King Julien's Aurora Indica X ??? Sativa Grow

[King Julien]

This is my 4th personal grow. I've helped with others and known plenty more growers but I am by all means amateur as I am sure it shows. I am honestly mainly starting this because I can't really tell anybody else about it where I live and everybody needs a confidant so here goes.

I came across some seeds from an outdoor aurora indica plant that had been seeded by a male sativa that was a random seed from the same seed company. The male was over 17 feet tall when chopped early.

So I started these in May. I had very little time to take care of them for most of their lives and so they got out of control and had multiple problems of which stretching was the worst one. I had trouble dialing in a new grow room while they were growing and so between temp swings and having to put the light higher than normal so it wouldn't burn plants before I could get back to them they got rather lanky.

Topped them very heavily during veg though. Took clones so I'd have the one I like ready to go for round two as soon as these get done.

I was hoping for a 7-8 week veg but scheduling didn't allow for that so after 10+ weeks of veg they finally got moved to 12/12.

Planted 10. 1 Stunted and was pulled, 2 showed male before before placed into flower, and 2 showed male after being placed into flower.

Since their genetics are so diverse there are some that tried tripling in height and others that barely doubled. Trying to keep the canopy even was a severe pain and in the end the best I could do was continuously super crop the stems over to keep them all on the same playing field. Now I'm just worried about supporting the lanky buggers later.

For the most part they seem to be taking after their mother when it comes to smell, which is mostly piney diesel with a bit of skunk thrown in, but one of them in particular smells like downright lemon chemicals.

I only feed with maxibloom powder, silicone supplement, and calmag during veg and then increase amounts and add liquid koolbloom during flower until finishing with dry koolbloom. I use white and/or yellow buckets but I also use calcium hypochlorite powder diluted for a sterile grow so I have no problems with algae or bacteria.

I use RO water and river rocks as my grow medium. You know the ones, the polished looking random sized river rocks you buy to line a flower bed. I used to use hydroton but it was so hard to clean the roots out of and process, not to mention dusty, that I switched to river rocks and never went back. It also cost me only 12 bucks to fill 16 grow buckets instead of like 150 for the (only able to be gotten through the mail) hydroton.

And lastly I use an air pump and air stones for oxygenation. Pretty standard sterile DWC.

I vegged under 2 400w MH and am now flowering under 2 600w HPS although I did leave one of the lights as a 400 mh for the first 2 weeks of flowering. Not to help with stretch or try to increase potency or any magical secret grower trick...Just because I didn't get the time to change it till then.

I didn't bother taking pics before week 3 flower simply because I had nowhere to go with them but now that I'm here I might as well share. Here are pics of day 21 of flowering (as measured by days spent in 12/12), which is today!

I actually took really nice photos with a really nice camera while writing this thread but when I went to upload them realized I couldn't find my card reader so until I do I apologize for the phone camera pictures.

So the first pic is of the canopy on the right side of the tent. Well, most of it.

Second pic is of the left side of the canopy, well most of it.

And the final picture here shows an idea of how things are progressing in the top 12 inches.

In total they are tipping out at 2 3/4 feet tall although without super cropping would have wound up more like 3 1/2 to 4. That plus the buckets means I would have been running too low on room.

I try to move the light back and forth across the canopy each day to get the best light coverage I can but nobody is perfect. Now I'm just super curious to see what these will yield...and how long they will each take to finish...and when the stretching will completely stop on all of them.............and how good they'll each be.

So there we are. Day 21 of who knows. I'll try and update this no less than once a week although I'm aiming for twice a week. Picture quality will increase soon as will quantity once things start picking up a bit. I'm also hoping to get a usb microscope to get some good trichome shots as things get closer to mature.

Happy Growing!

 

[BudBogart]

Thanks for sharing. Lots of farmers in the same boat, lots of exciting grow information and no one to share it with. You are in the right place.
Your pics will look better without the grow lights on. They make it hard to see details.
Your grow looks very nice despite any challenges you had early on. Keep us posted.

 

[King Julien]

Thanks for sharing. Lots of farmers in the same boat, lots of exciting grow information and no one to share it with. You are in the right place.
Your pics will look better without the grow lights on. They make it hard to see details.
Your grow looks very nice despite any challenges you had early on. Keep us posted.

Well thankyou for the compliment.

I really do love this stage. Things have really started amping up just since I took those.

And yeah I know the lights make the pictures look like crap. I took pictures with a nice Nikon before the lights came on but couldn't find my card reader so ended up taking those after the lights came on with a $10 phone camera. Still haven't found the card reader but I'll try and take some pictures on the phone after next lights off cycle tomorrow and post those at least.

