Last grow before upgrades!

hypoxia

Member
Hello all, thanks for stopping by and checking out my grow! I'm new to this forum but this is my 4th year growing. I've never posted on any of the cannabis forums before, mostly a bit of paranoia, but I ran into a few issues my last grow and am hoping that if it happens again maybe someone following with more experience can chime in with some advice before things get out of hand!

I guess I'll start with my setup, it's very basic. My tent was purchased 3 years ago on amazon, 4x4x6.5 feet. It's served its purpose, however this will probably be the last time I use it. It has plastic joints to hold together all of the frame pieces and just about all of them have cracked. The only reason its still standing is because I have 3 tents all together and have used pieces from the other tents. The stitching is also sub par and I've had to sew the zipper back to the tent in a few places. My light is a 600w HPS. I have a simple fan zip tied to the skeleton to move air around and a home made carbon filter for scent control. The carbon filter is made of a 4inch case fan attached to some pvc with some carbon fabric from an air purifier on the end. It is very basic and not effective towards the end of flower when things get very stinky so I will probably upgrade that one piece of equipment as things move along.

Now, onto the genetics. One plant is a Barney's Acapulco Gold feminized, the last of my 5 pack. Here is where things start getting a little crazy... I had a 6 pack of Sour Diesel feminized from Rerserva Privada and grew out all but one of them (the last I'm saving for another time) With one of the plants I took a few clones and tried my hand at using giberellic acid to make one of them go hermie and fertilize the other one. While I did get male flowers, they seemed lacking in pollen. I tried crushing one of the male flowers into a female bud and in the end I only got one seed, and that is the second plant I've got going. Now, my next set of seeds is a bit of a mixed batch, follow if you can. A few years ago my buddy had a Critical Jack and an Exodus Cheese together in a tent. The Jack went hermie and fertilized the Cheese with a seed that I grew out and then fertilized with a male Malawi Gold. With one of the male offspring of this plant I fertilized my highest yielding Sour Diesel plant, and I've popped 3 of the resulting seeds for this grow. I'll refer to those 3 as "R5 a, b, and c" for the rest of this grow.

I hope to accomplish a few things during this grow. The first of which is obviously to replenish my personal stock of bud a little bit. I'm curious to see how some of these crosses turn out as well. I'm also hoping to replenish my seed stock just a bit too. Hopefully one of the R5 crosses will yield me a male (hopefully ONLY one) and I will use that pollen on each female. I'm also going to retry making feminized seeds with the Sour Diesel. I'm not sure if I'll use giberellic acid again or if I'll try ordering something like silver theophosphate.

My technique will be fairly simple. With every plant except for the Sour Diesel I will simply top at the 5th node and supercrop the resulting tops. The Sour Diesel will be a bit of an extended grow as I'm planning on trying to mainline it which will of course require a longer veg period. They are started in Happy Frog and will probably be transplanted into Ocean Forest. I typically feed fox farm grow big for veg (if necessary) and tiger bloom for flower. I also use distilled water and add a tsp of cal mag with every gallon of water or feed. So without further explanations, on to the girls!

The 3 R5s and the Sour Diesel are out of the ground about 12 days. The R5s are grouped together in one photo for now and the Sour Diesel is in the orange pot. The Acapulco Gold just broke ground 2 days ago. I planted her at the same time but she was a much older seed and took longer to sprout. I had actually just given up on her. I was about to plant one of my other hybrid seeds when I walked in and saw she sprouted!

So feel free to comment on my thread, I'm open to any questions, advice, or criticisms! I'll try to keep this updated every week or so, for sure with any major developments. Thanks for viewing and enjoy the ride!
R5a-c_9-6-14.jpg ag5_9-6-14.jpg sd1x1_9-6-14.jpg
 

akhiymjames

Well-Known Member
Wassup bro glad to have you here man. You got a really move project going and I will be here for the whole ride. It's good to see some people out here making crosses trying to make good genetics. Very interested in the Malawi cross. Looking good bro. Peace
 

hypoxia

Member
Thank you both! I know I'm kind of "shotgun breeding" here. The right way would be to have a few dozen plants, pick the female with the best characteristics, breed her with a healthy male and then keep backcrossing the male offspring with a clone of the mother until I get something stable. I just don't have the space or the time for that, nor do I live in the most cannabis friendly area so that is not an option. The plants involved in these genetics represent my favorites of all of the strains I've grown. The Malawi had a very nice uppity high and yielded a massive amount. However it took forever to finish (something like 20 weeks of flower) and it was so incredibly leafy, a real bitch to trim! The cheese/jack cross had an insanely powerful couchlock stone that was just... just wonderful. And the Sour Diesel.... It was just the perfect blend of sativa and indica in my opinion, and her smell was to die for! Hoping to get lucky with one of these girls and find something that reflects a nice balance between all of them. I do plan on taking clones of all the R5 crosses and if one does turn out to be a winner, I'll keep an active clone of her and try backcrossing males with her to get a stable generation somewhere down the road.

