Mostly organic grow 1st journal

2016-03-08@2016-03-10

Yeah, I'm being quite lazy with journal updates. This Hearthstone game from Blizzard sucked me in again. However, things turned out well for the LSD and the 2016-03-10 was the last day of the 18/6 photoperiod. It was also the last day for nice tent pictures as I the MH lamp has been replaced since for an HPS one.

(from left to right: LSD, "Kush", "WW")

2016-03-11

The younger LSDchild has been removed from the tent and the three bigger plants spent the entire day in darkness, for a total of 36h without light. Some grow shop owner making his own fertilizer line told me to do this . Well, I'm pretty sure he was more than a pure businessman from the looks of his office and the diplomas hanging in there. I still remember his face years ago when he was pointing at one of his shelves, explaining that he had to hold Advanced Nutrients mainly because it was selling well (and kept the business going I guess). I think his feeding schedule include at least another day of total darkness to induce flowering. Anyway, I'm doing this 36h of darkness transition since the first time I ever grew. It seems to stimulate the plants instead of bothering them.

I spotted a General Organics GO Box in a local shop and reserved it. It was his demo. These stuff is still pretty rare and apparently not very popular where I live, where shops usually carry General Hydro only. I was mainly after their BioBud and BioWeed, both containing seaweeds. I didn't have stuff containing seaweed and I've heard it a very beneficial product. Well, I have leftovers of a 30ml Floralicious Plus sample (that I spilled most of on my kitchen floor, omg this stuff is so concentrated and made a huge mess, spilling a quart would be such a nightmare...). I have less than 5ml left lol.

I also wanted to try an organic bloom booster additive. The only product I have qualifying as some sort of bloom booster is Snow Storm Ultra, known to be a source of triacontanol (growth stimulant). Speaking about Snow Storm Ultra, I will make some kind of test with this grow: Since the "Kush" and the "White Widow" are so similar and has been/are being treated the exact same way, I will water and spray (until the buds fully form) SSU on the "Kush" while the "White Widow" will go entirely without SSU. Both plants have also been trained the same way, thus having almost the same structure. Since the "Kush" is a little smaller, it should catch up (of do something different lol) if the SSU works.

This brings me to my homemade lactobacillus. I think the plants like it so far. I know my cats love the curds (from brewing the lacto) mixed with their dry catfood. I've read it has beneficial effect on growth but the other thing is the sanitizing effect of this bacteria. It takes over and eat other microorganisms and produce lactic acid out of it. I think it will help preventing bad things like powdery mildew (foliar) and pest in the root zone. You spray this in a filthy smelly cat litter box and it becomes less smelly. This makes sense since you must let "infected" milk brew at room temperature for about a week to produce a lactobacillus serum. You'd expect the thing to smell like organic waste by this time, but no. My brew actually smells like sour cream (because I'm pretty sure that's what the curd layer is after tasting it), with the "cream" part being much more prominent. It has a floral hint to the cream smell, I'm still amazed.

2016-03-12

When I opened the tent after 36h of darkness, the plants looked like they were praying for light. Everything was like this ---> \|/ . The idea of Viagra them came into my mind.

Lights went on again, but with and HPS bulb instead of a MH one. Here is a pic an hour before lights off, when they usually go limp. I really should have taken a pic just after the darkness.
(from left to right: LSD, "Kush", "WW")

Those girls look nicely prepped for a scrog!! Looks great !

STLbudz said:

Those girls look nicely prepped for a scrog!! Looks great !

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Thanks!

I was thinking of using the scrog method because it gives awesome results. However, I like to move my plants out of the tent for pruning and watering. Moreover, that wasn't the most planned out grow, with bag & breeder seeds growing in different pots & media (ran out of peat and there was small bags of coco at a local shop just for me to try out...). So the scrog idea went out of the window.

I'm doing coco for the 1st time and a scrog too im glade I got to do both great results ! Treat it like hydro. Everything looks great noneless. When you thinking to flip? Where did you pick up those yellow trap?

STLbudz said:

Treat it like hydro.

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Yeah, I learned this the hard way with my LSD plant. Mainly why I took so long to flower.

STLbudz said:

When you thinking to flip?

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It was done ! I gave them 36h of darkness (2016-03-11) and the 2016-03-12 was the first day of 12/12.

STLbudz said:

Where did you pick up those yellow trap?

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Yeah, they are quite sticky. I picked them up at a hardware store, Canadian Tire. It's like a big general store, they sell a lot of things. It's one of my favorite "man's store", except when it actually comes down to tires. Unfortunately one of the suckiest place for tires. They should change their name lol.

