First Grow: 4 Super Skunk (Fem) Under 600 Watt LED

Totally, bro. I’m noticing that now. Two have grown a bit faster than the others. What if - I lifted the smaller ones to reach the height of the taller ones? For example, Put something underneath it with drain holes that will bring it to the average height of the other tw0?

Also, yet another side note: in regards to pruning (which I haven’t doing much of, I’m mostly bending and training trying to open space to get light to were I see buds). Should I be pruning anything at this point? I’ve left the super large fan leaves on the bottom. It’s so dense and lush in there, I’d be pulling back tons of foliage to reach, I guess what are called “sugar leaves”? Should I just leave them at this point?

I’m sorry I talk a lot, lol.

I’d be a little bit worried about running out of room. @raustin is right, of course, that it’s best to let the plants grow into the scrog before flipping. But you seem to have a bunch of plants in there, and they are going to “stretch” for the first couple of weeks when you flip to 12/12, and they can grow anywhere from 30% to 100% in those two weeks. (I just grew some White Widows that were closer to 30%, but I don’t know what SS do in stretch.) Your tent is going to get awfully crowded then. So you might just want to go for it now. If you do, keep an eye on them, and keep tying down your kolas and larger stems as they stretch, to train them. The buds will then sprout upwards from the nodes along the net. I wouldn’t raise any plants from beneath, because if you do, you won’t be able to remove the support, once you tie down their branches, or tuck them under. They should grow up into the light.

People feel differently about pruning. Personally, I would let them be for now. It looks like you have low humidity in your tent, so the lower foliage shouldn’t be causing you any problems. Later on you might want to trim back some of that low growth, if it doesn’t stretch up into the net. Great job @thcrootz! Those plants look like they’re loving life… and they’ll make you happy later on!

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You really hardly will run into to much growth on scog you got plenty of space pack that screen up that’s the whole idea of it

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note to self: get larger tent lol

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@thcrootzlookin’ good. I’M m chugging along behind you with my SS. Think mine were 2 weeks yesterday. Starting veg now.

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Okay, so here’s the latest from Beginner Super Skunk over on the East Coast lol. Originally, there were 4 plants in my tent. Turns out the plants grew too damn big, and - in the middle of week 1 Flower I made an executive decision to remove the “runt”, see if I could keep her in veg (so far, so good - she’s officially growing like a “weed” with more space, literally OUT of the tent just chillin’ under some CFL’s, best I could do for now).

Meanwhile, back in the tent. We got 3 ladies growing - I think they are happier to have a bit more space, but it’s still filling up quick. I’m pruning very strategically (Don’t want to lose too many lower fan leaves, or leave just enough to help tell me what’s ‘going on’). I couldn’t stand the fact that I wasn’t able to get the temp/relative humidity right “at night” (lights off) so I bought a slightly move expensive inline fan (which, to my amusement and horror - seems to suck ALL the air out of the tent to the point where the suction looks like all the walls of the tent are literally “caving in” at night. Remember, during the “day” I keep my tent open, which gives the plants PLENTY of ventilation - and I have much easier control over their temp/RH. Inside the tent, along with this new, more powerful inline fan that’s supposed to be sucking out the humidity? (still, when I wake up - I’m at around 60%? even when I have other fans circulating INSIDE and OUTSIDE the tent, and the freakin’ window open which is making me freeze to death lol). So that’s small problem #1.

Problem #2 is - I don’t know what to expect exactly in week 1 of flower, it went kind of slow and I think removing the 4th plant helped speed things up, as in - the 3 girls that are in there now are growing faster, most of the terminals are through the trellis. (I had two horrible disasters where the circulating fans fell on the canopy, first time I didn’t lose anything. 2nd time, I lost a beautiful bud terminal and I tried to save it, but the next day it was all dried up and withered away, so instead of wasting time on repair, I hope i did the right thing, I just gently pinched it off with my fingers. If it takes longer to flower so be it. Under the microscope (I need to get a better one) I see some of the larger buds developing little white hairs. Clearly, at this point the plants seem to be giving it their last go at growth. Am I supposed to put the lights as close to or as far away from the canopy as possible now?

With 3 plants in there, I was able to also put a couple of CFL lights shining up from underneath, giving more light to the whole area - because everything is SO BUSHY (as you’ll see from the pics). I didn’t realize I put the plants in 3 gallon pots and not 5 gallon pots, which honestly I think would have been my only option, because there’s just no damn room.