 

[King Julien]

So I managed to get some photos of lights off but I didn't have a flashlight so I had to use the camera flash. I was also still using the crappy phone camera. So I apologize in advance for how bad these pics are. These are the best out of many more I took. Eventually I'll either find or buy a new card reader and get some good pics but until then...

First picture is an attempt at a canopy shot but this is the best shot that came out of it.

Next picture is a better close up of the canopy. Can't see how wide spread it is but you can get a good idea of what is going on.

Same as the pic above but a shot of most of the other half of the canopy.

Lastly I've got the best of like 6 shots I took with that phone trying to get a closer look at one of the tops but this is what resulted.

I resolve to find that card reader!

Oh, and these pics are officially from day 24 after switch to 12/12.

 

[King Julien]

So I've noticed a small infestation on one of the plants of a bug I'm not familiar with. Tiny and long pill shaped. Brownish. I've got a macro lens for my Nikon but until I find my card reader that doesn't matter.

They seem to be a bottom leaf feeder of some sort. Found some minor leaf discoloration on the leaves they were on. Almost a slightly spotty fading. Don't look quite like aphids to me but I know there's quite a few species of them so dunno there either.

I'm not gonna wait around to find out what they are though. I'm azamaxing the hell out of them next light period. It's early in flowering and I don't want to have to use the stuff any later than I possibly have to.

I'll try and take a couple more crappy photos tomorrow just to keep up an idea of progress. They are certainly doing their thing. Starting to get a little bit of frost building on the leaves. A couple in particular have trichs way out on some of the larger fan leaves already so I'm excited to see what happens there.

The one that smells like lemon chemicals is still about the same in smell. Faint unless you rub a stem. The rest are starting to build a general fruity skunky smell when you open the tent. Rubbed up on some trichs on one of the other plants though and it had a smell almost like watermelon on a spring day in the rain while a skunk passed by with a fruit bowl. Was invigorating.

I both love and hate growing unknowns. They're a pain to manage and plan for but you also get to go on an amazing journey of sight and scent exploration.

 

[King Julien]

So I managed to block the light of the HPS a bit with a note book or two and get a couple good pics with the phone during lights on. Things are taking off it seems to me. These pics are officially from day 26 of flower.

A top cola starting to do it's thang:

Managed to block enough of the HPS that the phone took a regular looking photo. Canopy is coming along on the left side of things, and it's the one that's lacking compared to the other:

It kinda looks like some of the lower down buds or leaves have a reddish or brownish tinge to them but it's just the odd color contrast from there still being HPS light in the picture.

 

[fatawa]

Def sativa...lol.so u def hav awile.stay on yur numbers n keep them happy.i love a good sativa.hav a racy strawberry cough pheno i puff every morning.yurs look good tho,sometimes people hav trouble getting a sativa to pray n i c yur r.

 

[King Julien]

Def sativa...lol.so u def hav awile.stay on yur numbers n keep them happy.i love a good sativa.hav a racy strawberry cough pheno i puff every morning.yurs look good tho,sometimes people hav trouble getting a sativa to pray n i c yur r.

I grew some random seeds I was given by a dude that goes through a lot of high end stuff years ago and while I have no idea what it was for sure I wound up with a plant that smelled like strawberries and would make you cough your ass off from sheer expansion in the lungs. You were guaranteed to break a sweat after one hit. Was good get up and go stuff. Always had my suspicions that's what it was.

And those plants have been a bit of a nightmare to reign in compared to many other plants I've grown. They were super cropped like mad for nearly 3 weeks after flowering started. Only about the time I started this 3 weeks in had the stretch stalled enough that I could stop evening the canopy.

I think it'll pay off though. The canopy expanded by a little more than 2 times in just a little longer than the first week. If I'd had the time and space to scrog I really could have put those suckers as they were into a 10X10' room and filled the whole damn thing. So much stretch.

The lemony one might take quite a while longer than the rest at that I'm afraid. It took almost 3 times as long to start hairing out as the rest after 12/12 and is clearly 1 - 1 1/2 weeks behind the rest in development of buds. I'll try and get pics of it separate from the rest so you can see what I'm talking about.

ALSO, just got a new reflector to replace a simple cooltube with crappy wing reflectors I'm currently using in the tent. It's the one on the left side and is why it's not doing as well. I'm replacing it with one like I have on the right which is a 29"X 26"X 6" reflector around a cooltube. It helped make the right canopy so even with much less management.

