Indoor AB Fills the Tent!

[Grey Bear]

Hey Andy,
On the mutant, you might consider trimming some of those lowest sucker branches off of the main stalks.
They will not add anything to the final product and are syphoning off some of the energy.

 

[BayouBengal55]

nice work!

 

[The Elvis]

nice job andy...

 

[AndyBotwin]

Yeah Grey Bear, they'll go soon as they're already not getting much light and are starting to get a bit wilty. I pulled a couple of lowers off the Durban yesterday while I was flushing. I generally let nature take it's course & don't do any defoliating on my plants. Maybe they're consuming energy but they'll also provide some as the plant sucks the nutrients out. Who knows what the net gain/loss is, and the cannabis books I've read are divided on the issue. Probably talking about fractions of a gram anyway, and I'm not overly concerned with yield. When in doubt I go the lazy route and do nothing most of the time.

Bayou, thanks for stopping by! Maybe my Bulldogs will meet up with your Tigers in the SEC Championship game...

Hey b16, good to see you bud!

"AFN smoke out"

 

[AndyBotwin]

Wow, I knew I had been neglecting this thread but I didn't realize it's been weeks. I'm a little peeved off with where things are at this point, and it all went wrong when I flushed prior to starting bloom nutes. I had some bad luck with the weather as right after I flushed it got very rainy and cool for most of the next week. Temps were down and humidity was way up, and it ended up taking almost 5 days for the pots to dry out so I could water/feed again. Nothing like waterlogged soil and sopping wet cloth pots hanging around the tent for a week... By the time I was able to resume feeding, the plants were yellowing fairly quickly and they have lost some of the older fans in the weeks since.

This time I have been intentionally running TaNg's schedule very closely to get a baseline for these nutes, but after this experience, I am going to modify the flushing for the next grow. In the past I have not had great results when running large quantities of water through my medium in mid-grow. I had good success with both the Trio and GH Flora series by running around a gallon of water and FloraKleen through the pot and going straight to bloom nutes. I will be doing that in the future with the AN nutes and hopefully that will avoid the problems I am having now. It's interesting because I have chatted with many folks who have used these nutes and some said flushing is critical and they had major problems without it, and others really don't bother and just run a little extra water through at the end of veg. :dunno:

Anyway, I supplemented a little with some veg nutes and it seemed to slow down the N deficiency. But I'm at day 51 now and the buds are starting to put on some density and trichomes, so I will not be adding more N than what they get with the normal flower nutes schedule. Overall the plants are still looking like the will produce a really nice harvest, so I can't complain too much, but it is irritating to lose those fan leaves now rather than in the last couple of weeks when the plant is packing on the final weight. I will say that the soil pH is still right around 6.4-6.7 in all the pots with no adjusting whatsoever, so from that standpoint I am very happy with the pH Perfect nutes.


Day 51

BSS - The mutant gal has turned out to be a pretty good plant with those three colas, though it's still very sensitive to nutes and moisture levels. You can see it's drooping in the pics needing water, even though the pot is not bone dry and the other two are fine with the same level of water in the soil. But given the rough start, it's doing well and starting to develop a distinctive sweet, sugary smell.

ADP - She's looking pretty good all things considered, and the bud sites are already getting firm to the touch. The cat piss smell is fading some and being replaced with a bit of sweetness, but I have no idea how the final product will turn out. Loads of buds forming and she looks to be the top yielder of the bunch.

OAA - The Amnesia will probably be the first one to harvest at the rate she is going. I can already see a few cloudy trichs at day 51, and the buds are getting a nice density. She's been kind of a generic skunk smell most of the way, but a distinct lemon aroma has really kicked in over the last couple of weeks.

MSC (Day 27) - This Mephisto Sour Crack was germed when it looked like the Syrup wasn't going to pan out, and now I'm kind of in limbo with it. It's not the most robust plant I've ever seen, and at the first light feeding around day 18 (same as the other three got), she clawed up like I'd dumped a whole bottle of nutes on her. Since then I have just given her RO water and she's kind of meandering along. I saw pistils around day 20 and she's up to about a foot tall now. I debated chopping her this week, but it's not costing me anything to have her in the tent while the others are growing. But unless she really takes off in preflower and impresses me, there's no way I will run the tent for several weeks after the others are done just for this one plant. I really want to grow out some of the Mephisto strains I have on hand, but it looks like it will have to wait until the next grow when I can really devote my time and energy to doing them justice.

