Jack Flash #5 Feminized: From Seed to Smoke

So I decided to start another grow after a year since I last grew. I ordered from the attitude seed bank after reading lots of great reviews. I have ordered from gypsy Nirvana seed boutique in the past (like 5 years ago) and always got what I paid for back when they took paypal and I have even used money orders. Anyways I was a little hesitant to order from the attitude because of the expensive shipping ($10) plus if you wanted the guarantee that’s another 10 bucks but you get a free shirt, but I bit the bullet and got the shirt and im glad I did. Free shirt + a guarantee went a long way for me. I ordered on Sunday Jan 30 2011, got the package Feb 11 and I live in the Midwest. As the title notes I ordered 5 pack of Jack Flash #5 feminized by Sensi seeds I also got some free seeds but I crushed one, the purple Maroc, but I have one feminized Bubblegummer seed by UFO, anyone every try this strain?

Feb 12: So I began germination by soaking 4 of the seeds in distilled water over night until they sank and then placed them in moist paper towel until the tap root showed. Each seed will go into a 2 inch rockwool cube that was being soaked in 5.5pH water since I began germination. All 3 seeds popped within 8 hours of each other and one took about a day longer.

Feb 13: I placed each seed in the rockwool cube after taproot showed and placed it in a dark warm closet until the stem popped out of the cube. Once the first 3 seeds popped out of the cube I put them under a 8watt t5 light. This was actually a mistake in retrospect and I should have placed them under a stronger light sooner because the first 3 babies stretched quite a bit compared to the delayed seed that got the stronger lighting since before it popped out of the cube.

Grow system: 2x2 Flood and drain (ebb and flow) in 3x3 grow tent w/18 Gallon reservoir
Light: Veg – 96W 24inch T5 High output Flouros
Flower-430Watt Eye Hortilux HPS
Medium: Hydroton
Nutrients: General hydroponics flora series – Lucas formula mixed into RO water.
Nothing to fancy just trying to put my basic experience together to get a good grow. I will update accordingly. Questions and suggestions welcome.

March 4th: I have properly set up my ebb n flow I ghettoed the small tub I had my plants in with grommets and connectors and tubing and added a small oscillating fan. I have also decided to use a 14 gallon tub instead of a 18 gallon, the 14 gal is lower in height than the 18, by a few inches.

My babies are growing well and since then I have decided to add a few additives to my grow. I have decided to add a .5 drops per gallon of superthrive and 3ml/gal of Growtek Pro-Silicate. I ordered some Thrive alive red as well as some beneficial microbes. I wanted to add some beneficial microbes to my grow so I ordered some GH Subculute M and B but I am going away for spring break today and the subculture and the thrivealive red wont get here until this coming Monday when I will be gone, but I will be back 3/14 so no updates until then. In the mean time I bought some General Organics Ancient forest Humus a few days ago and began brewing a tea by filling up a gallon jug with RO water, adding a tablespoon of table sugar and bubbling the tea for the past 2 days with about 1 cup of the humus in a fine mesh. I added the tea to the reservoir about 1 cup/gal and dipped the each pot into the tea on Wed Feb 2. Since then my pH has been goin up slowly thoughout the day reaching pH of 7 one time. Not sure why but it might be the tea.

I have been trying to dial in the nutes for the past few days also I started out the solution at 100 ppms when they were seedlings and after a week I bumped it up to 400 ppms after about 1.5 weeks since germination and got some nute burn for a few days but then I lowered it a bit and since then have raised it slowly and the plants have grown and seem to like the current nutes.
Nute strength: 450ppm
pH: 5.9

Another thing is that I am an aquarium fan and I have some of the additives that are good for planted tanks and I was wondering how they will fare in my reservoir. Im kinda cheap and knowing a a bit aobut the science behind the chemicals in acids bases, fertilizers, salts etc I feel a somewhat confident that these can benefit my plants in just the same way as the store bought products. Here is a list of these chemicals:

SeaChem Equilibium: an additive that restores mineral balance to RO water. These are percentages of elements contained
Soluble Potassium (K20)
Calcium (Ca)
Magnesium (Mg)
Soluble Iron (Fe)
Soluble Manganese (Mn)
Contains: Derived from: potassium sulfate, calcium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, ferric sulfate, manganese sulfate.