 

[King Julien]

It's picture time!

So I spent the last 2 hours in the tent moving things around, spreading out tops, picking off tiny little buds below the effective line that are too low to even benefit from defoliation, generally cleaning up the bottom 3/4ths of the plants. My fingers were so sticky I started rolling them about and managed to get a third of a pea sized piece of dark blonde hash off my fingers.

Took a couple pictures when I was finished of how things were going. Also turned all of them around for the first time in about a week and a half.

Turning them around led to weight shifting of those top heavy girls and it took forever to line things back out to a semblance of acceptable. The canopy is 110% not even anymore but I spent a lot of time super cropping over the tallest buds that were blocking light to the rest and tried to even things halfway out. Once they get a chance to figure out where the light is again they'll straighten out and I can re-even things one last time before I just leave them alone.

Didn't have time to replace the light fixture but here's what I've got up...

And here's what I'm replacing it with...

The pile of crap I picked off these girls, a surprising amount for sure. Should have done it a little earlier and last time I did it I should have done a little more. I just wasn't sure what was gonna stretch where so I was a little conservative the first time...

A couple of pictures of the colas starting to fill out a bit...

The canopy before the intense super cropping session...

And now the after pictures. I warn you, graphic content advisory...

That cola is a solid foot that you can see there. What you can't see is the other almost 3 feet of it. I didn't even super crop that thing. It is just that flimsy from the severe early stretching. Keeping these girls up is officially gonna be a challenge within another week I'm afraid.

And finally, a picture of the only plant in the tent from different genetics. I've had this clone going for over a year. It stalled and barely managed to keep itself alive without any nutrients what-so-ever and only RO water and pool shock to keep it from rotting. I wasn't even planning on really doing anything with it more than seeing how long it would last.

Finally came the time to throw it out and I said screw it and replanted it. It took off after being in the bucket doing nothing for over 2 months. It vegged out kind of like a monster cropped plant. And here it is at the same number of days of flower as the rest as of today...28. It's just a little shorter than the rest...

Here's a pic of a cola forming on it...

It's obviously an indica dominant. It smells like the most amazing tropical fruit salad you've ever had with an emphasis towards peach, mango, and pineapple covered in a hint of diesel fuel. No idea what it is originally but this particular clone came from seed that I got out of another plant I grew.

It smelled almost the same but with more diesel and peaches to it. I had a few plants growing at the time that all hermied and barely seeded the plants around them before I caught them. Only got maybe 10-20 seeds a plant but I have no idea what bred with what to make this as they were all mystery bag seeds including the original mother.

Planted 20 of those seeds and weeded out about 12 hermies and males and a few crappy sets of genetics and this was the stable one I kept.

Stoney, fruity, smooth, and is downright greasy with terpenes. The best tasting BHO I've ever had was with fresh frozen buds from that plant. However it isn't the most potent plant by any measure so even though it's good I'm not bothering to continue it's lineage. I hate ending a line but I'm also tired of buds that aren't just fantastic.

After I've grown these and probably the clones from the best of these I'll order me some real genetics. I'm thinking Ghost Train Haze #1 for a sativa and either God's Gift or Purple Urkle for an indica.

Anybody have any suggestions about those strains or maybe alternatives? I'm looking for a sativa that will melt my mind but produce decently enough and an indica that will shred my ability to stay conscious.

And it threw in this photo that I didn't mean to add but here's another one of those fruity colas.

 

[King Julien]

So just a couple canopy shots to show how things are progressing towards evening back out.

Right side...

Left side...

An attempt at a bud shot. Swelling nicely...

A canopy shot of part of the left side with better lighting...

And finally a shot that shows you just how bad my stretching problem was. I'm sure you'll see why I fear for my time spent tying things up in the future...

Also replaced the water in all of them today. Had been a little over 2 weeks at this point so they were needing it. Upped my maxibloom by 1/3rd and reduced calmag by half. Other than that everything is staying the same.

I will just mention that it kind of looks like I thinned out the canopy but that is not the case at all. The shifting of weight from being turned around caused the branches to try a lay in directions other than what I wanted them to. They're simply not spread out to fill all the gaps as well as they were before yet. I'll keep posting pics as often as I can as they spread back out.

 

[Organikz]

Nice operation you got. You are right in step with me right now. I will follow along.

 

[dan1989]

Following also, always nice to share with a fellow amateur :)

 

[Organikz]

@King Julien
You want the rarest, most phsychoactive sativa on earth...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.greenrushdaily.com/malawi-gold-rarest-strain-earth/amp/

Ace seeds > Malawi gold

 

[King Julien]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.

