The OBBT Grow Show!

[LadyLargely]

man, fuck 24/0, that shit is for cloning pussies.



Little-discussed fact: At the very core of photosynthesis is the fact that it takes a lot energy for the plant to drive the process. Photosynthesis is energy-intensive as hell, thats why plants don't move around a lot, its all they can do to crank out them sugars.

During the day, plants make sugars, burn them for energy and also put the excess away in storage. As long as photosynthesis continues to run the plant continues to put energy away and not draw on its reserves. The earth has had night and day since the very beginning of life, the plants don't fucking have to know when to stop, it is triggered for them.

At night, photosynthesis shuts down. That doesn't mean growth stops. Far fuckin from it! Without the burden of having to generate new sugar cell reproduction can launch into full speed. It pulls on the energy reserves and is able to apply all avaliable resources towards getting bigger! Yes, that means that a well-run aggressive cannabis plant will in-fuckin-deed grow faster at night!

The starch load also gets sent down to the roots at night. (this is why there are many proponents of cutting down in the night/after a dark period) Those starches are the biggest building block for new root growth. Therefore 24/0 plants tend to be foliage-heavy with a relatively skimpy root mass. Early on in the grow this is the exact opposite of what we want! Moar roots!

Moar roots pay huge dividends when you flip the switch. A fuckin 24/0 plant might look a tiny bit more impressive above-ground than my 18/6 plants towards the end of veg, but my girls are gonna blow that 24/0 shit away when stretch/sexing starts. The magic that is stretch, the plants' mind-boggling ability to grow so much so fast is based on it drawing on energy reserves that got built up during veg. Plants vegged with a night cycle do this better. Period

Now there is a strong case to be made for a very short night, I could see going as low as 4 or 3 hours in certain situations. But I would say those situations are limited to situations with mega-HID lamps and CO2 supplementation. Shit that is out of reach and/or desirability for most of us.

No apologies for my kurtness. I flat-out think anyone who veges under 24/0 who isn't trying to root clones (or otherwise slow growth/stop the usage of energy reserves) lacks a fundamental understanding of the cannabis plant.

 

[rrog]

So what do you really think Lady? hahahahaha

Ah well. While the logic you reference makes sense, and I am certainly not a plant physiologist, I (personally) have not seen research that says there are specific activities that are hindered or simply don't take place in constant 24/0 light. "Dark Photosynthesis" doesn't require dark, for example. In fact when I started reading up on this (a bit) I was of the opinion that plants needed some dark. When I was done I couldn't find a metabolic activity that required dark or "rest." This doesn't mean that there's no benefit to dark, I'm simply saying in my cursory research I didn't find any data.

But that's not what this thread is about so I'll not hijack further.

 

[McDanger]

Gotta say it man, leaving the lights off is a pretty big fuckup! They need light to stimulate chlorination, which is why you have them big yellow patches in the center of those lower leaves.

Yea, I know. I was getting everything ready so I could leave for the weekend and the MH plug came out so I was waiting 5 min for it to cool b4 plugging back in and forgot.
Man was I pissed when I got back and checked on them only to find the light still off. At least they had some ambient light from a cloner that was running in the same room, but only 24" single flouro.
All seems to be good now.
I have to build a few more buckets, more seeds popped today.

 

[McDanger]

Can somebody explain what this chlorination is? I have well water so no chlorine. I tried a search for it but only come up with it in water purification, not plant growth.

 

[rrog]

I've not heard of this before either.

 

[LadyLargely]

Hahah! Sorry guys, chlorination prolly isn't a real word! At least not how I'm refering to it. Told ya I'm not a scientist!


I'm referring to the process where 'empty' leaf cells take up sugars, combine them with iron and then under the stimulation of light make new chlorophyll. I'm usually referring to how my over-sized sprouts are all yellow but then go green when you put them under lights. They don't grow much, but they make new chlorophyll like crazy!

 

[rrog]

Sorry to jump ahead, but confirming that you aren't using UV-B yet. That comes later?

 

[LadyLargely]

And now for a mini update!

So far I have been dispensing knowledge out into the ICmag community. I was wondering if anybody out there could give me a little back.


