# Lucas Formula. should i be adding a "bud booster" ? is lucas worth it?



## budtoker0987 (Oct 20, 2013)

Hey all, long story short started in hydro, with the full GE flora series line, roots got fucking gross brown and never recovered. figured out of the what? like 5 different things i was told to use i screwed up SOMETHING, i was blaming the floralicious plus because is so damn thick and guckky.. Anyways I read about Lucas, it seemed easy, so i coulod at least get some grows in, then i'd go back to a full line of something. I was thinking the Botanicare line.. Thoughts? 

Question, has anyone used Lucas and have you added a "bud booster" during veg, or are u strictly sticking with 8ml micro/16ml bloom?

Right now im doing 100ppm cal mag in RO water, 8/16 and adding botanicare sweet. 

Thanks!!!!


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## smokegreenshlt (Oct 21, 2013)

I use Lucas method in my hempys....veg I do 5/10 and flower 8/16(ml) ...I use dechlorinated tap water ... I use calimagic in week 3 of beg to week 3 of bloom...but only if a plantu is showing it may need some more gunk in her trunk lol....and I use no other bloom boosters either...I have been highly debating going to the flora nova shit tho....cuz not having to mix shit would be awesome....and I heard its for harder water like out of the tap...and the pH buffers are better suited for that....


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 21, 2013)

smokegreenshlt said:


> I use Lucas method in my hempys....veg I do 5/10 and flower 8/16(ml) ...I use dechlorinated tap water ... I use calimagic in week 3 of beg to week 3 of bloom...but only if a plantu is showing it may need some more gunk in her trunk lol....and I use no other bloom boosters either...I have been highly debating going to the flora nova shit tho....cuz not having to mix shit would be awesome....and I heard its for harder water like out of the tap...and the pH buffers are better suited for that....


5/10 only for veg huh? I have been actually adding a little grow too because they looked a little bright green. 

WOW i just re read what i asked and i meant is anyone using a bud booster in FLOWER.. wtf... facepalm. Sorry!!! 

So smoke, no sugar like molassas or anything like that? what you growing in?


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## smokegreenshlt (Oct 21, 2013)

Nope nothing but base nutes for me...I grow in perlite hempys


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## nameno (Oct 22, 2013)

I was using GH 3 part,after a few grows tried the lucas formula and I add powder kool bloom last3 weeks it sure makes for large buds.
I been thinking about the botincare(?) I used it years ago never had a problem. I want to try something to bring out the smell.
I haven't seen any that smells like it did 3 or 4 years ago. What used to make the east coast from the west coast was perfect,not so any more what's happening? What I been doing is getting me better highs than I can buy now.It may be that people are buying from local growers that just don't match up to the experience from long time growers.Let me shut up I already said more than I know. Peaace.


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 22, 2013)

budtoker0987 said:


> Hey all, long story short started in hydro, with the full GE flora series line, roots got fucking gross brown and never recovered. figured out of the what? like 5 different things i was told to use i screwed up SOMETHING, i was blaming the floralicious plus because is so damn thick and guckky.. Anyways I read about Lucas, it seemed easy, so i coulod at least get some grows in, then i'd go back to a full line of something. I was thinking the Botanicare line.. Thoughts?
> 
> Question, has anyone used Lucas and have you added a "bud booster" during veg, or are u strictly sticking with 8ml micro/16ml bloom?
> 
> ...


It depends if you're goal is for the most sugariest, tightest buds, or the largest heaviest yielding harvest, or something in between. If you are going to strictly use the lucas formula you will get very nice tightly formed (strain dependent of course-pure sativa's are a bit of a different story) sugary buds but they won't swell and yield the heaviest for your plants potential. When you use the lucas formula you are not using the grow in the 3 part system. The theory is that the micro has enough nitrogen in it for the plant to develop well throughout it's whole cycle. This is true to a point but your plant will NOT yield to it's max potential with this formula because of the drastically lower level of nitrogen in the formula.
I'm a commercial med grower. I've been growing for 20 years. We have systematically tried pretty much every combo of ratio's of the 3 part and 2 part systems over the years. And that is what we found. We do side by side controlled experiments with clones not seeded plants from the same mothers. In the same completely controlled sealed room systems. We have done some controlled test grows for a local nute company.

Over the years we have fine tuned our own formula of base nutes and boosters to get us what we feel is the best product and best possible yield. Though we adjust the formula slightly for different strains because different strains can react differently to different strength nute ratios.

If you went with a 1/1/1 ratio throughout your grow with an added booster like kool bloom or big bud (in powder form-much more positive affect than liquid) throughout your flowering stage you would maximize the yield potential of your plant. When you get some grows under your belt you should start playing with those base nute ratio's and cut back slightly on the grow and micro and increase very slightly the bloom. A 1/2/3 (G/M/B) formula is a nice formula for both yield and quality but it isn't the best either. The yield will be less than a 1/1/1 with booster formula. So tweak it till get what you want from your plants.

Always start off weak with your formulas then very gradually increase ratios to see how the plants react. In hydro they will react much quicker and more drastically than in soil. So start off with lower ppm/tds measurements and you'll be safer from burning, stressing, or locking out nutrients.

Feel free to pm me if you want more specific info.

Good luck


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 22, 2013)

nameno said:


> I was using GH 3 part,after a few grows tried the lucas formula and I add powder kool bloom last3 weeks it sure makes for large buds.
> I been thinking about the botincare(?) I used it years ago never had a problem. I want to try something to bring out the smell.
> I haven't seen any that smells like it did 3 or 4 years ago. What used to make the east coast from the west coast was perfect,not so any more what's happening? What I been doing is getting me better highs than I can buy now.It may be that people are buying from local growers that just don't match up to the experience from long time growers.Let me shut up I already said more than I know. Peaace.


Botanicare Sweet will bring out some strong smells of your flowers but a lot of companies make carb/amino,vitamin etc additives to aid in this BUT it isn't just food or your grow environment that helps with the smell of your flowers. After harvest care, drying, and curing of your product will preserve those strong dank smells your flowers have during growth.
If you mishandle, dry and cure your product poorly and too quickly you will end up with weak smelling, dull looking buds. If you want to keep that smell in your flowers dry them very cool (62F) and very slowly and have a bit of space on your racks between buds; don't cram them or overlap them on drying screens. Use an a/c or some sort of cooling system in your drying room with a de-hum in the dark. Don't go lower than 50% humidity at ANY time during your drying and you will keep all that great smell in. Drying of small popcorn buds should take at least a week or more. Mid sized to large top buds should take up to 2 weeks to fully dry. When they are about to be fully dry you can further cure them for even more evenly dried and dank buds


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## tallstraw (Oct 22, 2013)

You added molasses to your Hydro? Which is most likrly airrated as well? No wonder you had brown gross roots. It probably created bad bacteria. What you use in soil isn't the same for hydro.

Like he said though. Lucas is a base. You can tweak it from there. I'm gonna start adding more bloom to the lucas method for my coco, and see if it helps bolster the buds. As well as some of those snow supplement things that make better resin production. But Ithink II'm gonna do that next grow. And take some chttings off my best plants this grow, and try the addiditves and see what it does.


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 22, 2013)

No, i didnt ever use molassas. i Was just asking if ppl have.

BCOGYODA thanks for the good info man. If i may ask, what system do you grow in? And you say you have a specific modification of nutes.. what brand? Ya I dont know if im totally sold on the lucas formula its just something that was easy when i was having nothing but issues. at least for my flowering ladies and the new lil ones that are already getting lucas I will continue it for those but im thinking of changing it up after that. maybe the whole line again. 

but like you were saying BC, the buds, they smell pretty good but for a good little bit they smelled "planty" but now its been over a week of curing and they smell way better. but when they were live they smelled like super fruity! 

How i harvested: for one they could hve gone another maybe two days but the veg room was overfloweing so badly we had to cut.
trimmed right awasy and put in nets to dry i honestly dont know the temp and humidiy i just know it was in the dark in the basement. Id say it had to be close to 65F and like 40% give or take some
they sat for i think 5 or 6 days before i took out all the popcorn, basically anything that the stem would actually snap on i put in jars. 
The bigger buds stayed for another two days and got jarred.
been getting burped 3 times a day for 15 mins for the first week. now they geting around like 10 mins twice a day. right now is about.... 2 weeks of curing i thingk... 

They do smell pretty damn good right now. but like when i go a put the cap back on they have a little "Planty" smell. it seems to be going away tho...

But if using Botanicare would give me better tasting smelling buds. im in!!


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## JohnnySocko (Oct 22, 2013)

BCOGYODA said:


> It depends if you're goal is for the most sugariest, tightest buds, or the largest heaviest yielding harvest, or something in between. If you are going to strictly use the lucas formula you will get very nice tightly formed (strain dependent of course-pure sativa's are a bit of a different story) sugary buds but they won't swell and yield the heaviest for your plants potential. When you use the lucas formula you are not using the grow in the 3 part system. The theory is that the micro has enough nitrogen in it for the plant to develop well throughout it's whole cycle. This is true to a point but your plant will NOT yield to it's max potential with this formula because of the drastically lower level of nitrogen in the formula.
> I'm a commercial med grower. I've been growing for 20 years. We have systematically tried pretty much every combo of ratio's of the 3 part and 2 part systems over the years. And that is what we found. We do side by side controlled experiments with clones not seeded plants from the same mothers. In the same completely controlled sealed room systems. We have done some controlled test grows for a local nute company.
> 
> Over the years we have fine tuned our own formula of base nutes and boosters to get us what we feel is the best product and best possible yield. Though we adjust the formula slightly for different strains because different strains can react differently to different strength nute ratios.
> ...


I read something similar to what you posted, but as usual the poster spent more time referring you with links than offering a one sentence explanation...


> If you went with a 1/1/1 ratio throughout your grow with an added booster like kool bloom or big bud (in powder form-much more positive affect than liquid) throughout your flowering stage you would maximize the yield potential of your plant


. So are you saying skip GH's feed chart and just go 1-1-1 all the way through? (ppms being 800-100-1400 seedling-veg-bloom ;respectively or you do something different? (pardon, but it just sounds so simple he he) ...and specifically just then follow the amt/feeding sched on the instructions of Big bud et..... again, if you could hold our hands here and re-educate us , I'm all ear s


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## apollo4 (Oct 22, 2013)

Yeah 1tbls each never exceed per gl then koolbloom


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 22, 2013)

budtoker0987 said:


> No, i didnt ever use molassas. i Was just asking if ppl have.
> 
> BCOGYODA thanks for the good info man. If i may ask, what system do you grow in? And you say you have a specific modification of nutes.. what brand? Ya I dont know if im totally sold on the lucas formula its just something that was easy when i was having nothing but issues. at least for my flowering ladies and the new lil ones that are already getting lucas I will continue it for those but im thinking of changing it up after that. maybe the whole line again.
> 
> ...


I grow in soil in SOG's I also have a some larger trees. I use a combo of nutes some are from different companies but my 3 part is Advanced Nutes Jungle (not ph perfect). My booster is Big Bud by Advanced. I use enzymes, carbs, vitamins, pro silicate, and I flush with Final Phase. But it doesn't matter which company you get the carbs from or the vitamins or pro silicate etc..Senzizyme and Grozyme are both good. Grozyme is more concentrated. For a booster I've tried so many and If I had to only narrow it down to 2 different ones they would be Big Bud or Kool Bloom. You don't have to use one specific company's nutes. I get a very good deal on my nutes cause we buy them at commercial rates so that's why I buy Advanced for my 3 part and some of the additives. 

The Lucas formula is just that; very simple and it will give you sugary tight buds but won't give you massive yields. You need nitrogen in a higher amount to "blow" your flowers up. You can tighten them up more at the end by changing your formula a bit and by lowering your temps and dimming your lights so that ripening happens at a quicker rate. So if you tweak your formula you can get bigger buds then tighten them up more to the end.

If you went colder 62F and higher humidity of 50% for drying your buds you will find you get even danker smelling buds. Just make sure they don't touch each other or over lap which will encourage mold. The idea is to slow down drying as much as possible while still removing moisture. You will also notice your buds don't shrink near as much as they would if you dried warmer and quicker. 

Some guys have to "sweat" their buds in order to get inner moisture out because they dry the outside way to quicker; leaving the inner flower still moist with stems that don't snap. 

The way I dry I don't ever have to "sweat" or "burp" my buds. In 2 weeks of slow cold rack drying the buds are the dankest they can possibly be. Try it out. You will see 

It's the Botanicare "Sweet" additive that will give you a boost to the flower smell. We used it in comparison a few times and love it.


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 22, 2013)

JohnnySocko said:


> I read something similar to what you posted, but as usual the poster spent more time referring you with links than offering a one sentence explanation... . So are you saying skip GH's feed chart and just go 1-1-1 all the way through? (ppms being 800-100-1400 seedling-veg-bloom ;respectively or you do something different? (pardon, but it just sounds so simple he he) ...and specifically just then follow the amt/feeding sched on the instructions of Big bud et..... again, if you could hold our hands here and re-educate us , I'm all ear s


Which feed chart are you referring too? Their Lucas one or their 1/2/3 ratio or? You are right. It is simple to do a pretty productive and high yielding formula if you have great grow conditions, lighting, co2, etc..You can have great nutes and formula but if the grow environment isn't as good then things can change very drastically with yield. Yes a 1/1/1 ratio right to the end with a booster from week 3 of flower to 8 of flower (with a 10 week strain) will give you excellent yields if everything else is good like grow conditions, good starting plant health, etc etc..
I personally tweak my formula based on how my plants are responding, what strain I'm growing, etc..so my formula can be slightly different from crop to crop BUT if I were to give you a good piece of advice it would be to use a 1/1/1 ratio like I said then tweak it a bit for the last week before you flush by increasing the bloom slightly, reduce the micro slightly, and reduce the grow even a bit more than how much you reduced the micro by. So a 1/2/3 ratio. For that end week before flushing. I flush for a full 2 weeks with a clearing solution. I use Final Phase but other ones work well to like Clearex (Botanicare) etc.
I grow from clones. They can take a bit more nutes at their root onset than a seed grown plant. I veg for 2 weeks. My feed starts at 400 then up to 800 for 2 weeks of veg. I flip to flower and feed a 1000 ppm flower feed. I flower for 10 weeks. Depending on the strain an average ppm for me is 1000 up to 1600 ppm then flush. I used to do 1000 to 1600 then down to 800 then flush but I found I got better yields by feeding strong right up to my flush stage. I'm in soil though so there is still nute salts in there that can feed the plants a bit as the soil is flushing so it's not like they are getting cut off nutes completely cold turkey. If I were in Hydro I would weaken off my nutes more gradually before the flush.


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## JohnnySocko (Oct 23, 2013)

BCOGYODA said:


> Which feed chart are you referring too? Their Lucas one or their 1/2/3 ratio or? You are right. It is simple to do a pretty productive and high yielding formula if you have great grow conditions, lighting, co2, etc..You can have great nutes and formula but if the grow environment isn't as good then things can change very drastically with yield. Yes a 1/1/1 ratio right to the end with a booster from week 3 of flower to 8 of flower (with a 10 week strain) will give you excellent yields if everything else is good like grow conditions, good starting plant health, etc etc..
> I personally tweak my formula based on how my plants are responding, what strain I'm growing, etc..so my formula can be slightly different from crop to crop BUT if I were to give you a good piece of advice it would be to use a 1/1/1 ratio like I said then tweak it a bit for the last week before you flush by increasing the bloom slightly, reduce the micro slightly, and reduce the grow even a bit more than how much you reduced the micro by. So a 1/2/3 ratio. For that end week before flushing. I flush for a full 2 weeks with a clearing solution. I use Final Phase but other ones work well to like Clearex (Botanicare) etc.
> I grow from clones. They can take a bit more nutes at their root onset than a seed grown plant. I veg for 2 weeks. My feed starts at 400 then up to 800 for 2 weeks of veg. I flip to flower and feed a 1000 ppm flower feed. I flower for 10 weeks. Depending on the strain an average ppm for me is 1000 up to 1600 ppm then flush. I used to do 1000 to 1600 then down to 800 then flush but I found I got better yields by feeding strong right up to my flush stage. I'm in soil though so there is still nute salts in there that can feed the plants a bit as the soil is flushing so it's not like they are getting cut off nutes completely cold turkey. If I were in Hydro I would weaken off my nutes more gradually before the flush.