I've been busy the past couple days. Disaster struck the night cycle after I last posted. 2 of the largest plants, the ones on the right, fell over. Not completely. They just lacked the support to stay upright and bent sideways all the way down to the tops of the buckets with some longer side colas reaching the tent floor. The were bunched up in a big ball on their sides basically.

So I didn't get any pics of before because it was near lights off when I got to them and in a blind panic spent a few hours of shifting and tying branches up until after lights went off and I had to move my overall time back 30 minutes just to make up for it.

A shot of each side from today, 2 days later. Right...

I haven't tied up the left side yet because it has been cooperating better lately but I'm going to tomorrow during next lights on period because I'm not gonna wait for disaster to strike again. Here's the left side...

And finally a closer shot of some of the colas on the left side...

So yeah. Gonna tie up some more plants in the next day and then maybe do some very light, very light, defoliation of some of the larger leaves I can't fold back that are shading some of the lower down stuff.

More updates to come as things recover and get tied up.

Just had to edit this to add this pics are officially from day 31 after switch to 12/12.

 

[stonestacker]

Nice clean setup. I'll swing by if you don't mind.

 

[King Julien]

Not too bad. Just smoked a mix of all the little buds from all of the plants that were on the trimming up I did from below the canopy a few days ago. Not too harsh for being green as could be and drying in maybe 2 and a half days. Took a mighty bong rip.

Got an interesting high from it. At first I thought I didn't get anything from it but then I sat here for about 5 minutes browsing around the site and it snuck up on me. I'm definitely stoned, surprisingly so, and yet it's also crawling right up in my head.

I'm definitely impressed for it being not quite 4 weeks old and only just starting to gain any noticeable amount of frost. Can't wait, but obviously both will and have to, to see what these turn into.

 

[King Julien]

Didn't get to tying up the other side of the canopy yet but all is well for the meantime. ASAP though I will get it done. Don't have pics for today but I should have some posted tomorrow for general progress. I'll try and get some before and after shots of the left side tie up effort.

I was mainly posting to comment on the frost starting to form and the smell in general being emitted.

The lemony one hasn't really gained much on smell. If anything it lost a bit of the chemically smell and kept the lemony scent. Frost is less pronounced than the others but it seems to be behind them all in development. It's definitely gonna take a while to finish I'm afraid. But that also makes me hopeful of what it might become.

The rest have little to no real smell when messed with. The tent has a general weedy smell when you open it but it's kept fairly light by the carbon filter. But when you take some trichs and break them open they have just the very faintest smell of sweet citrus and pine but only barely detectable. However, there are a couple of the plants in particular among the less stanky ones that are really building frost nicely.

I know the aurora indica mother they came from had a kind of diesel, pine, skunk thing going on and was really pungent when it was fresh harvested and when it was cured properly but with the unknown sativa genetics in there there's no telling what I'll get.

There's no worse game than the hurry up and wait game.

 

[King Julien]

So still no time yet to tie things up but it will be done by the end of this week come hell or high water.

For now though here are some general progress pics. Keep in mind the poor camera and lighting makes leaves look like they're reddish or brownish in places but I assure you they are a lovely green with a tiny bit of lighter green towards the center of new growth.These are officially from day 33 after the switch to 12/12.

A pic of the left canopy, well at least half of it...

A pic of the right canopy, well part of it anyway...

A couple cola shots to show how things are filling out...

Here's one of a cola that didn't need bent down to keep along with the canopy in front of a college rule notebook...

A couple more colas in front of the notebook only this time the note book isn't to their base...

And finally a cola that's been super cropped and I'm holding up a bit to show better with the notebook...

Also decided to ph things for the very first time this grow. I usually don't but I also knew I was growing way too many different genetics and had been kind of lazy about keeping proper track of water levels so I knew things were getting a bit out of whack.

It wasn't bad. The worst one was the biggest plant at 5.5. PH'd up to 6.3. I won't need to do it again on the oddball out plant because it finishes in less than 56 days and will only get one more change of it's water in about a week and a flush at the end. The others though will likely need to be monitored a couple more times if only due to how damn long they might take.

I fell out of growing for the last couple years and this was my restart from seeds. Got clones going and about to replant them into buckets finally. Getting my perpetual up and going again. In the meantime though I'm down to paying 100-120 an eighth for third tier bud and eating butter made with insane amounts of fan leaves and stems. I miss the days of having 20+ mason jars curing 2 different strains and another batch ready to come off in a month.