I didn't mention anything about veg time before. The Malawi genes tend to make for some tall stretchy plants, so height will possibly be an issue longrun. I am shooting for a 6-8 week veg time with everything except for the Sour Diesel. I typically try to make the 12/12 switch when I see either alternating nodes or preflowers. But if height becomes an issue before I see signs of sexual maturity I may make the switch sooner, I guess we'll see!
 

hypoxia

Member
Veg Day 16

Alright Here's an update. The girls are coming along nicely, I forgot how much they could develop in just a few days! Today I gave them their first real feeding, its been just water with a trace of calmag up until this point. The feeding was a very light mixture, a half tsp of calmag plus a half tsp of grow big to a gallon of water and ph'd to around 6.5. Lets start with the R5 crosses.

R5a
This is definitely the tallest of the hybrids. As you can see in the photo it had a visit from an insect this week. I looked closely with my scope and could not find any mites or other types of bugs. I had noticed a stink bug on one of the other plants the day before this happened and I'm wondering if that's what ate it up? I know they eat crops and what not, I wish there was a way to get them out of the house but they seem to be everywhere. I'll keep an eye on it in the meantime and just try to toss any out of the tent whenever I find them. Any tips on what to do with the damaged leaf? Seems like it's still growing with the rest of the plant, I figure its still doing its job providing some energy to the plant... should I chop it off or just let it go for the time being?
R5a_9-9-14.jpg

R5b&c
There's nothing too crazy going on with these two so I'll just group them together. They are both on the shorter side, R5b seems to be a little bushier in general but otherwise aside from the size difference (R5b broke soil a day or two before R5c) there aren't any major differences going on. R5b is on the left, R5c on the right.
R5b_9-9-14.jpg R5c_9-9-14.jpg

Sour Diesel (fem)
I know its early in the game, but I'm kind of curious if this girl's mother was fertilized by another hermie plant in the tent and not by the clone I forced to hermie. All of the Sour Diesels I grew before had a tendency to be very stretchy from the start, this girl is staying short so far. Again, its way early to make any assumptions, so we'll just see what happens! Here she is.
Sd1x1_9-9-14.jpg

Acapulco Gold (fem)
Well, at this point this girl is probably only at about day 7 of veg since she only sprouted late last week. She got top heavy and fell over sideways. I do have a fan blowing on the plants for stem strength but I think she just stretched too far too soon. I'm just going to leave her like that since she kind of sprouted on the far end of the pot anyways. If I think she needs support once she's a little more developed I'll toss in a chop stick and tie her up.
ag5_9-9-14.jpg

A few notes/questions so far...
Whenever I've grown in the past I typically started closer to the end of September or beginning of October. That being said, I'm experiencing some higher temperatures than I'm used to dealing with, daytime is around 84 and nightime is about 70. I know this is towards the upper end of what the plants can tolerate but unfortunately there's not much I can do about it, there's just no way to control warm temperatures in the basement. The plants seem unaffected as far as I can see, and tomorrow is the last day in the 10 day forecast with outside temperatures being over 80, so I'm hoping things will start cooling down for me down there. I've never had any experience with heat stress before, is there anything I should be on the lookout for?

I realize that I'm going to have to start taking odor into consideration somewhat soon. I fully expect the R5 hybrids to produce some stink (they have the fuelly smell already if I put my nose right to the top of the plant) plus I know from experience that having even one Sour Diesel by itself is enough to make the house stink horribly. I have been able to keep the smell under control in the past with the combination of my homemade carbon sheet filter combined with air fresheners plugged in all over the basement, and keeping the basement door closed when we have company... but I'd like to do something a bit more effective this time around. I don't like closing the basement door as I have a wood stove in the basement so closing the door during the winter cuts off a good deal of heat circulating up into the house. What I do have is a very powerful blower fan that my friend used for his past grows, but no filter for it. Any recommendations on filters or something I could make that is more effective than what I've got going on? I know there are a hundred different products out there, I've read plenty of claims of this or that, I'm just looking for anyone with some personal experience that could toss some ideas my way, keeping in mind that I'd like to not spend too much.

