New Grower Canna Coco goes to Mephisto’s Wedding

[MIAutomatic]

They are flying along, man i am envious.
Uk420man

Thanks man! I have usually screwed up at least something minor at this point, fingers crossed I can keep it on the rails through harvest.

 

[MIAutomatic]

Cruising right along, all the plants are starting to flower now. They don’t quite have budlets yet, but the stretch seems mostly done and flowers are starting to form. Plants are pretty maxed out in height, I can probably allow them to get 1-2 inches closer, but the tallest plant is at exactly 24 inches below the light. I have the LED lights pretty well dialed in, I ended up needing to turn them down to get the DLI I was shooting for,

DLI across the top of the canopy is between 45-52 @17 hours of light. I am running lights 17/7 right now. I would have needed to raise the lights a little higher to get the DLI I wanted, and shaving an hour off was easier. They are not showing any signs of heat stress at this height, so I will keep it this way for now.

The Double Grape was showing signs of heat stress, and had been for a few weeks. I have grown DG before and never got such a lanky phenotype. It was taller than the other plants by 2-3 inches and I couldn’t get it any further from the light, so she has been re-homed into my second tent. I didn’t want to put her under the second CMH I have for the same heat/light stress reasons, and running a 315 watt light for one plant in a half gallon pot also seemed silly. As an alternative I got my old 2ft HO T5 ballast out. I am running it just a couple inches over the canopy and the DLI is a respectable 20-30 with a 20/4 light schedule. She won’t be a huge yield, but it’s a fun and low risk alternative to letting her be light stressed all through flowering. It was also getting just a little crowed in the other tent with 5 plants, so this may be for the best. I did a bend on the main stem to even out the canopy. It cracked a bit, but looks like it will heal just fine.

I have got the understory cleaned up and all the shaded fan leaves removed. On the early flowering plant I’ll do a bit more leaf plucking today or tomorrow, and then on the other three once the budlets start to fill in a bit more.

All plants are a pretty good size and have very beefy stems for their height. Now that I have a feel for these 2 gallon bags I think I will probably resume topping the plants next round and run 4 x 2gal bags per 3x3 tent.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[uk420man]

Cruising right along, all the plants are starting to flower now. They don’t quite have budlets yet, but the stretch seems mostly done and flowers are starting to form. Plants are pretty maxed out in height, I can probably allow them to get 1-2 inches closer, but the tallest plant is at exactly 24 inches below the light. I have the LED lights pretty well dialed in, I ended up needing to turn them down to get the DLI I was shooting for,

DLI across the top of the canopy is between 45-52 @17 hours of light. I am running lights 17/7 right now. I would have needed to raise the lights a little higher to get the DLI I wanted, and shaving an hour off was easier. They are not showing any signs of heat stress at this height, so I will keep it this way for now.

The Double Grape was showing signs of heat stress, and had been for a few weeks. I have grown DG before and never got such a lanky phenotype. It was taller than the other plants by 2-3 inches and I couldn’t get it any further from the light, so she has been re-homed into my second tent. I didn’t want to put her under the second CMH I have for the same heat/light stress reasons, and running a 315 watt light for one plant in a half gallon pot also seemed silly. As an alternative I got my old 2ft HO T5 ballast out. I am running it just a couple inches over the canopy and the DLI is a respectable 20-30 with a 20/4 light schedule. She won’t be a huge yield, but it’s a fun and low risk alternative to letting her be light stressed all through flowering. It was also getting just a little crowed in the other tent with 5 plants, so this may be for the best. I did a bend on the main stem to even out the canopy. It cracked a bit, but looks like it will heal just fine.

I have got the understory cleaned up and all the shaded fan leaves removed. On the early flowering plant I’ll do a bit more leaf plucking today or tomorrow, and then on the other three once the budlets start to fill in a bit more.

All plants are a pretty good size and have very beefy stems for their height. Now that I have a feel for these 2 gallon bags I think I will probably resume topping the plants next round and run 4 x 2gal bags per 3x3 tent.


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Thanks for stopping by!

Man i feel sick looking at your perfect plants that you germed only a week or less before mine and mine look like yours ar day 5, ffs need to sort whats up with mine maybe the genetics being crossed or whatever. all room conditions are good, as is feed, rh, lights!!!! GGGrrrrrr
Uk420man

 

[MIAutomatic]

Man i feel sick looking at your perfect plants that you germed only a week or less before mine and mine look like yours ar day 5, ffs need to sort whats up with mine maybe the genetics being crossed or whatever. all room conditions are good, as is feed, rh, lights!!!! GGGrrrrrr
Uk420man

Thank you for the high praise sir! I owe a lot of my current success to AFN. I have been on AFN for almost a year as a pretty active member, and before I was an ok grower at best. This site has so few trolls and so many good growers who want to help it really helped me step up my game. Now I would say I am a pretty good grower and getting better all the time.

It sounds like you are still getting used to autos, I am still a bit myself as well. Once they get going they are almost as hardy as a photo period plant, but since they are on a clock the consequences of any stunt can be harder to comeback from depending on when it happens.

Scanning through your current grow here are a few things I would look at: Don’t worry so much about humidity during germination, the humidity levels in the damp medium are more than adequate for germination and adequate airflow is just as if not more important for good growth and avoiding the possibility of dampening off and stunting.

Start feeding sooner, I moisten my coco with a feeding solution of about 1.0 EC (5ml/A&B, 10ml Rhizo, 2ml dynagrow silica, 4ml canna calmag all per gallon using RO). I keep the top of the medium moist with a mild foliar of: 2ml silica, 2ml calmag, 5ml rhizo, 5ml canna start/gallon . I do this untilI I see the third set of leaves then fertigate for the first time with the same 1.0EC mixture. After that I fertigate every 2 days and by flow

Don’t worry so much about too much light. I start my seeds under my 315 CMH at day one at 3ft. I let them grow up to about 2 feet below the light and then I keep it there for the rest of the grow.

