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A first timer's grow

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BullDogUK

Member
Howdy everyone :tiphat:

As this is my first time growing this wonderful plant I thought it would be nice to have an open thread here for helpful tips and to sate my urge to show off my babies to people (you all know what I'm talking about :woohoo:)

Anyway, we're a little late in right now as tomorrow marks the start of week 3 flowering. I'm using ~5L pots with a cocofiber/woodchip mix with about 3 cups full of perlite and a few spoonfulls of bat guano mixed in for some added magic goodness. No fertilizer was used during the vegging stage however after flipping to 12/12 I've been using bioponic 2 part bloom fertilizer (supposedly) adjusted for the local tap-water supply.


Here's a shot of the garden itself with all three of the ladies. We have a Huckleberry Hound in the front, a Mex Sativa in the back left corner and a thai plant growing in the back right. I'm using 6 1000lumen CFL lights with a 6" fan to aid with air circulation.


The Mex Sativa is probably the oddest looking of the lot. The seeds were provided in a free pack from Kalyseeds. It has a physical structure rather reminiscent of the old wild-type plants you see in the old 1920's and 30's informational films.

For those interested in stealth strains, the Mex has webbed, unserrated leaves which make it very hard to identify as cannabis.


The other ladies are coming along nicely and I expect to be looking at harvesting in 5-6 weeks. As I've reached the image limit for this post I shall add images of them at a later date!
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Quick update for flowering week 4!



Overview of the whole garden. Since this photo was taken I've added some little foil reflectors over each light to try and reduce wastage a little if possible.

The Mex Sativa's flowers are starting to look purdy. From what I've read online, it's something of a late bloomer so I'm not too worried about the lack of progress thus far.


The buds on the Hound are starting to thicken out and are getting nice and sugary. The whole thing is sticky to the touch and has a lovely weedy smell.


The flowers on the Thai are getting a little thicker and are as hairy as my balls. It has a lovely lemon/citrus smell which has me itching to have a tastey smoke from it :(

Anyway that's all for now! I'll probably put up another few pics next week :thank you:

N.B. The photos were taken right after the plants had been given a quick misting.
 
socialist

socialist

Seed Killer No More
ICMag Donor
BullDogUK said:
The Mex Sativa's flowers are starting to look purdy. From what I've read online, it's something of a late bloomer so I'm not too worried about the lack of progress thus far.
Click to expand...

I hope For your sake it's not a 16+ weeker. The leaves on the sativa look really waxy.
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Howdy everyone and welcome to the week 5 update! :tiphat:


As always, a quick shot of the garden to begin with. Both the Huckleberry and Thai are starting to really thicken out and put out frosting, whilst the Mex is still trodding along at it's own gentile pace.





Two lovely little profiles of the ladies. I'm getting so damn impatient for them to finish at this stage, I can't imagine what it's going to be like drying them haha.



The flowers on the Mex are starting to gain some height so I'm confident that it's not going to take 14 weeks, maybe 10 though :(, still it's such an odd looking plant, I'm enjoying just growing it!
 
DemonPigeon

DemonPigeon

Member
Veteran
Dude that mex has changed since I last saw it!

I love how the VBThai is looking :) looks bushier than the mother plant did :p
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Cheers DP, I wanted to get a few snaps of the kolas as I don't think it's going to be nearly as spindly as the buds that AK ended with. I got a bit carried away and got some beauty snaps of all the flowers :laughing:


One of the secondary branches of the Thai


The Thai's main kola


One of the Huckleberry Hound's tops.


A Mex flower. Frosty!
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Howdy everyone :tiphat: it's time for the week 6 update!

I'm going to split this into two posts as I have too many pictures for one sadly :(

I've added another 1200 lumen light to the setup as I had a spare socket however not much else has changed. The plants are continuing to thicken and I've noticed a bit of browning of the leaf tips so I shall be flushing them over the next two feeds or so.

As a rough guideline, I'm expecting the Huckleberry to be ready for harvest 7-12 May, the Thai about 2-3 weeks after that and the Mex whenever it looks good enough to chop. I'm going to be inspecting the buds on each branch from now on to try and determine how mature the trichomes are.

Anyway on to the plant porn!


Weekly garden overview, everything's looking good.


The main stalk of the VB Thai, looking sooo yummy :dance013:
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Week 6 part 2

Week 6 part 2


The same side stalk cola shown in last week's update. You can really see it starting to thicken out!