Just another day spent waiting for the promised land.

 

[King Julien]

So I figured I'd take a moment to run across some of the rather unorthodox things I do and have done this entire grow and for the past couple I have done.

I run DWC in white, yellow, or orange buckets. I do not make any attempt to lightproof my buckets. The large river rocks in the net pots create decent gaps in them in places and just let more light through.

I also do not run any chiller, obviously in DWC, nor do I attempt to chill my buckets in any way other than the tent naturally being colder at the bottom. Water temps tend to stay 2-3 degrees below air temp of bottom of tent which stays around 74-75. So my water is usually in the 71-73 range.

I also do not usually PH or keep track of PPM. I will PH and check ppm when I first start a new grow just to make sure my RO filter is still doing it's job. Otherwise I just keep track of how much water the plant is using how fast and use that as a gauge to estimate when to change to water out with fresh and at what % strength to use my nute formula. Occasionally I lose track or simply don't have time to keep track and that leads to PHing things. During this grow I have only PH'ed the once a day ago. Didn't even PH the entirety of veg or the first 32 days of flowering.

I use calcium hypochlorite, otherwise known as pool or spa shock, to keep things sterile. Used every other day it keeps everything nice and white and healthy in spite of light leaks in white buckets and water temps of 71-73 degrees. It can go longer but it will slowly develop problems. A week is about tops before a rot sets in. Even at that point you can just use it a couple days in a row and it will kill it all off but the slow down in growth will already have occurred. I usually won't go more than 3 days just to be safe.

I use the cheapest river rocks I can buy at a hardware store. Like 3.25 a bag and a bag will do at least 7 or 8 six inch net pots. I wash them off and while doing so rinse them with calcium hypochlorite water to sanitize. They are kind of a pain to place carefully around new clone roots but once they're in they are pretty solid around the stem and prevent it from tipping at all. They are also a breeze to clean for round 2.

I change my water every 2 weeks during flowering for simplicity. If things get to drinking real fast I have been known to change in 5-7 days but that generally is when I haven't had a way to PH things at all.

During veg I used to PH religiously and simply not change my water out at all until flowering but now a days I just follow the same code and it works for me.

These plants were all grown from seed in really crappy soil. They were almost a foot tall when replanted into net pots. I gently broke off the loose soil and place the rootball in some RO water with a tiny bit of calcium hypochlorite in it. Once it hydrates completely I gently massage the rootball to get as much dirt off as possible.

At that point the roots are free of soil but are full of bits of bark and peat moss that wouldn't wash out without damaging roots. Then I replanted them in 6" net pots in river rocks. Despite that the poolshock kept them clean. I've done this a few times now and while it's a little messy the plants don't seem to mind and are growing faster than ever before within 24 hours.

I think that's about it but if I can think of anything else odd I do I'll post it. I get used to doing things and forget most people don't do it my way. Probably shouldn't. It's terribly sloppy and lazy. Boy is it cheap and easy.

 

[King Julien]

So I've been super busy the past few days. Besides my normal busy I contend with daily I also got another 2 plants tied up and did some much needed defoliation. I'm not a big fan of defoliating but the colas were also so close together that without some serious trimming I was gonna be facing bud rot issues in a couple of weeks without a doubt.

These pics are from day 37 after the 12/12 switch, one light cycle after I got them tied up. I also forgot to take before pics but you basically saw them a few posts ago.

Right canopy shots...

Left canopy shots...

And lastly a couple cola shots, the first one is some of the smaller colas in the tent and the second is one of the longest, but not the fattest...

Smoking on some blue dream right now. 120 a quarter but it keeps me from trimming on my plants. The last time I started up from scratch I smoked a plant and a half before harvest time and hurt my yields by a good 25%.

I also had less money and options back then though but I got by either way. Still stayed high after week 4 till finish and managed to yield just over 3/4 of a pound off 2X400W. Not the worst yield. around .4-.45 grams a watt but if I'd have left them alone I should have gotten more like .55-.65 grams a watt.

I'm not really sure what I'm gonna hit this go around. Got good spread and coverage for the most part. Things are filling out and bud sites are starting to catch up with one another so I think I might wind up with a decent yield.

A friend told me when I first threw them into flower that they probably wouldn't produce very well because of a combination of mixed genetics and just how damn lanky they were to start with. Said he's be surprised if they produced a pound across the 5 plants under 2X600W. I told him not to count his chickens before they hatch.