Gettin the Hands Dirty: Mother Search 2021

[swapmeet]

Okay, so I opened up the quad at lights out for a little photo shoot. The first wave should be done in the next two weeks. All the rest are just finishing their stretch period... Tuesday will make three weeks. I have decided to go to three lights because the second shelf isn't really getting enough light. So, I made a triple stack light stand that should put the base of the bulbs just over the top of the second, third, and fourth shelves--16" apart. So that will make the stack 945 watts of love to cover 9 sq ft. interior dimensions... The lights cleared customs already and should be delivered on Tuesday...So Tuesday will be a busy day...starting the defoliation of fans on wave two, adding the 16ish moms I'm flowering out, setting up my triple stack... I'll have pictures to prove that in a few days. Until then, here's tonight's photoshoot. Also, I ordered the reflectix Freds....

 

[swapmeet]

The next wave just finished up week three of flower, so I started removing some fan leaves to open these gurls up and let the light in...My new lights have been held up a few days, but should be here later today...also a couple closeups of some plants in their last 10 days or so..that tiny first wave of mostly runts...

 

[swapmeet]

So today, I did some rearranging of my setup. I got my new lights in the mail, so I assembled a triple stack light setup at 28", 44", 60" off the ground. The shelves are at about 4", 18", 32", 46". I will be adding in the next 16 or so more plants in there in a few hours... here is the triple stack as it stood before and after I fired it up.

I know the first one is a little blurry. I'll take a better one at lights out--after I fill up those third shelves....

 

[swapmeet]

 

[swapmeet]

Quick update... I am about to top the clones that are vegging for wave 4. You can see those here:

Then Waves 2 and 3 are in the quad already. Wave 2 is 4 weeks in. Wave 3 is one week in.

 

[swapmeet]

Quick update on my new veg set up... I basically have 3 areas now, though two are the same. I have the rooting area with the white perlite clones rooting.... right next to it is a pallet upon which rooted clones stack nodes. over to the right, I have the horizontal pre flower veg area for them to get size before flower for a couple weeks. It seems to be working well because two weeks ago, the rooted clones went under the preflower looking like this, you can see all 3 areas:

To this:

other direction:

I will top them today/take clones, then let them go a week longer, then flower. I also usually "water in" my fresh transplants, but I found in this last batch, that 36 hours after transplant, I had roots shooting down the sides of the new cups almost to the bottom, then I watered them.

I also have a couple additions to the mother stable. I just put 22 moms into flower. Based on the results from my testing of the runt first wave, I really liked all the strains I tested as far as bag appeal and power, so it really came down to yield. Both Blueberries and both Gelato yielded well, as did the BigBud.

Back to the new moms. To go along with the Peyote Gorilla, Runtz Muffin, Critical, Purple Ghost Candy, which I will be topping for the first time today, but I also have Sour Diesel 2, which I didn't flower with the rest of the moms, but also, I have fresh seedlings of Humboldt's Lemon Grass and Blueberry Muffin, along with Amnesia Haze.

I have work to do. I will update the flower quad later on...

 

[Beaucephus]

don’t even think about postin flower room pics without reflex backing...lol....freds right as usual though, like heating your house and leaving a window open. waz up fred! good on you takin care of troops.
i like them new racks dude, look real sturdy.

 

[swapmeet]

don’t even think about postin flower room pics without reflex backing...lol....freds right as usual though, like heating your house and leaving a window open. waz up fred! good on you takin care of troops.
i like them new racks dude, look real sturdy.

hahaha....with these small ass lights, I don't know how much could even penetrate the canopy, let alone reflect back onto the plants. It is a trade-off between airflow and whatever result the reflection of the leftover lumens from the reflectix onto the back of my plants will add. Since I don't have a circ fan in there yet, I need the airflow. That is why I have been dragging my feet. I'll have to mount a fan up on the wall..

 

[swapmeet]

Here is that flower quad picture I hinted at...

