PICTURE UPDATE: 13 Fire Alien Urkle, FLOWERING 2 WEEKS, 3000W

No..no..no, I am not impying anything like that. Sounds like a good idea too! The only concern I would have is that the roots are going to stretch towards the walls immediately, which means that they will get thru the rockwool and be in dirt at this point. When you lift them out to move them, you are then risking damage. If you are going to move it anyways, you may want to consider eliminating that step and go straight to the actual grow pot. IMO. Those clones look real healthy and are probably out of the RW already. Rock on ...

bird dog said:

No..no..no, I am not impying anything like that. Sounds like a good idea too! The only concern I would have is that the roots are going to stretch towards the walls immediately, which means that they will get thru the rockwool and be in dirt at this point. When you lift them out to move them, you are then risking damage. If you are going to move it anyways, you may want to consider eliminating that step and go straight to the actual grow pot. IMO. Those clones look real healthy and are probably out of the RW already. Rock on ...

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Oh... so you're saying when I transplant them to bigger pots I risk root damage where the rockwool meets the soil?

The clones roots are definitely well out of the rockwool now, almost all of them had roots established out of the rockwool before I planted them into the soil.

I had originally planned to simply kill off these clones after the experiments, but I figured that was a waste, so I left them under a flourescent tube for a week in poor environment where they stagnated and got infested with bugs, so I neem oiled them and got rid of the bugs, then I decided to just flower them at the edges of my flower room to just pull a few extra nugs out of the room so I put them in small pots and shoved them directly into 12/12 at like 3 weeks old (stunted for over a week)... After I saw how healthy they started looking, I decided to get them back to veg quickly and pulled the pots and put them outside in the sun (indoors at night). Now I've given them a proper home in a good environment under T5 lighting on 20/4... I planned to let them fill up those pots with roots then transplant them up to 3gal, then once my current harvest is done wash my 5gal smartpots and put them in there as their final pot. They haven't had the best start but they're proving to me how resilient they can be.

Yes, I would almost guarantee potential problems. Honestly, you really don't need the rockwool for dirt grows. I've done hydro and dirt both, but prefer dirt (hydro is alot more expensive and more trouble - IMO). If it were me, I'd carefully cut those starter containers (don't even try to dig the plants out) at evry corner, get it to the new hole, and baby it into it's new home. I put clones into biodegradable 4" peat pots, which work great when you put it into the mother hole. But, like I said dude...IMO. Those clones look as good as they get. Airee

bird dog said:

Yes, I would almost guarantee potential problems. Honestly, you really don't need the rockwool for dirt grows. I've done hydro and dirt both, but prefer dirt (hydro is alot more expensive and more trouble - IMO). If it were me, I'd carefully cut those starter containers (don't even try to dig the plants out) at evry corner, get it to the new hole, and baby it into it's new home. I put clones into biodegradable 4" peat pots, which work great when you put it into the mother hole. But, like I said dude...IMO. Those clones look as good as they get. Airee

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What you say makes sense. I haven't had any problems with transplants before, but I've been planting the rockwool directly into 3gal and then transplanting into 5gal once the 3gal pot is almost full of roots, so by that point it was held together well.

This time around we decided another transplant step would help with a lot of things, but I hadn't considered what you said. I think I'll switch to just rockwool into peat pots into the 5gal smart pots? I think I have some peat pots somewhere anyway... Would that be better?

Sometime within the next 2 cycles I'm going to buy or build a far more sophisticated cloning area so I might end up not using rockwool anymore anyway. What's the best way to clone for organic soil grow? I've just been going with rockwool because it's so easy, I'm always worried about the rockwool once it's in the soil though.

I've been considering switching from Rockwool to Rapid Rooters as well... my friend swears he gets more roots out of rapid rooters than rockwool... Worth an experiment, but any input on that before I go out and start shoving my precious plants in them? Also would RRs carry the same risk during the first transplant? (I haven't actually ever tried RRs I'm not sure what they're made of)

My other idea I've been toying with is setting up a bubble cloner... Is it easy to transplant from a bubble cloner into soil?

You make some excellent points there dude. I'm not sure if I said it before, but I use rockwool (or similar) only in hydro grows, which I do not do anymore...but still have the setup. RR's give you less chance of hurting the roots on a transplant, as long as the roots have not bound up or started coming thru the cup. So, in a cup, all you have to do is make a hole in the mother pot bigger than the cup, insert the cup into the hole, and backfill. You have not messed with the roots at all here. IMO...

bird dog said:

You make some excellent points there dude. I'm not sure if I said it before, but I use rockwool (or similar) only in hydro grows, which I do not do anymore...but still have the setup. RR's give you less chance of hurting the roots on a transplant, as long as the roots have not bound up or started coming thru the cup. So, in a cup, all you have to do is make a hole in the mother pot bigger than the cup, insert the cup into the hole, and backfill. You have not messed with the roots at all here. IMO...