I was hoping to use this powder as a cal mag supplement alternative (or similar product) the big difference that I have noticed between these products is that the horticulture products are usually nitrate salts instead of sulfate salts. I have done some research and have found that magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts)and manganese sulfate are used as soil conditioners so I feel reletivley safe in using this product. My only concern is the high level of Potassium, aquatic plants like lots of potassium. I added about a table spoon and a half to my 10 gal reservoir. Any suggestions anybody?

Acid buffer: Lowers pH. Contains Bisulfate salts.

Akaline buffer: Increases pH. Contains proprietry non phosphate buffer salt.

The 2 buffers above are supposed to be used together to buffer the water at a particular ph. When I added the Pro-silicate the pH jumped up to 6.7 and used the acid buffer to bring the pH down but I over shot it a bit and then used the alkaline buffer to raise the pH up to 5.8. I did this yesterday and today the pH is still variable. I thik its because of the tea but I think the buffer helps. Yet to be determined. I have to find a good ratio because its best used both together to stabilize the pH

Anyways these are just some thoughts and I would welcome any comments or suggestions about what im doin here. Here are some pics of my set up so far. When I return from my trip I will have my my 2x2 tray and my 430W hp and hopefully my grow wont be a disaster. I hope the pH stays in range and doesn't jump to 7 for a week. We will see. Peace

March 16th :Aight, time for an update. I got back from my trip and everything was great with my babies at home. The pH had jumped to 6.3 but the ladies looked nice and healthy and my place smelled DANK as hell. I shipped my equipment from back home and I began setting it up to take care of the smell and to improve my setup. I also decided to transplant them to bigger 6inch tall pots. I took a picture of the root zone as well to show the root growth and it looked nice.

I also decided to add a new supplement. I added some General hydroponics FloraBlend Vegan compost tea. I also brewed some GH subculture M and B with a little bit of the ancient forest tea I had made prior to leaving and with the water change I added it. Once I transplanted I changed my reservoir and set it to the following stats. Once again using Lucas formula.
pH 5.7
ppm 620

March 27th: Ok another update. At this point there is good and bad news. The bad news first. First off I am never buying feminized seeds again. A few days ago I confirmed that our of these 4 plants that I had 2 were male and 2 were female. What a disappointment with feminized seeds. The good news is that there appears to be 2 different phenos of females that I got just like the Jack flash Description says. It looks like a Sativa and an Indica pheno to me. The other good news is that considering the price of the fems, $90 and the cost of the regular 10, $143, so I saved some money so I can’t really complain but it does suck to get males in a feminized seeds batch.

I decided to takes some clones and for cloning I built an aerocloner from a homedepot 5 gal bucket with a 285 gph pump. Check out the pics. My reservoir temps are at 78 degrees and I did a mix of RO water with pro-silicate and 2 cups of my veg reservoir with a small amount of some GH subculture M and B to protect against bad bacteria. pHed water to 5.7 and ppms at 5. I ised Dip N Grow rooting formula as well. I got the pump set for 30 min on 30 off and I am bubbling the solution with an airstone 24/7. The clones have been in the cloner for 2 days and I am noticing that some of the stems of the clones are really bent oddly, I’m not sure if that is normal but they are not rotting. Perhaps someone can comment on them if they are ok. No need for a tent as they perk up without one . I took 3 clones of each pheno to hopefully make mothers out of them. To protect them from the HID lighting I put a plastic bag over the clones to reduce the intensity of the light. I hope they root soon
Currently the veg water stats are as follows:

pH 5.9
ppm 950
Air temp ~78-80 Degrees F

I also took a picture of the emerging roots so you can see how nice they look. My plants look really green too and looking at the leaves im noticing a slight claw. Too much Nitrogen? What do you think? Over all they look great but considering that I lost the other 2 plants to males I have to veg these a little longer. I also FIMed the sativa dominant plant. With my new equipment in place its looking legit and the smell is about 95% gone. Im hoping to begin flowering in about 2-3 weeks to make up for the 2 lost plants. I hope errybody enjoys my update.

Fantastic journal you've got goin here Bro +Rep, I'm subbed and along for the ride. I'm really interested to see how these turn out for you as I tried to grow out some JF#5 last year but didn't get to harvest with mine as the phuckers turned hermie on me about half way through the 2nd week of flower!!?? Totally dialed in room too with no light leaks or stress of any kind, keep a real close eye on them when you flip the lights to 12/12 as I'd hate to see the same thing happen here. Proper pissed me off no end as I've smoked JF before and really wanted my own crop of her she was that dank.
Good Luck they're lookin great so far .