I hope others were listening; the time spent on that post is very appreciated.... I did a Lucas grow and it OK...but now I'll try a 1-1-1 for this 4x4 Sativa grow (trainwreck, Green crack, Skunk 11, and Purple haze) and you preemptively answered my question on a ppm sched....


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 23, 2013)

JohnnySocko said:


> I read something similar to what you posted, but as usual the poster spent more time referring you with links than offering a one sentence explanation... . So are you saying skip GH's feed chart and just go 1-1-1 all the way through? (ppms being 800-100-1400 seedling-veg-bloom ;respectively or you do something different? (pardon, but it just sounds so simple he he) ...and specifically just then follow the amt/feeding sched on the instructions of Big bud et..... again, if you could hold our hands here and re-educate us , I'm all ear s


No problem glad to help


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 23, 2013)

Ya BC, thanks for taking the time man! much appreciated!

Just so im clear. say i have 40 gallons in my res. The whole way thru i should go 1/1/1 so 40ml grow 40ml micro and 40mn bloom.

Once in flower after week 3 start doing 1/2/3 up to week 8, or a week before i would start flushing. I AM in hydro so in the week before the flush mybe cut those nutes in half? then my two weeks of flushing.

If that's right, when would i want to add the bud booster and the sweet? I have liquid koolbloom and the berry sweet. Do i need dry koolbloom instead? 

Im not totally sold on the Lucas Formula for exactly that reason you explain, they just seem too light in color. I end up just doing lucas and ADDING grow to it during veg.... which... doesn't make it lucas anymore i guess lol..


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 23, 2013)

budtoker0987 said:


> Ya BC, thanks for taking the time man! much appreciated!
> 
> Just so im clear. say i have 40 gallons in my res. The whole way thru i should go 1/1/1 so 40ml grow 40ml micro and 40mn bloom.
> 
> ...


No, No I do 1/1/1 right up to where I tweak it the week before I flush. Not 1/2/3 from week 3 on. I veg my clones for 2 weeks, flip them to flower, then flower for just over 10 weeks. OG is a 10 weeker.
So depending on what strain you are your flowering time may be less.
Yes when you say 40 ml/40 ml/40 ml that is a 1/1/1 ratio but I don't know what ppm that would equal in your 40 gallon res. You will have to play with the amount of nutes you use to equal what ppm you want to be at. 
Like I was saying I veg from 400 up to 800 ppm then my first feed when I flip to flower is 1000 ppm. I work it up to 1600 for my max ppm before I flush. I do 1/1/1 ratio up to my week 7 then week 8 I do a tweaked ratio that is similar to a 1/2/3 ratio. Then I flush week 9 and 10. But different strains can take different strength in nutes so be careful you don't burn them. It may be safer for you to max out a fair bit less to be on the safe side. If you see the tips of the leaves start to go burnt looking and crisp then flush right away and reduce the ppm strength of your next feed.
So for boosters I use an additive that triggers the plants to flower a bit quicker than normal. I use Bud Blood but there are other similar products on the market that do this. You can use any of them or you don't have to use it at all. With OG if I don't use a flower ignitor product the plants will take about 14 days to start showing flowers. When I use the additive I start seeing flowers form around day 8-10 usually. Not a huge difference but it does give them a little more time to fatten up in the overall scheme of things. I use it when I flip to flower for 2 feeds, then after that I use the Big Bud booster the whole way through my flower stage right up to when I start to flush.
Yes being that you are in hydro I would lower that tweaked feed down half way for that week before you flower.

You should use the sweet right through your flower stage after the buds have started to form from when they are about the size of a dime on.
Liquid boosters are ok but the powders are purer and just get better results. Maybe use up your liquid one till you run out then get the powder on your next one?


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 24, 2013)

Ok ya i'll use that up then. So do you think it would be beneficial to my right now flowering ladies that are getting lucas @ 100ppm cal mag (because im using RO water) and 8/16ml per gallon micro/gro (Flora series) and 10ml per gallon sweet (should i go full dose on this? which is i think like 20ml per gallon) which brings us to about 1100 ppm (.5 conversion) could be more by 100 or so id have to look again; to switch over to a 1/1/1 feed? Right now they dont look burnt so i think the strength of ppms is about good. so i could tweak the exact am,ount to be close to that.

right now, i think today actually is day 1 of week 3. this is pics froma couple days ago


so at this point, me being in hydro, if you suggest chaging it up, say my target ppm to make it easy is 1000ppm. How high would you go with the base nutes at 1/1/1, so that you can still add your additives to equal out to 1000? And how strong should i mix in liquid kooldbloom and sweet? I figure i would still keep the 100ppm of cal mag to begin with so there is 900ppm left.


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 24, 2013)

BCOGYODA said:


> Like I was saying I veg from 400 up to 800 ppm then my first feed when I flip to flower is 1000 ppm. I work it up to 1600 for my max ppm before I flush. I do 1/1/1 ratio up to my week 7 then week 8 I do a tweaked ratio that is similar to a 1/2/3 ratio. Then I flush week 9 and 10.


Would these ppm strengths also "work" with a hydro setup like mine? I know you said your doing soil right? You want different strengths for the different systems of growing right? or is that incorrect? between hydro and soil


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 24, 2013)

budtoker0987 said:


> Ok ya i'll use that up then. So do you think it would be beneficial to my right now flowering ladies that are getting lucas @ 100ppm cal mag (because im using RO water) and 8/16ml per gallon micro/gro (Flora series) and 10ml per gallon sweet (should i go full dose on this? which is i think like 20ml per gallon) which brings us to about 1100 ppm (.5 conversion) could be more by 100 or so id have to look again; to switch over to a 1/1/1 feed? Right now they dont look burnt so i think the strength of ppms is about good. so i could tweak the exact am,ount to be close to that.
> 
> right now, i think today actually is day 1 of week 3. this is pics froma couple days ago
> View attachment 2869426View attachment 2869427View attachment 2869428View attachment 2869429View attachment 2869430View attachment 2869431View attachment 2869432
> ...


Your plants look great. Healthy and happy. Yes they are very early in flower. You would benefit from switching to 1/1/1 now. If you did 8ml/8ml/8ml you should be close to where you are at now with 8/16ml..That is a perfect ppm you are at right now. I've seen hydro grows feeding right up to 2000ppm at peak but I wouldn't recommend that while you are trying to figure out exactly what your strain likes and where the boundaries are with the ppm dosage.
I suggest slowly building up your feed by only an increase of 50 ppm at a time and see how they react. As soon as you see a sign of nute burn back off 100ppm then you know where you max ppm will be with that strain.
You don't need to give the sweet at full strength yet. Build up to it until week 4/5 that's where you should be at full strength with it.
I'm at full dose of my booster by week 5 flower with my 10 week flower strains. If you have a 9 week flower strain build your booster dosage to max out around week 4 flower.


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 25, 2013)

So your cutting DOWN on the macros when your building up more on the boosters and sweet?

So say im doing the 8/8/8 and for shits and giggles we'll say that = 1000ppm alone. No booster, no sweet. But lets say right now is my week 4 or so and im close or already wanting to be at full strength booster and sweet. Am i factoring that into the 1000, meaning i would want to cut down on the main nutes to EQUAL that 1000ppm with everything included; so instead of the 8/8/8 it would be like 6/6/6 + full strength sweet + full strength liqkoolbloom = 1000ppm? Does that make sense? I have deleted this 3 times and re-wrote it to try and not sound crazy.. 
REALLY REALLY REALLY APPRECIATE THE ADVICE BC!!


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## eyeball (Oct 25, 2013)

This is a great thread with good Q and A's... I too stoped using all the complicated regimens and switched to lucas formula with great results. I was able to focus more on my environmental control and not always second guessing my nutes... Now 2 years later I'm ready to expand my nutrients and all this makes a lot of sense... thanks BC.... like said above.. my down falls have always been environment and over watering. BC if you dont mind, sharing what room temp, co2 leval, prunning technics.. ( do u cut off lower branches and at what stage)... I hope this isn't considered a hijack, just thought it would be good info for everyone....
Thanks..


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 25, 2013)

budtoker0987 said:


> So your cutting DOWN on the macros when your building up more on the boosters and sweet?
> 
> So say im doing the 8/8/8 and for shits and giggles we'll say that = 1000ppm alone. No booster, no sweet. But lets say right now is my week 4 or so and im close or already wanting to be at full strength booster and sweet. Am i factoring that into the 1000, meaning i would want to cut down on the main nutes to EQUAL that 1000ppm with everything included; so instead of the 8/8/8 it would be like 6/6/6 + full strength sweet + full strength liqkoolbloom = 1000ppm? Does that make sense? I have deleted this 3 times and re-wrote it to try and not sound crazy..
> REALLY REALLY REALLY APPRECIATE THE ADVICE BC!!


No questions are crazy or wrong to ask. It's the guys that ask all the questions that become great growers. The guys that trip over their pride and don't ask are often stuck in growing "ruts" for long periods of time. So no worries. Ok so while you increase your boosters you're ppm will increase so don't lower your base nutes unless you see that you're total ppm is getting too high too quick. So what I do when growing a new strain for the first time and I'm in flower: is to fill my res, add my base nutes a little weak just while starting that res mixture, then add my booster at say half the directions strength. I check my ppm. So say I want to be at 1200 but I'm at 1000 with all that stuff mixed in the res I will gradually add a bit more of my base nutes till I reach the ppm I'm trying to get to. So just add equal parts of g/m/b until you get there. Does that make sense? The sweet shouldn't have a large increase in ppm to your res. Maybe 100-200ppm if I remember right.

Eyeball:


> This is a great thread with good Q and A's... I too stoped using all the complicated regimens and switched to lucas formula with great results. I was able to focus more on my environmental control and not always second guessing my nutes... Now 2 years later I'm ready to expand my nutrients and all this makes a lot of sense... thanks BC.... like said above.. my down falls have always been environment and over watering. BC if you dont mind, sharing what room temp, co2 leval, prunning technics.. ( do u cut off lower branches and at what stage)... I hope this isn't considered a hijack, just thought it would be good info for everyone....
> Thanks..


For the most part I grow tight SOG's so my pruning is very heavy duty compared to someone doing farther spaced trees etc. For pruning here in BC we call it "flagging"=taking a lot of fan leaves off the plants to allow for more air flow and light to reach the flower sites, and "lollipopping"=to remove the lowest branches to allow for more air flower under the plants and to give more growing energy to the higher up flowering sites that are closer to the lights. We cut the lower branches off when we flip to flower (you can use these branches to make cuttings with if you need clones) We flag at around week 3-4 of flower.

Room temp is VERY dependent on the strain you are growing. Dif strains will yield more or less and tighten up or get more airy dependent on how they react to the room temps..And the MOST important thing to know about room temps is that your thermostat on the the wall is only reading the ambient temperature (the air temp by the thermostat) NOT the temp directly under the lights and at your plants canopy level. Two very different measurements. 
So take for example Purple Kush ( I grew it for years ) I could set my thermostats for 78-79 daytime/74-75 night time temps. The canopy would be around say 6 to 8 degrees warmer than that 84-85 daytime but still 74/75 nightime cause lights are off. Purple Kush loved those temp settings and responded by yielding great and still tightening up, sugaring up, and coloring up nicely at the end.
BUT take OG in comparison-a Sativa/Indica hybrid that lent itself a little more showing a Sativa dominant side in the pheno's we developed doesn't like warmer temps like the P. Kush does. So my temps are lower for growing the OG. On my thermostat I do 75 daytime/71 night time. Add 6-8 degrees to that for canopy level temps. Drop your temps both day and night for the last two weeks of flower. It will make the flowers ripen quicker, harden up more, and sugar up more.

For CO2 I start at 400ppm when the clones are just planted. I gradually bring it up matching my feed ppm until I am in the second week of flower then I set it to 1800ppm. The very last week before I chop I lower it to 400 ppm. I grow in completely sealed grow rooms so you can't turn the co2 completely off or the plants will eat it all up then won't have any co2 at all to metabolize with.

I use co2 tanks in some rooms, and co2 burners in other rooms. A VERY important thing to note when growing with co2 burners is to always check your burner tips on a very regular bases. If one single tip is fucked from a build up of oxidation's, carbon etc and stops working then it can be spewing out un burnt propane or natural gas (whatever type you are using) into your grow room. This WILL poison your plants. They will deform, get very twisted and distorted, and completely slow growth and yield very poorly. Every time I enter one of my rooms with a burner I walk straight over to them and check that all my burner tips are lit while the burner is on.

Edited: "was" to "wall"


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## eyeball (Oct 26, 2013)

Thanks BC.. so after all the side by side experiments you decided to go with soil over other mediums..what did you like about soil. Im surprised that you are able to get your plants to show flower after 8-10 in soil days..thats cool. Are you doing a drain to waste and do you check the ppm's of what drains out... ( soil has some nutes in it already right).. last question; I'm using RO water should I use cal/ mag with the 3 part formula..
Thanks..


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 27, 2013)

eyeball said:


> Thanks BC.. so after all the side by side experiments you decided to go with soil over other mediums..what did you like about soil. Im surprised that you are able to get your plants to show flower after 8-10 in soil days..thats cool. Are you doing a drain to waste and do you check the ppm's of what drains out... ( soil has some nutes in it already right).. last question; I'm using RO water should I use cal/ mag with the 3 part formula..
> Thanks..


Hey eyeball I have always grown in soil myself; not hydro. I have worked with growers in their hydro set ups but I have always grown in soil. All the comparison grows we've done were in soil beds with fresh dirt, side by side, same rooms etc..
Ya the products that jump start the flowers to show are very good. Pricey but they work well. The soil I use is Sunshine #4 it has a ppm of 150-250 it's a peat base with added perlite.
I grow in beds. No drain holes at all. We re use our dirt once so two shows off the same dirt. We pull the root balls out and turn the dirt over before planting the next crop. I flush a lot before chopping. 
If I ever am concerned about salt build up in my soil I do a soil test. Take samples from top, middle, bottom of the soil, mix it with a cup of ph 7 water, let it sit for an hour, then test the ppm and ph of it. Same idea as testing run off.
I do large commercial shows grown very densely to use all the grow space in the rooms. My beds are on wheels. We move them to do work in between them when needed. This maximizes yield per sq/ft so hydro just isn't suited to the way I set up the rooms.
​ with a 1/1/1 you shouldn't need the cal mag. But if you see any deficiencies you should use it. I don't use it but I used to use it in every grow. I haven't seen any negative affects on my plants when not using it with the 1/1/1 ratio feeds. Not sure if hydro you will notice the same but I think so.Pictures is shitty quality cause of the hps lights but you can see how tight I grow:


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## budtoker0987 (Oct 28, 2013)

BC, thank you man for all this good info!! If it's cool, i may have some more questions in the future. still cool to shoot you an PM?


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## BCOGYODA (Oct 28, 2013)

No prob ya anytime


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 4, 2013)

Mr. BC, didnt take too long til i started pondering some stuff lol.
So, in my system, in 4 weeks my res gets changed twice. 
My schedule is every two weeks or if i have added back the total amount of my res before the two weeks i would do a res change but that hasn't happened. I have so far only been changing every two weeks (give or take a day due to schedule conflict).

SO  I wanna switch my big ladies from lucas 8/16 M/B to the 1/1/1 like ur sayin. I think Friday was day 28. Res change is in like a day or two. Total PPM's right NOW are about 1260-1300ppm. So the mix im thinking is gonna be like 6/6/6 (NO CAL MAG RIGHT? I AM USING RO) im gonna start doing full strength sweet and i think that is 20ml per gallon(they been getting 10ml per up til now). I'll use the Silica Blast (they have NOT received any of this yet as i just found out about it *facepalm*) and there are two strengths on the bottle one for medium sized plants and one for mature plants. and i think its 2.5ml per gallon and 5ml per gallon respectively. Think maybe since they haven't ever had it should i only add the weaker strength? Or go with the stronger? (AND ADD THIS FIRST BEFORE OTHER NUTES, RIGHT?, at least that is what i've read.) Then we have the Liquid KoolBloom; now this stuff they also have never recieved. Would i wanna go half strength on that?

