MHippie said:

Uh well.. you are going to throw up in your mouth a little probably.... but... I went from one 4x2 Sunblaze T5HO to 2 Viparspectra P2000's in a 2 x 6 area. I was using it for flowering small plants. Like trying to do a 6 cola bonsai in a traditional bonsai pot is tough. Most of the strains I'm messing with expressed significant Cal/Mag deficiencies specifically, even though they were getting not only normal nutes but an Earth Juice Cal/Mag supplement at full strength too. When I up potted those plants into 5 gal grow bags, that cal/mag def went away within a week as soon as the roots got under the plant.

The byproduct of that mess? I've been growing a lot of HSC's Purple Mountain Majesty and it's a frustrating strain. It comes up with like no tight spacing on bud sites. It looks like freaking Charlie Brown's sad ass Christmas tree. And the damned thing grows TALL if you let it. 5 gal bag outside on a normal veg cycle? 4.5 - 6 ft tall plant. But once it goes into flower? The thing takes right off and packs it on. The little sparse nug sites become huge tight nugs with a tight well formed cola.

Well... I took 4 clones of that strain and dropped them into bonsai pots that are only 3 inches deep. And then vegged them for 2 weeks on 186 to let their roots spread out. And then hit them with 12/12 under the LEDs. They stretched and stopped at well under 3ft. I'll put a tape measure on them and take more updated pics outside of them so the lights don't bleach out the pics tomorrow. But if you compare the cola formation, the dense flower growth, and the size of the nugs on these three plants to the outdoor stuff I did with this strain this season? You can barely tell they are the same strain at this age.

I've got two more test plants in that LED indoor run. They are old school :) Lemon Skunk #2 and GSC. And again, the difference in these two plants and the ones that are finishing outside are insane. My wife calls 1 piece cola plants "baseball bats". The same height limiting "technique" was used on those two. Both came from clones just their their outside counterparts. But the outside ones are spaced out heavily and the yield is going to be shit. And the inside ones are short but will be just single cola plants WAY more densely budded than the outside stuff.

I didn't change anything else in my set up. Nutes, supplements, ph, soil, methods, all the same. The difference is the lights. They have blown the tits off of my grow and I'm incredibly happy with what's going on for sure. If these cheap lights are pushing this type of output, I'm almost afraid to work with a high quality line like Gravitas or whatever.

And today I ordered 2 more that should be here in the next few days. I went with the P2500s. I'm going to use the smaller space for veg and keep the P2000's in there. These new lights will be for my larger flowering area. We'll just have to see what happens.

Sorry for the novel. Just wanted to give a complete pic.

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AnselAdams said:

Still waiting on the pics. Did i miss them? ☹

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MHippie said:

Holy shot a lot has happened since that post. Like LS2 has been harvested. The 3 PMMs are in the jug. But heres my current set ups.

. . .

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AnselAdams said:

You are not kidding. My world got turned upside down with this COVID crap. I was away for quite awhile after my mom died of the crap.

Love that training on the bag. That was a LOT of work, hopefully your love and affection will be returned in bud and clones

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MHippie said:

Man, I'm sorry for your loss. I had no idea. Glad you're back :)

Thanks re: the training. I have another PMM bonsai for clones in the veg room. Its the one with REALLY messed up fan leaves under the light on the right kind of in the middle. Almost killed it but got lucky. I should have done the root trim and soil repack on one day, let it sit for 2 weeks and THEN went nuts top side. Instead I did all of it in one sitting and rewired the damned thing to spread out the canopy better. And uh... Thought I was going to have to go down that WAY aggravating road of holy shit have to clone a flowering cutting. Got lucky lucky lucky. She came through it. But man!

I'm not sure what is going to happen with that bagged plant. It has 7 colas. Height is pretty much uniform. Buuuuuuut... there is a lot of side shoot growth on this one, where I don't get that on a single cola, not topped plant. I thought the nugs would hug the top of the plant. Erp. Wrong. So this one has me kind of stuck. It has grown out a second "bud" layer in the middle from all of that side shoot growth. And that second layer is just about uniform in height too, just shorter than the main growth shoots of this thing. And... it's only a 5 gallon bag.

Kind of on the fence with respect to defoliating everything except the 7 colas or just letting the thing rip while treating the bag like 1 gallon coco fiber container lol.