One of the plants (the biggest one of course), her soil started to smell a tiny bit moldy. I sprayed her with a Neem Oil mix, and waited for her to dry out before watering/feeding. She seems fine now. I don’t see any or smell any mold problems on the soil or the plants. I do have some blue and yellow sticky traps in there for pests, but I know there is SOMETHING minor going on, every now and then (less and less now, but in veg more so) I would see little tiny holes in some leaves. My magnifying glass isn’t good enough to really get close and see what’s going on. I treated the plants with a Neem Oil mixture BEFORE flowering stage, and I’m watching very closely how I water and feed them.

Since adding the Cal-Mag, that DID solve a lot of the lower fan leaf problems. @raustin
I’m just going to post some pics, if you all can inspect them carefully and tell me if you see anything I may not, please don’t hesitate to say something. I’m so close to the end, 6-7 more weeks away - I would hate to screw this up big time now. I’m not putting pics up to “show off”, i’m putting pics up to get help and get more experienced eyes on things I may not notice.


I also put a sprinkling of DE (dioecious earth food grade), approx. a teaspoon around each plant to ward off any pests. I am not where these potential pests/problems are coming from, but I’m doing the best I can to organically keep things safe. Haven’t used a chemical pesticide yet (that I’m aware of). Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about cleaning the tent area with apple cider vinegar? When I sprayed the Neem Oil Mixture (inclusive of peppermint, rosemary, a dash of DAWN original and pH proper water) I made sure to avoid the buds. @WonkaMan @OldSchoolGrower @fano_man

I noticed in one plant, when I go to check the moisture level - it was hard to get my finger in the soil passed the 2nd digit. I started poking around and realized this was happening in many places around the plant. Could it be “root bound” or are the roots just freakin’ everywhere? I did a little scratch investigation with a fork (I have to learn these things), and saw little white roots. All the roots look good, from the point of view of what I’ve been told they should look like - clearly I can’t see THROUGH the pot, so I have no idea what’s going on.

Random question: has anyone ever put an earthworm in their soil to aerate it? What’s all this talk about no-till and living soil? For example, people planting clovers and such in the same pot with their cannabis plant? Just a random thought, since I’ve seen in come up in a couple of articles recently read.


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Plants are lookin’ nice. On occasion​ when my soil got compacted, I used a screwdriver gently inserted into the soil and jiggled lightly to loosen and aerate the soil. Never ran a no till garden. You wanna talk about pests. I had to battle katydids during my last grow. All the stuff outside for them to feast on, no they had to come inside for the good stuff.

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I agree that the plants look good. I never had to use neem oil during my grow, and didn’t have to clean my tent with anything like vinegar. I don’t remember the size of your pots. If you’re in 5 gal pots and the roots are that plentiful, I don’t think that there is harm in it, it’s just natural… and that sized pot should be plenty big enough for an indoor grow… though they could always take up more room if given the opportunity. If they’re in a 5-gallon pot, I doubt that they are technically root-bound, just a bit crowded. You’re doing well!

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So I’m not sure if I’ve run into a problem. It seems that one of the plants looks like a hermie? She was purchased as a feminized seed, which means I must have done something to overstress the plant. Take a look at these images and tell me if you see anything wrong.

Here’s some more pics of the other plants:


@raustin, check these pics closely if you can. You see my confusion as a noob?

@thcrootz, unfortunately you read the situation correctly. My gorilla glue fem did the same thing recently.

Ah I knew it. This sucks. Down to 1.

Dude looks like a lady !! Sry to hear that bro

It’s all good. Part of the learning experience. Better off make these mistakes now. I have one female left (currently in early stage flowering), and the other female I gave to my brother-in-law so even though I’m not finishing that one out, two out of 4 isn’t bad.

I’m just surprised bc they were feminizes seeds - so I’m trying to go through my journal notebook, and see where maybe I made a mistake or where I could have done something different. I already have a couple of ideas.

I do have some issues with my flowering girl now, Betty. But I literally have no idea what the problem is, so I took some pics and hopefully some of y’all can give me advice, opinions, constructive criticism, etc.

I took the pics under the LEDs I can always fix the white balance to show the true color of the plants, this way y’all can get an idea of what color her leaves actually are.

