Indoor Jack Herer Auto rDWC

[RivetGrrl]

Here is the thread that pop22 started, if you want to have a read of it. I don't want to change your mind, but it's food for thought (pardon the pun). May make things easier. There is benefit in cleansing if you run nutes heavy and hard, but in moderation all should be well. It is something every grower needs to decide for themselves.

https://www.autoflower.org/threads/flushing-the-myth-that-wont-die.56274/

Much of the time, when smoke is harsh it's the chlorophyll from an improper or rushed cure. My first "taste" of this was having to harvest a plant before I even had time to flush it. I cured it as usual, and it was fine. Because of the perpetual grow, I usually only cleansed the plants for three days max anyway using cleaning agents, and to be honest I have never seen a difference after a good cure. I've seen strains even say that they put most of the weight on in the final two weeks. I'm a person that has to see it/experience it myself, or that it makes sense scientifically, to believe it.

I don't want to advise you if you don't feel too comfortable not flushing, you could try cutting the stem but I'm not sure how well that would work. It should, in theory. I have a 4X4 tent for my photo's and I really crammed stuff in there before!! It isn't always ideal, but growing perpetual has had me make a lot of compromises

 

[jER]

Yeah I don't know how you manage perpetual in a recirculating system, must be a balancing act! Different pheno's are hard enough to balance never mind different strains. I am glad to know your able to make it work though, would be nice to have a variety of meds going all the time!

 

[jER]

I borrowed a handheld microscope from my neighbor and had a closser look at the trichomes on the buds themselves, as the scope I have is too hard to focus on the plant itself.
Still mosly clear on all the plants including the stunted one that is the most mature (it is about 50/50 clear/cloudy) so I figure they can all go at least another week, two for the big one and the back right, and maybe 3-4 more weeks for the back left.
I picked up some AN Overdrive to give them a bit of a kick and they seem to be continuing to bulk up, a few of the branches on the big girl are getting heavy and falling over onto the stunted one, but they get more light there and the stunted one isn't really growing anyway so I think I'll let her lean on.
I've been trying to pull apart the branches everyday to seperate the buds and get some light and airflow through the middles.

 

[jER]

I harvested the stunted one in the front right corner, pretty dismal results from her, as I was expecting. She really didn't grow at all after getting sick while I was away for work back in february.

I was able to block the pipes to the hydro system with some screw-on plugs which worked perfect to isolate the bucket and allow me to do a quick flush. I read through pop22's entire anti-flush thread, and was tempted to forgo it, but most of the info pertained to soil not hydro. I have never read of anyone not flushing dwc. I can say for fact that when I replaced the water in the bucket with plain water @ 200ppm a couple days later it had risen to 700ppm. Whether or not it will make a difference to the final product I can't say.
I am planning on chopping the big girl tommorrow morning. She'll be a lot more work to trim up than her sister. She'll have probably 70% of the total yield from this grow. I'll hang her branch by branch inside a large carboard box to dry. It is super dry here (<30%) so with a humidifier in the room i should be able to dry her slow enough.

I am not quite sure what the driving factors are that caused this grow to get so uneven, up until flower i was sure the two that I had LST'd on the right side of the tent were going to perform better than the other two. Then the front left grew two feet in a week.

I can't be sure whether it just out competed the others , definately in shade but possibly in nutrients as well as it is a recirculating system (pretty sure I had more than enough nutes in there for everyone).
It's possible that the strain didn't handle the LST well, the back left one was shaded almost as much as the others and still performed much better. It only has three or four colas but they are huge and dense as f**k. It's still mostly white pistles and needs another couple weeks at least.

 

[RivetGrrl]

Sorry I missed the other two updates, I don't know if it got buried or if I had too many alerts.

Hard to say sometimes why a plant does better, or not. Sometimes it is a phenotype, or a seed that just has that extra oomph, or not! I've had my share of runty plants that just were not happy no matter what I did.