I added the LED strips and the foliar feed this cycle, but I have been doing everything else the same for a while now. The LED strips are amazing, and I think the foliar is also beneficial. Before I started the foliar misting this cycle I was just doing very light waterings to keep things damp. The sprayer is easier and as long as the EC of the sprayer solution is low (1.0EC or less) the plants seem to love it and respond with good vigor.

@Dell boy is a real coco pro, be sure to check out his grows. @Son of Hobbes is another amazing source for coco tips.

good luck!

 

[uk420man]

Big thanks MIA, tbh i'm not too far off what you are suggesting with feed strength maybe a little to waterlogged i reckons as the leaves are a little droopy so tomorrow if not perked up ill repot them all into a drier coco mix and do the fertigate thing. Really appreciate your help, advice and guidance.
uk420man

 

[MIAutomatic]

Finally had the first problems of the grow, both quite devastating. The largest of the Mephisto Wedding appears to be a hermaphrodite. The plant has been exposed to no significant stress, so I can only assume it’s a genetic hermie. It’s not the type of hermie I have seen before where the male flowers appear at random. This plant has the male and female flowers mixed all in the same bud cluster, and it’s uniform throughout the plant. The two larger of the MW started flowering about the same time a little over a week after the smaller plant. The early plant and the second larger of the MW both displayed typical bud structure, but the hermie plant looked weird as soon as it started flowering. I am still not 100% sure about it, but it definitely looks odd, it’s all I can come up with, and I don’t want a tent full of hermie seeds. A mixed flower hermaphrodite is a know thing I discovered after a quick google, they are less common, but not like a unicorn or anything like that. Yea for learning new things….

weird plant

The zoom on my camera is not very good, but in person I am just starting to see the pollen balls emerge from the flowers. I don’t think it comes through in the pictures.

normal plant

I set the weird plant on my back porch, it’s pretty warm for the next week so I should be able to keep and eye on it. At this point I am pretty sure about it being a hermie, the other plants keep filling in and this one keeps looking weird.

 

[MIAutomatic]

The little Double grape is also having issues. When I moved it to the second tent with the T5 lights I also pruned everything except the top 6-8 inches of the plant since the T5 light doesn’t have very good light penetration. Then I pretty much ignored the plant and was just watering it with plenty of runoff but not checking the EC. When I finally noticed the plant was starting to look a little wonky and checked the EC it was 2.1!?!? Apparently the reduction in light and the reduction in biomass caused the plant to use A LOT less nutrients, the EC quickly climbed and the whole plant got nutrient burn. I flushed back down to 1.5EC but one day later it is already back up to 1.7EC. I will give it one more day to stabilize, but if the EC keeps going up I am going to cull the plant. I don’t have the time or patience to mix different water for it and check the EC with every watering all for a plant in a .5 gallon pot. Once plants are in this stable watering routine I always check EC and PH of the nutrients, but I only check the runoff every other day. The other plants have been steady with a feeding solution of 1.4EC and runoff between 1.2-1.4EC at every check.

sad double grape

Please don’t feel obligated to like any of the sad stuff in the last two posts…..

 

[MIAutomatic]

Great news is the other three plants are all doing great! I have done some pretty aggressive leaf pruning on all plants and they responded with great vigor. Buds are already getting nice and frosty on both of the MW. Feeding at 1.4 EC right now. Soon I will add boost and PK. The PK I’ll only use for about a week, but the boost I’ll use until harvest.

Healthy plants!

early girl

big girl

SN x LiversBX1

thanks for stopping by!

 

[MIAutomatic]

I did decide to abandon the funky Double Grape, the EC just kept going up. The other three plants however are doing wonderfully. I have started to add PK (up to 3ml/gal) and reduced calmag to 3ml/gal. Current feeding EC is about 1.6, runoff EC is on target coming out at 1.70-1.73. 1.8 EC is as high as I like it to go, so I’ll hold at this feeding strength unless the runoff EC drops a bit heading into peak flowering.

The early MW is really packing on the flowers. The larger MW was getting too tall (about 19inches from the main light) so I made the questionable decision to bend the main stem. She bounced back almost immediately so I think it was the right move. Whenever I have let flowers get that close to the CMH it cooks all the terps right outta them. SN x LiversBX1 is so huge for a plant in 1/2 gallon pot, She is about the same size as the smaller MW in 2 gal. I hope she can continue to get by on only 2 waterings a day.

Smaller MW

Larger MW

SN x LiversBX1

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[MIAutomatic]

Early MW is really starting to pack it on, both flower mass and frost. Bigger plant is really getting going and both are starting to show a little purple already. The color is possibly from the cool nights with lights off in my basement. The SNxLiversbx1 is so huge for such a small pot it will be interesting and to see how heavy flowering goes.

I backed off the PK, these plants just didn’t seem to want it. Even at 2ml/gal the EC was creeping up. I am also out of town the next 5 days and I am a little nervous….the house sitter has watched the house before and taken care of outside plants for me, but this will be her first time doing coco. I think I have her setup for success she has more than enough water has detailed instructions and I mixed the EC to just 1.25, so as long as she is getting runoff there shouldn’t be any nutrient build up.

Fingers crossed she can keep everything on the rails!

early MW

bigger MW

the shape of this plant is funny after I bent the main branch, but bounced back like nothing happened, there is a wicked knuckle there now where I bent it.

SNxLivers BX1

when I get back from this trip I am gonna get out my Nikon DSLR and take some real pictures, I am tired of whack phone photos.

thanks for stopping by!