THIS:



...has been happening to me for years now. I've had lots of tripod (three leaves per node instead of just 2) plants, but as far as I knew those are genetic flukes. Ever since I started using the grow method I use now (organic OBBTs with heavy cytokinin treatment) I've had at least one of these per grow. Randomly, one of my plants' offshoots will start to grow tripod. No idea why. This time, DM#2 has done it.



Two of her offshoots have done it, and interestingly they are sisters, they are rooted to the same node on the main stem. They are also the lowest and oldest offshoots. Perfect tripods both of them. It isn't just them starting to go alternating nodes so a funny one comes out, all three fan leaves conjoin in the exact same place on the stem. Too wierd! Anybody see this before? Know what it's about? Never really bothered me because tripod just means denser nugs, but I've always been curious.


rrog
No problem buddy, I know you wanna get this shit down!

UV would be very bad at this point. Aside from burning and stunting leaves the levels I plan to use could easily corrupt the DNA in the growth tips, causing malformations. Right now, all I'm running is overdriven 6500K T-12 floros supplemented with a pair of normally-driven 5000K T-8s. They are contributing massively to the awesome bushiness of my plants. Time to again focus on the end desires more than on individual supplies or techniques.

I'm growing floro buds which means they're gonna need all the help they can get to be comparable with HID head stash. One of the many things trichomes do for the plant is absorb UltraViolet radiation. Trichs are thickest on the plant's sex parts, the bits that are most important to protect from the UV waves!

Happily, the sex parts are the bits that we like to smoke!

Therefore, UV tubes will not come until trichs have already started. A lot of people claim that their usage will up THC potency per weight in your final bud. I'm not so sure about that, or that it is a significant gain. You might pick up 1-2%. If your plants are strong enough to survive UV and you are a badass enough gardener to be trying it out then this quantity doesn't mean much.

I think the main benefit of UV is upping the complexity of the finished THC. I think UV is one of those 'x factors' that can make outdoor bud blow its indoor competition away when things are just right. UV treated bud gives you a more complicated and deep-seated high. Powerful medicine, makes you think deep thoughts!


So hold off their cowboy, no UV until around 2-4 weeks after flipping the switch. Stay tuned to see the magic unfold.

 

[Citizen024]

Hey gang!

Getting ready to go to Burning Man and had to get all my shit dialed out. You know how how it is to co-ordinate a harvest, new veggies, and clones to all allow you to leave for a week? Like the Mayan calendar, wheels inside of wheels all lining up.

But I did it! Yeahr!

LadyL: Yeah I should have taken a perspective pic, there are some new ones on my profile album. Yeild could defiantely go up, no doubt there. The strain I work with goes deep down though, and is insanely quality. But I am not sure how far it will go yeild wise. The pics are deceiving, those plants are 3 feet tall, and the calyxes are huge. The Deep Chunkx NC Afgoo is like nothing I have played with before genetic wise, and picky. I am moving into more "Grapefruit" next time as it is more aggressive, nutrient tolerant and does very well in the kind of space I have. It loves to be packed in and trellised. My friends pulled high yeilds, so I know it can do it.

Had the extreme pleasure of fighting mites and end cycle PM too. But, I managed it well, and the finish is really nice. God bless the Fogmaster Jr. Now I get to load it up and spray out my room too. Physan to end it all.

That was the second run in the room, and like you said earlier, you need to buy quality. Well let me tell ya, it doesn't happen overnight. That said: next round will feature a CO2 system (now that the environment is dialed in to handle it), and drip systems on every tray. They were not completed through out, and was dialing in my nutes/flow rates as well. They are now DIALED in, so. . next round will be spankin it off the bat. Even my new veggies are crankin at warp speed as I adjusted my veg nute too.

Rocket power- nothing else will do from here on out.

Loving your progress everyone!! I am off to the most insane incredible party/adventure/ soul stirring event on the planet. Surprised there isn't more Burners on here. See you kids after the Man burns!

 

[Citizen024]

Pics:

Deep Chunk x Afgoo



Grapefruits:



Those put out some really huge colas too. They will require trellising. And they are completely PM resistant, which is a big problem in my area.

The smell cannot be described!!