Taking all in mind that, I do res changes every two weeks. Just started week 4. The fruity chronic juice strain SAYS its an early finisher. The last run i did with them i did in DWC and did NOTHING but stress them out. nasty roots. different nute mixes, a couple flushes. I ended up cutting them down at week 10 and it looked like they could have went a few more days but the veg tent was OVERFLOWING so i had to cut them then. (im now doing EBB & Flow, no more DWC) SOOOOO these flowering ladies are ACTUALLY my first in this system too. So honestly im not SURE if they are gonna go the shorter time like the description of them would say. Or if they actually do take 10 weeks. I figure any of the stupid shit i was doing to them in DWC could have stunted them, roots not absorbing like they should, ect.. So im kind of expecting an earlier finish. but to be safe i guess i could say week 9 would be a fair prediction. 

WOudl you suggest i mix up a res like normal (depending on what you think on the above) and that will last two weeks. So then in week 6 im looking at another res change. And i guess technically if they WERE gonna be done in week 8 i would start flushing here right? SOrry for all the mix of questions. I jsuut get on a roll lol.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 7, 2013)

lol. i just came back to look at this thread and am laughing at how much i frickin put in this last comment. sorry about that dude lol. i musta been super dusted and ranting. basically all that long shit SHORT 
how would u suggest i deal with that last month of flower with res changes happening every two weeks, and your saying you make that one week adjustment before flush.

Think i should just weekly changes for those last weeks? sorry again for the book man lol


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 8, 2013)

Hey no prob ya sorry I spend most my time at the concentrates section on the forum so I don't check back here too often. Yes I would change your res once a week for the last couple if you are going to tweek it up with the 1/2/3 ratio before you flush.
With any of the silica products just follow the directions. They usually tell you to dose it lighter with younger plants then increase it as they grow. Kool Bloom is powerful stuff and when I grow a new strain I never give any boosters to them in full strength right off the bat cause some strains burn way easier than others. You should give it at half dose and see how the plants react. With hydro the plants will react very fast to too powerful of nutes. In soil they can take up to a week to react. If you don't see any leaf tip burn then gradually increase the dose little by little. If you grow the same strain over and over you will find what they like and where your max ppm's are for nutes.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 11, 2013)

what what i did was half strength koolbloom. But again, its the liquid too so expect its not as concentrated as you would be thinking with the powder. Still I only did half strength. So here is what i put in this time
40 gallon res, RO
40 teaspoon per gallon Silica Blast, only brought it up to 30ppm
6/6/6 G/M/B so 40 per gallon each
Sweet full strength 20ml per gallon
Liquid Koolbloom half strength so about a teaspoon per gallon

Which all came out to 1260ppm, 6.2ph. No ph up or down added.

Now these pics here are from Saturday which was week 6 day 2. The res was down to 32 gallons and my readings were like 1370ppm and 5.2 ph. I added ten gallons of half strength of everything i put in originally, and a little ph up and got it to 1230ppm and 6.1ph. But MAN, they look like they like what they're eating tho dude  Im excited to give them the full strength booster  Would you also run this same ratio with any 3 part nute line or do you just know this works well for GH flora? Cuz i was maybe thinking of botanicare line at some time. I have "HEARD" the buds taste better.. ? who knows til i try...


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 11, 2013)

Oh ya, you said you got pals doing hydro. Do they use something like hygrozyme? Someone recommended pondzyme. Its obviously much cheaper but if it does what it needs im in. Just curious because right now im not using anything like that. And i know for a 100% fact that roots are all up in the hoses and stuff so there has to be some dead matter in there.

ya.. whole nother issue, if it IS actually an issue. Being that there was this much roots in the hose and this was like a week ago.


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 17, 2013)

Hey man you should be proud of those girls. They look happy and very healthy. I'm glad everything is working out very well for you!
That root porn is awesome! And look at how you have resin heads forming on even secondary fan leaves. That is a very good development. A great sign of health, plant vigor, and shows the strain you are growing has great potential to produce a lot of resin. The booster is doing it's job well too.

Yes you can do the 1/1/1 ratio then tweek it towards the end with any 3 part fertilizer company but keep in mind that different companies can and do use different concentration formulas so always start off low what their labels recommend for dosages to see where you are at for ppm value.
Be careful not to get too carried away with thinking ahead to change nute companies and experiment a lot. I recommend really dialing in what you are doing first and give your whole full attention to this grow and these plants. If you give them love they will give you love back big time.
Put some full time music in there for them too if you can. Check out plant studies with music.. They respond to it. Lot's of side by side experiments have been done. Check it out when you have time.

Yes, adding Hygrozyme/Grozyme will be a good addition to use for sure. Your roots look very nice and white so keep track of what you are doing and make notes of this grow and what you do all the way through it. Even if you do little adjustment along the way. I have notes on grows going back a lot of years and still keep them and read back on them now and again. Especially things like ambient air temp, canopy temp under lights both when lights on and lights off (get a min/max day/night time temp/humidity stat) res temp, co2 levels, etc, 
With the shape of your roots looks like you have good res temp, oxygen levels, etc. that your plants are liking and responding very well to.

And don't be in too much of a hurry to increase the ppm's too much at a time. In hydro once you go over the plants max ppm uptake they will burn and respond poorly to it very quickly. So only go up 50 ppm at a time if you are going to raise it at all.

Keep up the great work man!


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 17, 2013)

Im gonna PM you man!! I got some new pics from tonight, and a lil question  of course lol


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 17, 2013)

Ok, cant attach pics in PC i guess 
Anyways, these are from tonight. Week 7 Day 3. 

LOL I noticed these lil survivors and said FU&% it lol IM KEEPIN EM! lol

Readings when i left. Right is Veg, left is Flower. They steadily drop in PH. Slowly, but steadily. So I go a lil high.


Basically I THINK they look like they should be good to go by week 8 (What you think??). Which is the 28th of this month. Per their seed description that's when they should be (https://www.cannabis-seeds-bank.co.uk/delicious-seeds-fruity-chronic-juice/prod_417.html) My vegging ladies are dying to go into flower. They are on Week 6 Day 3.


LoL, im doing a little experimenting here too obviously lol. I got one that I'm LST'ing. 2 the I'm Mainlining, one with 8 tops and one with 16. 3 that I just topped Uncle Ben Style (4-6 tops). And 3 that I'm using scrog with, found these sweet little per bucket metal net things so figured hell ya lol. So far Im liking the topped, mainline, and LST the best. But not even in flower yet so we'll see.

So On Tuesday the 19th will be 10 days away from 8 weeks. Which is when i wanna start doing my flush. BUT, HERES MY QUESTION: How do you really know WHEN you should START your flush??? I know when you want to CUT is when you have cloudy trich's and like 30 or so % amber ones if you can hit that window. But how can you read your plant and know when you should start your flush for 10 - 14 days before the end?

Oh ya, how do ur buddys doing hydro like to do their clones? I have an aero cloner i made. Works pretty sweet. Only thing is, i just put them in the neoprene covers and let them hang in the tote. Sprayer on 24/7, within two weeks they root and the ones that dont, get nasty. I did em in RW once but that shit just stays SO WET. I didnt like it. But doing it this way basically leaves the roots fully exposed. Then going from hanging in the air getting sprayed constantly, to getting transplanted into hydroton that feeds 3 times a day. I dunno, they just seemed stunted or slow to get going it seemed like to me. Oh ya and most of them wilted pretty bad. I wonder if the rock crushes the roots. Or like tugs at the roots connection to the stem, ya know? Just not sure what way I wanna keep doing it yet. I meant it WORKED bot ways i guess lol...

Thanks BC DUDE!!! Ur the man. I really appreciate the time u spend helpin me out, seriously!


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 17, 2013)

Got any suggestions for me on what kind of ZYME i should get? Hygrozyme? Pondzyme (suggested by a guy on here)


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 18, 2013)

Well if you are going to stick with this strain your chop time is a bit of a learning curve for the first couple crops because different strains mature at different rates BUT if you want you can go by your trichs with a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe and start your flush when you see the first couple cloudy trichs show up. This will give you time during the flush for the rest of the trichs to cloud up. And if you have to chop when you haven't seen any amber yet that will still be ok cause at lease they should all be cloudy by chop time.
It also depends on what kind of a high you want from your meds. If you want more head high or more body couch etc..
Also you can take close up pics of your calix's too and watch as they swell and the hairs tuck back into the calix's that is a sign they are really mature and ready to chop soon. So watch as they swell. At that point your trichs will start to cloud up.
If you think your strain is only an 8 weeker then you should start to flush soon but to me those buds still look like they are going to swell quite a bit more for a couple weeks.

It's tough to make the call without being there. With hydro you can flush them really quick and well compared to soil. So with hydro you can be pretty confident to extend your feeding longer than in soil.

Make sure you use a clearing solution not just water. I use Final Phase and love it but there are a few others out there.

My buddies that grow hydro use RW for their clones. It's a bit tricky to find the right moisture level for the RW while they root. You want the RW to dry out a bit before soaking again and you can raise the RW cubes off of the base of a tray a bit with little home made ABS pipe rings then add a skim of water to the tray so that the clones "sense" the water below them and will grow roots quicker to reach that water a half inch below the cubes. We used two trays. One solid bottom one with a skim of water in it and with the ABS rings in it, then another tray with open square holes in it to put the RW cubes on.
Not sure if you get what I mean but I used to produce clones in RW so that's how we did it with good success.

Not familiar with the pondzyme but I am with Hygrozyme and it's great.

Great to do those experiments with the training and topping. Make sure you harvest each one independantly and compare each ones yield to the others. This is the kind of thing that seperates the good growers who get better as they go. They experiment and learn quickly from their own trials and errors. Reading stuff on the net and books is good but it isn't worth near as much as learning from experiance. If I didn't try things on my own and think out of the box on my own I wouldn't have excelled the way I did at all. I would be stuck doing the same old things like other people not advancing in their passions.

There's only two kinds of people in this world. People that watch things happen; and people that make things happen. 

By the way; your grow space looks very clean and that is super important to man. 

Congrats again and keep it up man!

This is similar to the "open" types of trays we put our RW cubes on above the other solid bottom tray with the water and rings on. But you can use any kind of tray that makes the cubes not sit in water but rather makes the roots reach for water.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 18, 2013)

I did look at a couple leaves last night with the loupe. As far as I can see i THINK they all look clear at the tops of the trich's. So maybe you're right and it still has more time. Which is ok. Just eventually need to get my timing rigt so that my vegging plants arent vegging so long. Probly need a mother. Another day tho lol. Right now im just gonna take clones off of those bushy ass ones with the scrog net thing over them. Oh, while im talking about it, when do you like to take your clones? Right now im basically just taking them from my vegging plants like 2 weeks before they go into flower so they have time to heal up.

See the last ones i cropped, i was trying DWC and the roots got all gross and brownish. And they went for 10 weeks and probly could have gone a little longer but the vegging plants were exploding and HAD to flower so i cut them. I thought this might just be due to the fact that the roots were all nasty that they probly werent absorbing what they would normally be if they were good looking. Not sure if was thinking too much on that and thats not actually the case or what..

And the later yuo chop, with more amber, the more couch lock right?

And yes, I do used GH's cleaning solution. That might be the Final Phase, i cant rmember.

And he man, thanks for the compliments lol. I do tke the EXTRA time to make sure shit stays clean!! I dotn wanna live in filth and nor do i want my plants to live that way  So hey this music thing, IM INTERESTED!! Do you have an article you like or should i just google it?  Do they like a certain KIND of music more than others? its making me laugh to just type it!! lol

And im trying to invision your cloning process here. 



[*=1]and you can raise the RW cubes off of the base of a tray a bit with little home made ABS pipe rings then add a skim of water to the tray so that the clones "sense" the water below them and will grow roots quicker to reach that water a half inch below the cubes. We used two trays. One solid bottom one with a skim of water in it and with the ABS rings in it, then another tray with open square holes in it to put the RW cubes on.

So im seeing, in my head, two trays. One solid on the bottom, and one like the one in your pic here. The ABS pipe ring things, what are these? is it just something that will suspend the upper tray a half inch from the bottom of the "solid" tray? 

Also, say i put a clone in the RW, am i adding any clonex or anything? And say its setup, and the "skim"(is a Skim just mean a little bit of water? lol sorry if thats a dumb one lol) of water is in the lower tray, the pipes are in there, the top tray is in there, and am i just setting the RW cubes on that top tray? or you saying i need another dealio to cover the cubes? Do yo manually water the cubes when they dry? and then eventually the roots will reach the water, and you just let them chill like that? Sorry for the machine gun questions. ur the man!


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 19, 2013)

Hey would you think this guy has it about right for WHEN to start flushing? even for hydro?
Or i supposed in hydro you dont NEED as much time like the two weeks right? I just wanna make sure i dont do it too late lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dspivSZe4Ng


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 20, 2013)

Yes you got it right with the clone trays. Two trays. Bottom one is solid. Top is the one in picture. Cubes sit in top tray. Bottom tray has little bit of water in it; like 1/4 inch of water.
ABS rings are just spacers for the top tray to sit on so the top tray is slightly above the water in bottom tray. You can use anything for spacers. ABS is plumbing pipe. Like PVC.
Yes you should always use a cloning powder or gel on the stem of the clone. Check out vids on cloning. There's tons out there. To moisten the cubes you can just lift the whole top tray with all the clones and lower it slightly into a tub of water so they suck up a bit of water. It's not good to have the RW soaking wet all the time. You want them to dry out a bit before moistening so they search for water. You need to use humidity domes etc..Google it lots of info..

Yes just google the music for plants thing. Lots of info out there on it. I always just play classic rock. But I've read that heavier music is good cause of the music vibrations to the plants. Some people may think it's funny. But there is proven botany reports on it. Mythbusters also did a test on it lol.

That plant on the youtube video you linked is no where near ripe. And if you is going to start flushing it at that stage then he is fucked and will have a poor yield. He's also very incorrect about saying that you should flush BEFORE the buds swell. That's complete bullshit. The buds should be SWOLLEN when you flush. If you flushed before they swelled you would be way off your max yield big time.

Go by your trichs and you will see that as the trichs START to become cloudy the buds will also be SWELLING. So that is when you should flush.

Yes; the more amber trichs the more couch relax body stone you will get. You don't want more than around 30% amber though cause they change color quick at that point so if they all get amber on you they will quickly start to lose potency and flower weight after that.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 21, 2013)

Ya I've seen a lot of the vids for cloning. I dont have all the stuff right now and i think i may need to clone tonight.. So they will probly go in the aero cloner again this run but next i wanna try your way. I dont think I asked you this, when do you like to take your clones and from what plant? A mother? Your now vegging ones that will soon go to flower? And what is true? Clones taken from the bottom or top are better? 

right now, im taking them off the vegging plants i have. I FIGURED i need to give them about a week or more to heal after all that. Is that right? 

Gonna check out the music thing for sure man! lol makes me smile! 

Ok cool, im glad i asked you about that vid then. I will deffinetely be taking your advice and using the trichs to tell me. For a setup like mine, what would you think is the MINIMUM amount of days i should flush. My method so far: Drain res, refill with well water and a full strenght clearing solution (I may have gone a little weaker on this last time, worrying about it a little. ???) and fill the system for an hour, drain into the drain, fill res back up with half RO half well, let it run for however many days.

I wonder if i should do like half hour fill, when it drains, check ppm, fill again for half hour, when it drains, check ppms, it SHOULD be higher than before if its sucking out the salts, repeat that until the ppms dont really change. AND THEN drain and fill back up with plain water for however many days. ? 

Thanks BC


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 21, 2013)

I have cloned from both vegging plants and mothers. It doesn't matter you can do whatever you want. If I have multiple rooms going and I already have a cloning room going I can use the bottom branches off our vegging plants to clone for new plants for another room. Saves from having mom's going. But in some instances our timing is off so we have to rely on mom's for clones. 
You can use cuttings from anywhere on the plant but lower branches should in theory root better because they have more mature/stronger rooting hormones. But we haven't found a major difference with this in our experiments. When you are cloning you will find a variance in root times with all your clones. We find more of a significance to where in the room our rooting trays/domes are. For example if you have a better humidity and temperature level at the top of your shelves in the room then you will find the plants will root there before others. 
Some times it's opposite ie. the lower shelves will root faster because at that particular time the humiditiy/temperature is "prime" for root development at that shelf in the room. 
It's a good idea to have an oscillating fan going at all times in a cloning room so that your temp/humidity levels are the same everywhere. It's not just important to have good humidity/temp control under the cloning domes but also in the ambient air in the cloning room itself.

