New Grower Back at it with Coco: Night Owl, Mephisto, Twenty20, Berserker

[DoobieGrows]

Based on my experiences from my last grow, I did not expect my plants to get this large. I had to raise my lights so that they’re directly attached to the hangers on my 80 inch tent. I'm feeding them ~500ppm of Dyna-Gro Bloom and Mag-Pro nutes at the moment along with CaliMagic, and occasionally Pro-Tekt silica which I only use at this point as my PH up.

I sort of have the feeling I'm doing something wrong that's causing this excess stretch. I don't think it's the light intensity, since I have been pretty attentive to my DLI. Perhaps my environment is too hot? It gets close to 80 F on some days. The humidity is consistently around 65-70%. Or maybe everything is going well and they're just going to be massive plants. *Shrugs* We'll see.

I had to get a new 4x2 tent because the plants quickly outgrew my tent. I don't know why I thought I could fit 6 plants into a 4x4. The plants are under sub-optimal lighting because my 400 watt bar light is in my 4x4, and my 200 watt board lights are in my 4x2.

DLI is about 60 at the top of the canopy in my 4x4, but I can't really do much about it. The lights are on the second lowest setting at 40% intensity and the tops of my plants are just too close to lights for me to make big adjustments. I can't raise the lights any higher up and I already had to move my carbon filter outside of my tent.

The 2 Berserker plants - BB3xMOG and GDBxDJ, and the Twenty20 Durban Sunrise are all a little slower to develop. They just seem to be nearing the end of their stretch (thankfully). I'm anticipating that those three are going to be ~100 or 100+ day plants. Hopefully they'll be finished before my vacation on August 25th.

This was a super low maintenance grow and bottom watering makes everything so much easier. If all goes well, I’ll write up a detailed account of exactly what I did to serve as a guide of sorts for others.

Fugue State. 60 plus inches tall…after I super cropped it.
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Queens Banner ~53 inches tall
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Berserker GDBxDark Jedi - 2 gallon pot
I took this photo yesterday, and you can sort of see that it's distinctly shorter than the Fugue State. Well...I checked this afternoon and its now about the exact same height as the Fugue State.
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(CDLCxSS)xCDLC last week when I measured her, she was about 44 inches tall.
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Fugue state bud

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berserker BB3xMarathon on the left. I dropped a fan on her last week and a few of her branches had to go. Twenty 20 Durban Sunrise on the right. Both had to be super cropped to fit inside my new 60 inch tall 4x2
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Looks great
The reason why your plants are stretching is the DynaGro nutes have a good bit of ammoniacal nitrogen. That along with the far red in your led causes the stretching in flowering. You can raise your light as high as you possibly can. Then crank it up a little bit. Watch for stress. That may help with the stretching. It did for me anyway.

 

[DoobieGrows]

I had good luck with Dyna-Gro in a coupe early runs. I ended up switching to Jacks for ease of storage and less bottles to mix. Good stuff though. Especially that Pro-Tekt. I still use that, and in the same way you do, as a pH buffer. It's tricky having to add it in first but once you know how much you can hit your pH almost everytime. Plus, it seems to hold the same pH without much drift for nearly a week. Not bad!

I hope those stems are strong. Once those buds start packing on the mass I bet those branches start flopping about.

I am going to try Jacks next time also. I do have some Megacrop 1 part I need to use first though.

 

[DCLXVI]

I’d be down to try some powdered nutes. How has Jacks been with ph stability?

Very good so far. I use RO water with the silica as a pH buffer and store it in gallon jugs with the cap on. I don't know how it holds up in an open reservoir but mine holds steady for about a week. If you just mix the Jacks on it's own the pH usually comes out to 5.1-5.5 so it needs a bit of adjusting. The silica works great to bring it up.

Jacks has a couple different lines depending on your water source. You can also send your tap water in for them to test and recommend based on that. Pretty cool trick.

I know a lot of people here are using the Megacrop with excellent results as well.


Jacks the cheap way: Just buy part A from Jacks and the rest is common ingredients.

It's Part A, Epsom salt, Part B

Part A : Buy from Jacks

Epsom salt: Buy it cheap as heck at the grocery

Part B : Calcium NItrate - you can get agricultural grade Cal-Nit very cheap from Amazon etc.. Southern Ag makes a good one.

 

[DoobieGrows]

Very good so far. I use RO water with the silica as a pH buffer and store it in gallon jugs with the cap on. I don't know how it holds up in an open reservoir but mine holds steady for about a week. If you just mix the Jacks on it's own the pH usually comes out to 5.1-5.5 so it needs a bit of adjusting. The silica works great to bring it up.

Jacks has a couple different lines depending on your water source. You can also send your tap water in for them to test and recommend based on that. Pretty cool trick.

I know a lot of people here are using the Megacrop with excellent results as well.


Jacks the cheap way: Just buy part A from Jacks and the rest is common ingredients.

It's Part A, Epsom salt, Part B

Part A : Buy from Jacks

Epsom salt: Buy it cheap as heck at the grocery

Part B : Calcium NItrate - you can get agricultural grade Cal-Nit very cheap from Amazon etc.. Southern Ag makes a good one.

This is called The Recipe

 

[proustdreams]

Very good so far. I use RO water with the silica as a pH buffer and store it in gallon jugs with the cap on. I don't know how it holds up in an open reservoir but mine holds steady for about a week. If you just mix the Jacks on it's own the pH usually comes out to 5.1-5.5 so it needs a bit of adjusting. The silica works great to bring it up.