 

[Citizen024]

Lighting cycles:

I read a paper on here (with legit links, etc) study showing that 20/4 ended up with the best yeild. They raised plants all the way from start to finish, using 18/6, 20/4, 24, and 16/8 I think too. Anyhow- 20/4 was the top, and they calcuted the % difference in the other yeilds. Assuming all was the same- 20/4 won, and some cases the percentages were rather large.

I run 20/4. I was going 18/6. Since I knew I was leaving town I pushed the veg to 20/4. Whadya know- My new veg is healthy, very rooty, and always at attention. Granted I have got my ferts dialed in now, but still, looking very good with 12-14" pruned tops, and lots of roots running well out of 5" containers after 4 weeks.

As an aside, I know a lighting trick I am about to use for a week.

How to suspend your plants. Putting them into a deep sleep.

Switch your lights to run 2 hours on, 4 hours off. 4 cycles a day. They get enough light to stay healthy, but not enough to really grow much. Back the nutrient down slightly. You can leave them there for awhile if you need to stop them. Helpful if your flower is taking too long for your veg (too tall sucks!!!), or if you need to leave for awhile and want it to go to low maintenance mode.

No matter what kind of system you use, it should work. I have done it for periods of time in the past, but I will let you know how it goes to do it for a week.

Off to go BURN!!!

 

[rrog]

I'm not familiar with Burn, but have a great time! Thanks for the awesome pics also. I'm thinking 24/0 also, but am concerned about the various factors that LadyL and DM said led to high % females.

 

[LadyLargely]

Ehh, rrog, I believe C024 said that his reading found 20/4 to be the best, not 24/0

That falls right in-line with what I was thinking. I figured if you had a really badass grow situation, with all your shit dialed in and perhaps some CO2 supplementation then a 3-4 hour night would be best. C024 said that in places 20/4 won out by a very large margin. This doesn't surprise me at all. 20/4 still has a long enough night to maintain a natural rhythm and keep the plants nice and rooty. No reason it should interfere with achieving lots of girls. I currently run a 7 hour night as my floro grow just isn't aggressive enough.

Night cycle FTW people!

C024:

You bastard!

I've wanted to go to the burning man forever. I actually got the chance to go 2 years ago, but I didn't want to go unless I had the time and supplies to do an installation once I got there. I didn't just want to be a random attendee, I wanted to contribute because its people like that which make burning man cool at all! Someday godamnint!

Ok, so now that I see a shot of a bud in-hand, they look a lot better. Those are pretty chunky! But as thick as they are I think you will experience much more gratuitous nuggage if you went ScrOG under HID lamps (you said something about a trellis, assume thats what you are doing) with CO2 supplimentation. You could be dealing with some serious donkey dicks!

 

[rrog]

Lighting cycles:

I read a paper on here (with legit links, etc) study showing that 20/4 ended up with the best yield.

Might you be able to point out this paper with links?

 

[LadyLargely]

Time for ScrOG!

Time for ScrOG!

Well, its been 30 days since my beans hit the wet towel. I was shooting for a weekly-ish major update schedule and was intent on maintaining it. But whilst I was messing with the girls today I went to myself "oh shit, I was gonna do a how-to on ScrOG" >_>

*EDIT* Durrr, I guess it has been a week. NVM on that front, goodness how time has flown lately...





I put my screen up, like, a day after I said to you guys "oh yea, it'll be a little while before I screen, see ya then!" So much for that shit! Veg is seriously starting to hit warp factor 9. Even little Mutt Weed #1 is getting in on the action. Growth has started to hit that super-rapid pace where its too fast for the outer cell structure to keep up and weird shit starts to happen.

Like this funky 4-node leaf on MW#1:


Or this. What the fuck is this?


Its actually Sheerah's main growth tip. Its putting on new foliage so quickly and so densely that it no longer resembles cannabis. It just stops making any goddamn sense! At least, until we do this:


Ah, that's better! Now it looks like a growth tip! This brings us quite nicely to:

TODAY'S LESSON

Real ScrOG

You might have heard me banging on about 'real' ScrOG. Pleanty of growers here screen train, just have a look at Silver_Surfer_OG's current OBBT grow. You simply put up a screen and poke foliage underneath it when it gets too tall.