Not sure what you are asking about a "healing plant" Do you mean you give them a week to heal after you cut branches off for cloning before you flip to flower? If that's what you mean. That doesn't matter at all. We "lollipop" (cut the lower branches off our plants) right when we flip them to flower and they have no issues continuing on to flower fine. MJ is a hearty weed man. They heal and continue on growing without a problem. 

You should only have to have flush in hydro with a clearing solution for half to a full day then just give water after that. 4 to 6 days prior to chop is more than enough IMHO.
Unlike soil where you are flushing for a week to two weeks.
But make sure you use a clearing solution. Our preferred one is Final Phase but I don't like to seem like I am pushing any certain nute companies product. But in all honesty my bud smokes very very smooth with it and has a very nice white ash. You will see what I mean if you use it.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 21, 2013)

ya that is what i meant with the "healing" ok cool i didnt know that. I wont take my clones until like right before the plantare gonna go to flower then. Or do you suggest taking them at a certain time before putting them over? that will cut down A LITTLE on how long my plants have to veg. Today is week 6 day 7 for my vegging plants. soooo much damn vegging lol.. i gotta fine tune it eventually lol. But hey, extra vegging just means bigger plants. and i have the vertical room so FUUUKKK it lol. 

Anyways, i wanted to show you the pics from tonight. See if I got close enuf for you to check out the calyxes. I did scope out a few diff plants. and none of them had cloudy heads on the trich's yet as far as i could tell. The stupid little loupe i have is a 30X and 60X but the 60 is like the size of a pencil eraser so its kinda hard to use.. But the trich's i would see on like a side view were all clear. the only "cloudy" ones it would seem like i was seeing were when i was looking straight down on them, so, i think you were right. Little longer with the nutes.

These lil ones crack me up  SURVIVIN! lol

Seeing these, does this give you any idea to tell me how far they look? Hoping this run will really tell me when they get done for future runs. AND, when I DO notice a couple cloudy trich's, then flush, right? Question i have is, from then when i see a couple cloudy's, about how long does it take for the rest of those trich's turn cloudy to amber? 5-7 days? 10-14 days? It would be sweet if i was harvesting over next week's long holiday weekend!! but if it dont work out that way, whatever, i just want em as perfect as i can get them. Veg is exploding lol

mainline

Uncle Ben Topped

LST, hope she stretches a lot lol

Scrog


you said i should only have to flush for a half to a full day. Do you mean, have the res filled with water and the cleaning solution, (i do have whatever GH's brand is) and leave it in there for a normal day's worth of time? so it would get 4 15min shots of the cleaning solution all at same times they were getting the feedings. That what you mean? Then water only.


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## dustinpdr420 (Nov 22, 2013)

[QUOk and guckky.. Anyways I read about Lucas, it seemed easy, so i coulod at least get some grows in, then i'd go back to a full line of something. I was thinking the Botanicare line.. Thoughts? 

Question, has anyone used Lucas and have you added a "bud booster" during veg, or are u strictly sticking with 8ml micro/16ml bloom?

I am running the lucas formula with floralicious & 2 ml of calmag. At wk 4 I start giving 2 ml of bloombastic on top of the lucas formula. My ppms run 1400 and 1550 with bloombastic. I love bloombastic awesome product. At these levels I haven't experienced nute burn. I also use h202 so my roots stay pearly white.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 22, 2013)

Well if you read thru this thread, it started with me asking about Lucas. I have since then gone to using a 1/1/1 ratio suggested wonderful BGOGYODA. GH Flora series 3 part. The plants seemed to respond favorably. Little darker green. Lucas seems to lack some nitrogen. All my shoots were bright green. Now they look great. I was actually thinking of going with Botanicare sometime in the future myself. Since I use basically all thier products for my additives. I dont think you can do lucas with Botanicare tho if i remember reading correctly. Anyways, I would suggest following what BCOGYODA suggests. This 1/1/1 ratio really allows for to add anything. Just bring your PPM's up with 1/1/1 ratio to however high you want while still leaving room for your additive's ppm's to all equal a total ppm that you want. It's really simple actually. I like it better than lucas. just my 2 cents


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 23, 2013)

Fuck man I wrote a reply to you last night and forgot to hit the button to post it lol. Turned my dead computer on today to see it didn't post and my tab wasn't there anymore to post what I wrote so here I go again lol..

Ya those buds are getting more mature. You have "fox tails" coming out of the top cola's which are caused by a couple dif things at times. They can form from light and or heat stress, and/or can be just from your booster. It's not a bad thing but just make sure your top colas aren't too close to the lights. It's prob just from the booster. Sometimes it will cause these fox tails which give a bit of a dif shape to your buds. Instead of evenly shaped pine cone like tops they will get these fox tail shoots coming out from them. It adds weight to your buds so that's a good thing. When you see fox tails it's also a good sign you have strong boosters but you also want to be careful at this point you don't burn the plants cause they are maxing out around now.
You will read some people on the net talking about fox tails being some times strain dependent. This is only kind of true. Sativa's will more quickly fox tail just because the way their buds develop. They develop more airy, separated, and naturally have fox tail shaped development. But in hybrids and true indicas foxtails will develop for the reasons I listed above. We have played with tons of strains and tons of grow environment conditions to isolate these cases to figure out all the reasons this occurs.

Did you tweak your g/m/b ratio yet? adding more Bloom and less grow and micro? Sorry man if you wrote it earlier. I know we discussed it but I just got in and am trying to answer you without re reading everything.

Ya just go by your trichs to judge when to flush. Yes; when you see some cloudy ones you will want to flush cause they will still ripen while flushing and after. So like I was saying it depends what kind of a high/stone you want from your weed. I call a "high" a head high where you want more cloudy trichs and a "stone" a more body couch relax stone..If you want say a 30% amber/70% cloudy you would prob be good to flush when you all cloudy trichs. But again like I said earlier this can also vary by strain. Dif strains mature at dif rates. And these maturity rates can also be manipulated to quicken by lowering your temps and dimming your lights or turning some lights off. So if you flush and find you don't have any amber trichs yet you can manipulate things to get your plants some amber trichs. A trick of the trade. We have done it a lot. It will help tighten and harden up your buds and will also create more resin too because it's a defensive mechanism of the plant to protect itself from cold and dark. They do these things in nature in the outdoors naturally..

Yes, that's what I meant about the flushing..some guys in hydro only flush for 6 hrs to half a day then just go straight water till chop. I would go a full day of feeding just your clearing solution to fully flush them then go to just water till you chop. I would do your flush only a few days to a week at the most before you chop with hydro but like I said I've been a soil grower from day one so I'm going by what my associates are saying that I asked for you.
With hydro you can flush very effectively in much less time than soil. So what I would say is that if your grow was mine I would feed right up until around 5 days before I chopped. But I would know better after I grew that specific strain a few times. 
Say you see all cloudy trichs..then flush for the day, then go straight water and keep checking trichs...if you don't see some amber showing up then drop your temps way down and turn some of the hps off in the room to initiate and quicken the onset of amber trichs showing up then chop when you see around 30% amber. Wost case scenario is not very many amber trichs show up so you end up chopping when 10% amber show up. This is still an excellent chop time. Your potency will still be excellent.
You just don't want to chop when you have clear trichs or more than 40% amber. Anywhere in between will be excellent.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 24, 2013)

I was wondering what those lil things were. Ok cool. I could raise the light a bit. Would the stress be because the heat of the light or just that its TOO MUCH light? It IS a 1000w Super HPS. Cuz i know the its not really, HOT, at the tops. 

And yes, I did change it up. On, the Tuesday before this last one. I did a 1/2/3 ratio with full strength Liquid koolbloom, and full strength Silica Blast and full Sweet. Gave me like 1300ppm. They are drinking about 4-5 gallons a day. So since that res change they have gotten 30 gallons added to it. Some just plain water, like if my PPMs are starting to spike, and sometimes the water i add will have half strength of these nutes i put in originally. I WAS THINKING by now i would have been flushing. BUT i was just looking at them tonight and they still look clear man.. At least im pretty sure. Waiting ever so patiently lol  Wow dude thats really kool of you to ask ur buddys stuff for me. I really appreciate that!! 

Ok So i think I'll follow what you suggesting then. Wait till i see basically all cloudy trich's then flush for a day with the FloraKleen, then jsut straight water for a few days up to a week. QUESTION: I should give them 48 hours of darkness at the end right? Is there a point at which you go "ok cut the lights" by the trich's or just kind of play it as best as you can judge it? Obviously while in the dark you can still peak at them with the loupe, right?

And i might actually be able to do that, I dont know if you can see it, but I have 1 1000w Super HPS in a Raptor hood, but still wasnt getting the edges very well. I threw in my lil all in one 400w on the side, SOOOO if i needed to , I could cut the 1000W and just keep on the 400W. That would definetely make if colder in there. And my intake right now is pulling cold as air from outside, thats filtered before i get it. You can see my temps. Humidity is pretty low. Thats ok tho right? 

Pics from tonight. Man, im pulling up pics from two weeks ago, they aren't really as BIGGER as i thought they would be after two weeks. Have they not really started "swelling" yet? I forget if you said they didnt start to really swell until the trich's got cloudy. Just learned how to make the pics bigger lol 


I forget if i asked you about drying..? Someone was telling me a good way to dry is cool and slow. Like 62 degrees and i forget the humidity he said. But like a slow two week dry and then they dont dry too quick and have like a "planty" smell..? The last ones i harvested, in the dwc buckets, they did end up smelling a little planty, and they basically dried in a week too tho. Pretty quick. When they curing, when you first cracked them they would ahve a good lil smell, NOT AS SKUNKY AS I WAS HOPING, then when i would go a put the caps back on the jars they just smelled like chunks of PLANT in jars... ??


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 24, 2013)

Do you think those shitty looking leaves are from nute BURN?


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## mtlhaze (Nov 24, 2013)

Great thread guys, great pics and it was very enjoyable to return and stumble on to this post.

Now Budtoker I just have one suggestion that may save you alot of money and your girls will be very happy with the change. I consider enzymes important for coco, soil and environments containing beneficial bacteria.
If you are using a 100% synthetic feeding schedule like the Lucas formula (nutes don't contain humics, B1 or organic materials) I would HIGHLY recommenced you stop using enzymes. *You simply do not need enzymes in a sterile ebb and flow system.* Rather replace it with H2O2 (25% or higher) which is a fraction of the cost to keep your res sterile while it boosts dissolved oxygen as it dissolves gradually into the res. Add to your res according to bottle recommendation (about 150ml per 55gal) and about 1/5th (30ML) of that amount every 2-3 days until next res change.

I am sure that this is a method many hydro growers use to keep their res sterile throughout a grow so I encourage you to do your research to validate this. Save your $$$.

Cheers


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 24, 2013)

Since my water temps have now been lowered to about 67-68 degrees i dont really NEED to put any of that in. In the summer, when i cant control the fact that it will get up a little higher, then i add that in. Either H2o2 or aquashield. Depending. With low water temps tho, im not too worried about nasties growing. Each res and system is about to get a deep clean in about a week too. Thanks man!!


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 24, 2013)

No if it's just a 1000 w those tops aren't getting fox tails from that and if your temp is good then it isn't from that. It's from the booster and combo going to the 1/2/3 ratio most likely.
Yes, see the tiny little lighter colored tips of the leaves. That is the very first sign you are maxed out for nutes at the ratio you gave. BUT this will happen even if one of your N/P/K's is maxed out so if you did the 1/2/3 ratio with the full booster you now know that you should back off that 1/2/3 ratio a little bit to be at a safe max for that strain without burning.

Here's what I'm trying to say: you could have a 1300 total ppm comprised of even parts g/m/b a 1/1/1 ratio and not burn your plants. But when you go to a 1/2/3 ratio with still a 1300 total ppm you could now burn your plant because of the spike in P or K or a combo of both. Because your liquid booster is a 0/10/10 and you now raised your P and K with the new 1/2/3 ratio. So you can still feed at 1300 ppm but ease back the ml's of the 1/2/3 ratio you are giving a bit. Get what I mean?

Yes they will swell more when they are cloudy trichs and if you were to physically weigh a bud now compared to earlier you would see weight gain easier than size volume gain because as the flowers mature they gain weight faster than volume then when they swell towards the end of maturity they gain volume and more weight. Just gotta be careful now that you don't go too strong with your P and K in your feed cause of those early tell tale signs of the burn. It's ok I'm glad you posted the pics. Adjust the feed now and you'll be fine. That's why I asked about your tweaking the ratio. It's a very touch and go with a new strain you are learning about their happy feed ratios.

Yes that was me that posted about the drying temps and humidity in post #7 of this thread. 

What do you have for cooling in the room right now? Just air exchange or an a/c or chiller also?

Yes you can just use the 400w at the end to help with flower maturity and yes you can do 48hrs of dark to produce more resin and quicken maturity. Yes even in complete darkness you can check with a loup with a very small flashlight or phone light. It takes awhile before any light leak would ever affect your flowers negatively so a few days before chop a quick peek here and there is nothing to worry about at all.

In your grow room you want around 50% humidity lights on. When it's dark the humidity will rise a lot and you should have a dehum in there for that but if you don't have adequate cooling then a de hum running for hours and hours can raise your temp a lot.


Regarding H2o2 vs enzymes
Read post #29 of this thread:
https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/83532-do-not-use-hydrogen-peroxide-3.html
What this RIU member posted about it pretty much sums it up IMO and my associates who commercially grow high grade medical mj. They use h2o2 to sterilize in between grows. Not to grow plants with. It came up a lot in the past in our community because soil growers were also discussing using it.

It's a common topic that comes up over and over and over again all over the net. I can not personally give any tested results with it so I am just telling you what my associates' opinions are of it. So do your own investigations. But it sounds like you are doing the same thing so there you go.


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 24, 2013)

You can also reduce the booster a bit too and either keep your 1/2/3 dosage or reduce both slightly. This is where it's a tweak game to get max food to your plant without the burn. You are right there at max. Just gotta dial it back a little bit to keep them max and happy without going over the magic line.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 24, 2013)

Ok, yes i do get what ur saying. I'll try and cut it down a little more. 

I have a 4 inch inline pulling filtered air being pulled from outside. Right now that air is pretty cold too. Around 25 degrees F. But I have the 1000w and the 400w next to that. The 400w has no ventilation. After this crop im getting another 1000w and another raptor hood and my room will be NICE and lit. Then ill just have an exhaust straight hooked up to the CFilter and out. And a second fan pulling cool air thru the sealed reflectors and dispersing the warm air,,,, somewhere i want heat i guess lol. So yes, for COOLING my room right now its the intake air. RH is about 30% If i was to run a humidifier in there, doesn't it jsut easily get like sucked out by the exhaust/ The humidifier i have is this two gallon thing. Gallon per side, so it goes out fairly quick. Lots of refilling. Im actually going to check the night temps in a few mins to see what it is before lights on. I'll let you know. Just gonna check the trich's again. Basically every day now. 

Does is matter which one to cut back on at the end like this? Would it be more benificail to cut the main nutes back and have full strength booster? or visa versa? or is just a trial and error deal? 

Thanks MAN!!


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 27, 2013)

FYI, I think night temps are staying at about 64degrees.


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 28, 2013)

Hey sorry man been busy past couple days. You can cut back on either but the booster is the most potent ingredient so you may want to ease that back a bit. That's what I do when I hit just a tiny bit of burn.
Ya if you are air exchanging then humidifier is kind of pointless. 30% is very low. 50% is where marijuana does the best. It's tough to control humidity with an air exchange system at different seasons of the year with outside weather.
64F night time temp is a good temp for getting hard resinous flowers. The cooler temp helps with that. A bit warmer night temp will give you bigger bud though. So it's a "catch 22" situation. The product will look nicer with cooler temps but they will swell more with a bit warmer temps..Dif strains like dif temps too. So just watch how they finish up and you will know where you can change things up in the future if you have to.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 28, 2013)

Ya no problems man, its the Holiday's!  

So, yes, i am doing air exchange. Is that not what im supposed to be doing? Is there a better way? I always thought you needed to get old warm air out and resupply with fresh air constantly? Am i wrong on this? I'm honestly down to do whatever it takes. Including eventually investing a good amount of money in climate control stuff too. but thats a little down the road still. 

I just checked on them... forgot the camera  all the buds on all the plants are getting all orange now. And they smell better too. They are getting pretty HARD too  like little baseballs. Im zip tieing everywhere and had to tie up that one big top i have in the pics up to the reflector. So they getting fatter for sure. STILL jsut clear frickin trich's tho from what i can see. MAYBE i saw a COUPLE cloudy ones on like one or two leaves that i looked at. but its really hard to get a GOOOOOOD look with the little stupid loupe i have. 