Same with the Huckleberry, this baby is looking lovely.


The central stalk on the Mex is starting to look a bit like cannabis at last haha

And some examples for checking the trichomes:


This is the top of the Huckleberry Hound; you can see a large number of the trichome heads are begin to look a milky white showing that THCa synthesis is ramping up. We're going to want about 10-20% of them to turn amber before the cola is ready to chop.


In contrast you can see that on the Mex, whilst there are a good number of trichomes (giving me good hopes about this strains!), they are all pretty clear and so not nearly ready for harvest.
 
W

willyweed

should be just in time for week 7 updates ? looking good so far
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Week 7

Week 7

Howdy everyone, welcome to the week 7 update :tiphat:


Got a nice bunch of heads growing in the garden at this point. Everything is green and hairy and good.


I've pulled most of the larger fan leaves on the Huckleberry Hound to help speed up the flushing process as I'm aiming to harvest her this time next week.


The Thai continues to get bigger...


The bud structure on the Mex is as weird as the rest of the plant. I'm not sure whether it's going to be a load of very small individual calyxs or whether these are going to start converging and form a nice nug!
 
Reg Dixon

Reg Dixon

Member
ICMag Donor
Hi BD. Great journal. Nice job on those plants. They look great. I love the look of the Mexican Sativa. May I ask how is the smell of the mex sativa specifically?

I also grow with CFL's by the way in coco and have just found some bat guano in my locale. Do you you use it only in the final repot mix or earlier in the process?

Finally I notice the walls of your cab are brown. I have a similar cab. It is called the inside of a converted wardrobe! It is possible to get some flat white cardboard from a craft store and tape it to the walls of such a space to allow the light to penetrate more deeply.
However looks to me like it is going fine anyway so I await the results with interest. Best of luck. Love your pics.
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Cheers Reg :thank you:

The Mex doesn't really have much of a smell besides the typical growing plant smell, though I'm hesitant to outright say that it doesn't have much of a smell as it still seems fairly early in it's flowering cycle (certainly more than a month to go I'd say :dunno:). Also the plant I have growing doesn't seem to be the greatest example as the nodes are pretty widely spaced but she's still my baby haha, certainly worth a go if you're looking for a stealth strain or an oddity.

I use the bat guano mainly in the potting mix and occasionally do a top feed if the plants are looking a bit stressed, I think giving them a break from synthetics when they start to show early signs of burn is a good idea (new grower though so I could just be being an idiot). For the top feed I just sprinkle it fairly liberally until there's a thin layer covering the coco. I've also gotten some worm casting (vermiculite?) to add in with the organic break feed.

It is called the inside of a converted wardrobe!
Click to expand...

Same here! I'm currently just using half a wardrobe (you can probably see the divider I put in in the pictures). The plants seem to be fine with the brown walls however I just used tin foil to cover the [black] divider so maybe you could just do something like that for all the walls in yours? It's pretty cheap, reflective, discrete and takes about 20 seconds to get up so I figured why not haha.
 
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willyweed

its good to flush plants every now and then to stop nutrient build ups,use ph,ed water until you get run off 10/20% ish and throw away the water in the bottom tray if possible.ps do not worry about not having any smell until the 6 ish week,they should be pretty pongy by then.lol willyweed
 
DemonPigeon

DemonPigeon

Member
Veteran
Wooow Wardrobe crew in the house! It's good we're able to come out of the closet ;)

But I think vermiculite are the little bits of platey mineral, not worm castings.
 
B

BullDogUK

Member
Are they not the same thing? Just 'cos you get like vermiculture which is making compost using worms. I dunno...

@Willy yeah man, I'm flushing the ladies at the moment for a few weeks as the burn was starting to creep in at the leaf tips (You can see some in the photos in the last update), though I've heard this could also be a nitrogen deficiency so who knows hehe. Anyways I've got a slightly odd watering set up, I have a container which I can put my plants on and let them drain completely but I have to take them out of the garden for that because I'm a stoner and doing things in an unnecessarily long and convoluted process is always better than doing something simple if I have the materials available :D
 
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willyweed

vermiculite is erm like volcanic rock in tiny pieces and very light ,good for many things ,i stick some under my rockwool cubes when cloning great for drainage,always keep a bit around as its handy stuff
 
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