Thanks for stopping by! :tiphat:

 

[Waira]

:Gary:Ahhhh man, late for the porn flick again! :slaps: Well, I guess it's just like in real life-- fast forward to the nasty parts! :roflcry: :brow: And from the looks of these beauties, you've been servicing them thoroughly as usual-- :foxy: Sir Bot's and the Magic Wand-oo!! The way that Syrup chick came back around, who can argue? Just like last grow, another prime example to others on why to not bail out on a plant so hastily,... :Cool bud: I dig how all of them went *boom!* for you mid-to-late veg, well into bloom! The jump from the 2nd to the 10th was impressive,...ah, but that Syrup blows my mind-- from where she was a month ago?!...from fraggy and shaggy to shagable...LOL! I hear the aromatics and flavor are to die for,... No slight to the others though.... I'm loving how shapely that ADP is, such nice long full colas-- classic lusty sativa stuff! ...cat piss aromatics? -odd indeed for DP,... It'll be interesting to see how she transforms her terp' profile over the next few weeks-- who knows what she's cookin' up in there!...not that cat piss is actually that bad- LOL! I got a bag of that strain a few years ago,...first wiff-- a cringe, then a laugh-- uncanny!,... and then the aroma grew on me :dunno:LOL!!...the bud was excellent,...and a taster hit sold me on it-- not pee-flavored at all,...rich spicy florals, a little sweet... I've had DP a couple times now, and it's great, soaring buzz with a silly smile pasted to your mug! Hopefully this auto version will keep that... ***.. Wow, no lie! -that OAA is just cruising along,... Nice chunky gummy buds forming up on her! Another shapely chick to oggle- orn perv: I can't believe this is all tucked into a 3x3 tent! --fantastic job my friend! ..***.. How are you liking these pots, brudda? The design and quality look very nice; I really like the taller, slightly tapered shape...and the frames help keep them in shape and more stable..? ..**.. You know, this over-all yellowing is something that's happened (is happening actually-- I have a few auto's going on the D-L) twice for me this year,... :dunno: and it moves fast! ...not long after the fuzzy crowns formed, it starts.. within a few days, it's lost half the green, dammit! I do a similar thing as you do- a couple heavy waterings with Sledgehammer, just a bit of run-off, and I blend fert's for more or less even numbers across the board during transition,... I can't imagine the N is dipping that low (and to me that's what this yellowing looks like, but it's hitting top to bottom at the same time..?!), and that they're on the edge of defc. like that...I feed generously! My pH according the to Accurate8 meter is high 6's,... no salty looking rime building up anywhere,...(more :dunno:- LOL!)... so I sprayed a foliar high N + a little mixed metals supp', and some 16-16-16 in the soil,.. it helped slow it, but that's all,... Muddy had mentioned ammonia as a weak foliar, spot-shot on the fans only.... have you tried this before? ... weird,...
...Huh, duly noted on the SC-- nute sensitive! We're seeing some fine grows of Mitch's gear though, and I hope to get a chance to try some down the road here,...
You a good'un Sir Botwin! -can't wait to see how these girls turn out for you,.. lots of stinky jars coming up! And thanks again for all you do for us here at AFN-- I'm sooo stoked you're servicing us so well too!! :Got it Covered..?: :BottomBeater: :wiggle: ... hey, is that a grasshopper in the tent over there...?

 

[fweedom]

Wassup Andy nice job brother theyre nice and frosty and look like theyre going to be fire!

I'm a little peeved off with where things are at this point, and it all went wrong when I flushed prior to starting bloom nutes.

In the past I have not had great results when running large quantities of water through my medium in mid-grow. I had good success with both the Trio and GH Flora series by running around a gallon of water and FloraKleen through the pot and going straight to bloom nutes.

May i ask if you used 2x the pot size of water for the mid grow flush?

Also in the past when you said you ran a gallon of water through and then went to bloom nutes, did you use plain water...let it dry out a few days...then hit it with bloom nutes? or did you run plain water through and then hit it with bloom nutes right after?

i just ask because im at the transition into bloom on my photoperiods and i was thinking of giving a plain water feed before i start bloom nutes but the pots take like 5 days to dry so i dont wanna starve them so im debating in my head what to do lol :Sharing One:

 

[AndyBotwin]

Waira, thanks for stopping by and for the kind words, my friend! I love the EZ Roots pots. All the benefits of a cloth bag with the sturdiness of a regular pot, plus as you mentioned they are taller than a regular smart pot which is good for that deep diving autoflower tap root. I will continue to use them going forward, with the caveat that they are not great for grows where the temps get low (I guess any cloth pot would have the same potential issues). Earlier this year I was fighting a winter that wouldn't quit and these pots kept the roots around 10 degrees colder than a regular plastic pot I had in the tent. Really slowed those plants down and the grow took forever to finish. And then when I flushed recently I had another bout of cool weather and they took a really long time to dry out. It would seem logical that with the breathable cloth they would dry quicker than a regular pot, but that's not been my experience. Maybe because a black plastic pot can capture radiant heat from the lights much better.

As for this accelerated yellowing, I don't recall seeing anything like this, at least not affecting a whole grow. It is absolutely related to the flush, as the girls were completely normal before then. No foliar feeding this go round, but I probably should have snuck some on the lower leaves away from the buds when I was waiting for the pots to dry so I could resume feeding. Oh well, it's definitely going to affect my yield but all three of these gals are still going to produce a very nice harvest. I have at least a half pound jarred up in my stash so this grow is only to add some more variety to get me through winter, not max out the weight. It still sucks to put any kind of time and effort into a grow and have the plants not turn out great, but after the slog that my spring/summer grow became, this one has been a breeze.

 

[AndyBotwin]

Wassup Andy nice job brother theyre nice and frosty and look like theyre going to be fire!



