PooToe said:

Don't remember if I had posted this or not but here is a DLI chart that you can base your initial lighting on along with seeing how the light energy ladders up at both veg and flower. Notice how the light energy is lowered when you flip then slowly ramped up. I've noticed when I follow this chart, flower sites tend to pop up a little faster at flip. No science to say why but I'm guessing the drop in light energy gives the plant a chance to switch over and secrete the needed hormones it uses to signal the plant to start flowering without having to dedicate as many resources to photosynthesis due to the drop in light energy.
I started at the recommended levels but raised them a few points higher than what was recommended. The girls loved it. I kept raising the light energy little by little everyday until I started to notice the first signs of light stress then I backed it off and left it there. After that the girls just grew into the new levels every week.

And, yes, your light settings are in range according to the chart. Good Job Brother!!!

View attachment 2294416

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

I wouldn't bother. Start reading up on the dry/cure process. This is the point that will make or break your grow so it's important.

You'll probably see the most bud swell the last few weeks before harvest. I'm guessing they'll get twice as thick as they are now.

I'd also venture to say you have between 4 -6 weeks before you enter the harvest window.

Click to expand...

Olddude420 said:

Excellent. I know what you mean about missing the plants. Every 2 weeks (off water change week) I go out of town to my summer/retirement house to work on it. While away I miss the plants terribly. When in town i check em every morning before work and take pictures. When I get home, I kiss my wife hello, set down my bags, and go check the girls out, in that order.
Before my next grow I want to get with you and pick your brain some more on the Tent Buddy, DLI, etc.
Have a good vacation.

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

I know iv seen this chart a couple times before, but im also unsure if you already posted it here hahaha i think maybe you did? I dunno, theres a lot to go back through lol

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

Im definitely gettin into reading and watching videos about drying and curing lately. Slow drying and slow curing seem to be the way to go, i guess thats the best way to let the nitrogen and chlorophyll deteriorate while preserving the terpenes. Roughly 60° and 60% humidity is what iv heard to be perfect for initial drying, and then about 50%-60% in the jar for curing, making sure to burp it at least once a day.

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

Iv also read some good things about a certain type of bag thats supposed to control humidity, but i just dont trust them after working in the industry and seeing what comes in some of those bags.... theres a really nasty mold problem in the "legal" industry right now. I always catch it and bug the company i work for to destroy it or send it back. Iv gotten so used to moldy weed that i can tell you if its moldy just by the smell.... really sucks lol and AZ doesnt require companies to test for mold in their flower, but they do for concentrate lol i absolutely hate it.

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

And damn, i totally thought i was closer than that! Lol shes 43 days into flower (as of the day i switched lighting schedule) so thats roughly 6 weeks. I guess that makes perfect sense with what youre saying though. I might have been thinking of autoflower plants. This is definitely a photo and probably gonna take longer to ripen up. Which is fiiiiine with me, im very patient about stuff like this lol especially knowing il be rewarded for my patience, yea i dont mind the wait lol

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

Yes, this is a good journal for you to hold onto. Lots of good info.

60°/60% is the general rule. Yes, low and slow. Low temp/slow dry.

If you want to get even more precise you can buy a 2 pin wood moisture meter and it will tell you what the moisture content of your flowers are.

I was taught how to dry and cure from hippies up in norcal initially but since then I've modified their process to coincide more with actual science. Some of their findings were spot on, some were right but for the wrong reasons and some were just wrong. I also looked at other industries that rely on drying for their products to see what they did. I learned how the Germans like to dry their hops and why for beer(hops and weed flowers are very similar) along with how the Cubans dry their tobacco leaves and why. Gave me great insight into how to use both sources of information to put together a process.

You must be talking about Grove Bags. I've only used them once but I like them. When I was taught how to dry and cure, we were told to use large jars to cure which is what I've used for years. This time around I used the Grove Bags and can say that they did what they said they would. I guess where things tend to go wrong is when people try and use them to dry thinking that because the bag will maintain a 60% humidity level they can just stick them in the bag and they'll dry down to 60%. Most of the time what they get is a bag full of mold.
To use Grove Bags correctly you have to stabilize the humidity first meaning the dry portion of the process THEN you can stick them in the bags and let them maintain that level without them getting any drier.
This last run I pulled around 5lb. I dried them to 62% and stuck them in 1lb bags. By the time I got to the 3rd pound the flowers had been sitting in them, untouched, for around 4 months. When I opened the bag the flowers were peaking and the taste and high were a notch above the same smoke I had been smoking previously with a shorter cure time.

I typically don't buy from dispensaries for that exact reason. I get that the product gets tested and all but there are as many crooked labs as there are cultivators. If I grow my own I know exactly what went in it. Besides....growing is fun!!!

Day 43 of flower means you're in week 6 of flower going into week 7. Photos usually take around 10 - 12 weeks to fully mature.

Click to expand...

Organic13 said:

This is one of the most informative threads I've read here. I definitely have the link to it saved.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Very impressive grow. Plant is absolute perfection.

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

Water day again! No nutrients today, next nutrients are gonna go in the top soil right before i go on vacation, and then no more after that so i can (hopefully) drain out some of that nitrogen over time.

Hope you enjoy the timelapse :) and the wide angle top photo of the canopy. Looks pretty sweet lol

Click to expand...

MisterDunk said:

Hey yo, I have had to water a lot less as the girls get closer to chop. I even dribble some water over the top soil rather than wait for them to get dry like styrofoam and dunk them. Is that normal?

Click to expand...

Captspaulding said:

Exactly, though I never stop giving because it’s mega crop, it has a bit more than just the n and the superseding supplement kinda wants that stuff as a building g block to more complete nutrition through mid flower,
Late flower its scorched earth . Everything it can stand for the swelling. As long as you meet the n demands specific to strain in mid flower, you should be golden as plant demand for n is donezo.

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

I just re read this and immediately I thought "Run your blend deeper into mid flower, then high PPM feeds of straight Bloom." Yes?

Friend of mine that hangs with the owner of Dyna-Gro told me he said forget about bloom ratios, just run it with grow to harvest. I've seen it done but, you know, variables.

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

Yes, it was the Grove Bags! I think youre 100% right, companies are absolutely putting product in packaging WAY before it should be put in there. Sealing in tons of moisture with the buds and causing really disgusting problems.

I know for a fact the industry, at least in AZ, is rushing the hell out of the whole process because a bunch of rich people who have never smoked weed before (iv personally spoken to multiple cannabis business owners out here, thats how i know that) are getting into the industry just to make fat stacks of cash.

Its really frustrating and part of the reason i want to learn to grow so badly. I wanna bring real quality back to cannabis. Not this crappy weird designer weed bullshit thats always goin around now. If i can learn how to breed, im gonna do everything in my power to breed another skunk#1 style plant. Really miss that smell. From the plant... I live near skunks. Fuck real skunks lol

The labs and cultivators and dispensaries and politicians..... theyre all ignorant assholes. At least the majority of them seem to be based on their decisions.
If politicians and lawmakers understood, then the state would require mold testing and multiple other quality inspection points.
If dispensaries understood, theyd stop boosting the prices of products by multiple hundreds of % above what they buy it for, and theyd probably cater more to the medical users.
If cultivators understood, they would quit rushing things to just get a product out there to sell.
And if labs understood, they would stop taking bribes to boost testing on shit all the time!

For example, i recently had a type of concentrate from a certain (usually very high quality) vendor come into the store. Well when i was entering the testing into our system at the dispensary, i noticed the testing stated "104% total cannabinoids".... so either they got bribed or they didnt clean their machines or somebody fucked up when inputting the numbers into the testing machines. No matter what, all of this adds up to fuck consumers over. I hate it.

I think thats a fuckin great idea, learning how others dry and cure their stuff and applying it to cannabis. Iv heard that the Dutch will actually bury their cannabis under ground for a certain period of time, and its supposed to cure it really well. I have no idea, thats totally anecdotal. But im sure that, like your old hippie friends, they got something very right about that process. I should look into that too

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

I just re read this and immediately I thought "Run your blend deeper into mid flower, then high PPM feeds of straight Bloom." Yes?

Friend of mine that hangs with the owner of Dyna-Gro told me he said forget about bloom ratios, just run it with grow to harvest. I've seen it done but, you know, variables.

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

I'm sure most of those fat stacks aren't made from store front sales?

Click to expand...

RootFarmer said:

That's interesting. I once read a study done in Canada that looked at NPK ratios and yields. They found that added P and K didn't result in higher yields. That a 3:1:2 NPK yielded the same results as a high P:K ratio. There position was that the practice of using lower N and high P:K came about as a result of growers relying on tomato fertilizer back in the dark ages of growing when we had few options.
That being said, I've tried the 3:1:2 ratio and it never held up. The plants always asked for more P in early flower. I've even tried variations of an "all purpose" straight ratio of like 1:1:1 on up to 7:7:7 and never quite cut it either. They always ask fir more P and K. But I do wonder if cutting back K a little sooner might reduce dry times at harvest. I've gone with a lower K amount for my tomatoes for quite awhile now. I get more flesh and less juice/seeds. They are super meaty. That got me thinking about how K levels impact water retention in cannabis and if it's really necessary at the end. Would it affect budswell? Is budswell just unnecessary water retention or is it an actual increase in biomass?

Click to expand...

mstrpkl said:

No, the stores are just making stacks on top of the fat stacks lol

Click to expand...

PooToe said:

Interesting. I think you're on to something.

My friend told me that they'd done some tests at a few of the facilities they supply and found almost zero difference in dry weight like you said. I think you are partly right about how cannabis growers came to the formulas you see nowadays but I would offer up that part of it came from repeated deficiencies cropping up in mid to late flower hence the higher P and K. Dunno....just speculating now.

For me, the grow and bloom ratios respectively are 7-4-10 and 4-8-7. If I do a half strength blend of each my ratio would be 6-6-8. Good balance with a slight emphasis on K. Going into late flower, as @Captspaulding mentioned, remove the grow ratio leaving me with a 4-8-7 ratio. Essentially a drop in N, a bump in P and a slight drop in K. I like a bump of P in mid to late flower so this works for me. Granted, the bumps are slight but you don't need much in flower.

Here in California, a lot of the dispensary owners were old school cultivators. They still had black market connections so they were using the dispensary to be able to move large amounts through their stores without reporting it moving through their warehouses. If they got caught they'd just say oops forgot to report and pay the taxes and fines and carry on. The amounts going out the backdoor compared to the 1/8ths going out the front was staggering. Same with distributors.

One owner told me he didn't really care about front of house sales other than to keep the state happy with his sales and the taxes he paid on them.

Click to expand...