April 2: So my clones have rooted, they started poppin roots about after 3 days at the earliest and 2 or 3 other clones about 1-2 days later. Water temps were about 79-82 throughout the cloning cycle. One thing that I attribute to my success with cloning at these high temps is the fact that I added microbially active water which I think kept the damping off away. I mixed a little GH Subculture B and M and threw it in the bucket with 100% RO water. I also added about 2 cups of my nutrient solution from my veg reservoir which brought up the ppms to 50 pH 6.5. I didn’t mess with the pH since they didn’t have roots just yet. Got 100% rooting success and these lucky ladies will become my mothers for future clones.

Specs of my grow so far are:
pH 5.82
ppm 1035

My other 2 plants that are vegging are getting pretty big but I want to let them grow just a little more to maximize my yield since I only got 2 of them. The tallest plant, my sativa dominant one, is at 15.5 inches tall from the rim of the pot and my Indica dominant one is 13.5 inches tall from the rim of the pot. I am hoping to flower within the next week or so. So far so good. Any one care to comment on whether they see that one or the other plant is more sativa or indica dominant? There is a slight height difference but the smaller one, the indica dom one popped out the seed about 2 days later than the other one. Any tips anyone care to share.

April 4: I transplanted my rooted clones to small hydroton pots. Soaked the roots in a few drops per gallon of Superthrive and Thrivealive red for about 30 min to prevent transplant shock. I took a photo of one of the less rooted clones so you can see how they rooted in my DIY aerocloner. I forgot to photograph the clones with the biggest roots but the ones with more roots were probably about twice the roots of the one pictured.The lone clone is one of the Sativa phenos. For the Aerocloner im really happy with it, not bad after 10 days rooting. What I like most about it is that I think once you add the microbially active water there is almost no chance of damping off to develop and no humidity dome needed either so no mold problems. Im gonna make a separate mother/veg chamber soon and then off to flower my 2 main ladies. My tallest lady is now at 17 1/4 inches tall. so shes growin quick, just a little less than an inch a day. I will prolly ease her into 12/12 by going 18/6 for a few days. Enjoy the update

Lookin very nice here!! The sativa pheno from JF#5 is supposed to be pretty special & a top class smoke too.

It’s been a while since I updated but I been busy. I began flowering April 13th after about a week of 18/6 and we are about 10 days in to flowering right now. As you can see the ladies have started to show flowers by the white pistils on the growth tips and I think its gonna be a fat harvest! Im trying not to count my chicks before they hatch though. I flowered the plants when my Sativa dominant plant was about 24.5 inches tall and the indica was about 22 inches tall. I had to train them down to reduce the height using cotton twine and I made them an S shape making them more horizontal. They are growing nicely and they have slowed their stretch ever so slightly. I change my reservoir about every 10-14 days because after about 10 days I start seeing that the top growth leaves start to yellow a bit at the base of the leaves where they attach to the stem.

In preparation for flowering I flushed my plants with pure RO water pHed to 5.6 by simply dipping the pots in and out of the water to rinse off the buildup of salts. The flushing also removes the superthrive and thrive alive Red that I was using because I read that auxins can inhibit flowering. Well they seem to be showing flower development so I think it worked.
The clones that I took about a month ago are doing great and growing into strong mothers. I bought another grow tent 20x36x62 from amazon as my clone/mother chamber and it works great. I FIMed them yesterday so I get more tops and more clones. I also realize that FIMing is pretty good. The FIMed sativa sominant plant seems more vigorous than the indica plan and has more tops. I didn’t FIM the indica one just supercropped it but I also super cropped the sativa as well.

I also updated my exhaust fan. I bought a 200cfm Sunleaves wind tunnel and it’s just as quiet if not quieter and pulls twice the air as my 95 cfm hydrofarm active air blower. This thing rocks and it has seemed to improve my carbon filter effectiveness. Before I would have a slight dank smell in my room now its completely gone. I set it up differently than my blower though I am sucking air from the light hood through the fan and out through the carbon filter which is located on top of my tent now and acts as a muffler to dampen the sound. It works great and I don’t care about whether you should pull or push air with an inline because bottom line is it works great. I have to build a carbon filter for the veg chamber soon cuz its starting to smell dank some more but prolly not for another 2 weeks when I have more time.