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When you say "cup" are you referring to the biodegradable peat pots?

I've decided to buy a Clone King 25-site aeroponic cloner (I'm aware I could build my own but it's cheap enough that idc) & use that for cloning from now on in aero-pots, then carefully transplant to soil. I also bought a bag of rapid rooters because I'd prefer those to rockwool cubes when it comes time to pop these seeds.

Bottom leaves on the 2 larger plants in the laundry room were yellowing up & dropping off earlier than I wanted.

Top dressed blood meal on the Fire Alien Urkle and she immediately stopped dropping leaves and seemed to start packing on a lot of extra growth & weight.

So today I did the same to the SnowDawg.

Pic update coming later.

Hope your grow is going well, Baked. Mine is about done. Pictures later tonight when the lights go off. Rock on...

Some updated pictures of the 2 plants hanging out in the laundry room. The SnowDawg is so branchy it's having trouble putting on any weight, so I put a T5 against the wall next to it... hopefully that will help. I'm pretty sure my buddy said SnowDawg puts on the majority of its weight in the last 2-3 weeks, so we will see.

The Fire Alien Urkle on the right is really starting to put on some weight. Still 5-6+ weeks left! They're starting to need support to stay upright because they are so tall.

PICS 3 & 4 - SnowDawg main cola (I supercropped it to even the canopy after snapping the first couple pics)
PIC 5 - One of many Fire Alien Urkle colas about that size
PIC 8 - Main cola on the SnowDawg supercropped

4 weeks flowering

lookin nice! they should start their second swell in a week or 2 depending on how long all the strains go.

Do you plan to use any boosters towards the end of flowering? Snowstorm Ultra? botanicare RAW or SWEET?

They can be a good addition to the fox farm line and will help you get a little more density out of your buds.

budbro18 said:

lookin nice! they should start their second swell in a week or 2 depending on how long all the strains go.

Do you plan to use any boosters towards the end of flowering? Snowstorm Ultra? botanicare RAW or SWEET?

They can be a good addition to the fox farm line and will help you get a little more density out of your buds.

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Expecting the Fire Alien Urkle to finish between 8-9 weeks, and the SnowDawg 9-10.

Hadn't given any thought to any boosters.

Looking great dude. I rember when your girls there were young and you were having some problems to deal thru. I hope some of my advise helped, if used. They look healthy and fat, just as I like them (plants that is -lol). I think you will be flushing in a month. Keep us all informed, as you have done throughout your grow. A+++ - Airee

Sorry for the lack of updates, phone (which is my camera) battery died and won't charge so I'm cameraless until new battery arrives.

News though:
- Laundry room Ladies packing on weight, heavy trichome production
- main grow room ladies heavy trichome production, PK deficiency, added 0-5-6 PK boost to water
- NYC Diesel autoflower seedling has 2 sets of true leaves
- 2 new seeds planted: Dinafem's Blue Thai & Dinafem's DinaChem. No presoak or paper towel bullshit just a good soil mix and mother nature.
- the 10 random alien/snowdawg clone mix finally reverting to veg and beginning to branch out, looking great
- Fire Alien Urkle & SnowDawg mothers looking decently healthy, minor bug infestation

i should be able to do a picture update tomorrow

Finally an update:



1st pic: random Snow Dawg bud (laundry room)
2nd pic: random Fire Alien urkle bud (laundry room)
3rd pic: NYC Diesel auto seedling
4th pic: ~4 day old seedlings (except the Diesel auto)
- top left: NYC Diesel auto
- top right: Warlock
- bottom left: DinaChem
- bottom right: Blue Thai
5th pic: random Fire Alien Urkle bud (main room)


Lots of trichome production, starting to get a lot of trichomes turning milky; no amber trichs yet; going to harvest at ~15% amber trichomes, so still got a few weeks left.

Looking good, subbed up to see how your harvest goes.

hbbum said:

Looking good, subbed up to see how your harvest goes.

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Thanks. I originally thought my strain was mostly sativa due to leaf structure, turns out its supposedly ~85% indica, and I believe it because they didn't get nearly as tall as I was expecting them too, which left my lights too far away.

No way to fix the problem now though, yield will certainly suffer, but quality seems to be good, and hopefully the yield won't suffer too much.

Definitely could've handled light distance a lot better from Day 1 of veg though.

I trust the leaves way more than I trust what is posted on sites. The problem is pheno types can vary a lot, and even the best of breeders sometimes makes mistakes or things just get intentionally mis-labeled. It is even worse for clones from the dispensaries, it really is a crap shoot.