Either this weekend or early next week I'm going to invest in a bag of Ocean Forest and repot most of these plants, the R5s for sure as they are taking off quick. I have a compost pile outside that is a mixture of leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen scraps. It has been composting all summer long, I typically use this for the vegetable garden outside but I'm thinking of bringing some inside, sterilizing it, and mixing it with some peat, pearlite, mycorrhiza, and a bit of garden lime (I found a recipe for organic soil online with ratios of each to use). I'd like to mix up a batch of that for the Sour Diesel. Since she's going to have the longest veg time and I'm going for a very big harvest off of her, I'm going to repot her into a 10 gallon pot with that soil mixture and see how it works out.

On a final note, thanks for subbing up Abr*grower. My grow room is a bit cluttered right now with vegetables (I've got a tomato plant, an aloe plant, and an ebb and flow system I use for lettuce) and the girls take up a very small spot in it right now. I'm going to pull the other plants out this weekend and transfer them to my small grow cabinet and I'll post some photos of the whole shebang once I get the girls repotted, then it will be much easier to compare heights and have a better idea of how each one is coming along differently.

Thats all for now, more updates after I repot them!
 

akhiymjames

Well-Known Member
Everythings looking good so far bro. I wouldn't bother the R5a as the leaf is still growing and the plant is very young and needs it. The temps your experiencing aren't bad as seedlings like warmer temps. Since your growing in your basement in a tent you should be able to hook up the fan your buddy used for an exhaust with a filter attached to it. Depending on what size fan it is will decide what size filter you use. You could attach a filter to the end that's sucking so smelly air will be pulled through and be fresh when exhausted out or you could attach the fan blowing into the filter and attach ducting to the end of the fan that's sucking a run that into the tent. Either way should help with smell. Also since yourin your basement do you have a port that you can exhaust outside to? You could setup the fan/filter inside the tent and have it blowing the exhausted smelly air (which will be fresh) outside
 

hypoxia

Member
Veg Day 22

Busy day in the garden today! I know everybody's here to see the girls so I guess I'll play things like network TV and save those for the end :) . So, where should we begin...

Filter Construction

Well, scent isn't going to be an issue for a while yet, but I'm starting to take that into consideration. I've checked out the standard carbon filters at my local hydro shop and on amazon... damn this shit is expensive! I decided before I drop that much I'm going to try modifying my current setup. My current setup consists of a 4" processor fan hooked up to a piece of 4" PVC pipe which has a piece of carbon sheet wrapped around the end (I believe it is simply scorched coconut fibers woven together). As I stated, I have a 170CFM fan from a friend of mine which I intend to use... so here's what I've come up with, and keep in mind that this is a work in progress as it's not necessary yet. I plan to disassemble my current setup, and attach the 170CFM fan to the PVC pipe which I will run into the tent. At the end of the pipe, I will attach the contraption I slapped together below which is a 4" PVC elbow attached to a 4" PVC floor drain.
filterbottom.jpg filterside.jpg

The filter I use for my fish tank uses a netted bag of activated carbon which costs about 5 bucks and fits just perfectly inside of the drain piece without any air leakage. My thinking is that I can stuff 2 bags of carbon inside of this end piece and replace them a lot cheaper than what I'd pay for the carbon filters at the hydro store. I've seen filters made in a similar fashion on other forums and people claim them to be fairly effective so we'll see!

Soil Mixing

Last grow for one of my plants I used a mix of potting soil and some of the compost I make in my backyard which consists basically of leaves, grass clippings (I don't use any chemical fertilizers on my grass), and various kitchen scraps. I had good results with it, but decided to take a look into what goes into making a straight up soil from scratch and found a basic organic soil recipe online. I tweeked it a little bit to fit how I think it should, but basically its 1 part compost, 1 part peat, 1 part pearlite. I also added a cup of lime, a half cup blood meal, a half cup bone meal, and a half cup wood ashes with some granular mycorrhiza thrown in too. I am worried about bringing in any pathogens or pests from outside so I baked my compost in the oven for a few hours at 200 degrees. The only other thing the recipe called for was "rock dust", which I wasn't able to find anywhere. I was going to just smash up a few rocks from my backyard to mix in, but on my way home I got a better idea. It occurred to me that the bed of a creek should be loaded with very fine stone that's been weathered to dust by years of water erosion, so before I came home today I stopped by a local creek, filled up my coffee cup with some river gunk, and threw it in the oven with my compost when I got home. So once I mixed it all up, I topped everything off with a mix of water and what I had leftover of Fox Farm Big Blom. The recipe calls for it to sit and cook for a few weeks, so it should be ready to use for my next transplant. Ideally this stuff will require no fertilizer once ready to use, so we'll see how that works out too!

