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The End of the Beginning!

Here we are folks! My first ICMag grow journal!
I've spent quite some time lingering around these forums absorbing as much wisdom as possible, but now, it's time for you to meet my ladies!
Let's learn a little about the grow:
Strains: 1xHSO 707 Headband, 3xHSO BlueDream, and a mystery plant!!!(*I'll explain in a minute)

Medium: 50/50 coco/perlite

Containers: This is my first time using Coco, while I have now fallen in love with coco and have witnessed it's insane potential, there was a learning curve to it. So while preparing for flower I was exploring different ideas and techniques that would allow me to go out of town for a few days without killing my plants. So you will see that I have tweaked a thing here and there between each of these plants to get more familiar with the most effective grow style for this medium and my grow space. That being said, I have one BD and the Headband in 5gal bucket hempys, the mystery plant and a BD clone in 3gal smart pots, and my last BD is in a SIP(Sub irrigated planter) I made out of a 27gal container.(**)

Nutrients: I started this grow with Remo nutrients, watching his early YouTube videos when I was younger really inspired me to grow myself, so I had to give it a try. I think his nutrients are pretty good and I'm sure after another practice run I could dial it in and get great results BUT honestly running 8 bottles of nutrients is time consuming, costly, and makes it a lot harder to dial in with 8 variables in feeding schedules. So I have switched over to GreenLeafNutrients MegaCrop!!! The price is unbeatable and my plants have never looked healthier. They absolutely love this stuff and so do I. The price is insanely cheap and the plants have exploded with vigor since I made the switch.

Lighting: we are running ~980w of Vero29 COBs in 3000k. 12 moveable COBs on 3 rails spaced out across the canopy.

Feeding: I have a 27gal reservoir connected to a drip feed system that feeds 3 times a day to about 10% runoff total, daily. I think I will be adjusting my timer to feed 5 smaller feeds a day as I've heard the growth rate Coco is even more rapid with more, shorter feeds.

We are finishing out week 4 of flower right now and these girls are absolutely gorgeous!

When I started this grow I had never used coco before(I've grown in soil before) so I wasn't aware of just how well aerated it is and how fast it dries out. So after germinating seeds successfully I would place them in red solo cups but to my dismay the cups would dry out too fast and the seeds would die(even under a dome). Unfortunately I went through more seeds than I would like to admit because of this. After all was said and done I ended up with 2 different BlueDreams, 1 707 Headband, and a mystery plant.
*I call it a mystery plant because it could be 1 of 3 strains. As I was losing seedlings I was getting pretty down on myself because I had never had this issue before. I started with an old freebie I held onto because it sounded like a strain that had potential. It was WhiteWidow x Blue Lemon Thai. After proper germination I sowed the seed and it failed to break the surface. So then I did the same with a C99 seed a friend gave me, didn't sprout again. I gave it one more chance with another freebie, Chocolate Mint Og by HSO. Each time I threw the seed in the same 1gal smart pot without ever cleaning out the media. I wanted one more plant to even out the numbers at the time, fill my grow space, and add variety. Well a week went by and I gave up, tossed the 1gal pot in the corner. A few days later my girlfriend noticed a little sprout coming out of this arid forgotten 1gal in the corner. Hot dam! One of the little ones survived! So I nurtured it and threw it in the mix with the other girls who were way ahead at this point. And that's how we have a mystery plant! As this plant has matured it had some pretty heavy indica leaning traits. It had very wide leaves compared to the BD and the HB, it had great lateral branching, a very pretty little bush. But once I induced flowering this young lady stretched like crazy becoming the second tallest plant in my garden next to my 6 foot tall(not including the bucket) BlueDream girl in the hempy. So I'm really not sure what it could be as I have no experience with growing any of these strains in the past and I've never smoked any of the 3 she could be. She's very oily and the scent I get from stem rubs does have a very stinky earthy tone, smells like OG and you can definitely catch a chocolatey after tone. So I'm leaning towards the HSO Chocolate Mint OG but I may never know.

**Quick shoutout to the folks at the Sub Irrigatted Planter thread over at RIU or GCity(can't remember which one I had the discussion in) that said you can't use SIPs with drip fed coco. I was told SIPs won't work with coco because of salt build up and nutrient toxicity. Well my BD girl loves it so far! It's a large mass of coco to try to keep evenly watered but I have 4 drip heads sufficiently spread out and she's looking better than ever. I originally only had two drip heads in veg, if I had added the other two sooner I'm sure she would have been two or three times bigger.

Enough rambling, let's meet the ladies!
 
Okay, introductions! I've posted a few pics of just before the flip to 12/12 and then a few leading up to where we are now, with the most recent pictures being taken last night.
On the far left of the group photo you can see my BlueDream#2 in the big 27gal SIP. In the orange bucket next to that (the one in the middle) is my Headband. In the orange bucket on the far right is BlueDream#1 my tallest plant right around 6'(not including the height of the bucket). In front of her is the mystery plant. And in between the mystery plant and the SIP is a clone of one of the BlueDreams.

The headband is much farther along than the BlueDream. She has completely stopped growing vertically and is just fattening up now. The close up bud shots are the headband.
 

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Small update.....I was going to say "Small update" but when I saw the last pictures I posted I realized they have definitely doubled in size.

So today is Day 38 of flower for these lovely ladies and things are trucking along nicely! These girls just don't stop growing!! But I love it :D They have grown into the lights and I am now having to tie down all the tallest tops because this Blue Dream loves to get lanky. Also, I am now even more uncertain about the mystery plant. As you can see in the pictures she has expressed a lot more sativa leaning features since being put into flower. The smell is a very amazing grapefruit. Most definitely not the Chocolate Mint OG. Perhaps C99? I've never had any C99 or grown any so anyone with experience, could this be C99?