Once again here are my specs:
Lucas formula 950 ppm before additives 1100 ppms after additives, I add Silica, Flora blend compost tea and my buffers that mention in my first posts.

I finally got the hang of using the aquarium buffers and they work pretty damn good. I got my pH at 5.7 and it hasn’t moved at all for the past few days.

Im also brewing up another microbial tea like I did in the beginning and will add it in ~3 days when its ready. For that RO + subculture M+B and a handful of ancient forest humus with a table spoon of sugar. Aight errybody enjoy the update and the pics.

Update! I just bought a 400W Lumatek ballast and Digilux HPS bulb. I have a Kill-A-Watt pwer meter and when I measured my 430W it says its using 213W! how can it go from 430W to 213W? The lamp is old like 6 or 7 years old but I only used it for 3 grows. Do bulbs use less watts as their life increases? Its either that or my ballast is bad. I dont want to buy another 430 Hortilux and find out my ballast is bad so I just bought a complete system and went digital so I can dim the bulb and also strike metal halides to double up my flowering chamber as a veg chamber. Figured I should upgrade now to get the best lighting for my babies since they are currently day 15 flowering and wouldnt wanna get a bunk harvest cuz of it. Im gonna be losing 30 watts but don't think it will matter that much. I will update with pics when the new equip arrives. Stay Tuned!

Aight the equipment is here and all I can say is wow was I missing out. So apparently the 430 Hortilux I had was practiclly dead. The Digilux is so much brighter than what I had running if I didn't get a new bulb my harvest would have been pathetic. The digilux is a little more blue than the hortilux I had but then again im sure that bulb was dying so I cant compare to a fresh bulb.

Just to tell you guys a little about why I like this ballast so much already. Plugging this thing into the Kill-a-Watt power meter on the regular 400W setting shows a clear 426 watts being used, way better than the 213 from before. Lesson learned, change your bulbs before they crap out on you. I will probably change out my bulb every 2-3 grows.

Cranking up the 400W to Super Lumens the ballast now uses 446 watts so about a 5% increase in power to the lamp. Considering that I spent almost 3 weeks into flowering with only 213 watts I'm cranking it up and leaving the Super Lumens on for the rest of the grow to get that penetration into the canopy.

Another thing that I noticed from my killawatt meter is that it can detect the voltage from the outlet. With all the fans, 2 foot 4 bulb T5 from my veg chamber, and air pumps the voltage is only about 115-116 volts. The great thing about the E-Ballast is that it can detect the voltage and pull amps as needed to maintain the 400 watts that the bulb needs and keeps it dead steady with only a 1 or 2 watt fluctuation as the voltage varies. I think this is really important especially since magnetic ballasts cant draw more amps then what they are built for, atleast to my understanding. So unless your outlet is always pushing 120V chances are your light isn't being fully powered.

Another on of my worries in going digital was the RF interference that e-ballasts are said to give off. Well when I opened the UPS package I knew my questions were answered. This thing is UL listed so that calmed my anxieties and when I lit up the lamp my internet worked perfectly still. My router is located downstairs about 10ft above my grow.

The ballast does run hot tho, I cant keep my hand on it longer than 3-4 seconds before it gets to hot. I though they run cooler than the magnetic ones. Oh well it works great and its light and tiny and the purple finish looks pimp. The Ballast comes Hydrofarm ready and its even distributed by Hydrofarm as the logo says on the box so I know this thing is legit and judging by the serial I think it was produced March 2011 so I got one of the latest ones.

Flowers are developing nicely, hopefully they will like the extra light and fatten up quick style. Check out the pics. Enjoy errybody!

All lookin good, and I see you got the satty pheno' there too

I smoked some jack flash grown by a member I met here and boy was it some great weed. I smoked half a joint and I was totally ripped. Even though the initail high was super it still was creeping on me getting me higher and higher as time went by. I give this weed a 10 in potency but a 8 on taste. Exceptional strain!

consumer reports said:

I smoked some jack flash grown by a member I met here and boy was it some great weed. I smoked half a joint and I was totally ripped. Even though the initail high was super it still was creeping on me getting me higher and higher as time went by. I give this weed a 10 in potency but a 8 on taste. Exceptional strain!