And Finally... the girls!

Alright, well I've had a big going on in the last week... lets start with R5b. Firstoff, last update, I described R5a as the tallest of the girls, and although the overhead pictures are accurate, I had mixed up which was tallest in my head. R5b was actually the tallest, and remains so. I had a problem with this girl, you can see it ever so slightly in the last photo if you look, just a slight bit of yellowing towards the outer edges of the leaves. I actually had this same issue last grow with all of my plants, I had treated it like a magnesium deficiency and never saw improvement. I've grown a bit since then and learned more, and by the time it started happening this time around I realized it was actually a potassium deficiency. I treated it by just adding a teaspoon of wood ashes over the soil and watering it in. It seemed to clear things up, I don't see any issues on newer leaves and the affected leaves have not shown any progressive damage. Here is a closeup of what remains:
R5bclose_09-16-15.jpg

As I stated, I had some serious issues with this same problem last grow and didn't realize what it was, so that is the reason I added a half cup of wood ash to the soil mixture I just made today.

In other news, all of the rest of the girls are progressing nicely. They were getting a bit too big for their pots so I went out and purchased a few 5 gallon smart pots and a large bag of Ocean Forest to transplant them, but it occurred to me that this batch of seeds is my batch, and only 2 of them are feminized. I would rather not waste all that Ocean Forest on the R5s if they were to all turn out to be male. That being said, I gave all of the plants a slight upgrade(except the Acupulco Gold which is still a little behind). Hopefully these containers will be big enough to keep them happy until they can show me their sex. Every plant except the Acupulco is up to the 5th node so I topped past that. I also trimmed the lowest node on the Sour Diesel. I plan to start trimming some leaves off of her every few days. Not enough to shock her, but enough that she can focus on growing stronger branches as I get ready to mainline her. Here is a pic of them all together in their tent.
fulltent_09-16-14.jpg

The Acupulco Gold is resting on the bucket at the right of the picture. The tent is still a bit cluttered because I've got an aloe plant, a tomato plant, and a hydroponic lettuce growing behind the girls. The veggies will be moving over to a smaller cabinet as the girls get bigger. There is also a fish tank pictured on the left. This is the remains of an aquaponics experiment I tried last winter. If possible, I'm going to leave the fish tank in the tent for the remainder of the grow to help stabilize the humidity, it gets pretty dry down here once I fire up the wood stove.

That's it for now, stay tuned for more updates in a week or so!
 

hypoxia

Member
Veg Day 36

Ok, way overdue for an update, so here we go! I am up late tonight after a night of board games with some friends so I apologize for any grammatical / spelling errors... hopefully you can follow along! So I took some pictures last week but just haven't had the time to post them along with an update, so this will be sort of a dual update. Ok, lets start with what we know...

R5a (male)
Well, R5a turned out to be the first male of the group. While I was certainly hoping that all of the R5 group would turn out to be female... I was also hoping for at least one male so I could make more seeds... so here we are! I'm new to breeding, but as far as I can figure this guy is what you'd want in a male. He's got a nice bushy formation but also has a bit of height and a nice skunky smell when you rub the leaves. I only did group shots last week and this week, so no individual shot of him... but for now here is a pic of the preflower I used to identify the guy as a male.
r5a_9-23-14.jpg
Sorry for the poor quality, I tried my best to get a closeup so that you could clearly see that it's a male preflower, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Since this is a male, I'll be cutting it back over the next 2 weeks to just one or 2 nodes to conserve water or nutrient usage... just enough plant to get some pollen. I'll also be moving it over to my cabinet, separate from the girls.

R5 b&c
Well, I can't say anything for sure about R5b yet... it could be male or female at this point. But I'm 99% sure R5c is a female (I'm allowing a 1% chance for hermie). I could not get any kind of clear picture of the tiny tiny preflowers, but I know what female preflowers look like and thats what I see on this girl. A few days ago after confirming this one was a female I transferred her into a 3 gallon pot with my homemade soil mentioned in the earlier post. So far she seems to be doing well in it and is growing just fine. I will keep you updated on R5b, though I have a feeling I won't know the sex of this one until the 12/12 switch which should be in a week or two.