Jacks has a couple different lines depending on your water source. You can also send your tap water in for them to test and recommend based on that. Pretty cool trick.

I know a lot of people here are using the Megacrop with excellent results as well.


Jacks the cheap way: Just buy part A from Jacks and the rest is common ingredients.

It's Part A, Epsom salt, Part B

Part A : Buy from Jacks

Epsom salt: Buy it cheap as heck at the grocery

Part B : Calcium NItrate - you can get agricultural grade Cal-Nit very cheap from Amazon etc.. Southern Ag makes a good one.

Is there a specific schedule that you're following?

 

[DCLXVI]

Is there a specific schedule that you're following?

Nothing too fancy. The Jacks is pretty simple and straightforward. I usually run 60-80% strength start to finish. I run in coco coir and test my runoff for volume and ppm. I adjust strength based on what the plants are using. If ppm is below input, increase strength. If ppm is more than 300 over input, decrease strength. Easy peasy. Only hitch? You have to mix part A, epsom, then part B in that order. If you don't you get a cloudy mess. Measure, stir, wait, stir, wait,stir.... and so on until each part is dissolved.

80%: Grams per gallon. You can easily run this start to finish. Just watch to see if it's too much Nitrogen.
3g part A
1g epsom salt ( I like to bump this to 1.1g or 1.2g)
2g part B


They have a couple extra products they make. I bought the starter kit "bucket" as it had everything.

Clone/seedling product: I use this when presoaking my pots and for the first 1-2 weeks, which is usually only 1 or two waterings.

Then it's just straight 80% most of the time, which if you look at their website 80% of the full strength photoperiod formula is actually the 3-2-1 ratio they advertise. "Jacks 3-2-1" nearly perfect for autoflowers. Hahaha.

They do make a "Bloom" powder for the transition week but I've not had good luck with it. Just sticking to the 80% blend seems to work just fine.

There is also a "Finish" powder that they say to use for the last 2 weeks before harvest. I do like that one.

I've had a couple runs at 80% strength where it was definitely a little N heavy and the plants showed it but somewhere in that 60-80 range is really good.

I do use a liquid silica product that I like. I use it as a pH buffer. Silica will raise pH and I've kept a lot of sheets of paper of my nute blends. I put my EC/ppm pen in the mixing bucket and add silica until I hit a certain ppm. That usually brings the pH right where I want and it holds steady for at least a week in my experience. I am going to switch to a dry powder version once this bottle is done.


One other point, the Jacks is a little N heavy for autos but works fantastic at full strength on photos. I should pick up a bag of soluble gypsum for Ca without the N bump that the Jacks Calcium Nitrate has. It's pretty cheap and probably using half Cal-Nit and half gypsum would be ideal. Ah well, too many bags! I like the 3 part measure and go simplicity of the Jacks line. I do want to try the 1 part MegaCrop soon. I think it just needs a little Mg and Sulfur bump which is easy with epsom salt. Apologies for writing you a novel.

 

[proustdreams]

Haven't updated in a bit, but all 6 plants have been chopped! Fugue State, (CDLC x SS) x CDLC, and Queen's Banner were all chopped around day 85-86. Durban Sunrise started to throw nanners towards the end of her life so she was chopped on day 90. No other nanners to be seen, and I let the plant go a bit longer than I normally would, so zero points deducted from Twenty20 for the nanners. BB3 x MoG was chopped around day 95 and GDB x Dark Jedi was chopped day 100-101. I've chopped and trimmed a few branches from the first three I chopped after about 10-12 days of drying.

Fugue State
Massive colas larger than soda cans. Plant structure was a tall main cola that nearly reached the top of my 80 inch tent if I hadn't supercropped it. The side branches didn't grow out horizontally too much and liked to grow straight up just like the main. I get a strong peppery smell, with hints of grapefruit and lemon rinds. The smoke is smooth, and I felt the buzz nearly entirely in my head. My friend has a really strong tolerance, and the Fugue hit him more like a strong indica - he immediately slumped back into his chair and his eyes were super relaxed. He felt it mostly in the body.

(CDLC x SS) x CDLC

Runner-up to Queen's Banner. I may have chopped a bit early because the effects are a bit racy to me. It was the shortest tent in my grow (45 + inches) and had an ideal amount of side branching - not too much so that you'll want to cut off some bud sites to prevent crowding and larf, but just enough to get a great yield. Although this strain is technically a CDLC x SS BX1 with CDLC, I am getting zero CDLC terps - in fact the plant smells exactly like Sour Stomper at this point, but that may change with the cure. This plant had way more bud sites than the sour stomper, but they were golf ball sized and not nearly as fat as the Sour Stomper buds. My initial impression is that I prefer Sour Stomper, but I would still keep this strain in my rotation.

Queens Banner

Smells like gas up front and in the back end. Red berries and a cloying jammy sweetness permeate with a discernible funky stank. I don't smell too much cheese as others have noted, but my friend says he can smell it quite clearly. The high reminds me of Sour Stomper - an excellent versatile high that has something for everyone and is great for social outings. I haven't smoked the BB3 x MoG or the GDB x Dark Jedi, but so far Queen's Banner is sitting on the throne. Mine grew tall with wide spreading side branches that had difficulty supporting the buds.

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[DCLXVI]

nice run!