New Grower First auto after 22 year break!

[Tony21]

Very cool man , looking spot on. Next couple of weeks I would keep the center, what I call within the perimeter, clear of those pesky 8-10 cm fan leaves, try to keep it open to the light. I just snip with my fingers whenever I'm in the tents.
Lots of nice colas developing.
Space allowing, now is also the time I start supercropping and softcropping, but it takes a little practise to get right.

I wouldn't worry about the temperature, I often have over 40 c in the summer qng high humidity too. As long as you keep her well ventilated and open, mold shouldn't be a problem.
Fat thick colas may look cool, but not really what I want.
Here is a seedstockers AK420 thats been supercropped and staked. Yielded 450 g in 92 days, this is day 70 or so

 

[The Iconoclast]

Yo @Tony21 you wouldn't believe it, this was not there this morning all I had was some random pistils nothing in the heads, and now one day and a half after the big defoliate, she has begun to start budding up. Talk about not missing a beat... She's 17" now, grown 2" since yesterday!

What is 'soft cropping' I cannot find any reference to that. Also in the photo you posted, is this before a super cropping or is this an illusion because it appears that the colas are going straight up. Do you mean crop at a 90 degree angle?

Edit: attached some plants eye view shots taken from the bottom of the plant looking up. To the plant it must look like a bright sunny day, with light filtering all the way down.

 

[Tony21]

Cool man, nothing like some flowers to brighten the day

Softcropping is just supercropping without the snap, it creates a knuckle and some direction. That ak420, the outer branches were supercropped and the center ones were mostly softcropped. It depends on the plant structure too.

 

[The Iconoclast]

@Tony21, OK thanks.

We're a week into the flowering now which began after the super defoliate, I didn't hold back. I also tried a practice supercrop on one branch that was a couple of inches higher, I didn't do a great job the stem split a bit, not enough to do any damage, it didn't slow it down at all, but it was a warning to me. So I think for the moment I'll not go too crazy and when I have it out this week I'll give it a heavy lst. And maybe a bit of soft cropping. I'll be moving onto the Flora series at my own mix of micro/grow/bloom at 2/1/4 giving me a 12N/20P/24K mix. Last ppm at 1130 was a tad too high so I'll come back down to 800. The 6.2 I'm running at seems to be working well, although it did work it's way down to 6 so that's OK.

Otherwise here is a final shot of a typical flower today, day 49 beginning week 8 tomorrow. She has grown 5" this week to 20" and I'm expecting another 5" by the end of next week and I am hoping that 25" will be the final height. She seems to be budding up well at the lower bud sites. If I didn't have the reservoir underneath, then I'd put a scrog screen in but I'll try to emulate the scrog with lst.

I've had to host this offsite because I wanted to do a flower whore shot but I can't load up a decent file here, it keeps making it all fuzzy, it's not that large only 700kb

P.S. I think I've finally understood this viparspectra, thanks to the people at ChiLED and their spectrum tool. It's not really meant for Mary Jane, so it has too much blue, however instead of seeing it as a 320W light, I now see that I should see it as three separate lights. A bloom at 240W a Veg at 240W and a Seedling light. So it's never really used at more than 240W.

Seedling is White only, Veg is 100W 100B 10%R; Bloom is 100W 100R 10%B

However near the end I'll give it a blast of blue for 2 or 3 days.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Welp, start of week 8 today and I celebrated with a no holds barred defoliation. Plus a test supercrop to see if I could improve my technique. Softened the branch up a bit better and she bent over faster than the Orange Clown meeting with Vlad Putin. The test went well in that the branch did not split and she stayed down and no leaves wilted at all. So after a couple more hours I bent another 4 or 5 branches seeing as there was plenty of room now that the defoliation was done. Here's a couple of photos but it looks much better than the photos which look kinda weird due to the sparkly background. You can prolly see some of the bent branches. If all looks well tomorrow I may bend the rest so it has a flat canopy on top. The branches are tending to stay down due to their own weight.

Probably not much to do now for a week. I hope I haven't gone overboard, but I'm encourage by no adverse reactions just yet. a b c d were after the defoliation and SCA a and b were more super cropping.

 

[Iriee Vibez]

Excellent job with the defo, man! Those budsites are going to love all that light!

 

[Tony21]

Very cool, I can only say what Mr. Pigskin fantasize about haha

I wouldn't say you have gone overboard but actually seem a little underboard to me, but you can make up for any slacking any time you like hahaha

Regarding supercropping, I do it as long as it possible. You will notice that a stem is actually not round, but rather square. When the stems get woodier and are harder to make pliable, squeeze at 2 diagonal points as you roll it between the fingers to soften it up.

Here is a SS Amnesia I just harvested, she lived under a citi 1825 running 65 w in the grow tent taken at day 94 and it's not been supercropped because there was no space, only defol. Wet was 910 g, so around 225 g I think when dry.
I bent a couple of the tallest stems when she got to 1,2 m

Very sticky, caked with goodness and crinkly to the touch. amazing what can be done with 65 w worth of photons one of the hangpots just yielded 4,85 g/w, I can post some pics if you want.
I like this strain. There's another 20 or so going at various stages and ways haha

 

[The Iconoclast]

They are certainly super looking heads @Tony21, I'm only running 240W in a 3 x 2 area now, so I don't think mine are going to be at their best. But it's only my first Auto. That certainly is a phenomenal return at over 4g/W! Always happy to see your shots Tone, post away.

I had a couple of scrog screens made before I started but although it will be slightly tricky to get the lower reservoir out, I have decided to put the screen in. So that will make it a bit more organised now. Prolly shouldn't have super cropped her now but it doesn't seemed to have hurt her.

 

[The Iconoclast]

She was looking a little bit sad after that scrog. But she's perked up a bit in the last two day. However I've probably made a litany of errors on this first auto. On the bright side I've finally cracked the germinating conundrum, I used one of those little expanding peat pellets and seed popped up in two and a half days. That's auto blueberry that I'm leaving in a cloth pot outside. So if I get a bad yield from this OG, hopefully the Blueberry might help me out by the end of Jan! There's a photoperiod White Widow that has had a horrendously difficult time due to me not giving much of a shit and generally being lazy, but it looks like it's on the verge of recovering.

 

[Nosias]

You will enjoy the harvest, for sure.