Sour Diesel (fem)
This girl is really bushing out. She was getting a bit big for the green pot I had her in and I decided to switch her over yesterday. I put her into a 7-10 gallon pot filled with my homemade soil... not sure the exact size of the pot, I picked up a fruit tree this past spring and this was the pot it was in. I had originally planned to plant the Sour Diesel in this extra large pot and then try mainlining... but a thought just occurred this week. I only have 2 grow areas, the 4x4 tent everything is in, and the 2x4 cabinet I'm going to put the male. I won't have an area to keep this girl on 18/6 in order to veg her out a long while to mainline her properly. So it looks like I'm just going to flower her with the rest of the girls. She is really coming along nice though and is definitely the prize of my collection so far. My plans for her in the immediate future involve cutting a couple of clones from her. One to treat with the Ga3 and induce hermaphroditism, the other to fertilize with the hermaphroditic plant and get some feminized seeds from. I'll probably cut the clones this weekend and post an update regarding that.

Acapulco Gold
This girl is also coming along very nicely. She is exhibiting some heavily Sativa traits and bushing out nicely. Last week I transplanted her into a 5 gallon short smart pot using the bulk of what I had left of the Ocean Forrest soil. She's been doing well and I also topped her last week. I am probably going to take a clone or two of her when I do the Sour Diesel just to keep a crop of her going. I really enjoyed her sisters and since this is the last of my AG seeds, I'd like to keep a copy of her.

The Group Shot
Ok, so just to give a visual idea of whats going on, I took a group shot last week...
group_9-23-14.jpg

And one this week...
group_9-30-14.jpg

In both shots, it goes left to right: R5a, R5b, R5c, Sour Diesel, Acapulco Gold. To give you an idea what the heights are looking like, the bamboo is sticking out of the ground roughly a foot in each shot.

I guess that's all for now! Stay tuned for more informative and fun updates... the 12/12 switch is coming in a week or two!
 

hypoxia

Member
Veg Day 41

Alright, have had a few things going on over the last week, here's what's up!

In the Tent (Sour Diesel, Acapulco Gold, and R5C)
The time finally came that the tent was getting a bit too tight and it was time to separate the plants. I started by reducing the number of plants in the tent to 3, the ones that I know for sure are female. I took two clones each from the Sour Diesel and the Acapulco Gold. I did not take any from the R5C as I'm just not impressed with her growth through veg and would like to limit what I have on hand to plants that I feel will be bigger producers. I could very well be proved wrong so if she turns out to be a high producer, or gives me some really good bud, I'll re-veg her and take a clone that way. While I had the scissors out I decided it was also time to trim the lower branches. I reduced the R5C and the Acapulco Gold to basically 4 main branches and left the Sour Diesel with 6. I Also super cropped a few branches on each of these plants. I think in a few more days I'm going to make the 12/12 switch for the tent. These girls are getting big and I know they're going to stretch! Here is a shot of the tent as it looks now and a couple shots of the surgery station.
tent_10-6-14.jpg surgery1.jpg surgery2.jpg

Sorry for the poor quality pictures. I screwed with some settings on my camera and am having issues getting it back the way I like it!

In the Cabinet (R5a, R5b, clones)
I still haven't been able to conclusively determine the sex of R5b, so for now I swapped it into the cabinet along with R5a and the clones. I trimmed R5a down to just one single branch, just enough to produce a couple flowers to use for pollination. My plan is to let him veg out another week or two past the 12/12 switch for the tent and then to put him in there with the girls. I've got a glass jar I'm going to cover the plant with until a pollen sack forms and opens up so that I can collect the pollen and fertilize where I like without worrying about getting seeds everywhere. Here is a view inside the cabinet (lit with about 8 mixed spectrum CFL bulbs)
cabinet_10-6-14.jpg

That's it for now, the next update will come sometime next week when we're in flowering mode. Thanks for stopping by!
 