 

[swapmeet]

I have a couple of updates now that I have begun harvesting wave 2. I have so far tried

Blueberry 1

Gelato 1

Gelato 2

Orange Cookies 1

Blue Dream 3

Blueberry 2

Big Bud 1

White Widow 2 Gigabud 1 Gigabud 2 Blue Dream 1 Blue Dream 4

They all had good nug structure and frost. A lot had good smell, and they all had the power. It comes down to flowering time, yield, or something extra. 2 moms stand out above the rest. First is gigabud 1 & 2 by G13 Labs. They were very similar, and yielded the exact same. I can't tell the difference, so I count them as one. There is also a gigabud 3, but I won't test that until wave 3, which will be next month. Here is the gigabud:

That is currently Jarred. I have wave 4 getting ready to go into flower in a couple days, and I am removing all the gigabud plants and making a few mothers so as to begin preparation to monocrop a quad in two waves of 16, a wave every 3 weeks for production since it is a 5-6 week strain. It is a cross of Northern Lights and Big Bud. I may fill two quads of the gigabud, while I grow moms of my last few strains for this project. That way, I can time it out so I am harvesting 16 plants every 11 days or two weeks, or whatever... This is the production strain though.


The second mom that stood out was Blue Dream #3. Not only are the buds dense and frosty, which is always appreciated, but they have purple hues, which I could bring out even further by blowing colder air from outside into the window at night. BD is a haze cross (Haze #1 x Blueberry), and she finishes in 6-7 weeks. So an opportunity for a super fast, purpling, dense, frosty, haze cross, and it finishes in 6-7 weeks? I am keeping that. I had two out of two BD #3 plants purple, but have not seen another up close yet. Here she is:

So those are the first two keepers in this mother search. Everything else was good, but these just fulfill my needs better, and it is 1 indy and 1 sat. I assume keepers will change when my Humboldt seeds grow up, and when my serious seeds get here. But these are the only two I'm keeping out of those listed.

 

[Itsmychoice]

Yes sir, progress its what matters. The next run is always the one i am looking forward to. Vert stacked donuts took care of my family as i lurked around here learning what i could.
4 years to go until retirement and i hope to take the pension some place in central america where it goes a little further. I have the forever farm established in the mountains of your once trailer community home but a winter escape will happen and i like to build what i want. I like the pacific and CR is in the running maybe somewhere down the peninsula.
I have had good luck with the hortilux 315 bulbs, when you hold one you feel better about paying for it and the spectrum on paper looks better than anything. To me nothing beats mixed lighting and i bet that a hps bulb in the mix gets you improved quality and yield for the same work.

T5s are the way but recently i have went to 4 65 watt hlgs covering a 5x5 under my tables for early veg and they really build the plants just like the t5s for less watts and bulbs.

Running seeds is such a pain in the ass that i can’t avoid but congratulations on getting it done and finding some nice ones. Looking forward to watching this progress. Anyway, best of luck to you sir.

 

[swapmeet]

Yes sir, progress its what matters. The next run is always the one i am looking forward to. Vert stacked donuts took care of my family as i lurked around here learning what i could.
4 years to go until retirement and i hope to take the pension some place in central america where it goes a little further. I have the forever farm established in the mountains of your once trailer community home but a winter escape will happen and i like to build what i want. I like the pacific and CR is in the running maybe somewhere down the peninsula.

This is basically what I have done out here in southeast Asia. My retirement is enough to live very, very well here. Since it was a US territory for a few decades, the US set up their government and the laws and setup are pretty much the same, plus most people speak English too, so that helps me. I bought a nice piece of land in the Mountains with a view, and am having a big cabin built. I thought my production days were over, but the weed out here is mostly shit, and if you want the bomb, wholesale prices are higher than retail in So Cal, and I met a guy who also grows, but is plugged in heavily in the game out here. So what started as personal use grow, turned into production.

Here is a shot from my area: only one visible neighbor, and he is barely visible and has a huge parcel of land, and can't even see my house...

I have had good luck with the hortilux 315 bulbs, when you hold one you feel better about paying for it and the spectrum on paper looks better than anything. To me nothing beats mixed lighting and i bet that a hps bulb in the mix gets you improved quality and yield for the same work.

