The Quest For Trichomes (a Story Of Micro Cultivation)

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SMACKA

SMACKA

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I'll be picking up nutes (Jack's 3-2-1 moving forward), and some Coco Coir tomorrow, taking cuts, and switching these girls over to 12/12.

I'd love to really dial these girls in but we've run out of room and frankly - they're almost half a year old. I won't have anything to show for these girls until early November anyway, and at this point I'm ready to move onto new girls regardless.

I'll probably grow out the clones, too - but will be popping seeds within a month or so in order to change up the genetics and... hopefully get a healthier mom to start with.

Here they are on their second last day of veg, looking a little worse for wear because I just spent 10 mins on each pruning out a bunch of dead leaves in preparation for the switch.

Here's the White Widow...

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Here's the Purple Kush...

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And here they are beaten up in the tent a few minutes before lights off...


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SMACKA

SMACKA

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Will also tie them down when I take cutting and switch them to 12/12... this is just to help with evening out the canopy, and open up some of the lower bud sites.

I haven't decided on how much/what defoliation I'll do (if any).

Thoughts?
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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Quick update - the girls got their last veg feed, and starting tomorrow will be under 12/12 lighting: 10pm-10am which is giving future consideration to cold Canadian winters being colder at night. It will help me keep temps in check.

My first cloning procedure started like all scientific endeavours... with a dab of Pink Kush

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I scoped out the mom plant - decided on 1 or 2 donour shoots, and got a glass of water ready to soak the cuttings in.

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I'm soaking Jiffy Pellets in water to hydrate.

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Take a cutting...


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Remove extra nodes/branches.... Drop in Water...


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Rinse and repeat as necessary...


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Get your Jiffy Pellets ready then move onto the next step...


Glob on some cloning gel (don't get too caught up in this shit... just buy one and go with it; it all works... Clonex, Remo, Dip N Grow, So-and-so, Remo, Honey, Aloe Vera, or just plain water... these things want to root)


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Nothing to it.

Since my cloning chamber is a PC Case, a typical cloning chamber won't work. I'll eventually clone into beer cups but for this round since I'll be gone for a week and unable to take a look at them, I wanted to get them all under one roof to keep moisture as high as possible...



Here they are all closed up in a rotisserie chicken container ;)


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They're sitting on perlite, and I added a centimeter of water in the bottom that just touches the bottoms of the pellets. This will be their only water source for the next week so hopefully that'll be enough.

Here's the finished "clone chamber", with plant leaves and chamber misted with water...





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One cutting in particular was a tiny runt, and I accidentally shaved a chunk out of her stem. We'll see how it turns out - I actually just want 2 clones of each, so I've planned for 50% failure.


At which point the (thirsty) mom's got a feed of nutes at 660ppm... Their last veg feed...


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(yes, it was a hot day today)

With a bit of luck, one or two of these clones will take root and when I arrive back in a week we'll be ready to transplant them into small pots.
 
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SMACKA

SMACKA

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How are you handling air exchange?

Air exchange just comes from the inline fan, for a few reasons.
  1. Sound
  2. Space
  3. Sufficiency
Here's the calculations that I did to come to that:
  • Tent is 3.75 sq. ft or 11.25 cubic feet
  • Fan needs to exchange 30x per hour (safe numbers)
  • For my space that's 337.5 cfh
  • The fan I use (ASIN: B01L6EFLK2 on Amazon) does 110cfm, or about 6,600 cfh
That's about 20x the strength needed, so even with the filter I have it dimmed way down and would assume I'm well over the needed numbers for FAE.

In terms of temps, it's not a tent issue, it's an household issue. I probably just need an air conditioner, but it's only for a couple months of the year so I've ignored it for the most part.
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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For the clones?

I was referencing your cloning technique

Oh, cool - for the clones it's a similar setup in that the exhaust fans do the work.

There's four fans in total and the case is split into two chambers.. .a light chamber and a plant chamber. Each chamber has a front and back fan blowing a straight shot across front to back.

Within the cloning chamber I'm just relying on the little air vents at the top shown in the pics.

Hope that answers, @Dutch Jon ? If not, let me know and I'll clarify. Hope you're doing well.
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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Yeah - not an ideal little case, but I couldn't find a more suitable container which was: dark on bottom, clear up top, fits inside a PC case, less than 7" tall, etc. :drunk2:

They're pretty tiny clones – I cut them right at the 4th node (ie. shoot-top, then 3 nodes, then the cut node) – but a better solution is probably to have small beer cups and clear soda bottles over top à la v12xjs (who posts in the micro forum, as well as other forums, and whose PC box design inspired mine). He's got a good handle on micro cultivation, so I'm taking a page from his book for the cloning/veg chamber here. :eyepiece:

All I'm hoping is that in 7 days there's one or two which aren't bone dry and dead. Even then... if they are, I just get to pop new seeds and start some new genetics so all's well that ends well either way :smoking:
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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I'm back from my week away and the girls are still alive!



Sadly, the auto-watering pan shit the bed halfway through, so when I came home the plants were wilted, and the bottle was still half-full of nutes/water.


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It was after midnight and I'd been traveling all day so I emptied the last 2L of nutes into the pots and went to bed.

A day later and here's how they look...


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SMACKA

SMACKA

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The coco plugs were absolutely water-logged.


The Purple Kush clones seem to have either died, or are on their last legs.

The White Widow clones aren't too wilty, and seem to be doing okay?


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I was afraid they'd dry out so I didn't squeeze them much before leaving.

Turns out that chicken container was more than enough to keep them damp, so I've pulled off the lid in an attempt to dry them out. I'm still misting once a day since I haven't seen roots and haven't given them any attention for a week... wanted to give them the best chance I could at getting some roots going.

Since the White Widow clones aren't too droopy, I'm hoping they'll be working on roots and the plugs drying out over the next couple days will give them a chance to flourish.

The Purple Kush clones are droopy, and the fingers are all but strings at this point.

The yellowing is on leaves which stem from the coco. Anything above the soil is still green. The leaves on that thing are so wimpy. I don't know if I even want to grow out these clone genetics again at this point.

Either way, I'll be popping some more seeds of these same genetics for another round and once I've dialled in the grow cycle a little more, I'll move onto some of the other more interesting genetics I've acquired over the last few months.
 
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Unosnow

Unosnow

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Something is seriously wrong with your soil.
If you are going to grow i HIGHLY recommend starting with the absolute best soil you can find.
I recommend super soil and cutting it with a potting mix.

If you are east coast Bumper Crop makes a INCREDIBLE mix, they even use the right type of bat guanana (there is only 1 type used for cannabis, i dont care what anyone says science says to only use this one type from a south american cave bat)

its about 60$ a bag (typically super soils run 50-60$/50lbs, cut that with some potting mix so allow room to breathe.

Also what the heck are you planting in lol?
#smartpots bro, smart pots.

You want your soil and root system to breathe, not be trapped by hard plastics (which can also leach chemicals into your soil and taken up by your plant depending on what ferts you use and how much, the salt in ferts can degrade hard plastics and release plasticides into your soil, thus into your plant.

I hope the next round goes better! if you are having trouble contacting people you can inbox me for a 24hr response, this might be my first indoor cannabis grow but i work in the greenhouse industry and have grown everything indoors but cannabis until now lol.
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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Tops were looking a little lime green still so I bumped the nutes from 650ppm to 680ppm and will see how they react.

Day 13 of flower today.

While I was feeding them I also did a defoliation, to let air get through the canopy, and open up some lower bud sites, plus did some LST to even out the canopy and give them some space from the lights.

My dad always said growing up that the key to pruning is to go just a bit too far and let them grow back into the new structure, similar to how a haircut looks better a few days after the cut.

Here's the before and after...

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And here's what I plucked...

Image 1



The plants look a little ragged but the canopy is much more even now and I'm looking forward to seeing their recovery over the next week or two.
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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Here's the White Widow a day later...

White widow



And here's the Purple Kush the next day:

Purple kush



You'll notice the leaves at the bottom are curled in from all the deficiencies, but the leaves up top are relaxed, spread out, and not clawing.

I repeat: The clawing was there when I was underfeeding them, and has stopped now that I bumped up my nutes... so no talking about Nitrogen toxicity!

Updates to come on Monday, and I'll try to take some up-close flower shots, so you can see what's happening with the pre-flowers.
 
SMACKA

SMACKA

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Quick update! I culled the clones, as none of them had rooted.

Plants in the tent have been in flower for 19 days now.

Here's the tent...

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Here's the White Widow...

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And the Purple Kush...


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And since the clones didn't work out, I popped come new seeds

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