2016-03-13@2016-03-16

Everything is going well and plants are growing fast from the photoperiod switch. The LSD is looking good now with the new growth not overly pale anymore and reduced purple in general. I think I got the coco coir peculiarities mostly under control now. For the vegetative phase .

And I mentioned that I've won a giveaway here on RIU. So I got an undersized T-shirt from The Vault and 11 (instead of 10 lol) seeds of Major Medic Regular Seeds from Professor Paul Seeds.

Here's a picture.

2016-03-17@2016-03-21

Currently in the middle of week2 of blooming and everything is still going well. I'm more worried about the LSD plant than the two others because of the issues it had the the fact that it's in coco. It's my first time in coco and for me, it's quite finicky in comparison to peat. It fooled me by looking similar to peat. I had to modify the nutrient profile of my fertilizer (BioCanna) with 5-0-0 and 0-4-0 products (Nature's Nectar), add Ca&Mg or magnesium sulfate and adjust pH to keep the LSD mostly healthy. It had numbers of issues in veg that both plants in peat didn't experience.

In spite of all this, I'll try to stick with coco because the LSD plant is still notably bigger than the two others. It has the thickest stem I grew yet. I think the coco has more to do with the bigger size than my homemade pot that holds the LSD (a 10-12L bucket with holes).

I misted the plants today with a mix of bloom booster (GO's BioBud), lactobacillus and a 1/3 dose of Saturator (surfactant/wetting agent/other non-organic stuff). I need to get yucca extract for misting. The mix for the "Kush" and the LSD also contained Snow Storm Ultra while the White Widow did not. As previously stated, I will water and spray Snow Storm Ultra with the "Kush" but not with the "White Widow".

The buds are beginning to take shape. The plants in peat are developing buds in a different way than the LSD. Hopefully because of genetics rather than nutritional unbalance. I'll try to take close-up shots by the end of week2.

(from left to right: LSD, "Kush", "WW")

Your catching me up jkjk. looking good bro! Have you done any defoliation yet? Expose them bud sites underneath

edit: How long did you keep yours in veg for? Left mine for a month +- 10 days due to space. Only have a 3x3 area :/ They have a Sqft each to work with, when they really need 1 metre each for full potential

Hey, thanks!

Feisty1UR said:

Have you done any defoliation yet? Expose them bud sites underneath

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Yeah, I did, especially in veg. I also removed a lot of sad looking undergrowth (branches) that wouldn't have been able to make it to the canopy. I had a pretty even canopy before switching the photoperiod, but the LSD is exploding since a couple of days so I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this. Although it's hard to tell from the pictures, the two other plants have about a 4-5in of very defined canopy. They would look like palm trees without the older (huge) fans leaves. I don't really want to take out those older leaves as they are super healthy despite getting less light. They can also serve as gauges if I get mobile nutrient deficiencies.

Feisty1UR said:

How long did you keep yours in veg for?

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It took me about 3months from germinated seeds to switching photoperiod. Yeah, more than twice as long as you! I ran into some "coco issues" with the LSD so this added about two weeks. I wanted to be as sure as possible to have healthy plants before going into flowering. Also, I wanted to fill out the space in my 4x4 tent. Like you, I only have three plants.

Well, the LSD plant is now pretty big with an impressive stem. I hope to get many colas out of it.

Here's some pictures of the LSD while I was watering it today. I hate my second hand camera

3 MONTHS! Jeez. I'd like to see the comparison to each of ours and see if longer veg times really make a difference, and by how much. I'm running an off-spring strain of AK-47 (60/40 indica dom). Its pretty good overall, I dont know how it would compare to the LSD you have. Is LSD sativa dom? You should probably yield 2x as much as what I would have, theoretically. I was hoping I could get 5-6 oz per plant. I don't know if thats possible, or not. I bought my seeds from Royalqueenseeds, on the site they state I should be able to pull upto 500g/m2. I'm guessing wet weight? Unsure If that's dry, well then. Im hoping for ALOT of bud!

I had a few problems with mine in the beginning too, slumped growth for about 2 weeks. Because I left the hygrometer outside the tent with the probe inside. The temps were waaaay off, soo the little tiny seedlings were exceeding 90+ degrees F. Added 2 fans and they started to blow up from itsy bitsy plants almost instantly!

Feisty1UR said:

I'd like to see the comparison to each of ours and see if longer veg times really make a difference, and by how much

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Well, I don't think it makes any significant difference. Considering we are both growing in rather small spaces (tents), I believe that it's actually better to keep veg times as short as possible. Without training, my LSD would be around 3ft high at the end of the veg phase and would outgrow the tent in height.