May i ask if you used 2x the pot size of water for the mid grow flush?

Also in the past when you said you ran a gallon of water through and then went to bloom nutes, did you use plain water...let it dry out a few days...then hit it with bloom nutes? or did you run plain water through and then hit it with bloom nutes right after?

i just ask because im at the transition into bloom on my photoperiods and i was thinking of giving a plain water feed before i start bloom nutes but the pots take like 5 days to dry so i dont wanna starve them so im debating in my head what to do lol :Sharing One:

Here's the deal on flushing, fwee. TaNg's schedule calls for running 2.5x pot volume of plain water through, then finishing with a half dose of whatever you are starting out at with the bloom nutes. Since I was using FloraKleen, I did not run nearly as much water through my pots. I used approximately 3g of water for each 3g pot and checking ppms showed that was more than enough to strip out most everything from the soil. One thing to consider is that TaNg feeds every day, while I feed each watering which is roughly every 3 days. So it's likely that I had a much lower concentration of nutes in the medium already, so such aggressive flushing wasn't needed. I did put the half dose of nutes in at the end of the flush, but at that point everything was so saturated that probably 90% of it ran right out the bottom. Then with the cool, moist ambient temps in my grow space, it added to the problem with the long drying time before I could resume normal feeding.

Since I've been using only organics for several years now, this grow was really a shakedown run for the AN nutes & I wanted to follow a successful schedule as closely as possible. Knowing what I know now, I think next time I will probably run at most around 1g of water + FloraKleen through my pots at the end of veg and then just move on to bloom nutes. I will probably do some runoff ppm testing along the way as well, and let that influence how much I flush mid-grow. Also giving a very aggressive last feeding of veg nutes prior to the flush might be helpful. In the past when I have grown with and GH synthetic nutes, I never did the massive multiple gallon flushes either, so I think I am done with those going forward.

Since the flush I have really pushed the feeding and have a little burn on the tips, but the flowers have responded well. The N deficiency seemed to slow when I supplemented with some veg nutes, but once I stopped the yellowing has continued to progress. Otherwise the plants have been great - not a spot or damaged leaf anywhere to be found. As I approach day 60 there is nothing much to do about it but let them finish out however they are going to.

 

[AndyBotwin]

Hey friends, back with another update as we wind down this grow. The tent is packed full flowers and all three of the big plants have had their last feeding and are on nothing but water until I decide to chop. The premature yellowing that I've been fighting has continued, but only the Durban has lost most of the big fans. It is a wall of funk in there, and my huge carbon filter is struggling to maintain odor control. Despite the less than perfect conditions since the flush, I figure I've got a good 3-4oz of bud per plant, and I can't wait to get these gals jarred up and curing.

Day 68

Buddha Seedbank Syrup - The ugly ducking has truly turned into a swan. A big, smelly, triple-cola swan. More evidence to support the fact that you should keep those mutants alive if you possibly can. You never know what they may turn into. She's had a sweet smell most of the way, but now I'm picking up some spicy, ginger aroma. I can't wait to see how the taste is on this one. I put the tape measure on her and she's going to finish out at 31" tall. The buds are very dense and heavy, so she may even finish out as the biggest yielder of the bunch.

Dutch Passion Auto Durban Poison - She's shed most of her fan leaves but still keeps popping out the new bud growth. Thankfully the cat piss aroma has mostly faded and been replaced by a generic fruity smell. The buds on this one have foxtailed a bit and are not as dense as I would like them to be, but hopefully things will thicken up some more over the next 1-2 weeks. But even so, she's still absolutely loaded with bud and very top heavy when I pull her out of the tent for watering. Visually it's not really sparkling with trichomes like the others, but is by far the stickiest of the bunch. I will be cleaning by scissors frequently when this one is harvested. Final tally on the height is 36".

Dinafem Original Amnesia Autoflower - This one has probably the strongest lemon smell of any strain I've grown other than a lemon haze. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the lemon flavor, so hopefully it will mellow out in cure. The buds are heavy & hard as a rock which surprised me as this is supposed to be a sativa dominant strain. Some of the leaves have been canoeing lately, which is a mystery to me since temps have been low and humidity is hanging around 50% most of the time. Not really a concern at this late date, and I still think this will be the first to harvest. The other two are mostly cloudy but I am now seeing the stray amber trich on the upper buds. She's ended up at 33" tall.

Mephisto Green Crack (Day 44) - This one has me scratching my head. It has had exactly two feedings in it's 44 day life - one light dose of veg nutes around 3 weeks, and one light dose of bloom nutes around 5 weeks. It clawed up after the first feeding so I left it alone for the rest of veg, and after the second feeding it clawed some more. It's weird because there are no signs of nute burn, and other than the talons, the plant is green and seemingly healthy. Mephisto says it can take heavy feedings, but I'm finding that it doesn't seem to like any food at all. Nevertheless, she's frosting up nicely and should produce pretty well despite the 16" height. Hopefully she'll continue to be speedy and will finish up not too long after the others.

Thanks for visiting, folks! :tiphat: