4th Grow. 2*600w, 8 SHaze, 3 Red Diesel, 7 Cheese

[theTinker]

This is my 4th Grow. 2nd grow in my current room setup.

History:
I've grown 3 cycles of Dutch Passion Super Haze from start to finish. 1st grow was slow and wastful using CFLs. 2nd Used HPS and some ventilation but temperatures got too hot. 3rd grow had HPS and proper ventaliation, 3 weeks till harvest. All produced very nice buds to different degrees. Thanks in no small part to all you fine members at the farm. Its my bible!

Proposed Grow:
7 Big Bhudda Cheese. Fem Seeds.
3 Barneys Red Diesel. Fem Seeds.
8 Dutch Passion Super Haze in Autopots. Clones.

Conditions:
Multi level grow.(top and bottom)

Medium: Soil. Bio Bizz All mix. 5 litre pots.
Watering: Hand watering Cheese + Diesil strains. Haze in Autopots.
Nutes: Bio Grow, Bio bloom, Bio Alg Mic. Bloombastic. Considering Bio Root Juice.
Lights: 2*600Watt with Cool tubes.
Ventilation: 6" fan running closed loop. 5" exhaust with Carbon filter. 4" intake. No access to outside air so hot air is exhausted into my home which really saves on heating costs. Cool air is room temperature(kitchen). I keep a window open at night(lights on) to keep things fresh.
Temperature: 20C at night(min), 28C at day(max).

Progress:
I purchased seeds for Big Bhudda cheese as a bigger yeilder for my grow(part cash crop). Haze was taking a long time and although a nice yeild, nothing comparing to pictures i see!

Super Haze: I took 2 rounds of clones for Super Haze. The first were taken from mothers who were accidently put into flower for a few days. It triggered flowering and they were then put back into veg 2 weeks ago. This has me a bit concerned.
I tried clonex rooting gel instead of my usual cheap powder and put the clones into rooting cubes i purchased. I never used cubes before. 7 days later, not a single clone i've checked has had any root development from thier stem. None.

As a precaution I took another round of clones(20ish) yesterday and placed them in soil with the same rooting gel as per normal. I dont know if ill be using the cubes again!
In total, about 40 clones. I only need 8 so fingers crossed.

Cheese + Diesel:
Germed 8 cheese and 3 Diesel in moist tissue between 2 plates over 2 days.
All have sprouted and are planted into small soil pots and placed back into the cloning tent.

If anyone has any opinions, thoughts or advice. Please give it! Especially about the damn rooting problem...

Im very much looking forward to trying these new strains and excited about trying autopots out!

Thanks for reading

T

 

[spinkus]

Hey thetinker on the rooting problem; the best thing l ever did was leave the ez-cloner and get rapid rooters. Not saying the cloners don't work, there just finnicky. Rapid rooters are easy as hell just moisten them up once a day and thats it.

I use rapid rooters and water with a 10ml of LiquidKarma per gallon. Thats it. No gel, no powder, nothing else... here is what we get

 

[theTinker]

Update 2

Thanks spinkus for the rooting tip. I will most likely try that next round. I hate waiting two week for no shows!

Progress:
Super Haze: I checked roots on my first round of clones. There was alot of discarded foliage by the plants so i pruned these too.

First Tray: 55% success.
Before:

After:

Second Tray 100% Success.
Before:

After:

I cloned 1 entire tray from one mother and the second tray partly from the same mother, and partly from another mother.
Question: Is it possible that one of my mothers gives excellent rooting potential and the other gives very little chance?

This would explain why in the 55% success tray, most of the success was in one side of the tray where i implant from one mother. I got 6/6 clones in a row all success. then 7 out of 18 in the rest of the tray.
Is this possible and Likely?

Tomorrow i will be repotting the survivors into larger soil cups. I need 8 strong growers from the choice of 30ish.

Thanks for Reading.

tT

 

[theTinker]

Update 3:

Super Haze:
I've repotted 23 Super Haze into 1 litre pots. These surviving clones rooted in 10-14 days. (75% success from cutting to roots)
I want the best 8 of these for my grow in Autopot pots. I'm very interested in how they perform in AutoPots comparing to my experience with this plant.
18 of these plants are in my cloning tent vegging under 2*36 watt long CFLs. The remaining 5 had to go into my mother room with a few regular 25 watt CFLs supporting them. Ill rotate to maintain even light distribution.

Cheese + Red Diesel:
7/7 Cheese (Yellow pots) sprouted and survived. Currentily under 6 23watt CFLs. 3/3 Diesel (Blue pots) sprouted. All are doing ok. If a bit stringy. I'll try get the lights as close as possible and babies need a little wind to strengthen thier lovely bodies up.

lol, it seems i popped 2 seeds into a single pots. I don't look forward to untangliing these!