I'm REALLY hoping when i check on them either tomorrow or saturday that they have more cloudy. Then I'll start the flush. Do that for 5-7 days. my veg tent is literally jsut exploding right now. i mean shit, they been vegging for frickin 8 weeks now.... this time tho, im not taking clones until like they day before i transfer to flower. that way i get at least 2 weeks in the cloner (gonna use your method next run) before they start their actualy "veg" time in the veg tent. 

Anyways, thats the update  I may need to rethink the strain i wanna use. I really would like one that finishes a little sooner. The damn descriptions shows 50-55 days. And i have some Purple Paralysis seeds but those say 65-70 days. Ican only imagine if these ones say 50-55 and they taking this long, then the 65-70 day ones gotta go even longer than THAT... sigh.... Thanks dude


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 29, 2013)

Hey right on man ya they are ripening now! That's what they do. The hairs will get orange and retract in towards the calix and the buds get harder and swollen. You should for sure see cloudy trichs very soon. 

If you can a good way to check trichs is to turn off your hps lights and put an incandescent or fluorescent light source above the bud you are checking. That kind of light will give you a better realistic view of the true clarity of the trichome. The HPS may be affecting the view of the trichome through the loup. 

There are also cheap trich microscopes you can get on line or in grow stores too for around $15. Most of them have a light in them and a dial to adjust magnification and focus.

Yes there is a different way to grow indoors than using air exchange. Sealed grow rooms are the most controlled grow environments you can make for plants to grow in but it may not be feasible for a one or two light room because it costs more $ to build them properly. 

The issues you will find though with air exchange rooms is that they are very cold in the winter and very warm in the summer months, the humidity is hard to control, and the co2 levels can't be manipulated to well to give the plants high levels of co2 they thrive in.

But if you are doing well in the air exchange system with the set up you have then keep her going like that. Don't fix what ain't broken until you have to.

A sealed room is exactly that; perfectly sealed and the whole grow environment is completely controlled by a/c's, dehumidifiers, co2 generators etc..
I have been growing in sealed rooms for a long time. It give's you complete control of temperature, humidity, co2 etc.

If you decide to go that way eventually I can help you with any info you need. Like I said though it is costly with the equipment you need but sometimes you can save a lot of $ buying good used equipment. 

I used to put tons of pics on the internet of my commercial set ups but people close to me warned me about doing that so I took them all down of the net a couple years ago on a different forum. I'll try to find some pics on a flash drive or old disc to post some of my set ups for you. No promises though I have to look through some old stuff..Took them all off our old computer too cause we were being really careful then.

I don't take too many pics anymore of my places but If I get around to it and remember to when I'm working I'll take some pics for you to see what I mean by sealed grow rooms.
You can also google it and see what you find..

Plants take in co2 in the light cycle and put out oxygen and in the dark they take in oxygen and put out co2..In a sealed grow room you do not exchange air. They take in co2 from a co2 tank, or burner, or other source when the lights are on. In the dark they take in oxygen from leaves and from their roots via the oxygen in the water/food that's in the soil or hydro supply.
Cooling is done by a/c's, or "swamp chillers/coolers". No air exchange on those either. They run on either freon or water, or both with some types.

Ya man a LOT of seed suppliers understate the correct flowering times for the strains they are selling/pushing. Because a lot of growers want to crop out fast so even if a strain is really a 9 or 10 week flower they will market it as a 7 or 8 week flower strain. Complete bullshit and should never be done! People want to grow powerful potent marijuana medicine, not weak immature non potent medicine. 
Growers need to really realize this. A crop chopped down immature with clear trichomes is very weak with meds and is a waste when you consider how much time, money, and effort goes into growing healthy plants. 

You are doing it completely the right way. You are going to have potent fully mature flowers. If this strain is too long for you then look for some potent quick maturing strains out there but don't believe the breeders or seed bays all the time. Read good grower reports on them done by growers that check plant maturity by trichomes. And read, read, read about marijuana maturity and potency. You will see how important this is. And mature ripe flowers will out yield immature unripe flowers by a very large margin.

Keep up the great work man! I love to hear that you are tying up heavy flowers! This made me happy man. I'm so glad you are doing things the right way. Just imagine if you followed the seed sellers recommendations and chopped them in 7-7.5 weeks lol they would have been SO weak of meds and SO underweight! Good on you man!


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## twistedwords (Nov 29, 2013)

I will give you some advice. Most of all of these growers really don't know much at all about growing anything. They see some ad or go to some hydro store and try the next best thing. Bottom line these are plants and every single plant specie can only grow according to its genetics. So all you can do to try and maximize everything for the plant(this is what hydro is doing), is to give the plant the best possible environment. Nothing more you can do than that as nature takes its course. So, GH Maxi series is all you need if you want a good yielding plant. If you want to go for maximum, then you are going to have to learn about foliage feeding and micro and macro feeding to the roots(basically you need to learn on your own to become a green thumb). There is no cutting corners are some secret to growing plants. It comes down to experience with a plant and learning how it grows. Just like I know how to grow this plant, tomatoes, jalapenos, green peppers, snow peas and some other plants. Can I grow every single plant specie on earth to its maximum as much as I already know, absolutely NOT. That comes with experience. So get your hands dirty, stick with a basic grow plan for now and then get more advanced as you learn.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 29, 2013)

twistedwords said:


> I will give you some advice. Most of all of these growers really don't know much at all about growing anything. They see some ad or go to some hydro store and try the next best thing. Bottom line these are plants and every single plant specie can only grow according to its genetics. So all you can do to try and maximize everything for the plant(this is what hydro is doing), is to give the plant the best possible environment. Nothing more you can do than that as nature takes its course. So, GH Maxi series is all you need if you want a good yielding plant. If you want to go for maximum, then you are going to have to learn about foliage feeding and micro and macro feeding to the roots(basically you need to learn on your own to become a green thumb). There is no cutting corners are some secret to growing plants. It comes down to experience with a plant and learning how it grows. Just like I know how to grow this plant, tomatoes, jalapenos, green peppers, snow peas and some other plants. Can I grow every single plant specie on earth to its maximum as much as I already know, absolutely NOT. That comes with experience. So get your hands dirty, stick with a basic grow plan for now and then get more advanced as you learn.


Hell ya man, I hear ya. Im strapped in for the ride! lol I've been learning a lot! This spring I'm also gonna be making a garden outside. Grow peppers and tomatoes and make salsa and stuff  Really excited for that too! I have actually been trying to find like a real in person Botiny class, either at a university or like a community college. All I have been finding so far are online courses or like "pay this money and get this course" which consists of a few videos or something.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 29, 2013)

BC,

Got some pics from tonight. Man i think its getting CLOSE! And ya I have actually been taking the trimming scissors and just clipping a nice little frosty leaf from almost each plant and bringing it the "workroom" where its just an INC light in there. And my loupe has a 30x and a 60x on it. With a little light that turns on when you pull it all the way out. Bringing it out there, your right, you can see it the best, and it actually just sits still for you to get a good look. I almost got real frickin excited, I pulled a frosty one from my MIDDLE lady, she's got just like little baseball nugs on her tops, and is one of the two with the most orange hairs. Anyways most of them all clear, then im scanning and im like "WTF" is this an "amber" one?!?!? And i found like 3 others on that leaf. I couldnt tell if they were like damages trich's or if they were actually mature trich's. Thing is, i didnt see ANY others on any other leaves. And on that same leaf, all the other trich's were clear. 
I'm gonna do a little googling here too. Is it like REALLY obvious when they are cloudy? Like will they look like thick and grey? Or just NOT CLEAR? that question make sense?
They definitely have more of a fruity "bud" smell. Rather than before they had a fruity smell but you could really still smell like "sour plant" smell to them. So your right, they are definetly maturing. Woulda bee SO FUCKING SWEET to be harvesting this weekend but I dont wanna rush it. My veg tent is literally exploding tho... lol. It is actually little funny. they look fucking great. but now they all at the tops of thier cages already. Actually lemme ask you.. Would you just keep em that tall, knowing i have at LEAST one week left of them in there potentially two weeks. Or would you top them down under the top ring? I already topped a couple and now I have fucking 4 tops up there lol... loosing battle i tell you lol. (the middle, side two)



Ya, im almost POSITIVE i cut the last ones too early. I know i did actually. Seeing how these ones look right now and im still not cutting them down, ya i definitely pre cut the first run!
Here you can see the fatty's gettin held up lol



And Ya that sounds like a good plan eventually here. To go with a sealed room. Total control over the environment, sounds fucking glorious! lol. So, couple just little questions. So NO intake or exhaust in a sealed? How bout oscilating fans? Do you just like hook this room up to your houses vents for the ac and stuff or have a window unit or a portable ac? And I assume all hooked up to one of those badass control units? Man, that shit is the stuff of my dreams lol. If only I could try and ask for some of that shit for Xmas! LOL


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 29, 2013)

meant to delete a couple of those...


edit: Oh ya, I got hovering at 50% RH now too. Temp is about 73. Day time temp. Put humidifier in there. Its in a good spot where the floor fan is blowing it around so that it doesnt hover around just like one or two plants. But, once I put that in there, and plugged the exauhst fan into the temp controlled fan controller i got the Rh to go up to 50%. The fan is hardly pulling out right now cuz the temp is where i set it to be.  So the humidity is staying in there nicer. But ya man, that sealed room sounds like the way to go.


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## BCOGYODA (Nov 30, 2013)

Looking great! Yup their starting to ripen up good. Still looks like a bit to got though. What day of flower is it right now? Counting from the day you flipped them to 12/12, not the day they showed pre flowers..

The cloudy trichs will look just like a cloud lol...like white smoke. Google "cloudy trichomb" in google images and you will see them. Yes there can be the odd amber ones even if the rest are almost all clear.
And the hairs going orange is a sign of ripening that comes along with them receding back to the calix BUT they also do go orange for other reasons ie. if they get bumped, touched, held, etc..they will go orange too but in your case they are ripening. 

Fuck man those veg plants will be monsters. How high can you bring your shade in the room? They can triple in height when you flower them! I dunno it's a toss up whether you should top them just on the main shoot, top all growing shoots, or tie them down but no matter what they will be huge if you don't do something. At least they are very healthy looking gals.

Yes no in or out vents in sealed rooms. You could technically use an a/c that is hooked up to the rest of your house but you would have to have that "zone" on it's own controller to the a/c separate from the other zones in the house. Not a practical way of doing it. Usually in sealed rooms the a/c is set up just for that purpose. There's dif types of a/c's..spit systems where there is an indoor air handler and an outdoor compressor/condenser unit connected to each other by copper freon lines and electric lines through a wall of the house which is sealed up by foam or silicone, or self contained water/freon a/c units that are an all in one unit that sits right in the grow room, or swamp chillers that cool with water and radiators type grills..no big control panel just a thermostat in the grow room. The portable units need to exhaust warm air so they aren't good for sealed rooms. With sealed room a/c's they get rid of heat through water and/or freon; no exhausted air.


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## budtoker0987 (Nov 30, 2013)

That was last night so day 57. Today is day 58.Week 9 day 2.
lol, ya i figured that would be the answer. The "cloud" answer lol.  So in your sealed room, no need for carbon filters or stuff like that either? I suppose its "sealed" so it wont stink up the house right? Im gonna have to look into getting this setup before summer comes again  More on that later tho when ill actually remember your answers 

Do you KNOW of a early finisher strain? Of course, that is also CHRONIC in EVERY way? |pipe dream? lol| I either need to make a mother, or get earlier finishers. 

Ugh... i dont know what im gonna do with veg yet... If i just leave em, they gonna get too tall to where that cage wont even be any help really.... well,,, passin out finally... have a good one man!


any hypothesis on how long you think i got before im seeing all cloudy? (which again is when i should START the flush right?)


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## JosHendi (Nov 30, 2013)

Just my two cents... I used the Lucas formula when first starting hydro. We have since tweaked it to our liking, but I can tell you that using the normal Lucas formula plus a little booster (liquid KoolBloom for us) did well for our Indicas. We used RO water, and our solution hits 1200 so not too far off the 900-1000 Lucas gives you.

Everything turned out good. Tight dense buds, caked, good yield, cheap nute cost


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 5, 2013)

Hey BT did you see some cloudy trichs yet? Did you flush? I think from your last pics you were probably about 4-6 days away from cloudy trichs. Give us an update!


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 5, 2013)

Well I looked on tuesday night. and still look mostly, if not all, clear. Some I cant tell. Some look cloudy I THINK but then it seems like if i get a profile view of it then the head looks clear. I dunno tho I think for sure I saw a couple. If i had to put a percentage on it id say like 5% maybe. so frusturating lol at the same time you can tell they getting fatter. And now every bud has orange hairs all over them. Im gonna be looking agiain tonight. FINGERS CROSSED. Here's a few pics from tues





Veg... Gotta be 2.5' at least now... I have actually topped the middle left and middle right ones a couple times now... which kind of sucks because i topped them to have 4 and 6 tops. Now they will have a bunch more... damnit lol.. whatever.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 5, 2013)

Excellent BT! Ya man it sucks about the overgrowing veg plants but you are doing the right thing 100%. You are learning about that strain and finishing them off perfectly. Yes they are getting nice and fat and tight!

How much did you back off the booster? Cause I think you fixed that slight burn perfectly. I don't see any signs of continued burning on any of those pics.

When you chop those girls and smoke them you will be SO glad you flowered them fully and properly. PLEASE make sure you do a good long cold dry with a controlled dehumidifier. You need to really control your drying properly to give you dank ripe smelling flowers. Too quick of a dry at too warm a temp or too high or too low of humidity will really give you poor lawn smelling flowers. You've made some beautiful healthy gals there so keep it up man!! Great growing BT!


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 5, 2013)

Well those pics are a little decieving i guess. i think i took them after i pruned up a little too. They still to have burn. But when i did that res change i think I didnt hear back from you til like the day after I did the res change so what I actaully did was back down on the main nutes a bit and kept the full strength liquid kool and sweet. And this is gonna be the last res so i didnt wanna just dump it and make another. shit these big res' like to eat up nutes lol. 

Question, would the flowering ladies getting burned basically as soon as they went into flower and really it has continued thruought the process,,, would that possibly make it "stunt" or take longer to complete the flower cycle? So if my next ones going into flower i just start them basically at the same strenght they are now in veg, cuz they look very healthy and beautiful in veg right now,,, i keep the ppms basically teh same wich is about 8-900ppm and creep it up, and lets say they shoe NO SIGN of burning, if i get lucky. would they potentially finish sooner like their description says they should, or you think it wont make TOO much of a difference on duration time?

And YES! I am trying to find the best location in the place for drying them. I have a drying net, and im gonna have to hang some too, still on the stems. I have an area natrually that is about 60-63 degrees but like 28% RH. So i bought a humidifier. I think I wanna try and corner off an area cuz its in a big space and then set up humidfier and try and get as close a possible. Its kinda stressing me out actually cuz i would really like to be as perfect as possible at this part!!! lol

Thanks dude ur the man!



*You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to BCOGYODA again.



*


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 5, 2013)

oh ya, lol, went ot check em out tonight. Im for surely seeing a few cloudy's now, but most are still clear. A bunch tho that are clear, have a little hint of opaque to them like they are about to turn cloudy.  

And you said since im in hydro i should pretty much wait until they are basically all cloudy right? Or am i off on that one a little. If that is right, do you THINK (i know strain dependant) that 5-7 days more would be the time it would take for me to get enuf ambers in there to cut?


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 6, 2013)

The answer is kind of yes to your question about nutes affecting flower time but in the opposite way you are saying..If you ran a full flower cycle with Lucas formula with only micro and bloom you would chop them sooner than using the 1/1/1 ratio. But you would have a noticeably lower yield. You would get smaller tighter nice quality flowers that finish sooner but they wouldn't blow up/swell near as much as the formula you are using. That's why I tweak the formula (like I suggested you do) towards the end of flower cycle to help them finish ripening up. 
Trust me a very high percentage of seed suppliers market their seeds as finishing WAY sooner than the strain really does. And also some seed companies count flower from the day they show pre flowers, not from the day you flip to 12/12 so that can add on a full 2 weeks of flower from the day you actually flip to 12/12. It's their way of marketing them as quicker flowering strains while actually not really lying to their customers cause of the pre flower counting..