In our conditions, yield is normally limited by either light or space, not plant count (more important outdoors). However, it's quicker to get maximum potential yield by growing many smaller plants because of shorter veg times. I believe this is called the "Sea of Green" (SoG) method of growing. I really need to get into this lol.

Feisty1UR said:

Is LSD sativa dom?

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In comparison to other things I've grown (GreenhouseSeedsCo's White Rhino and a multitude of bag seeds that curiously all turned out to be females), my LSDs always had the strongest sativa traits. Leaf fingers are slimmer with less overlapping, plants are generally less bushy with more spacing between nodes and buds are fluffier. But I like the end product.

It's an hybrid strain, but I don't really know if it qualifies as sativa dominant. Sativa plants I see in photos are really super skinny and tall at the same time.

Feisty1UR said:

Because I left the hygrometer outside the tent with the probe inside.

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Yeah, I remember this lol. But how could you not feel the heat waves when opening your tent? No matter, they look a lot healthier now.

2016-03-22@2016-03-25

I'm at the last day of week2 of blooming. I gave the LSD a boost in phosphorus today to promote budding. Not that it really needs it but some say that it can increase the amount of bud sites in early bloom phase. And now that the plant has fully recovered from past mishaps, it can sustain some more again .

I want to point out one thing I've learned so far in this grow: The nutrient profile I must give to plants in coco is surprisingly different from the one for plants in peat. Using (potassium rich) "normal" fertilizers without adjustments in coco coir is a surefire way to get unhealthy plants.

I forgot to mention that I took cutting of the LSD on the 2016-03-10, the day before I induced blooming. They're in peat pellets surrounded with perlite in miniature cups, all enclosed in a fruit "basket" sitting on a tupperware lid and covered with some saran wrap. A ghetto contraption indeed. Please don't ask, it's the best I came up with.

Here's a picture of the cuttings as of now, towered by hot pepper plants recovering from root rot (finicky plants...) and healthy catnip. Never mind the dead leaf.

2016-03-26@2016-03-27 (week 3)

There's something of sheer interest I must bring to your attention. I can barely contain myself.



Ok. Now that the important stuff has been said, here's some pics inside the tent, resized for your convenience. (from left to right, in case you can distinguish them apart: LSD, "Kush", "WW")

2016-03-28@2016-03-30 (week 3)

Good news. My ghetto cloning contraption accomplished its mission. Although the new roots look way more healthy than the overall plants themselves, some leaves have made it entirely unscathed from the ordeal. The funny thing is that no root grew from the carefully chiselled stem tips. I tried to remove as much of the peat wrapping before transplanting, which was a pretty hairy procedure.

2016-03-31@2016-04-01 (last day of week 3)

Things are looking good. Here's a closeup of the LSD, exposing its developing genitalia. The "WW" and "Kush" are more reserved ladies, covering their private parts behind huge leaves.

2016-04-02

I've misted my plants a few minutes ago, taking great care to soak all the forming buds. Some may cringe at spraying plants while they are blooming ("~SOUND THE MOLD ALARM!!!~"). However, I sprayed them with some BioBud (GO) and a healthy dose of... homemade lactic acid bacteria (lactobacillus).

The lacto should take care of any mold threats. I believe.

When I brew this, I get a mass of curds as a byproduct. Yeah, in this case, the byproduct is cheese lol. My cats really like it. Having tasted the thing myself, I can't really question them.

Here's a pic of a mature batch that I brewed. Appetizing indeed.

2016-04-03@2016-04-04 (week 4)

Everything is well.

I watered all three plants yesterday. The LSD (in coco coir) must be watered at the least every 3days while the "WW" and "Kush" (in peat & tall narrow pots) are due every 4 days. The coco pot (a bucket) contain slightly more growing medium than the other two peat tall pots. However, the coco pot will begin to give run-off after I pour in only ~3.3L of water while the peat pots can take up about 4L.

The "Kush" plant has grown huge leaves for its size. It's the smallest plant but has the biggest leaves. I think the Snow Storm Ultra (triacontanol) treatment has something to do with it. I also spray the LSD with the stuff, but not in the watering as I do with the "Kush". Let's hope the buds react the same way as the "Kush"'s leaves. I don't see any difference yet when comparing the "Kush" with the "WW". Again, the "WW" is SSU-free. I can't bring the LSD in the comparison because it's in coco, way different nutrient mix and the plant just looks very different overall.

Some pics (foreground: "Kush", background left to right: LSD, "WW")