Click to expand...

Agreed, JF is a very underated strain imo.

THESkunkMunkie said:

All lookin good, and I see you got the satty pheno' there too

Click to expand...

Initially I thought I had both an indica Pheno and a sativa pheno (post 4/2/2011) but now I cant tell the difference between the two unless I look at some of the lower fan leaves. Either way I got 2 different ones and cloned both of them so I will see which will win a permanent spot in my mother chamber, who knows, they will prolly both be winners!

consumer reports said:

I smoked some jack flash grown by a member I met here and boy was it some great weed. I smoked half a joint and I was totally ripped. Even though the initail high was super it still was creeping on me getting me higher and higher as time went by. I give this weed a 10 in potency but a 8 on taste. Exceptional strain!

Click to expand...

I grew a Jack Herer clone before and the weed I got off that one clone was fugin awesome!! What a great sativa buzz with a great body high. I couldnt afford the Herer seeds so I went with the feminized Jack, I cant wait until the end of June when these ladies get the axe. Also some bubble bags are in store too but not till we get close to the harvest date. JF#5 bubble hash...mmmm

I'm gonna get this when I can next afford some more beans >>> http://www.sanniesshop.com/sannies-jack.html
Way cheaper than the Sensi Jack and it's supposed to be bred for all the better qualities of the Jack Herer strains too. And it's from the original release Sensi Jack seed stock too .

Hey skunk that strain looks NICE! I hope you grow it sometime soon.

Here is the latest and greatest on my grow. So I have upgraded my veg chamber by adding a DIY carbon filter just like my flowering chamber has. 30 bucks to build at the home depot and I had some carbon left over from my previous build. My original 6 clones have been vegging under the 2foot 4 bulb t5 lamp and they are doing great, plenty of clones for the next grow which I’m going to begin in about a week or two. The plants are about 12 inches tall and were topped about 1-2 weeks ago for extra shoots.

I also got a new lamp, a Digilux Metal halide for compact node growth. Im looking forward to testing out these bulbs.

We are 24 days into flowering and the buds are getting hairy, im expecting to flower for about 9-10 weeks so they should get fat…I hope. Im also adding something new to the reservoir next time I change it. I got some Floralicious plus and some liquid kool bloom to promote those flowers . We will see how they like them. Aight, enjoy the update.

So far pH= 5.7
PPM= 1100

2 thumbs up!! your set up is rockin too mate .
I got some Jack Hammer beans in my stash and I've just set off a pack of Killing Fields F3's from Sannie's too. The Jack F6 is on my list though for sure.

Just wanna show you guys what its lookin like at week 5 + 1day. They are puttin on some weight despite a slight nitrogen deficiency. I did a little foliar feeding of some flora micro with some floralicious plus to try and help it out a bit.

Each of these two plants it looking rather unique. Early in veg I felt that I could identify the plants as one an Indica dominant and another as a sativa dom. The buds that are coming from these plants seems to confirm my guess. The indica one is forming lots of calyx and starting to swell, what I can the Indica dominant. The sativa dominant one is a little behind in flowering bulk compared to the indica but that is prolly cuz of the sativas longer flowering period. The sativa is making pine tree shapped buds while the indica is making some club shaped ones. Still got 3 weeks minimum left to go, I think they will get heavy. Enjoy the pics.

Today we celebrate the 7th week of flowering for my ladies. Since my last post the ladies have put on some weight, and it shows. I opened up my tent and noticed half of my buds had been shifted when some of the tops fell over and took some branches with them. These ladies are getting fat. I decided to pull each one out and see how the plant supports itself and arrange them like that in a less supportive but more open canopy with the light a little higher than I had it before since the nugs are more stretched out. Perhaps some of the lower nugs will get more light instead of the nutrient deficient leaves of many of the top colas.

There are still lots of white hairs poppin out of the many calyxs. Im thinking they may have about 2 weeks for the indica and prolly 3 weeks for the sativa.

The two buds have very different smells the Sativa is very wood and spice like smell where the indica has a sweet but pungent smell the Sativa is more pine shaped and the indica is club shaped, can you tell the difference?

I cant believe im this close to harvest and I started back in mid February, time flies. Well, enjoy the pics.