hypoxia

Member
Flower Day 7

Ok everybody. I made the 12/12 flip Last Wednesday so it's time for an update! We'll start with the bad news. R5c turned out to be a male after all. I was absolutely sure it was a female but since I made the flip, the preflowers became more pronounced and it was more obvious I had another male. Since I've already got a breeding male, and I wasn't fond of the overall physical characteristics of this plant, it made its way to my wood burning stove. On the plus side though, I have confirmed that R5b is a female! The preflowers on this one looked much like R5c and was also hard to tell. But just today I spotted the first pistils poking out of one of them so unless it turns out to be a herm, at least one of these hybrids I planted is indeed a female! Before I go into any further detail on any individual plant, here's a group shot of what I've got right now. Left to right: Sour Diesel, Acapulco Gold, R5b.
group_10-14-14.jpg

R5b
Ok so to go into further detail about this girl, as you can see from the top photo she's the tallest of the bunch. I kind of regret keeping her in a small container for so long. She ended up getting root bound, was thirsty every day, and the lower leaves were showing some signs of nutrient deficiency. Also, I feel that definitely contributed to her tall thin structure, but if experience has taught me anything, its that she'll fill out nicely over the next week or two before the flowers really start forming. Yesterday after I was certain I was dealing with a female I pulled her out of her tiny pot and repotted her into a 5 gallon short smart pot with my homemade soil and gave her a thorough drink of water. Hopefully now she won't be so consistently thirsty and will have a chance to flourish! Here's a shot of her from above.
r5b_10-14-14 - Copy.jpg

Acapulco Gold
This girl is doing very well. She's the second tallest of the group and just a bit fuller than the R5b. She's definitely got the most preflowers on her, I can pretty much pick a branch and just spot them everywhere with little pistils shooting out of every one. When I grew out her sisters 2 years ago I really didn't have a firm grasp on what I was doing and still got a very good yield. I definitely know more now and at this point she is looking better than her sisters did at the same stage of growth so I'm really looking forward to a good harvest from her! Here's a shot of her from above.
ag5_10-14-14 - Copy.jpg

Sour Diesel
This girl is also doing well, if I had to pick the best lady of the bunch it would be her! In terms of height she is definitely the shortest, but she is also much bushier than the others. She has responded very well to everything I've done so far and just looks like a great plant all around. In terms of flower development, She's actually just finally starting to show some preflowers, I haven't spotted any pistils yet. Here's a top shot of her.
sd1x1_10-14-14.jpg

As far as my clone/male cabinet, nothing much to discuss from that angle. With the exception of the one Acapulco Gold clone, they all look well. I'm not sure why but one particular clone looks horrible, yellow and brown, wilted leaves, I'm just pretty certain it's not going to root and have a feeling I'll be throwing it out in a day or two. This will actually mark the first time I've every lost a clone if that happens. No big deal, I'll just veg out the other Acapulco Gold clone and take more cuttings of her. I typically have roots within 2 weeks when cloning the way I do, so I would imagine by next week I'll have a few clone photos to share. The male R5a is doing well and has shown quite a bit new growth since I chopped it down last week. I'll give it another week or two of veg before I switch it to a 12/12 schedule. I like to try and time it so that the females are a few weeks into flower when I apply pollen, it seems to work out better with timing the maturity of the seeds to the maturity of the rest of the plant. On one side note, I did finally take the time to set up my homemade carbon filter. Its just like I described, a PVC elbow and shower drain filled with a mesh bag of activated carbon and attached to a 170cfm fan. It's definitely doing the trick (so far) as before the smell was hitting me as soon as I walked in the door (even in veg mode!) and now I smell nothing when I get home. We'll see how it holds up during heavy flower though! Here's a shot of the elbow set up in the tent.
filter - Copy.jpg

That's it for now, Hopefully next week I'll have some more flowery pictures to share!
 

hypoxia

Member
Let's see those flower pix bro. How's the sour d going? Hope your project is going like planned. Peace
Things are going smoothly for the most part. I've been taking pictures but do many Halloween festivities and other things going on the last two weeks that I just haven't had a chance to post anything! Only problem right now is that my 600w bulb blew out so I had to swap in a 400w HP's until I can get a replacement. I'll be back either later this evening or sometime tomorrow work done pictorial updates!
-peace
 

hypoxia

Member
Flower Day 22

Lets just start with the pics and I'll follow with some explaination...