@raustin @OldSchoolGrower @WonkaMan @fano_man

Alright, so I forgot to tag ya’ll in the last posts. Sadly, two of the four turned out to be hermies, and I’m not sure why but I will go over my notes and see what I could change. I gave one of the two girls to a friend, and I currently have this plant, which is in Week 3 of Flowering (or since I officially started it, based on date). As you can see from the pics I uploaded in the last post and this post, I’m having some trouble lol. I’m not sure wtf is going on - and although I scanned the books for answers, I thought it would be wise to take a few pics and get actual opinions. It seems this plant is flowering very slowly, but what do I know? She is about 20 days into the flowering stage. I’ve taken a full size pic, as well as a pic of her “main cola” as its currently developing. The close ups are of some sugar leaves close to buds, and some fan leaves. They’re random and it’s not as bad as it looks because I took a lot of pics of the same thing, however - I still feel this is crappy news. Then, to top it all off - now I’m no longer sure if this plant is full female or herm. I’ve either become paranoid, have no clue how to sex a plant, got a bad batch or did something really wrong along the way to stress these girls.

At this point, I’m looking at it from a learning experience point of view. Even if this one herms, I’m going through to the end - to see the outcome, and become more familiar. Okay, no more talking - here are the pics.

This bud has some of it’s leaves “eaten” away?
Another eaten away leaf?
Full view of plant - which appears healthy and happy to me, unless I’m missing something (besides these eaten leaves issue).
A lower fan leave with what looks to be a partially eaten finger?
A fan leave…so weird. This is recent.
underside of same leaf.
More pics in the next post…

Little holes in middle fan leaf
underside of same middle fan leaf
Finally…
Main Cola (hard to get a clear shot with it moving about from the fan). Nonetheless, what I notice is - (a) shouldn’t it be a bit more filled in by 20 days? and (b) I HAVE notice that the two main fan leaves coming out from under each terminal bud have stems that are reddish/pink. They’ve been this way, pretty much from the beginning, but they’re getting more pronounced as we move along. It seems ALL of the mature bud terminals have these color stems, so I’m not sure if it’s me who stressed the plant to no oblivion lol, or if it’s a feature of this strain, etc. Please help?
@raustin @OldSchoolGrower @WonkaMan @fano_man

Ok, first of all, calm down, your plant looks fine, healthy and happy; and yes she’s a female. My plants always have bruised or ripped leaves, I find them all the time, it’s nothing usually, just make sure you have no bugs.

The red stems can mean a few things, it can just be genetic to the strain. It can also mean a magnesium deficiency. Are you feeding Cal Mag?

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yes, got the Cal-Mag! I’m using the Cal-Mag Xtra from Advanced Nutrients (which I thought was supposed to be good, but then some people were like aahh! no, too much extra Nitrogen lol) So far no, I don’t see any bugs I’m like the bug psycho (we live in a swampy area and this house is just awful, currently have a gnat problem - so I keep my door closed and plenty of ventilation. It’s an indica, so I’m dropping the temp a little at night, my humidity dropped as well and is perfect for this stage - so of course I’m like WTF is going on here? lol is it some weird ish I can’t see? (clearly).

Yes, I did notice on other people’s plant pics there were some stuff on them, mostly yellowing or burnt tips/nute burn - I just hadn’t seen THIS, so I’m thinking “figures, I’ve made it this far and now look…”

To be honest with you? I think these plants were slower growers/developers from the start. I mean, they had growth spurts in certain areas, but when it came to sexing? I may have even been wrong about one of them being herm! I think one def was, but the other? If I had just waited a bit longer - I’m almost certain I pulled a perfectly good plant. Which is why I’m not jumping the gun with this one.

I had the trellis net over her, but I removed it for the time being - when I was up in there cleaning and checking things out. Should I put the net back, or at this point just leave it be?

She’s drinking/soaking up what I give her really well now - I truly believe one of the reasons the others didn’t thrive and this one is doing better with them gone, is because they needed more space. They were cramped in there, and although it would have been awesome to have all 3-4, clearly that’s not what’s best here. I didn’t think the dang thing would grow this tall either.

What’s confusing about the sexing of any plant (whether it’s one in veg, or one that is slower to flower), is that the little “balls” (no bananas lol) which is staminate in/on male, Calyx on female - look pretty much the same until the female grows those little hairs. And so, if you think you have a potential “herm”, suddenly you have some small buds which indicate female parts no doubt, but then you have these underdeveloped balls - which could be male OR could be slow-to-develop pistols on a female. The question is, how long do you wait to see, when you’ve reached a flowering stage? I mean, in my case it doesn’t matter bc there’s one plant - so whatever happens happens. But, I’m kinda kicking myself as I said, I believe one of the two I removed was actually female. See if you can scroll up to that post and maybe you can tell. One is pretty obviously male to me, the others - the ones under the LED light? It could have been easily a slow moving female. It looked similar to this one. What I find on this plant just confounds me lol, so I’m gonna wait and learn…wait and learn.