Yes when you flip those veg plants to flower just continue the ppm strength from where you left off in veg then consistently bring it up to your max ppm..Next round I would reduce the booster a bit to help them not burn at all.

The burning wouldn't keep them from finishing up unless they completely locked out a nutrient which I don't think they did at all. You would see the burn continue and work its way to discoloring other parts of the plants; even up and into the flowers and they wouldn't continue to gain weight and blow up like they did.

Yes if you close in an area where you dry that will raise up the humidity in the room and remember that the flowers are 75% moisture so those chopped down flowers put into a smaller room will naturally raise the humidity a lot.
Also keep in mind that either a humidifier or de-humidifier running in a room will quickly raise the temperature in a sealed up closed drying room so you have to check your humidity and temperature in your drying room very very often until you have it dialed into perfect drying conditions with perfect humidity and temps.

It all depends on the kind of high/stone you want when you chop your plants. BUT at all cloudy trichs you will have absolutely maximum amount of THC in those trichs. You don't have to wait till you have 30% amber. That's just a good combo of head and body high/stone. You can very safely chop them at all cloudy if you want. Especially since you are worried about how huge those veg plants are getting. 
If some cloudy trichs are showing up you can safely flush if you want cause it's fine to give them straight water for a few days after your flush which will also help them ripen up too. 
A combo of a few things help quicken ripening...light intensity diminishing, temperatures lowering, nutrient dosage strength/ratio manipulation. 

You have watched how those flowers have gone through their ripening process by tightening up, swelling up, pistils receding towards the calix, pistils turning orange, and trichs gradually changing from clear to some cloudy. They are well on their way to finishing up. You are just days away. If you have seen say 10% cloudy I would wait a couple days then flush them give straight water and check trichs every day and chop when all cloudy. If you wait for some ambers to show up your veg plants will be hard to control in that grow space.

You will read some guys on this forum posting shit like "trich color doesn't matter with potency or maturity level" This is complete bullshit and please don't give them any time of day to consider what crap they are spreading on this forum. Read and listen to real marijuana research by medicinal suppliers and you will find the truth. We have taken pure Sativa's to complete amber to prove a head high pure sativa plant can produce body stone medicine. This is actually done on purpose by some breeders/med researchers to combine high CBD plants with certain kinds of stone effects on the body. All kinds of excellent research being done out there with medicine. Trich color with relation to THC content and high/stone affect are 100% proven truths. There is no debate. Just uneducated people.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 6, 2013)

This is why i feel fuckin blessed that u stumbled onto my thread man! lol Everything you have told me so far has been right on! And i 100% appreciate every letter of it!  

Ya, that would make sense then if they only started their "flower time" when pre flowers started aobut two weeks in. Stupid.. Great plant, just dickhead salesman lol. Oh well i guess. Now i know. And I decided Im going with a couple mothers with the clones im gonna take from Veg. That way I'll take clones from the mom when these next ladies will be at like 4 or 5 weeks in. Then they will be perfect sized.

Something I wondered. Does a BIGGER vegged plant, even with smaller size thickness in their stems because they started to over grow their veg space, always produce more buds than a smaller size vegged plant? This smaller one would probably be a little more structurally sound with less SHIT everywhere like my vegging ones are now. 

The ones in flower NOW actually looked a lot like the vegging plants do now when they were waiting for flower. But maybe a little smaller. These new veg plants are getting huge. lol... i'll be tieing up more buds lol..

Cool cool. I will wait for a few more cloudy's and flush. Will cut at all cloudy. If theres a couple ambers in there sweet, but I dont think i have the time to wait for them. Next run ill be able to. THEN ITS THE PURPLE PARALYSIS    Cant wait for that.

do you actually have any experience or ur buddy's with a super chronic strain that you/they love that is an earlier finisher? I saw Stinkbud on here after years of strains said he loves loves loves the Kandy Kush and all the cancer patiennts he gives to LOVE it too. It's his absolute favorite, at least up to now  Was thinking of trying those eventually, along with some Grapefruit deisel, i wanna grow a super skunky TASTY blueberry strain, and OG KUsh strain, and a white widow strain. On the wish list  if you know of WHO i should buy those from, im all ears


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 10, 2013)

Just FYI. Flushed on sunday night. Now they just getting water. wating to see like almost all cloudy then hit two days of darkness.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 12, 2013)

Hey BT right on can't wait to see the final product!!
Yes bigger vegged plant means better yield potential than smaller vegged plant.
Sorry I don't have any advice for you for quick finishing potent strains. Best to do a lot of reading about what growers have found with different strains. There's books on strain guides etc..


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 12, 2013)

For sure. Is the OG Kush ur fav then? Thats a 9 weeker you said right? I forget..
Anyways, this is from last night. they been just getting straight water since sunday night after i used the florakleen for a day.

I was hoping last night to be seeing close to 50% cloudyand to be able to cut the lights for 48 hours and cut this weekend. But i THINK i was only seeing like 25% give or take. It's hard to tell with the loupe i have. I also went and bought a "hobby microscope" that plugs into ur PC. The scope i think the light is too bright on it cuz it just LIGHTS up the trichs and its hard to tell. Then the ones you thought looked cloudy with that, dont look cloudy with the loupe... Shits driving me nuts lol. At the same note, there are definetly, sparatically some amber trichs. Unless they got damaged somehow to become amber. And a lot of my trichs dont really HAVE a round head on them. Lots do, but lots dont too.

I also lollypopped my veg plants, pulled clones that im gonna make a mother or two out of and cut off unwated branches that were just weak as fuck looking. Looks a little drastic but now there is some room to brethe in there. They still have minumum of 3 days in there to fill back in.




I dunno man. im thinking im gonna cut the lights after tonight though. Then 48 hours darkness and cut... Hopefully im at 100% cloudy or damn close too. The veg plants are going on 10 weeks now... These flowering ladies are for sure 5 10 times better than the first run where i DEFFINETLY cut them like a week or two or more early. What are you thoughts? I'm gonna try and get a pic of the trich's. That scope that hooks up to the pc takes pics. lemme see if i can get a few good ones.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 12, 2013)

Here we go. These are from yesterday. Day 69


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 12, 2013)

Yes!! you have lot's of cloudy trichs in those pics. And if you look at the clear ones they are on their way to cloudy. Some of the clear ones have like a light cloud swirl starting up in the base of them. And the trich stocks without heads on them can be broken or undeveloped. They break off very easily from pruning, bumping them, moving them around etc..Trich heads are very fragile when brushed against etc..Perfectly normal. 
See how long of a flower that strain really is though. You're not at 100% cloudy but darkness will help with that too and if you can drop your temps a bit too.
That strain is probably a full 10 weeker counting from day of flip.
Yes I love the true OG. There's so many strains out there using the OG wording in them now though. Years ago there wasn't so many..I truly think it came from a White Widow lineage originally. There's some controversy on the internet about the true lineage of it..

The OG I have is a solid 11 weeker at 70% cloudy 30 % amber but I chop it now at 10 weeks cause 11 is just too long lately and customers etc like the full cloudy high. I personally like more of a couch lock so I smoke more indicas myself but I'm not a heavy smoker these days. I used be a chronic and did nothing but smoke weed back in the day. Have a family and a lot of responsibilities these days so I smoke or eat edibles in small amounts before bed mostly..


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 12, 2013)

Ya I hear ya. I basically smoke instead of drink. Both sides of my family have major alcohol prblems. And every male on both sides of my family has either died from drinking or has been hospitalized from it. From literally drinking til jondis. Not car crashes. I like to drink like once every couple weeks these days. At most before it was at least every weekend. Shit hurts too much lol. But its a terrible thing to be hooked on. Still have family issues with it ongoing all the time. Just differnt family at different time. SOOO I RATHER come home and smoke some weed, eat some food, grow a few plants because its my honest new found passion! And sleep. Go to work. pay my bills. do it some more. get a few extra bucks to go out to eat and shit. Gas money. lil splurge on somethin here or there. 

lol anyways  Ok, so like, looking at the 5th pic. to me i feel like there a tons of clear ones there. Or am i expecting too much cloudyness? and i didnt know i was really taking the STALKS of the trich into play. but i AM supposed to? i always thought it was the head you were looking at.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 12, 2013)

Ya never been much of a drinker either. Just social for get togethers etc.

Ya no sorry I worded that wrong. At the base of the head where it sits on the stalk some of them look like they are clouding. And yes some of the trichs in the last pic are more clear but there are cloudy ones there too. 
Where on the plants are you taking those pics from? Buds right up on top of the plant will ripen faster than others and this is due to environmental conditions and lighting at the bud level. Another reason why we heavily prune our plants in our tight sog's we grow in; to get the light to penetrate to the lower buds and get better air movement down lower. 

That's why lower buds mature later than upper buds on plants. A lot of growers just think that's the way it goes that lower buds mature later but it's their positioning on the plant which hastens their ripening speed. Our fully pruned plants have 80-90% of the flowers ripening at the same time because they are very pruned at harvest time. 
It's not as noticeable with plants grown with more room between them and with more light and air penetration getting through. 

You should take some close ups of the very top colas and compare to mid and lower buds and see if you find a difference there.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 13, 2013)

those are getting taken from like mid upper plant. 

how heavily should i be pruning? lots more than i have? i've heard both ways. prune and dont. But trust ur judgement so let me know how you guys do it


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 14, 2013)

Well the amount of pruning (we call it flaggin) is dependent on how blocked in the lower buds are from light and air circulation. If the plants are spaced farther apart from each other and they aren't very bushy with leaves then not much pruning is needed. But if you can see that lower buds are shaded then you should prune to let the light and air circulation get down to those flowers to help them ripen with the other upper ones. 

Man I gotta try and put some time aside this weekend to find you some pics of my before and after pruning sessions on my tight sogs. I used to post the pics on the net years ago and it was funny reading people freaking out at me for doing it lol. Then when I posted pics from later on in flower when the buds blew up like crazy and the plants were bent way over from how heavy all the buds were on all the branches even lower ones people started realizing what was happening. But I prune very heavy cause I grow very tight sogs. 
60-70 plants per light in most of my sogs. Only 2 weeks veg though, and the lowest branches are removed (we call that lollipopping)

Marijuana grow books from back in the 70's and 80's used to say "Never remove a fan leaf" "Never prune a marijuana plant" There are so many busted myths about marijuana plants from that generation of growing. We have come a long, long way since then and we should never stop learning cause I'm sure growers will produce better results still in the future. 

One of the funniest things I have read growers saying on forums is that "Never remove the one big fan leaf directly under each main cola" LOL cause they think that, that one fan leaf gives all the nutrients and life to that one flower. Man some of the stuff people come up with is entertaining. 

So I have a room right now that just got most of the plants heavily pruned in it. I WILL get some pics of that room tomorrow for you to show you how heavy I prune my plants. Then I will update you with pics along their flowering progress. You will be amazed if you haven't ever seen this done before. The plants look so bare when they are first pruned. 

For you with only a few plants under the light pruning doesn't have to be that drastic at all. What I do suggest to you though is for you to do an experiment with one plant on your next grow and compare the flowers on that plant to the other un pruned plants at harvest time. So that you can see first hand the difference in how those lower flowers mature, blow up more, harden up more, and produce more sugar than the other un pruned lower level flowers do. 
Seeing it first hand is much more enlightening than hearing it from me. 

Actually man I just went back over your pics and it does look like you have quite a bit of air and light being able to get down pretty well on your plants. And your veg plants look very well pruned on the lower parts of the plants. GREAT JOB!
Did you do some pruning of leaves also on the mid and upper parts of your flowering plants? Hard to tell if that's the way they naturally are or if you thinned them out.
I think even your lower flowers are looking good and hard man. 
Sorry too tired to read back through the thread to see if we talked about this before with your plants lol. Kinda think we might have. Gotta hit the sack soon.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 14, 2013)

Ya man definitely. I could even go as far as doing half like a light pruning and the other half as much as you think i should. Im totally down for that. This next one is already my EXPERIMENT run anyways lol. Scrog, Top, Mainline, LST all in one 

And YES. I have actually topped and pruned pretty much the whole plant on all of them. They were getting way too tall. and there were tons of side branching that was just shooting out sideways to try and find a way up to light. CUT. Ya every plant in there besides the LST in the middle, thats the small one in there, has been topped recently.

So, I decided there were enuf cloudy that I was gonna cut the lights at 530pm CST on Friday. So it's been dark since then. I'm CUTTING tomorrow  I have a good feeling that I'll see many more cloudy if not all. REALLY HOPING for all. I just cant push these veg plants any further. or they just gonna be ridiculous and a pain in my ass. 

SO!!!  Im SO EXCITED LOL! So the plan is to chop and trim, hang some branching on lines, and i think the smaller stuff ill toss in the hanging net. You know one of those like 8 layer drying net things? 

What I did was poly'd off a section of space in the basement. I'ts loosly sealed so there will be small air flow. So now, with a humidifier i can keep the humidity up and the temp is staying between 62-64 degrees. should that be good? I think i shouldnt have too much of a problem holding 50% RH either. BUT, what i wanted to ask is, if Im drying like this, what are like the RED ALERT zones? So my temp should be 62F, when should the alarm bells go off to raise or lower the temp if it starts to stray? Same for RH. You said I should hold 50% right? 

Once all chopped, it'll hang in there for 2 weeks. Correct? Are there times where it takes less or more time if those temps and RH hold? Or is there something physical i should keep an eye out for like when the stems snap or something like that?

And I remember you saying you dont necessarily need curing after a dry like this if you do it right, BUT that it would still be beneficial right? I think I'll still cure when ready. Just to make sure i have the right info, should i just use jars for curing? nothing else? and fill them only like 1/2 - 3/4 full, crack them daily a few times a day at first and slowly start cracking them less and less. OH, should my jars or whatever it is i cure in be in a specific temp and RH as well? I would assume they would.. ?


I think these pics of trichs were from the day after the pics from up there, I'll take a bunch of pics tomorrow during my process. FUCKIN cant wait! lol


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 14, 2013)

Right on BT!! Yes a lot more cloudy trichs should show up by the time you chop.

So the thing you have to worry about absolutely the most is being able to get the humidity down in a smaller space right after chopping because of the high amount of moisture in the flowers. 
But if you have a very low ambient humidity in there already then you shouldn't have to worry about that. But the keys to a good dry/cure together is that you don't go under 50% humidity or over 64F temp. 
When you go under 50% humidity you will dry too quickly and it will affect your flowers smell and cure. When your humidity is too high you risk getting mold forming as you dry especially for a longer 2 week drying cure. 
When you go over 64F temp you will also negatively affect the dank smell that your flowers have and the buds will dry too quickly on the outside and they will still have moisture on the inside; making an uneven dry where you will have to "sweat" the inside moisture out to fix the problem. That is what you want to stay away from happening. Drying too cold isn't a problem if you have good control of your humidity. I have dried as cold as 58-60F before with no issues cause the room was very controlled. 

If you want perfectly dried and cured dank smelling buds after harvest it is really best to have a room designed just for drying so you can control the temp and humidity perfectly with a dehumidifier and air conditioner. If you can't have that then you really have to check the rooms conditions very often to make sure your dry/cure doesn't go wrong.

The smaller buds will finish drying earlier than the larger top cola flowers. The big flowers usually will take 2-3 days longer to finish drying properly than the smaller buds. 
Hang drying is best if you can leave the flowers on branches. If no it's not that much difference to cut the flowers off the branches and dry them on racks.

Yes, towards the end of the dry/cure you should be able to snap the stems on the buds. But when you feel you are very close to them being done (like a few smaller buds have the stems snapping) you can then bag or jar the buds to finalize the dry/cure process. Over the last couple days they will cure even more if bagged/jarred up and the stems will then snap after that. Yes, you can open the bags/jars once a day to let the remaining moisture out. But honestly you can do the whole dry/cure process just on the racks if you do it properly with a slow, cold dry/cure process.