Group
group_10-29-14.jpg

Acapulco Gold
ag5_bud_10-29-14.jpg

R5b
r5b_bud_10-29-14.jpg

Sour Diesel
sd1x1_bud_10-29-14.jpg

Everything so far is going very smoothly overall. The homemade soil I made has been providing the girls with everything they need, I haven't added any ferts even once yet and have yet to see signs of any deficiency. I noticed a very slight potassium deficiency (she is planted in straight Ocean Forest) on the two lower leaves. I just clipped those off since they weren't getting much light anyways and watered in a tablespoon of wood ashes, haven't noticed any problems since. Like I stated before, The 600w HPS bulb blew out on me so They're all under a 400w now and I just ordered a new 600w, should have that by the end of the week. The last few weeks have been much cooler in my area which has helped bring the temperatures in my tent down to much more ideal levels. Higher 70's during the day and 60's during lights off. Overall all of the girls have been rather thirsty, requiring a heavy watering every few days.

So as you can see, the R5b has the most developed buds thus far. They are already getting a bit frosty and I'm getting very excited about this plant. I'm regretting not taking a clone of her and have a feeling I'm going to end up re-vegging her to make a copy at the end of the grow. She smells the skunkiest of the plants so far, very similar to the smell that the sour diesel carries, but a bit more "earthy".

The Acapulco Gold is doing well aside from the slight deficiency I mentioned earlier. I believe she is a bit taller than the R5b at this point, but it's damn close. Flower development is coming along nicely, no real scent to her yet (I don't recall if her sisters carried much of a scent, if anything it wasn't until the end).

The Sour Diesel is still the shortest and bushiest. Her flower development is the furthest behind, and just starting to show very prominent pistils over the last week. She is doing quite well though, and I expect her to produce well, her mother was a very high producing plant and also took a long time to flower.

I do have 3 rooted clones, one is an Acapulco Gold and the other 2 are from the Sour Diesel. I had originally planned to do the GA3 treatment to one of each plant and produce some fem seeds, but as I've only got the one tent and small cabinet right now, I believe I'm just going to end up vegging these out a bit longer and throwing them in the flower tent as this current grow finishes up. If either the Acapulco Gold or the Sour Diesel does end up being a great producer, I may just keep cloning a copy to keep the genetics alive. Here's the cabinet right now, with the Acapulco Gold being the biggest of the bunch.
clones_10-29-14.jpg

On a side note I started a second batch of seeds. Kind of defeats the purpose of this grow being titled "Last Grow Before Upgrades" but I just figure'd these plants are all going to be done by January at the latest, that leaves me a whole flower period before it gets too hot and humid in the basement to grow so I figure'd I'd squeeze one more round out of my current equipment before shutting down the show for the summer. The genetics from the new grow are hybrids I made with the last generation of Malawi offspring but never got a chance to grow out. They are Malawi X (Critical Jack X Exodus Cheese) and Malawi X Red Cherry Berry. I put 2 of each in a wet paper towel a few nights ago and I just checked today to find that they've each got a taproot sticking out, so keep an eye out for a new thread from me in the next week or two.

-Peace for now!
 

akhiymjames

Well-Known Member
Take a clone of the Rb5 now if you can. You won't have to reveg her and you'll have a nice plant that branches out from being in flower. It's called monster cropping and it works very well. Think about it. Everything's looking great bro keep up the great work
 

hypoxia

Member
Just reading up on the monster cropping idea, definitely sounds interesting! I'll have to take a look at her once the lights come on and see if there are any branches I can cut a clone from. I did trim down all of her side branches before switching to flower as I wanted to just leave 4 tops, but maybe there's something I missed or maybe there is a branch off of the main branches that is big enough to clip.
 

hypoxia

Member
Flower Day 29
Greetings everyone! The last batch of pictures are a week old, so its time for an update! Lets start with a couple group shots.

Here we are after a fresh watering...
group_11-5-14.jpg

And here we are all in the tent...
group_tent_11-5-14.jpg

Overall we're looking good! Now onto some individual updating.

Acapulco Gold
She is doing ok, but starting to pop up with some minor issues. I'll start with a pic and see what you guys think...
ag5_11-5-14.jpg

You can see her buds are developing nicely, but I've got a bit of downward leaf curl going on. I know this is typically an overwatering issue, but I don't water her until the soil is just about bone dry. My thinking is that the humidity is a bit low, right now I'm hovering around 25%. I was maintaining a higher humidity with the fish tank in there, but no longer have the room to keep it in there.I'm not really seeing any problems associated with this, just this bit of curl. If anybody has any suggestions I'd love to hear them, but otherwise I'm just going to continue on with what I'm doing!