All plants have 10 more days to strengthen up before I move them into the room and the 600w HPS.

Thanks for Reading. Any advice or questions are welcome.

tT

 

[Xrancher]

Hey theTinker, if you want to see some real screw ups cloning, check out my learning process here...

I killed all of them by trying to do them with natural lighting...some experiments go really wrong...Rapid rooters are the bomb...my last clone project was 100% with them...and yes this site is the most informative and the most friendly site on the net...props to Logic...and all you farmers for sharing your knowledge.

Xrancher

 

[theTinker]

Hey Everyone, Hope all is green and mite free!

Update (1 week continued in cloning tent, now 1 week into Veg)

All surviving plants are now vegging in my grow room. Under a 600watt HPS. 48" starting but now at 18inches. About 1 week now.

Super Haze: The Superhaze are doing well. A bit elongated and thin comparing to the seeded RD and Cheese. I think this is normal?
Here are the pictures of the Dutch Passion Super Haze clones. I would really like some advice on which of these to keep. I need to pick EIGHT of the sexiest ladies for my autopot run. Experienced and knowledable opinions welcomed on this! Im at quite a lost about judging the girls.

Cheese: Here are my Big Bhudda Cheese one week into veg. They are all doing fine now. I believe the yellowing of their leaves was a nitrogen deficency? Does that look correct? started at tips and progressed inwards, oldest leaves first.
I was giving them PH 6.5 water with 2ml/L Rhizotonic. Yesterday I gave them some Vegging feed Bio Bizz Grow 1ml/L so hopefully they green up shortly!

RedDiesel: Same as Cheese so far. Slightly less vigorous but no problems. One of them suffered issues and looked deformed and none of the leaves where forming properly. Twisted, damaged, dry, almost a mix of true leaves and seed leaves, malformed. So i bined it incase it was a virus or bad dna.

AUTPOTS! yay! It took a while to set them up as the smart vavles (blue pump things) needed to be reset and i found them a bid fiddley. Anyways, Here is 8 of them being fed from a resovoir(my first) and with a air pump running a air cage in each one.

I found the pots took nearly 36 hours to reach maxium saturation through wicking action. This was longer than I thought by far, but im very glad that this points to little chance of water logging the soil! The smart valves also come very close to completely drying out before refilling. I like these pots so far. I shall transplant the 8 best SuperHaze into the pots in a few days once thier roots have established more.

Thanks for reading so far. I'd really like some advice on the SH choices. I dont know how to pick good plants yet, and i'd like some pointers from the examples above. Thanks in advance!

tT

 

[jagle]

yo man, living the setup and loving the grow, very clean, its nice.

about the clones i don't have personal experience, but from what vie read its all about healthy plants, hows its growth, tallest or smallest, is it stretching or the runt of the litter. whats its nodes spacing like? stretching too much or nice and even, even canopy and healthy even leafs, no deformities.

but also what do you want, no point picking the more saliva based strains if you don't have height

 

[theTinker]

thanks. Its been a year working on that set up improving it each time. Its working well enough so far. If the autopots turn out to be a success. I may switch over entirely to them. Fingers crossed :)

I am definitely stuck for height. All those clones are the most vigourous of the bunch. I have 20 others that are much slower growerings.
I will be topping (uncle bens) and lsting tomoro so i can control thier height that way. Node spacing seems far on all of them, but in saying that, its a single leaf each node unlike the seeds which are very symetrical.

I think i may choose 1-6,10,13 and the guy in the yellow pot. Yellow is smallest but hes a week behind and almost the same! Ill put him in the middle under the light and his height should be less likely to be a burn issue,

7,8,9,11, 12 seem more stringy in comparison.

 

[jagle]

actually id agree with you there on the numbers, those plants look great

 

[usstoner]

looking good man...

 

[theTinker]

thanks jagle and usstoner

 

[theTinker]

new fan install

My old fan broke so i needed to install a new one. My old fan was a shitty home depot style deskfan. now ive a big boy fan :)

I found a nice simple cheap way of insulating the sound which i plan to extend to all my gear.

You know those cheap roll up foam bed mats that people use for camping under thier sleeping bag? Well i got one of those and its slices up real nice to whatevery shape desired. and provides a nice soft flexible vibration absorbing material between fans and wood/wall.

 

[theTinker]

I spent much of this week making new trays to fit in as many plants as possible. I can now fit in 15*10L plants on top. 6 more than usual :) Watering has always been a night mare for me so I've been working hard at a new watering system. I completed most of it yesterday.

