@Bogleg Ripening is the step just before “flushing” and is to pimp up the PK nutrients and force trichomes to “ripen”, mature faster…
I’m not a hydro guy, so I do not know the ppm required… Most probably @Donaldj @bryan @kabongster will do 
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Even the reduced nutes should speed ripening and a full flush isn’t needed if ppm is 6–700 you will see leaf die off even at that low which will speed ripening if they are drinking heavy as little as 12hr’s ph’d water would suffice. I tend to use sap test taking a leaf stem sucking sap out to taste if it’s bitter flush tastes like water no need
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Day 70 since 12/12 flip. Estimated 56 days since first pistils.
Well, ILGM has definitely created a great plant in the Crystal strain. A week or so ago I trimmed off some lower branches that weren’t getting any light and weren’t going to grow. I dried up what was on them (not much) and tried it out last night. Holy cow! Two tokes on my dry herb vaporizer and I was gonzo. Can’t wait to see what this stuff is like when it’s fully mature.
Anyway, nothing too new with the plants. Topped off this morning and decided to keep giving nutes (thanks to donaldj’s advice). Still day to day, but so far I don’t see any changes since Monday. I kind of want to go another week.
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Trichome check today - still looks about the same. I am going to harvest three of the plants tonight/tomorrow, and leave the other three until Wednesday (when I am back from my work trip). I’ll use a card board box with string in it to hang the ones I harvest this weekend, then put them all in the tent on Wed when I get the other ones down.
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Harvested one plant this morning. Also got a gallon zip lock bag of trim (lots of popcorn buds).
They aren’t the prettiest buds in the world, and definitely not the biggest, but man does this stuff pack a punch. 5 more plants to harvest. I will do 2 more after brunch today and the other 3 on Wednesday or Thursday.
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I took down plant #4 today. I just chopped the whole thing up for hash/butter. It was a sad looking little thing that was drowned out by its big sisters.
Plants 5 and 6 will come down tomorrow. They are now enjoying their last 24 hours of life in the darkness of my tent.
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@Laurap - tagging you in so you can see at least the last part of my grow that I journaled in this thread.
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Thanks, you are the first I’ve found that has grown Crystal. Your girls look Incredible! Many many thanks!
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Hi @bob31, What would you consider a strong loupe? How many times magnification? Could you also provide an Amazon.com link?
Thanks,
HC
Thanks - I didn’t manage/understand lighting very well during this first grow, so you can see my girls were all very leggy (I was so worried about burning them I put my light at the top of the tent for the whole grow). With better light management these things would’ve been great producers. I will be sure to post a dry weight when it’s all said and done - I’ll try to break it down by plant as much as I can (I already combined a couple of plants in one of the cardboard boxes).
Of course when I started the whole thing I planted all 10 of the Crystal seeds I had purchased… and all ten of the germinated and produced seedlings. I ended up giving away 4 of them. Sure wish I had some of those seeds back because I definitely want to grow this strain again now that I am marginally smarter. 
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Yeah I’m super excited to see these girls grow! Hoping they turn out as well as yours. Looks like your tents alot larger than mine. Think 4 will be okay in a 36x36x72" or hopefully 5(doubtful as it’s already been two weeks.)
@Laurap - I have a 4x4 tent (80" tall). I think 4 will be okay - it will be tight and you will probably want to top/fim them. I sort of randomly topped them because I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I have a lot of weird branches going all over the place - not a neat grow on my part. Just as an FYI I am only doing two plants on this next grow - I am going to attempt a SCROG and see if I can fill it up (I built a 3x3 scrog - I want a little extra room in my tent this time around) with just two plants this winter.
I believe you are growing in soil, right? I had serious problems accessing all my buckets - as a hydro guy I would suggest to anyone starting out to not follow my lead, and make sure they have an easy way to get at all the plants and be able to inspect them. The one plant I had that I ended up chopping up for the trim bag in its entirety was back, center in my tent and I had a really hard time adding and changing the reservoir on it. I didn’t plan well for that.
I only had my plants in the vegetative state for roughly 4 weeks - not long enough at all:
June 26th I put them in the bubble buckets and they looked like this:
This is what they looked like a couple weeks earlier (June 14th):
And this is what they looked like when I switched them to 12/12 on July 24th:
As you can see, I didn’t really let these plants grow long enough - they could have been WAY WAY bigger if 1) I had managed my light better and 2) given them more time to grow.
So, if you want to put 4-5 plants in your 3x3 tent, I would just watch how big they are. I definitely saw 2X growth during the stretch in flower, as you can see from my other pics in this thread.
I guess I sort of accidentally ended up doing a sea of green type of grow…
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Hubby & I fought over the # of girls. I think with less I could utilize more of the plant. I wanted 3, he wanted 4. One seed has never popped & she’s been in pod 14 days so I have little hope for her. And 5 has just been put in pod under dome. I know they’re not the prettiest buds but the thc is more appealing!
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Kinda goes back to the old saying “less is more “ 
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Just need a bat to make him understand. Lol
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Took down plant #5 this morning - #6 I will have to take down this evening.
Today marks day 76 from flip to 12/12. Searching the forums and talking to the one other person I saw who journaled a Crystal grow, he took his plants down 80 days from flip to 12/12.
Plant #5 was one of my better ones (but still not like what I see posted all over these forums by other people!):
Picture above is after I removed most of the big fan leaves. Next pic is what I trimmed up to dry and jar:
The trim bag there at the bottom is mostly buds from the lower part of the plant - not as much as I have taken off of other plants so far.
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I have one in the basement. I can ship it to you 
It’s still a nice harvest. It’s not pretty plants but the punch that matters
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