The headband is looking amazing!! She just finished a nice swell and you can see she has thrown another set of fresh white pistils and I'm sure by the end of the week she will be swelling out!

Now for some pictures!
There are a couple pictures of the stems of my plants just to show what sort of training I did. You can actually see the stem of BD#1(5Gal Bucket) split when it was younger. So of course I taped her up nicely and she has fattened up into a very thick stem.

The thicker buds that are much farther along are the Headbands, looking great!
 

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Day 47 Flower!
I am thoroughly convinced the mystery plant is C99, fingers crossed, she smells beautiful! She's so top heavy, her little 3 gallon smart pot is tipping over.

At this point the colas are too tall to stand up straight and they are kinda just leaning on each other. My intention with the first grow in this new set up was to see how much bud I could get if I maxed out my space. Well, I'm definitely maxing out my space!

Does anyone have experience growing 707 Headband by HSO? Depending on where you look, it's a 9-10 week strain. In the pictures you will see the most developed buds are the Headband. I pulled a small lower branch that was completely shaded by the canopy but still a decent size. The trichomes on the buds were just beginning to amber, just one popping up her and there, not many at all. Id like to know if anyone's got experience growing this, how long did yours take to finish? I'm just not sure if this will go another two weeks.

The Blue dreams are starting to fill in and show some nice bud structure. I look forward to seeing these monster colas fill out. These are 2-3' colas, I really hope they fill into super dense buds.

Also, I have a couple leaves with a little funk going on. Any ideas what this could be? Too much P? It's not super common but all the plants have one here or there.

Until next time! Peace and love :joint:
 
Hmm I can't seem to see the individual pictures up close the way that I uploaded them in my previous post. So I'm going to re-post those pictures as regular attachments.

Still learning
:joint:
 

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These are the pictures of the effected leaves. Any ideas?

I have been using Mammoth P about once a week maybe every other week. I think I read a couple reviews of people having too much phosphorous, or just having weird side effects like extra stretch or longer flowering times. This is my first time using it and I got a couple free samples from the hydro store so I decided to check it out.

I guess its like many other products in that some people swear by it and some people think it will do more harm than good. Who knows, I'll give it a shot. I'm pretty sure I saw Growmau5(I learned everything I know and built my COB lights based off what I learned in his videos, so if you are interested in learning about COB lighting and how to build them go check out his youtube channel.) do a side by side and he liked what he saw so much that he didn't even finish the side by side because he wanted bigger buds out of his control plants. Or something along those lines, don't quote me.

Either way, I'm giving it a try. But if it happens to be signs of too much phosphorous maybe Mammoth P made too much readily available.
 

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Day 60!

Everything is coming along nicely!
I've been pulling down some Headband lower branches that are completely shaded and started to atrophy from lack of light. I decided I'd rather have the premature smoke and still use the small buds and trim for hash instead of just letting it die on the plant due to lack of light. Got a few nice buds and a lot of well, lowers ;).
They smoke nicely and definitely fits all the reviews which is what led me to picking this strain in the first place. Very upbeat happy high, love jamming to music every time I smoke it, good feels.

The headband is still fattening up and building lots of resin now. Very think dense heavy buds. The main colas are like belts of hand grenades, probably weigh about the same as one. Pulled down a bud last night and checked it under the scope, looking about 1% amber right now.

We got 2 large Blue Dream girls, 2 different phenos.
Blue Dream 1 is in the 5Gal hempy. Shes definitely frostier, has that classic frosted-over aquamarine BlueDream look but a lot more stretchy. Extremely EXTREMELY resinous. My hands are very sticky after barely touching the stem. Smells of blueberry lemonade, very refreshing smell. Long huge colas and literally frosted from stem to leaf tip for the top 4 feet of the plant.

Blue Dream 2 is in a 27gal(ithink?) SIP I built, shorter stature, still 6-6.5' herself but stopped stretching much earlier than her sister. Still solid resin content and coverage but the buds are a drabber green with darker pistils. Smells of fermented blueberries, no lemon tone. As you can see in the pictures the colas are equally as huge.

There's the small filler Blue Dream clone that's in the very front but it's just so small in stature compared to the mothers. It has 3 or 4 big colas and the rest will be decent sized buds.

Last but not least! I'm fairly convinced this really is C99, not sure. But from what I've read so far it seems fairly consistent. The biggest difference in what I read vs. what I have is the flowering time. Other people are saying C99 should finish in50-55 days-ish, we are on day 60 and she's still filling in. Definitely not ready. Very vigorous growth, giant colas as well. You're going to notice a lot of my colas are laying horizontally and thats because these monsters just grew so huge. Anyway, she smells like pineapple and tropical fruit. Very very resinous, close competition to the Blue Dream 1 and extremely sticky in her own right.

Lets see some pictures!
 
C99

C99

First the C99!
1.This is most of the C99 minus the backside but this is the biggest parts.
2.The stem and training. Mostly using the "Flux" technique and LST
3.Sideways colas. Easily 2 solid feet of bud
4. More cola! :joint:
5.C99 on the right side and the bud standing straight up on the left side is BlueDream1
 

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BlueDream1

BlueDream1

This is BlueDream1, shes probably my favorite because shes just an absolute monster.
1.This is her in all her glory. She's about 3.5'x3.5'x8'(that does not include the height of the 5gal bucket shes in).

2.This is the base of the plant. Topped and "fluxxed."

3.Nothing but colas!

4.More colas!

5.Falling all over the place!

6.The left side of this picture is the back side of her.
 

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BlueDream2

BlueDream2

1.This is one of her main colas. Beautiful roughly 2 foot long bud.

2.Cola on the back side

3.Another main cola

4.2 biggest colas

5.beautiful bud!
 

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