A pump from my watering butt pumps water to drip lines in each pot. Its simple, safe, and easy to set up. I run the pump for about 4-5 mins to water the plants. Drainage is a bit of an issue but I will be building a new drainage system shortly. This dripper system allows me to manually water without much effort, and put on a timer, It should tie the girls over should the need arise.

Im VERY VERY happy about this setup. Finally watering is not a nightmare for me.

Ill do an update of the plants and the new drainage system this weekend.
The plants are on Day 1 of flower. All looking well. Big bhuddas cheese came out with 2-3 different phenos. 1 is strechy with long internodes, the rest are smaller and tighter internodes.

 

[theTinker]

Worked really hard these last 2 weeks.

New drainage, new trays, new watering system. Its looking great and working better :)

New Watering system is a drip feeder connected to a pump, manually or timer activated. This is saving me hours :) It took 10 minutes to water rather an an hour :)
New Trays:
I found it quite difficult to find a drain for months. My own previous attempt was to use a hose and seal around it. it was shit and leaked. However after cutting this part. It made a great drain. Its for connecting two pipes or something.

22mm hole.

Since this, i've actually cut a 2mm deep recess 38mm wide which fits PERFECT. So its flush with the tray.

Sealed with silcon all round after completion. Its drain to waste so i dont worry about it being good for plants etc.

Drainage pipe:
Standard gutter with end cap.

Attached same drain to it using 25mm hole drill bit, screwed it to wall and supported using a standard bracket. Its tilted so it drains to one end.

Pipe attached that will lead to a bucket for now.

 

[jagle]

nice very impressive and clean

 

[theTinker]

Pump in a bucket, just testing. Its usually in my big res.

Trays draining into gutter.

Gutter draining into bucket.

Drippers in plants :)

Top and bottom plants. THey are a bit stringy due to a lack of air flow. I just installed 2 new fans so it might help.

 

[jagle]

gorgeous, proper jungle

 

[freegrow]

nice grow

love the detail .............subed +rep

 

[theTinker]

Tonight was hell!

3 of my plants hermied. I dont know why. The rest look ok.
I checked each branch and node. I threw out the 3 bad ones as they were flipping on multiple branches.

My air ducting pipe ripped! its right at the back of my room so it takes ages to take everything out and repair stuff.

Branches were being burnt as i waited too long to flip to 12/12 and they've grown too big.

ahhhhhh sometimes this is a hard job!

Lessons Learned:
1: Training and trimming is a must, NEVER again let plants branch as often as they want. End up with 30+ tiny branches + 2-3 big ones. The small ones are floppy and block light n air flow and are a pain to deal with.
TRAIN AND TRIM EARLY to structure the plants. 4-6 main colas ONLY.

2: Wind... I forsaked thee, and thou wrathful vengence has smote me. My fan broke just before start of flower. Being poor as i am at the moment, i waited a couple weeks before getting a new one. This left my stems all weak and floppy and together with untrained ladies, Its a mess. Branches falling everywhere. You are very important mr wind. I shall make u a hurricane next round. All leaves shall dance in your path.

3: Flip when needed, not when is convient. I had some other plants vegging so i thought i'd just use the room for that too... It made my girls too big and when they flipped.. they're far too big. Wasted 5-6 inches down the bottom, and time, and the branches are now being burnt at top.

4: Sort out yer electrics. Wires everywhere are a pain and a safety issue.

 

[theTinker]

Now that the bitching is over.

A few words on the new stuff.
The cheese is ok.. Im not too impressed with its growth pattern, and 3 ladies hermieing.. im not happy with. Sorry Big Bhudda.. Im wanting a lil more.
I have one plant in there from BB that is keeping me interested. Cheese number 6. Shes branchy, good bud sites, internodes not too bad. We'll see how she does and might make her my cheese mother.

The autopots ! These guys. I love em and hate em.
They are REALLY easy to use once set up, i dont touch these things at all.
They have GREAT growth rates. Easily out doing my previous grows of the same strain. These things have turned my plants into monsters.
Bud sites are developing normal but its like a big bush rather than a few limbs.
The only downsides are these 2. They are not for tight spaces or major efficent use of space. Given their dimensions. I can fit 16 plants inside the same area as these 8 plants. With slightly smaller pots of course (7 liter instead of 10). Even though the growth rate on these are great, and the maintence little. I'd prefer twice the amount of plants.

If you grow in a tent and just want a few large plants with little care, and its just for personal use. These things are incredible. Albiet a bit fussy with clogging. But, if your in it for a bit of cash cropping or desperately need a larger yeild overall. I'd stick with regular pots, and install a simple manual dripper system.

I shall be giving these autopots to a friend who would use them. I give them a thumbs up for what they do, but just not suited to my situation.