No doubt I pushed it further than most. I learned following Hellraiser’s guides and he tends to leave them in solo cups near this point. Just a different way of doing it, I definitely went 1 day too long, though.
Most solid root balls I’ve had in 3 grows. They got lots of Myko and plenty of room to grow now, so let’s see what these plants can do.
I hooked the watering system up on 06/03 (Day 32 above ground) after having transplanted on 05/21.
05/21 is when I ran into some issues…
Plants showed signs of being over fed. They became a darker green and new growth on all plants showed burnt tips… additionally, they were in a constant state of droop:
^just so strange that they were fine on 100% Jack’s 321 in solo cups, but then I transplanted to 5 gallon bags with same everything and they freaked out. I don’t know if it’s because they like overdosed themselves on the additional water available in 5 gallons of coco compared to a solo cup or what… in any case I was very frustrated by this development, because it cost me upwards of 10 days of growth.
On 05/30, I cut the Jacks down to 50%, so 9g (A), 6 G (B), and 3g Epsom Salt in 5 gallons of RO water for those of you keeping score at home. The plants showed immediate signs of improvement before problem #2 began!
3 of the 4 plants have been stretchy from day 1, and no surprise they started stretching as soon as I wasn’t pumping too much chemicals in them…
Should be even more clear from that same night when I topped them and did the first pruning, getting rid of large fan leaves, look how skinny and vertical the growth was:
On Sunday 06/05, I sprayed the plants with Neem Oil as a precautionary measure against bugs. I saw one gnat follow me in, but haven’t seen any since. I spray weekly alternating Neem Oil and Captain Jack’s Deadbug weekly. So, last weekend it was Neem, next weekend Deadbug, then Neem the following week… you get the idea.
My goal at this point is to get all 4 sprays in and then switch to flower. That gives the plants 4 weeks from last Sunday to prepare for flower…
I am going to continue watering with 50% Jack’s until the plants demand more, if they don’t I’ll continue like this as they seem very happy now.
I don’t intend to do any training as I don’t really have the time. The small plant is a great candidate for LST, it’s already growing a perfect cross section after being topped, but I’ll just let them do their thing.
I’m thinking I’m going to try to grow some massive plants, so I’m thinking of putting the lights as high as possible when I switch to flower to allow for a good amount of stretching, I’ve never done that before but it sounds fun. I’ll most likely put a SCROG over the canopy to provide support when the buds get heavy.
Any thoughts on what may be going on with this plant?
The tray has water, so it has access to the same water/nutrients as the other plants.
My 2 guesses are sensitivity to pH and/or it is not receiving enough nutrients. I’m going to bump from 50% strength Jacks to 75% on the next feeding. I think in general they are looking a little hungrier, but that plant is the only one drooping.
Last pic is the plant that was struggling last week. Think we are in a good spot. I’ll probably continue at 75% Jacks 321 with a watering today. No real signs that any of the plants are struggling.
The phenotype on the small plant is pretty funny, I’ve had those short, fatties before.
I’m actually tempted to switch to flower… plants are in pretty good shape and 3/4 are talllll. As you can see I don’t have much room to raise the lights already. Think I will definitely need a scrog regardless of when I switch, because a 3x flower stretch would put them through the roof of the tent, even 2x on the tall plants would be problematic.
I definitely fit a week and a half of defoliating into one night lol.
They always grow back anyway, so the plants can deal with it! They looked happy this morning, so I don’t think I killed or shocked anyone.
Plan is to have less larf on the bottom third of the plants. I kept 5 nodes per plant, compared to I believe 4 in the past, so we will make up for lost larf weight with the additional 2 branches and energy focused toward the canopy.
I’m not as anti-larf as many, I have made incredible gummies with it over the last two grows, but I should still have a good amount for that purpose and I can just use some of the hopefully larger yield.
Lookin great! Your gonna soon have your hands full!!!
I’ve learned a lot from nebulas defoliation steps, I suck a links but you can Google it up easy enough. I don’t know if it was Coincidence,luck or genetics but I wound up with much bigger buds this time around
Day 44. Everyone is doing good. I’m going with my original plan, flipping to flower in 10 days.
Ordered trellis netting, so I’m going to try to spread the canopy out during the first weeks of flower. If the plants double or triple during flower they would hit lights, the net will help.