I do it a bit different and actually weave the colas into the screen. The screen serves several purposes. It replaces the need for my earlier explanation on leaf training. Instead of supercropping the shit out of the leaf stems and tucking them way down in the lower foliage you just give the stems a mild pinch and poke them under the screen. This makes it easy to keep those newly formed growth tips under direct light.

The main stem is never woven, at least not in a case like mine. It is just too thick and dense. Just continually poke it down beneath the screen as well. It is the numerous offshoots from the main stem that we are interested in weaving. They will be much strechier and compliant.

I'm having a tough time putting the weave process into words so I'm just gonna show you a bunch of before-n-afters along with a few detail shots.

I've been ScrOGing this way for years and have experimented a lot. The first screen I ever used was some shitty 2 inch hexagonal poultry net. I've gone to all sorts of fancy plastic and metal meshes, but I keep going back to that goddamn poultry net! This time around I have some nice galvanized 2 inch stuff that came on a 2 foot wide roll, perfect for my needs.

You may notice that my screen is crazy-low. Normally low screens are an ergonomic issue. It has to be high enough to get your hands under. However, I have found that as long as the height of the screen above the 'ground' is not much more than the diamater of your mesh holes than it isn't an issue. If you need to get at shit way down on the plants you just reach through the holes in the screen. The mesh sits down so low that the issue with screen height just goes away.

Anyway, we want to do this:



It takes not two, but three adjacent screen holes to complete a single step in the weave. Up through the first, down into the second and then the plant grows back up through the third. I find having a hexagonal mesh makes completing weaves way, way easier. So much so that I would not reccomend trying this technique with a square mesh. There just aren't enough 'junctions' on square mesh so you have to go with little 1 inch holes and that just sucks. Stick with 2 inch hexagonal. Trust me, its just the best.

So here we are, from right to left this time:

White Widow#2


Dutch Mystery#2


Sheerah!


Mutt Weed #1


And last but holy-shit-definitely-not-least:
White Widow #1


So there it is, real ScrOG. It will start to look a hell of a lot cooler once I start to complete multiple weave steps.

One of the tricks with ScrOG is knowing when to pull the switch. It is easy to 'over-fill' a screen and trust me that sucks. You have to cut bits off and, arrg, its just not nice. You would rather not quite fill it than overfill.

But what we really want is to fucking nail it! Just enough foliage to completely fill our screen. This takes a lot of feel and experience, but as a general rule you want your screen no more than 50% full before going to flower, wich looks, uhhhh....



Well fuck, a lot like that actually. After finishing my training today I stood back and decided that its looking awfully close to switch-flipping time. As a newbie you might want to go to flower when it looks like this. I'm an old weaving pro and pride myself on my ability to often squeeze in two buds per hole in my mesh. So, I'll be going a bit beyond the 50% mark. Newbs to ScrOG: Don't do this! It takes a lot of maintenance and come streach its gonna be a nightmare. Unless you can handle the resulting growth you are better off flowering early. Too much growth can hurt your yield.

Anyway, I'm really digging the way this grow is going. And I'm seriously digging DM#2 I mean look at this:



Gorgeous big fat 11-node leaves that carry on being 11-node even though there isn't really enough room on the leaf for all those fatass sativa nodes. Love it!

Her tripod nodes are also, uhhh... still being tripods...


Don't really know what the fuck that shit's about, but I love it to bits anyway!

Also visible in that tripod picture is some lovely bright red pigmentation starting to show through on the leaf stems. She's been a bitch-and-a-half to get up into the screen, but I think all this work will be worth it. DM#2 is gonna be pretty!

Aaaaand that just about wraps shit up for the moment. Still nothing cool going on as far as feeding. Might water them for the second time here soon and they've been getting my veg spray every couple of days. Even though I plan to push past 50% screen coverage during veg I will prolly be going to flower sooner rather than later. Something tells me this is gonna be a sexing that I will not soon forget. Stay tuned!

 

[RipVanWeed]

Hey y'all, here's an update on my OBBT stylie

The temps in the box have been between 72 and 82...Rh 26-51%. These plants have been in 12/12 for 30 days. You'll see some yellow areas on some leaves, no worries, it's just where the buds have grown a little to close to the light. I tye them back but those that are front row center may always show that stress/ light bleaching, but I know that everything else is getting as many lumens as they can handle.