So you will be giving them around a total of a day and a half of darkness before you chop right? If so take some pics of the trichs right before you chop from the same areas of the plants you took them before to compare them. 
You are going to have some awesome bud there man. Please keep a careful eye on that drying room ok!! Make sure you put a humidity and temp gauge in there. Even two humidity stats is even better in case one is way off. 
The ones that tell you the max and min that the humidity and temp was during the day and night are the best. We call them "tattle tales" cause they tell you what's been going on in the room while you've been gone.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 15, 2013)

Well right now in my area, its very cold and very dry. in pretty much any basement around here the humidity is hovering at like 25-28% so ill actually be needing a HUMIDIFIER depending on how much the plants themselves put off. I DO also HAVE a portable AC and a DEHUMIDIFIER as well IF I NEED them. And YES this room i was saying I Poly'd off (poly beeing large sheets of plastic covering) is its own room SPECIFICALLY for drying buds. And i have MULTIPLE hygrometers going to be in there. So OK cool. I know I have to stay UNDER 64 degrees. And where is my cushion for RH? I know to keep at 50% but taking into account that naturally that space would be around 25-30% RH already is it "MORE OK" to have it be a little higher than 50 or a little lower? I imagine I'll be able to keep it PRETTY CLOSE. But its going to sway, theres just no way around that. It's just a plastic'd off room lol. 

Oh just going back up to your comment you say if you go under 50 its bad bad. So i assume a little above woudl be preferable?

And to your darkness question. pretty much yes, they will be getting ALMOST 48 hours. I will probably BUST thier room open anywhere from 6-3 hours before their 48 hour time is up.  ANd HELL yes ill take many pics of trichs, plants (excited to actually take pics of them in normal light. Havent been able to this whole time especially once i realize the roots were growing all thru the tubing. So icouldnt take them out of there or rotate them), the mess, the cleaned up mess, everaythang lol. It'll probly take more than tomorrow tho. lol.. Last time i harvested. me and my bud worked 8 hours straight no breaks thru the night on a fuckin work night on 2 and a half plants! lol... The two full size ones were like the size of the ones I have now. And there was one smaller little one. Fucker still produced just under a QP tho! i was impressed lol. So i can only imagine how long this shits gonna take lol. 

How long does it take you guys? Any tips on trimming? lol I'm the kind of dude that takes the extra time to get as much of the leaves out of there as i can. until it gets to the 8th hour with no breaks at 5am and im supposed to get up for work at 630am.. THEN IS START BUZZIN up pretty damn quick lol


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 17, 2013)

Hey BT sorry it took me a couple days to reply man busy few days! Yes you want to be at 50% humidity and lower than that is bad and higher than that is bad too cause you can get mold to form if the buds are too wet for too long a period of time. So when you start getting above 50% humidity you aren't really removing any moisture from the buds at all.

I'm glad you are going to take some trich pics under normal light. I'm very curious to see the difference.

Shit ya that sucks having to trim on a work night. My wife and I spent many a nights doing that back in the day. It's tough but worth the work when its done!

Hand trimming gives you the best quality end product no doubts about that. Unfortunately with large rooms and lots of plants we can't hand trim everything so we use spinner bowls for our lower smaller buds and hand trim the top larger buds only. I have a crew of workers so we can blast thought the work pretty quick.

Let us know how you made out! Pics of the chop down and on the racks?

So I took my good camera to the place where we just pruned the younger plants (they are in week 2 of flower) but when I got home to transfer them onto the computer I noticed the cf card was in the reader and not in the camera so that was a waste of time.

So I took some pics with my i phone of the other place that's in full flower; a week from chop. You can see in these pics how pruned my plants are with barely any leaves on them. They just have the small leaves on them that are more attached deeper in the flowers that aren't easy to pluck out.
But as you can see my plants are super tight together in very tight sogs and only vegged 2 weeks so each plant is small with a lot of bud on it in relation to the size of plants they are. 
It's a grow style which maximizes yield per watt and yield per sq/ft. Yields of 2-3 lbs per light are the average with this type of growing.
But for staying legal there are stacked licences which allow for higher plant numbers..

Very different style than growing typical "medical trees". Each way has it's advantages. Large trees with multiple rooms revolving the plants in different growth stages is also a good way to maximize yield per year growth time.

















​
Let us know how things went man!!!


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 17, 2013)

Ok so started the chop on sunday. then worked on more last night. and will finish tonight. man dude, by myself it takes me almost 5 6 hours do do one of my plants... by myself. with my buddy, about 2.5 -3hours. granted i take my time making shit perfect lol. temps holding at 59-63F and about 45-53% is that OK?


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 17, 2013)

It is MAINLY hovering at 50-51% tho. It seems i can try to keep it pretty steay within like 3% range. so would 47-50% be best you think? I we got one plant left to trim tonight. Clean the bud room real good. Check out all my lines and make sure they clean. Then im transplanting veg to flower ASAP. Give them 24 hours of darkness then start thier flower time. IS that something you do as well? 24 hour darkness between veg and flower. ALSO, do yo ulike to flush between V + F? or might i say, do you hydro buddies like to? This last run i only did it at the end.

Nice pics too. Thos things look beautiful! they get damn tall for only two weeks of veg!!


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 17, 2013)

Ya 45-51 is good but 45 is a bit low. But way better than getting in the low 40's that would be much too fast of a dry. As the buds dry more the humidity will want to go lower quickly. So keep an eye on it.

Flushing between veg and flower is not necessary at all. They can finish off their veg nutes while "transitioning" to flower. It is better for the plant too converting it's energy into creating growth shoots with veg food then flower food when they have "switched" over to use their energy into filling out those flowers.

I don't do 24 hrs of darkness when flipping cause I use an additive to help quicken flower on set so the 24 hr darkness is un necessary for me and I found no difference when doin that. But if you aren't using a flower onset additive then it may be beneficial for you to do.

Fuck my shades look dusty in those pics!! Gotta clean them up after this round 

Yes the OG likes to stretch up cause of the Sativa in it. My friend grew it outdoor in a greenhouse last year and they got to 14 ft tall!! We can't go more than 2 week veg indoors with it with 8 ft ceilings. With 10 ft ceilings I can go 3 week veg and have monsters lol.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 17, 2013)

Damn man those things look fuckin great!! are those all 1000w's? 

Well, veg has actually been getting an EXTENDED period of the same res for about a week more than i was normally doing. So when I switch them over, I was PLANNING on a new res. Is that still ok? I was literally going to just give them the same feeding they last got in veg cuz they look great in veg right now. After those two weeks (knowing now that these are going at least 10 weeks) i was planning to start introducing the sweet and liquidkoolbloom. Sound about right? or no?

Right now, in the drying room i have 5 lines hung. will be 6 or 7 when done. But i didnt want too much of a verticle difference in where they hung due to differnces in temp and RH. They are basically hanging at 4' from the ground and 6' from the ground. Those temps and RH for the most part stay exactly the same. Sometimes i may see ONE number difference in RH. Trying to keep as close eye as i can. 

Oh ya, i was noticing too, that right off the bat, while trimming and going into the dry room where buds are hanging, i dont really smell like dank bud smell. More like plant smell but you can smell the it IS bud plant smell. Does that make sense? When you trim and hang, do the buds smell basically the way they are going to smell when dried almost right awaY? Like does the room STINK like skunkyness? or does that come with slow dry and curing? There were times during thier flower that they jsut smelled like a fuckin fruit basket. Now, when trimming and smelling them, they dont seem to have TOO MUCH of that anymore..  Once cool thing tho, a bunch of the tippy tops have like purpleish color  probly dissapear when dried but i looks cool  My bottom buds deffinetly are less mature than the tops. It seems the further down the stalk, the more "planty" they smell. I dunno. I HOPE im being too critical about it.

Is there an additive i should maybe use for my hydro system? To onset flower..?


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 17, 2013)

Thanks man yes all 1000 watters.
Ya new res when you switch them over would be fine. 
If you are going to use an additive to quicken flower on set you should use that for the first two weeks of flower then start using your regular booster after that. Remember the formula you did the last time and lower the booster dosage a bit to try to stay away from that bit of burn you saw last time.
Add the Sweet when the flowers are starting to form actual round shapes to them when they are properly formed. Not when they are crowning and just starting to form.

Ya you have the right idea keeping the lines for drying at the same height for an even dry of all the flowers. 
Sounds like your temp and humidity levels are great right now. Yes keep a close eye on it for sure man. When drying things can change very quickly in a non sealed room without an a/c.

The plant smell you may notice can be from the branch part of the plant that is now cut off the plant and technically dieing. This is normal and the flowers will still keep their flower smell. A good way to tell is to squeeze a flower on a branch and smell your fingers. You should smell the fruity or skunky smell. 
I don't hang dry because I don't have the room for it. We take the flowers off the plants right away, trim them, then I put them on drying racks in a sealed controlled room. The smell in the drying room is overpowering flower smell.

There are basically two types of strong smells that come from different mj strains; fruity, or skunky. Some people like fruity strains and some like skunky. I like deep dank skunk myself but I've smelled some pretty killer fruity strains too. It's something you can experiment with different strains over time and reading reviews about them to see what you like more. 

Ya the purple colors are cool and they can come with the strain or you can bring them out in most strains by cold stress or other stresses. When you lowered the temp by putting them in complete darkness that would have brought those colors out. The colder you go the more purps you can bring out in the flowers.
The reason the lower ones don't purp up as much is because they aren't as ripe as the upper ones and they don't get as much cool air as the tops that are more in the open cool air up above.

I use Bud Blood for my flower onset booster. It's a powder though so read up on it to see if it's ok for hydro. Bud Ignitor is supposed to be a similar product and it's liquid but I've heard growers say it's not as powerful and doesn't work as good as Bud Blood. You can run Bud Blood for the first 2-3 weeks of flower.

Here's some pics of how I dry:

















​


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 17, 2013)

Hey BT I hope you save and dry your trim too man. I can help you use your trim to make some extracts with for some added medicine! Check out the concentrate section of Roll It Up some time to see what I mean. Lots of great info over there for extracts!!


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 17, 2013)

lol!!! i love the screen doors used for drying dude lol classic! I might have to adopt that. lol. I am acutally hanging as you know. Before I jsut used the hanging net with like 8 levels on it. I cant remember but I THOUGHT you may have told me to hang over drying in nets. I may be wrong..?? Nets are obviously a little easier to fit more in one area.. AND it makes it nicer to trim if I jsut cut buds off and dont have be all nice with the stems and shit  

And YES YES YES I DO SAVE THE TRIM!!  I LOOOOOOOOVE making butter!!  Cookies are so far my favorite, but I havent made much else. Made some carmels with my last butter. but they turned out like hard candy's. Not what i wanted. And they didnt fuck you up like the cookies. I could literally eat a cookie and decide to pass out in an hour or chill just nice a baked. OR i eat two cookies and im sleepin hard in couple hours! love it lol. 

I was thinking with these ill have a shit load more trim. I'm gonna make some hash oil. butane way. my buddy, all he does is smoke that shit now. hes a pro at making it lol. 

But HEY MAN< im totally sitting here with ears open. Let me know how YOU ROLL 

SOO here's some pics from Sunday to tonight. couldnt get more pics like i was posting of the trichs. pc got effed up over there.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 18, 2013)

Awesome man!! YES hanging is the best for an excellent even dry cure! I have to do the screens cause of room but if I could I would hang dry.

Right on BT you went the extra mile to make a good drying area. Some guys don't give a shit and just throw their weed in any old room with no thermostats or humidistats then they wonder why their weed turns out crappy. When you take care of weed properly it takes care of you!

Ya I've been making BHO and recently started running dry ice keif and dry sift keif. I've made edibles for a long time and they help me sleep too when I need to crash good and hard and are great for back relaxers. 

The BHO is honestly too powerful for me but I make it for other people. I make shatter and honeycomb. I'm going to start running some ISO extracts too soon.

Let me know if you want help with any of that. If you like powerful meds I don't think there is anything more powerful.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 18, 2013)

Ya BHO, that's what my buddy called it  ya he's got a sweet little bong and rips you up! lol. I also got one of these with the concentrate attachments, pretty sweet to take to work and go out and have a puff  Just looks like an Ecig, only problem is I DONT NORAMALLY SMOKE lol so i still kinda gotta hide out lol http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atmos-Raw-Vaporizer-GREEN-BRAND-NEW-KIT-Newest-Version-ATMOS-RX-/271348990454?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f2da901f6

I think i got the BHO part down with my buddy being a super nerd about that shit lol But as far as edibles, how do you go about it? make like bud cooking oil? or butter? and whats your method? So far what i have done for making butter is take 100g dried trim per 1lb of butter (4 sticks) aslo add enuf water in a big pot, enuf water so its like a thick liquidy soup, put butter in, let melt, simmer for i forget how long, maybe like a few hours or something. Strain it, put in fridge overnight or for a day, bust a little hold in the hardend butter cap, let water drain out, then im left with my green butter. 

I feel like there should be a better way. Not that my way isnt easy. I just sometimes feel like maybe the butter is a little gritty. Not a lot, but a little.

I am interested in the Dry Ice Keif and the Dry Sift Keif tho  Do you suggest youtube on those or might you have some tricks for me!!??  lol


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## cyanarnofsky (Dec 18, 2013)

great thread, read this bad boy start to finish. Fantastic info guys!


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 18, 2013)

cyanarnofsky said:


> great thread, read this bad boy start to finish. Fantastic info guys!


Glad you found it helpful cyanarnofsky. Post any questions if you have any

BT that is pretty much the way we make the butter too. If it is a bit gritty you can try using more cheese cloth when straining it. But yes ours is a tiny bit gritty too but very little. 
Yes youtube is great for making keif vids but recently I have tried the dried ice like I was saying but I think I'm going to stay away from that process for now because I think it freezes the trim too much and the trichomes and trich stocks end up shattering into tiny glass like shards. 
I just bought a dry sift keif extractor machine to help me process larger amounts of trim at a time.
Here's a link to the machine I got and the dry ice keif I made: https://www.rollitup.org/concentrates-extracts/760099-dry-ice-bubble-frozen-undried.html
Here's a link to a great BHO thread: https://www.rollitup.org/concentrates-extracts/624465-bho-vacuum-oil-wax-tutorial.html


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 23, 2013)

Ok, so its been 1 week of drying. Some of them feel PRETTY dry already though. Like especially the couple we got done that first night. The last one that got cut still seemed a little moist like it had some wetness to it. 

I dont know if its the strain, or something im doing, but honestly, i think SINCE they have been hanging they have just smelled planty like. It jsut DOESNT smell like i got a room full of BUDS hanging in the basement lol... i dunno. I got some purple paralysis seeds i wanna pop sometime but i feel like these last two runs of the Fruity Chronic Juice have NOT turned out how i THINK they should. There's no way the way I have been doing them or the END product i should say, has really NO like awesome bud smell. I dunno, i'll be seeing them tonight again.

I tghink I may already have to jar some tho. the RH has fluctuated from 46-53% so some shit is drying more than others..


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## cyanarnofsky (Dec 23, 2013)

I feel like I am running rather low, for my size plant but the tips seem to be little crispy. I was following lucas formula and feel like the N is lacking a little bit in my plant. I have started adding in 1 part Grow again. Following his conversion I got for a 4gallons of water 22.4 Micro / 44.8 Bloom. 5.6ml Micro/ 11.2 Bloom which gives me a PPM high 700's (760-780). You can see in the image the lack of green in the leaf, which is rather wide spread, can see the crispy tips tho as well.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 23, 2013)

I've steered away from lucas for that reason actually. I know this thread has a lot of details so ill make it short lol. Basically Im running a 1/1/1 ratio now, per suggestion by BCOGYODA. So basically figure out what PPM you want and jsut start light and add 1/1/1 tilyou hit your mark. No cal mag needed unless you see the plants are needing more. I do also add silica blast, as per bottle instructions. Run that thru veg and into flower. Once preflowers start showing, start adding in your bud booster, koolbloom is what i have. and also start adding your sweet. Man, i have to look bback again, but i think once your at about halfway thru flower you should be at whatever full strength is of your booster plus sweet. and in the last week before your going to flush, adjust to a 1/2/3 ratio. BC can confirm this for me if he sees it. hope that helps man!


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 23, 2013)

Hey BT I think when you remove the buds from the branches and bag/jar them up you will smell a different smell. When they hang dry on the branches you get a combo smell in the room of branch plant smell and flower smell.

If you are in the low 60's temp and 46-53 humidity you shouldn't have any dry buds yet after only a week. Are they snapping when you fold them or just bending? Are they very small buds that feel dry?
They can feel a dryish on the outside but still have a lot of moisture inside them still.

