for the plants reach about two feet in height. Two of the LA Confidential are slightly smaller then the rest, so I might super-crop the taller ones so I can get a more even canopy. I haven't seen anything distinctive yet to indicate different phenotypes yet.

If anyone has any experience with this strain or any advice/recommendations I would love to hear them! Also I welcome any questions!

After two days of the duct tape patch the plant has shown no signs of damage. There is no dropping and the plant looks healthy. I will probably remove the tape after a week.

Hi they sure are short and bushy bet they don't stretch much nice job .B

nice looking plants iQlusion. Very stocky. Have you thought of running them at 16/8 or 18/6 by any chance? You might see increased vegetative growth. Nice work here. You also might find some benefit from putting a layer of mulch down. good luck

I support organic grows primarily, so i figured i should toss that out.

Looking good man!

Are you going to put a net over those later? Will be following

3rdEye said:

nice looking plants iQlusion. Very stocky. Have you thought of running them at 16/8 or 18/6 by any chance? You might see increased vegetative growth.

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Does the dark period really increase growth? I might try it out. I'll have to get my heater dialed in, temperature gets pretty low with the lights off.

Kiloz said:

Looking good man!

Are you going to put a net over those later? Will be following

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I do not have any plans for a net. I prefer to have plants that are a little easier to move around and manage.

Looking forward to seeing them in flower!

iQlusion said:

Does the dark period really increase growth? I might try it out. I'll have to get my heater dialed in, temperature gets pretty low with the lights off.

I do not have any plans for a net. I prefer to have plants that are a little easier to move around and manage.

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I do believe that having a dark period is very important for plant health. There are a number of different biochemical processes that occur either only in the dark or are greatly increased in the dark. Think about how the plant lives in its' natural state.

Keeping temperatures up is very important. I have gone too low before and nobody likes it.

Why top them so much? you'd have nice plants to flower now.
I've made LA Confidential with a similar set-up, I vegged them 5 weeks with 600w and started 12/12 with a small bush with 8 solid side-branches giving a pretty harvest

kro-magnon said:

Why top them so much? you'd have nice plants to flower now.

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I am just trying to increase the yield and number of tops. I have 52in from the base of the plants to my light and I am hoping to get a final height of about 3 feet. So my plans was to veg them out till there at least 18in in height. Based on what I am seeing so far I wouldn't recommend topping this strain so close to a previously topped site. Due to how slow the veg is, the topped areas are taking awhile to recover. The side branches are growing faster and have covered the topped area. So I thinned out the plants out by removing the fan leaves that were covering the center. We will see if this helps and if the center tops will surpass the side ones again.

Also per 3rdEye's recommendation I have switched the light cycle from 24 hour to 18/6 hour schedule. Hopefully this will help, but it won't be very scientific because I did not measure the growth while it was under the previous schedule. Lastly, I turned on the heater I have in the center of the tent. It is connected to a sensor that has the temperature set to 75°F when the lights are on and 65°F when off. Also the heater itself has settings, which I set to about the middle of the medium setting.

LA will do better with bendin and tieing down verses topping.Growth won't slow down as much like it does with topping.Spread them to get good coverage utilizing all your space and light in your tent.A longer veg is needed with the LA to really get that yield out of her.

Get them to a decent size as she won't get a whole lot bigger in flower.

She handles a good amount of food which is good as i have seen quite a bit that subs super soil can be on the hot side.

LA was my first plant.ran her for close to 3 yrs.Good stuff.

iQlusion said:

I am just trying to increase the yield and number of tops. I have 52in from the base of the plants to my light and I am hoping to get a final height of about 3 feet. So my plans was to veg them out till there at least 18in in height. Based on what I am seeing so far I wouldn't recommend topping this strain so close to a previously topped site. Due to how slow the veg is, the topped areas are taking awhile to recover. The side branches are growing faster and have covered the topped area. So I thinned out the plants out by removing the fan leaves that were covering the center. We will see if this helps and if the center tops will surpass the side ones again.

Also per 3rdEye's recommendation I have switched the light cycle from 24 hour to 18/6 hour schedule. Hopefully this will help, but it won't be very scientific because I did not measure the growth while it was under the previous schedule. Lastly, I turned on the heater I have in the center of the tent. It is connected to a sensor that has the temperature set to 75°F when the lights are on and 65°F when off. Also the heater itself has settings, which I set to about the middle of the medium setting.

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That's a good temperature range. When i have let temperatures drop below 60 F everything slows waaaaay down. You could also use a heating pad to provide bottom heat directly to the root zone which i have had success with.

I do think you will see just as good, if not better, overall plant health as well as significant energy savings by running 18/6 days versus 24 hrs. I run a modified "gas lamp" light schedule in the summer for my vegetative plants for heat and energy reasons. Even my long day lengths do not exceed 15-16 hrs and i run my flowering room at 11/13 on/off now and i am very pleased with those results as well.

good luck. I'll be back

The plants are on their 6th week of vegetative growth now. With the tallest plant being about 1 foot in heights. Also, I have continued to remove all the big fan leaves that are blocking light from reaching the middle tops. The smallest and tallest plants have responded the best to this with the middle tops almost reaching the same height of the side branches. Hopefully the other two plants will catch up.

I believe that I may have at least two distinctive phenotypes. The tallest plant has quite a larger internode spacing then the rest and the smallest has extremely small spacing. We will see if anymore differing traits show up during flower. I think I will flip them over in about 2 weeks, depending on their size.

Cute kitty kat. I have seen my cats go after the plants i like the most. They know. Looking very nice in there.

looking very healthy, nice!!

i should get a cat..