My goal is to get 1 oz+ per plant. When I harvest wave 3 (about 3 weeks from now), I will see how close I can get to that. Wave three is mostly mother plants, if not all, so If I do not hit my yield goal then, I will replace the middle bulb with a 600w hps, and see how that affects yield. I have about 6 of those digi ballasts lying around with plenty of lamp cord. The first couple waves were runts going in, just to get a couple runs under the belt and get the system working properly, and find my moms... Now that I have found the first two, and have a few months before I keep any others, I'll monocrop these two strains and start dialing them in each in their own room. One quad each. I am considering loading 1 shelf in the quads every 2 weeks. That is 16 plants, so at my oz per plant goal, that will be about an elbow dry every two weeks, per room. Anything in that ballpark will be good.

I have also seen that there is a huge opportunity in edibles here. Anything even decent is rare as hell here. So I will be capitalizing on that as well.

T5s are the way but recently i have went to 4 65 watt hlgs covering a 5x5 under my tables for early veg and they really build the plants just like the t5s for less watts and bulbs.
Running seeds is such a pain in the ass that i can’t avoid but congratulations on getting it done and finding some nice ones. Looking forward to watching this progress. Anyway, best of luck to you sir.

I have definitely noticed that my 9 bulb t5 is really good at stacking nodes and rooting clones, so I set it up to do that... Then, to gain some size and growth shoots, I have had very good success with the horizontle 315 CMH can veg around 30-40 tweeners at a time pretty efficiently... seems similar in wattage to your setup, but yours likely has better coverage with the 4 bulbs, so I will look into it. Thank you for stopping by and especially for the kind words and valuable experience.

Swap

 

[swapmeet]

So, I might as well update the whole thing rather than just part of it, as well as show the setup I mentioned above. First is my clone (little perlite cups, in front of the rooted cuts on top of the pallet). In the foreground you can see my tweeners under the horizontal 315 CMH... transplanted, cloned, and ready to go into flower tomorrow.

​

Next, now that I have harvested the top two shelves, I have a couple pictures of wave three, which has a few weeks to go:

And here is a sour diesel I have prepared to start day one of flower outside today:

​

​

​

This wave that is going into flower tomorrow should be the first full wave of good-sized plants with good roots..

 

[Itsmychoice]

Central America just seemed easy but asia or indo would be badass, nice work on making that happen. It looks like a great spot. A lb every couple of weeks would keep the trimming manageable which makes everything more fun. T5s to hotizontal 315s is how i veg, nothing beats the cmh for veg for me. I just added the hlgs in between. Cleaning for the reset i have been working for today, it will be the first run in the new spot with just the good cuts .
Keep on keeping on.

 

[swapmeet]

Central America just seemed easy but asia or indo would be badass, nice work on making that happen. It looks like a great spot. A lb every couple of weeks would keep the trimming manageable which makes everything more fun. T5s to hotizontal 315s is how i veg, nothing beats the cmh for veg for me. I just added the hlgs in between. Cleaning for the reset i have been working for today, it will be the first run in the new spot with just the good cuts .
Keep on keeping on.
filedata/fetch?id=17970351&d=1634684715

Yeah, Indo is awesome, a couple hours from here. It is beautiful, but a lot more 3rd world.

So our veg setup is pretty much the same....man.... they thrive under that cmh horizontal.

I am putting the next wave into flower tonight after a long day of vegging... so I'll count tonight as their last day of veg and first night in the dark......then tomorrow will be their first full day of flower. 10/21

 

[swapmeet]

After I put the Sour D outside, I figured I ought to open her up a bit to improve yield, so I went to bending and tying...this is what it looks like now:

 

[swapmeet]

Here is my sour d.... speading out nicely outside...

And here are my newest potential moms... Some Runtz Muffin and Amnesia Haze, with a side order of Blueberry Muffins and Lemon Grass from Humboldt seed co.... There's a purple ghost candy in there... a couple gelato (not new).... Just waiting on my last seeds....serious seeds...

 

[swapmeet]

Quick flower rack update: 3 weeks to go on the lower plants, 10 days into flower for the uppers:

 

[exploziv]

Well, I am kinda late, but taking a seat!

 

[swapmeet]

Well, I am kinda late, but taking a seat!

Welcome... we are just getting ready to start the fun part....