Other issue going on with this girl...
ag5_def_11-5-14.jpg

She's got this going on with a few leaves. Looks to me like a potassium deficiency so I added a bit of wood ashes to the soil. Also since this girl was planted in Ocean Forest, and I haven't fertilized once yet, I decided to give her a small dose of nutes today, just 1 tsp of Tiger Bloom mixed with a gallon of water. I'll keep an eye on the situation and keep this journal updated with how it progresses. Other than this and the curl, she is looking good! She is the tallest of the bunch, and I actually had to tie the two main branches down to avoid the lights. You can see in the group shots that this actually balances out the space in the tent nicely.

Sour Diesel
This girl is doing very well! Very bushy and her flowers are coming along nicely... she's also starting to frost up slightly! She is starting to get the fuelly smell going on, I love it! I don't have much more info to share about her so I'll just let this pic speak for itself.
sd1x1_11-5-14.jpg

R5b
I saved the best for last, this girl is blowing my mind with how beautifully she is developing and her wonderful smell! She smells very skunky and is already frosty as hell! Nothing bad to say about this girl here, Here's a shot of one of her top buds.

r5b_11-5-14.jpg

I'm really loving the way this girl is turning out, and I decided to take akhiymjames advice and take a couple clones of her. On some of the lower branches there were some side branches that were perfectly suitable to cut, they probably would have just turned to popcorn otherwise. I've got them sitting in a dome under 18/6 in my cabinet, so I'll keep updates coming about how that progresses!

So on another note, I have a question for anybody with some experience on this... I typically make a CO2 generator or two out of some tubing and an empty bottle filled with water, yeast, and sugar. This is the first grow I'm doing with a 170cfm fan hooked up to clean the air out and I haven't bothered with supplementing CO2 because I feel like the fan is so powerful it will just clear it out before it has a chance to be absorbed by the plants. Do you think my train of thought here is right or would it be worth it for me to set up a generator or two the way I typically would? Any input is welcome!

For now that's what's going on. I'll be back in a week or so with some updates and more pics!

-Peace
 

hypoxia

Member
Flower Day 37

Hello everyone, time for an update! Not too much detail on any individual girl here, I'm just going to sum up the last week or so and then show a few flower shots taken just a few minutes ago! The Acapulco Gold and Sour Diesel are starting to show a bit more trichome development. The AG is coming along but definitely the slowest moving out of all of my girls. The R5b is fattening up and just smells wonderful. It is beginning to take on a different aroma than the Sour Diesel. The skunky/fuelly aroma is still there, but its got a fruity almost berry smell going on as well.

As far as what else has been going on... My home made filter seems to be doing its job rather well. As stinky as the tent smells when I open it, I don't detect a trace of it when I come in the house, which is good because its starting to get cooler here and I keep the basement door open to circulate the heat from the wood stove downstairs. My new 600w bulb arrived yesterday. Since I do have an additional fixture and ballast, I decided to try hooking up the 600w alongside the 400w that I've been using as a replacement to provide some additional light. The temperature quickly climbed up to 95 degrees so I decided that was a bad idea. I'm running just the 600w now and am maintaining 82 degrees with the lights on. I also decided to rig up some yeast powered CO2 makers. I basically took some empty Milk gallons filled with water, sugar, and yeast, and then ran a hose from each one and tied each hose midway up the main stem of each plant. With the air exchange going on from that exhaust fan, I'm not sure how beneficial this setup is going to be, but I figure I've got a bottle of yeast just going to waste in the fridge and it certainly can't hurt to try.

So without further adieu....

Group...
group_11-13-14.jpg

Acapulco Gold...
ag5_11-13-14.jpg

R5b...
r5b_11-13-14.jpg

And the Sour Diesel...
sd1x1_11-13-14.jpg

Until Next week!
 

hypoxia

Member
Flower Day 39
Not much to update here. I've just been a bit disappointed with my pictures so far and since I didn't have a lot going on today I figured I'd take some time to research some photography tricks. So here's some updated pics for anyone following this thread to enjoy!

Group...
group_11-15-14.jpg
R5b...
r5b_11-15-14.jpg

Sour Diesel...
sd1x1_11-15-14.jpg

Acapulco Gold...ag5_11-15-14.jpg

I'm a little happier with these shots!

On another note, I wanted to note for my own future reference that I mixed up a new batch of organic soil today to use with my upcoming projects. Should be ready in about a month.

I also wanted to say that one of the clones I took from the R5b during flower had roots sticking out today. Here is a shot of her after being freshly potted.
r5b_clone1_11-15-14.jpg

That's all for now, see you sometime next week!
 
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