I find that I have to add to my buckets every other day so I've been alternating Earth Juice, then Floranova Bloom, then some tea bubbled with Kelp, fresh EWC, alfalfa, molasses, and a little pinch o' this or that as I see fit. (I sound like some old pro, eh? not the newbbie on just his 2nd grow like I am...lol) Sometimes I just add bubbled tap water 50%--50% RO water.

Here let me go take some current pics for you guys. I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, I think these plants are a fair bit ahead of my 1st grow.



Super Silver Haze



White Russian



Next time I'll throw up some images of the Dabney Blueberry's. They have the biggest colas!

I have some Jack Herer and Swiss Bliss in my Outdoor garden, look for bud shots here soon. I used alot of the fungi and bacteria method outdoors as well.

 

[LadyLargely]

FLIP THE SWITCH!

FLIP THE SWITCH!

It Is Time!

To quote our buddy RVW:

Muwhahahahaaaa!



I chickened out. Switched out the lamps, now running 2 5000K normally driven T8s and 4 overdriven General Electric Plant and Aquariums. The narrow bulbs used to look red, but now look how blue they seem compared to the P&As. I was gonna wait a bit longer but I think I'll have enough trouble getting everyone crammed in as things are now. Things are looking good for 5 out of 5 going girl. However today I managed to fucking snap the main crown off of White Widow #2.

Let this be a lesson to you: never get lazy when ScrOGing. It happened because I tried to poke her main stem back down under the screen without supercroping it first. The stem was too stiff and it snapped under the strain. Had I not been lazy and pinched it first it would have bent easily.

Because of my incompetence I have broken one of my biggest, hardest rules: never top the plants! If I get a male this round it will surely be WW#2. Its late in the game though, I've accidentally topped her on the day of flower, so hopefully her chemistry won't change enough fast enough for it to make a difference.

Which brings us to sexing with my method. My ladies are quite mature and under normal circumstances plants which have been vegging this long (and this well) should be showing some signs of pre-sex. I should be able to see little pistils on the females and those damn nuts on the males.

But instead there is nothing, no sign of sex whatsoever. Even though I have pulled the switch this behavior will continue. Heavy cytokinin treatment does something strange to the plants at this stage. When you pull the switch they will explode into stretch, as is usual. However they stay weirdly asexual. They continue to just grow, for up to two weeks, while showing no sign of sexual orientation whatsoever. This means we have done things right.

When males appear with this method they come early and heavy. Within the first 3 or 4 days of flower any males you will get just covered in nuts that well within the first 2 weeks of flower burst out into thousands of those horrible little banana bunches.

Females on the other hand take a very long time to show. They continue to stretch and baloon and develop while showing no sign of sexual orientation. It usually isn't until week 3 of flower, sometimes even longer, for pistils to finally show. Once they do however, we put them through their first starve cycle and then the buds EXPLODE!

So! Fingers crossed for weird unsexed plants through my first couple weeks of flower. If I've fucked things up by accidentally topping WW#2 or some other way we will know very soon. If I make it through these first 5 days with no sign of nuts then we know I'm home free. Updates will come as things develop. Stay tuned!

 

[rrog]

Thanks for the update. Looking good indeed. So that's the "stretch" that DM has discussed a lot.

 

[SwitchAvenger]

Awesome!!! Sorry about your WW, but hopefully all things go as planned. What will you do if it does go male? Chop it? Just figured I'd ask anyway. Looks like things are going oh so well... It's so AWESOME. Good luck!

 

[LadyLargely]

Liftoff

Liftoff

We have liftoff



The girls are already stretching like crazy after going through their first ever 12 hour night. Just as I suspected, DM#2 is already becoming much easier to work with. Her offshoots have stretched out enough to get into their first step of the weave. She hasn't put on a ton more mass but she just seems so much bigger already.

Some before-n-afters from the training today:



DM#2 and WW#2



The other 3.

Yep, things are gonna get crazy! At least they're set for another day. They'll need just as much work tomorrow!