Yes BT you described that right to Cyan. Once you do that formula you can go further to see what your strain you are growing can take for strength of nutes by experimenting more very gradually. 
You can also go a bit longer than just one week at the end with the 1/2/3 ratio if you have a longer flowering strain. With 10 week and 11 week flowering strains you can do 2 weeks of the 1/2/3 ratio at the end of flowering before the flushing..

By tweeking what your strain responds to best without burning them and locking out nutes you can maximize your plants yield potential.


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## cyanarnofsky (Dec 24, 2013)

so you guys believe in the boosters? Tend to see people down talking bloom additives.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 24, 2013)

Boosters will give you bigger buds because they are adding higher doses of Phosphorus and Potassium. The downside is that it is easy to burn your plants if you dose it too high and if you are unfamiliar with how much nutes your strain can take. Another downside is the bloom boosters can produce iregularly shaped buds with fox tails and clusters coming out of the flowers; rather than the normal round and coned shape of typical flowers. But if you don't dose it too high and burn your plants it will produce higher yields. There's no doubt about that.


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## effect (Dec 24, 2013)

the real question is whether or not you need to add so much P in a medialess grow. 

the traditional reasoning in soil (and "soilless") is because the roots can't absorb it more than ~1mm away without fungal aids, and to overcome the ionic attraction of the media itself, you could add some more during times of high need. but in a pure hydro setup with turbulent water, both of those core issues are resolved. 

i run straight cns-17 bloom (2-2-5) in ebb-n-flow and 5g dwc, same great results. on the other hand, i've run straight maxibloom (1-3-3) in pure coco with great results. my experience over the years seems to reinforce this principle of P availability.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 26, 2013)

*You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to BCOGYODA again.

Ya dude so the ones i DID take down were at a week. put em in jars, and they do smell better than when they were hanging definetely. But the ones i took down, the stems were snapping. these were mostly like the smaller buds at the bottom of the stalks. but there were basically two lines worth that were snapping and dry feeling. ALSO NOTE that these buds didnt get TOOOO dense. so they are a little "airy" in the buds. Too many nodes and i left too much small shit on there. Also remember that it took us about 2.5 days to complete harvest with work and shit in between. so the ones that got took down were the first nights plants. 7 gram short of a LB on those lines  I liked that  and i think my dry room is probably dryer RH wise that the therms say. its SO DRY and COLD here right now. it honestly doesnt take much at all for it to be dry in there i bet. i dunno. all i can think of. cuz the numbers i gave you are exactly what they have been saying. most likely end up jarring up the rest tonight. most of the main tops from the last couple plants trimmed.

I wanted to ask you. what should my temps be in the curing jars? I got these tight little RH lids for mason jars http://www.ebay.com/itm/171191776622?var=470314251818&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

I think right now the jars are sitting at like 50% give or take a couple. And i seen dudes saying to have them at like 62% around that.. ?????? ANd they were buying these Boveda packs they stabalise RH to whatever number they set to. so i got the 62% packs. its supposed to pull it up to or drop it to 62% +/- 2%. Any thoughts on those? http://www.ebay.com/itm/370953762008?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649



*


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 29, 2013)

Hey BT! Ya the small airy buds that aren't dense will dry WAY faster than larger dense buds. And if you have a lot of little airy popcorn buds down low on the branches that is definitely a sign that you can prune more leaves off next time to let more air and light get down to those lower small buds.

Ya the humidity in canning jars should be a bit more than 50% because the idea is to very slowly cure the last bit of moisture out of the buds but this is a connoisseur thing that you will perfect by trying different things. I wouldn't go as high as 62 though. That is still moist. 55-58 IMO but I only keep very little bud around for my own stash in jars and I have never tested the humidity in them. 

When I dry I cure/dry just on the racks over a 15 day period so my buds only have 24% of their original weight/moisture left in them when they come off the racks. If I have very large tops I sometimes on the odd occasion have to put just those tops in rubber maid tubs for 24 hrs to help "pull" the very inside moisture out of them; then put them back on the dry racks for the last day or two of cure/dry.
At a very slow cold rack dry the buds are curing themselves and will have a very dank smell to them. You have to make sure also the drying room is always in complete darkness. 
Warmth and light will degrade the smell and taste of your flowers. 

The addition of co2 to your grow room will also help with increasing yield.

So what was the final outcome? Is it all dry now? What is the final total yield?
How's the smoke? Taste, smoothness, high, etc?

Pics of dried buds?


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 29, 2013)

YA i think i THOUGHT they were denser at first. Its just like all those little buds that make up a corndog top nugget never really CONVERGED to make that one bud. so i dunno i just think they dried quicker than we thought. and the fact that its SO DRY in my climate right now (and we do have air getting pumped into that basement from outside so we have fresh air so that brings in more dry air, but its fresh  ) so maybe next time ill go a little higher on the RH since its pretty easily getting pulled out of the room. What do you think? My TEMP was perfectly fine. highest it got was 63. hovered at like 60 61. We were pulling them down when they were snapping off the main stem. OR if they would be pulled off with just a little pull. If i had to twist the stem around a bunch of times to break it or if I pulled the bud off and the stem peeled down the main stem i left it hang another day.

Ok so final outcome of dried buds was 2lbs 1.75oz. From 7 plants. Equals out to just under 5 per plant. which is less than what i did the first run. I had a couple stragglers in this run that brought down the average for sure. Kinda pissed at myself for not marking out where each plant ended on teh strings. So i had to just do the average overall. 

Final outcome, very pleased still!! All is dry now and curing in jars. No more plant smell either!! I WAS the stems. At the same time they dont smell fruity or really WREAK like i would have hoped. But i know they got cut at the very least a few days early. The smoke is very smooth actually  Taste is.... good. Not GREAT, it doesn't really have a STRONG flavor one way or the other. BUT ITS NOT BAD AT ALL. Theres no harshness or bad after tastes or anything, its just not as flavorful as i hoped it would be. Its definitely potent tho  It's more an upbeat high i would say. Like you could fuckin start cleaning the house and shit lol. NOT GETTING CARRIED AWAY OF COURSE but at the same time I'll find myself watching football after smoking for a few hours and finding it pretty easy to nod off for a bit if i want to. Soooo,,,, more upbeat, smoke and go shopping high 

Had a picky friend pick these ones over some other stuff i had that IN MY HONEST OPINION smelled better than MINE DO. AND again told me they were bomb like a half hour later lol I was very happy. Anyways bro here are some pics  I just strive for perfection i think lol. So maybe im extra critical of my own stuff. lol others seem to really dig it so far 





This is from the first batch that got pulled off the lines. Two lines worth of buds equaled out to just under a LB  Beautiful site to see all those buds in a bucket!! lol So this is ABOUT 2 plants possibly a little bit more.


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 30, 2013)

Very Nice BT!! 
Ya I think if you are finding that it's mostly heady up high and you still had some clear but mostly cloudy trichs that shows you could have prob gone another week no prob.
Some strains just don't have a powerful deep dank smell to them no matter what you do. Do a lot of reading on growers reports on what they find the best for potency, yield, and dank smell if that's what you are after. There's so many out there...

I'm the same as you being criticle on my own quality sometimes when others aren't. I think that's natural if you are an over achiever and strive for the best always. Nothing wrong with that! That's how you get yourself to produce the best product possible.

If you blast your temps down for a bit longer before you chop next time for 4-5 days you will find you get the buds to sugar up a bit more, color up more, and can help with more dankness too. I blast the fuck out of my temps down looooww before I chop. But I have powerful a/c's in my rooms so it's easy for me to do. If you have a dim-able ballast you can also help bring temps down by dimming it for the last 4-5 days too. 

Over 2 lbs per light man is nothing to be let down about especially if you had a couple stragglers! How long of veg did those 7 plants have before flipping to flower?

You used the liquid GH booster this round right? If I could suggest one thing only it would be to try a run with powdered Advanced Nutrients Big Bud for your booster. Or if you want to stick with GH then try the powdered Kool Bloom rather than the liquid. I know we talked about it before and you had some liquid left so it was good to use it up on this run.
Also if you need to buy a new clearing solution for your next grow try Final Phase to compare it to the one you just used. 

It would be great if you could eventually seal up your room and add co2 to your growing. You would be amazed at how much more your plants grow with co2 enrichment. 30%-40% more growth and yield isn't an over estimate. 

Great work man!! Enjoy the fruits of your labor!


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## BCOGYODA (Dec 30, 2013)

And yes man if you can stretch your drying out to 14-15 days for your medium to large size buds you will find a much more dank smell than a week dry. My stuff always smells almost twice as dank as my friends crops who dry much faster and warmer than I do. That's where the magic happens; low temp and sloooooow dry! You will perfect that in no time I'm sure man.


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 31, 2013)

They got 9 weeks veg. Due to my wierd schedule i had going. now im gonna have a couple mothers. 

I did use the liquid koolbloom. I think ill have to use it one for run cuz i still got aobut just over half the gallon of it. unless you think I hsould just chuck that stuff and get some powder? I'm down. Now is the time to get upgrades and re up on some nutes so lemme know lol.


I wanted to ask you more about the whole sealed room thing. I DO want to have a sealed room here eventually. Basically what we did was take an opnen room in the basement that was already sheetrocked out as a bedroom and made a wall going thru it so if and when this room is done it will be a nice walkin closet. Its got a door and it's "ghetto sealed" at the tops with cardboard and spray foam lol **shakes head** we wanted to get shit done now, not later lol and had no money.  I'll take a few pics of the new flowering ladies and the room so you can get a visual. Its about 7'x9' and i think about 7' - 8' tall. I'll have to measure. concrete slab floor. And on the wall that faces outside we had a bunch of ants in the summer. lots of ant traps. I REALLY want to have a sealed room like your saying tho. C02 is my GOAL!!


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 31, 2013)

Also, i wanna be maximizing my space too! if I gotta go SOG i will. BUT i've spent quite a bit of money on this hydro system now. I dont go cheap either. Got two Bluelab Guardian meters. Those were $520. Two Brains for control buckets. $400. Then just a bunch of pumps and other shit that adds up.. So I WOULD LIKE to use these things but if a point is made that ill be getting more out of SOG or another method I"LL DOO IT. 

Right now I have 9 5 gallon buckets in that 7x9. Well, they go from the 5x5' tent in veg to the 7x9' bud room. I could try and go fewer larger plants. OR many more smaller ones. Go smaller gallon buckets, more of em. I dunno. I just ordered another raptor hood so ill have 2 1000's running during cold months and then ill run 600's in hot months. At least that is the plan lol. so im gonna have this whole bud room NICELY covered with light very shortly. I jsut need to figure out now how to max out the space under em  

I have been looking into mainlining! That shit is pretty fucking sweet man. Just take a quick peek. Beautiful fat buds. My next plan WAS to mainline all the next ones. 

I dunno . lol thoughts?


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## budtoker0987 (Dec 31, 2013)

oops, heres the link 
http://www.growweedeasy.com/main-lining-technique-nugbuckets

https://www.rollitup.org/subcools-old-school-organics/542308-main-lining-thread.html SWEET THREAD


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## budtoker0987 (Jan 1, 2014)

This has been on my leaves in flower the last 3 runs. Little less each time. But last time i thought it was because i was burning them. This time, they looked beautiful and lush green going from veg to flower. They were in flower for not even a week and i saw some leaves having just a little of this. Now its on a few MORE. MOST are fine a look great. But like last time it seems to spread thru out flower. This res change they just started preflowering so they got the same mix they had in veg 6/6/6 and I added 1/4 strength liquid koolbloom and sweet.

Check em out:


Most of my leaves look very green and lush like these two.


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## BCOGYODA (Jan 4, 2014)

Hey BT ya man the mainlining looks great. I like multiple large main colas. The more larger, hard buds, the better!! When it comes down to it we should all be striving to make the best medicine while getting the best yield possible in the least amount of time.

There's lot's of different ways to do that. Especially now days with so many growers experimenting with so many different growing styles. 

I don't think that's nute burn on those leaves in your pics. Leaves can react different ways to different ingredients in your nutes. Don't worry too much about it unless you see your plants reacting negatively by stalling growth, burning, molding up, etc..Too many growers freak out when they see their plants do something odd they aren't sure about. If you inspect your leaves and see no bugs I wouldn't worry too much about it. It could be a reaction to ph fluctuation also. When you start adding other ingredients like boosters, carbs, etc. your plants can react that way with variations in ph levels etc. Not a big deal.

If that's what you thought was burn so you backed off on your ppm strength I wouldn't worry about that. The leaves will burn from the tips inwards and they will go crispy as they burn more and the leaf dies.
You can increase your ppm if they weren't burning. Dif strains will burn at different ppm values. I got Chemo going that burns at anything over 1400ppm and I got OG going that can take up to 2000 ppm without any burn. Just depends on the strain.


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## budtoker0987 (Jan 4, 2014)

Ok cool. So i just did a pretty heavy trim on the new ladies last night  Check it out. Basically took off all the fan leaves. Looks a little drastic but i honestly think they gonna bush right back out with whats still left on em.



I wanna holler at you more about sealing my room off so i can add co2 eventually here. Waiting on my new stuff too. Just ordered another raptor hood so ill have two 1000k in there. REAL nice light spread then. Cant wait! Should we start a different thread? I would just PM you but then I cant attach pics. Or we can just keep communicating through this thread. Lemme know.

Again man I REALLY appreciate the help and tips!! I wish there was something I KNEW to help you with lol


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## budtoker0987 (Jan 8, 2014)

Sup holmes! lol


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## selektor (Jan 9, 2014)

nice top men


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## BCOGYODA (Jan 10, 2014)

Hey BT!! Ya man!! That's how the pruning is done! Excellent! Yes they will bush back up again on the 1/1/1 ratio. This time around I suggest tweeking to the 1/2/3 ratio a bit earlier and if you thought that other stuff with the leaves was nute burn (which it wasn't for sure) I would increase your max ppm levels for a bit longer towards the end of your grow. 

What did you max out your ppm last time around?

Up to you man if you want to start a new thread but I think it's cool if you keep this one going. Those vegged plants are huge! Should be a great yield. Keep up the pruning but if I were you I would do another prune around week 5 of flower. It will open up air and light to all the flower sites at a great time in flower where they do a lot of growing from week 5 to 9 of flower. 

Now that you know how long a flowering strain you have (10 week from time of flip I think) you can better tweek your feed schedule. 

Ask me anything you want about sealed rooms man. It's my specialty. Been growing like this way before the word got out about how great it is. I'm pretty positive sealed room growing was born in BC Canada cause we started building our rooms like that long before anyone wrote about it even being possible. There were so many naysayers about it at the beginning cause most growers thought it was impossible to grow mj without exchanging air. Anyway it's the absolute best way to have a 100% controlled growing environment and not waste any co2.


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## budtoker0987 (Jan 10, 2014)

Not exactly sure what i maxed out at cuz i thought i was burning them but they were up to around 1300 i think. 

Finally got the new reflector and ballast. So NOWWW I got 2 1000w in there in raptor hoods      I already had a 1000 Dual Arc from my first grow years ago. So the lower on has that in it and the one up a little higher has the straight super HPS in it. AND i moved them from short to tall so i COULD drop one a little lower. This is what its lookin like right now.


And remember i was talking about making a couple mothers. Well i made them in HEMPY buckets. And shit do they seem to respond well to that stuff. I feel like much better than the straight up hydroton. I would like to maybe run SOG in this room with a shit ton of hempy buckets made but at the same time i gotta try and be able to use all this expensive equipment i bought for all this hydro stuff. So id like to try and think of a good way to setup auto feed for them.. How do you feed you ladies if you have so many??


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## BCOGYODA (Jan 17, 2014)

Right on BT looking great!
The addition of the second light should make a big difference in bud size and yield per sq/ft

I hand wand feed. Large reservoir, heavy duty pump, hose and 5' wand. Go up and down the rows of each bed. Takes time but with a lot of plants it's the only way to make sure all the plants are healthy and all getting fed the same amount.
With auto feed systems with large rooms there's too much opportunity for a feed line to get clogged and plants not get fed.

I've been wanting to try a tight sog with hydro for years but never got around to it. They make some tube style hydro sog setups I've seen but I don't know anyone that have tried them. The guys I know doing hydro are doing large med trees.


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## ptr123 (Feb 24, 2014)

Nice thread, Very informative. Thx BC


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## ptr123 (Feb 24, 2014)

BC, do you turn the lights on after 48 hrs of dark to chop or leave the lights off? How far are your lights from the plant top in flower?


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## dexterblue (Jan 9, 2018)

Good thread


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