When I first started working this strain, I did a lot of shit to it. Defoliation. Topped. Mainline. Bushed. Cloned. Outside. Inside. Hybrid (veg inside/flower outside). Bonsai. Au Natural. And... Stunted. It's just amazing to me that a variant of the method yields a variant in growth pattern/behavior. I think I'm just going to let her go and see what happens. The single cola plants put out BEAST size dense nugs. Really enjoying the smoke.

Another weird thing I've been working on is stunting a plant so that the height restricts but the bud output is still hearty. Coming from the 80's, short plants were always an obsession. I've found something that has worked across a dozen or so strains for now and it's simple.

1) Veg out completely in a bonsai pot. I use a 9 x 6 x 3 (tall).
2) Flower in the bonsai pot until the top "crowns" or a cal/mag deficiency just starts to express (root bound).
3) Transplant to 5 gallon grow bag. Loosen the roots first and spread them out in the transplant.
4) It will pause for 3 - 5 days. And then resume.

Little height is gained after the transplant. And then they all start putting the bud on. My theory is that they have the root system of a normal sized plant, and have the ability to uptake the same amount of nutrients as a normal sized plant, but don't have all of that mass to supply. The tallest plant I have right now is an HSC Squirt. I'd estimate 24 - 28 inches. Certainly no more than 30". Same strain went close to 4ft grown naturally.

Anyway... welcome back :)

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AnselAdams said:

Very, very nice. I am looking for squat indica plants to do in hydro. I am still working with autos as my room and experience level (and fear of utter failure) of photoperiods. I will eventually get into all of those other variables that will make this even more difficult, but FUN!!

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Aqua Man said:

Hows the stretch bro? They look quite sativa leaning.

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AnselAdams said:

Update: Grow #8 Candy Cane
germination 26 Sept 2020;

The last 10 days or so have been a real bitch! All of a sudden the plant went into calmag def in a blink. I have been feeding on schedule, etc and things were looking fine. Long story short; @logic and I had a few discussions and i found out that in general the off-the-shelf products that we are all quite used to. fall WAY short to the recommended levels of both elements and generally in the wrong proportions. Consensus seems to indicate that the proper ratio is 2(Ca) : 1(Mg).

The ideal ratio is two parts calcium to one part of magnesium. A safe homemade Cal-Mag concentration would be 380ppm, with 260ppm Calcium and 120ppm Magnesium.

View attachment 1066465 (this product is no longer made by mfg)

. . . you could try and find a similar product, just look for 9% calcium, 5% magnesium and 14% sulfur

CALiMAGic = 5% cal and 1.5% mag
botanicare = Nitrogen 2% cal 3.2% mag 1.2% iron.19 no sulfur
vitalink = 4% cal and 1.7% mag
nectar for the gods Demeter's Destiny also only 4% cal and 0 mag
General Organics CaMg+ is also 5% and 1%
Emerald Harvest cal mag = 3% and 0.5%

The product i finally setteled on was this one:
View attachment 1066466

Dr. Seeds 2:1 Calcium & Magnesium Fertilizer Bulk - Dr. Seeds.net

Save money $ buying high quality soluble nutrients with bulk pricing. - 2 to 1 calcium (Ca) to magnesium (Mg) ratio. - Contains chelating agents for superior absorption. - 100% water soluble. - Warming water will help product dissolve better. - Dissolve this product separately from other...

drseeds.net

mainly because it had nothing BUT Ca/Mag so i could use it during the rest of the grow without worrying about the "N". Since i use RO water, my solution was to use this product in my 35 gallon top-off tank. I found out that it also has buffering agents in it to prevent the PH swing .

I figured that if i did the setup using this product:
Cal-Mag Complete Calcium Magnesium Growing Supplement by TPS Nutrients



by using it to setup the rez and during the first 4 weeks, and then i switch to the Dr. Seeds mix for the rest of the grow. With the top-off already cal/mag and alk balanced, i can use it for feeding mixes etc without worry.

It took a week for the two products to both arrive, by then the scene was ugly (understatement) I will try and show the before and after images as much as possible. I will recover but yield has certainly been affected. Try again on the next go-round

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chemistry said:

Stick me a pic up of your root ball. AA

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AnselAdams said:

Update: Grow #8 Candy Cane
germination 26 Sept 2020;

Flushing has begun! We we are two weeks from the scheduled end of the Candy Cane Autos. I have started flushing this week so we shall soon see how badly I screwed up this grow. ☹

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