I'm glad you were able to have a look at that thread, Pop22 grows in AutoPots which are stated as a hydroponic method, although not DWC of course. I believe the same applies to DWC but in DWC things happen much faster. I have experimented and the results were positive, but it took a long time to be comfortable with doing it. Especially after all the hard work and time growing!

 

[jER]

I took down the big girl this morning!
Here she is just prior to chop, half of her fell over once I pulled her out of the tent and she didnt have the other plants to lean on.

De-limbed and hung:

4 hours of trimming fan leaves later:

She was a very leafy plant, i think I will hang her like this with the sugar leaves still on for a couple days the break the branches down a bit to continue drying in the box below.

Check out that root ball!

Ill get some better bud pictures tonight.

 

[jER]

I promised some bud pics, so here ya go!

 

[Tetra9]

I promised some bud pics, so here ya go!
View attachment 1043734 View attachment 1043736 View attachment 1043737 View attachment 1043739 View attachment 1043742 View attachment 1043743 View attachment 1043744

Boom! Jack Herer, yummmmmy! Nice job man. You did good. Learn, Adapt, n grow grow grow! Enjoy that Jack, thats one of my all time fav photos, never tried the auto but looks delicious.

 

[jER]

Thanks Tetra9! I am hoping they got the auto at least close to the og, one of my favorites as well. Great creative and energetic daytime strain! I've still got a couple jacks to chop.

The smaller one could get cut anytime, the bigger one still has a lot of white pistles and needs another week or two at least, even though its 126 days old already! Hopefully it can gain a bit more mass with the extra light and space now that the tent is half empty.

 

[jER]

Final update!
Last night I finished dry trimming the last of my 4 Jacks and got it all into jars. Ended up pretty good for a first harvest, total dry weight of 11.5oz off the 4 plants in my 3'x3' tent under a Mars Hydro pro II 800W (362W actual draw). Each plant ended up pretty differently with some pheno variations and some environmental effects.

The first plant I harvested (front right corner) had got really sick in mid flower while I was out of town for work. I never really recovered and basically stopped growing at that point and matured much earlier than the others. It was also one of the 2 plants I experimented with a bit of LST on. I only got 15g off of it. The bud I did get off it is pretty nice though, good aroma and taste.

The second plant I harvest (front left corner) was by far the largest of the 4. It exploded and grew 2 feet during the week I was away. It was the best yielding plant at 166g. It's size overshadowed the other 3 plants in the tent which was way to cramped for 4 plants of this size. If I had more space I am sure all 4 plants would have yielded much higher. The terpene profile of this plant was quite different than the others as well, with some time in the jars bringing out a earthy chocolate aroma in contrast to the citrus grapefruit smells of the others.

The third plant I cut down (back right corner) yielded more than the first but still only 37g. This plant started life with a bit of mutant leaves, but grew out of that eventually. I had LST'd this one as well. This one had the best aroma of the 4 though with a very grapefruit citrus smell.

The 4th plant (back left corner) did pretty well despite being crowded out of most of it's corner by the big plant in front of it. I couldn't even see it for most of flower. Ended up pulling 105g off it. It was a extremely leafy plant and took quite a while to trim. The buds had so many sugar leaves you could barely see the flowers. The buds fron this girl have a citrus aroma with a bit of diesel.

I have to conclude that this strain does not respond well to training, at least in my situation. The two I very lightly LST'd did way worse than the two I let grow naturally. A lot of the discrepancy I am sure was due to being overshadowed by the big plant, however the 4th plant still did pretty good despite being shaded the most. It might have been better had I LST'd all 4 and kept the canopy more even, but then they might have all underproduced as well. Interestingly on all of the 4 the biggest buds and tallest colas were not the main stem even on the plants that I didn't train.

I am still curing the buds but preliminary smoke has been pretty good, the effects are remarkably similar to how I remember Jack Herer being with a very clean high with good energy, clear focus, and inspirational creativity. It also come down super smoothly with no tiredness or headache. I can smoke this all day and not burn out!

I used half the sugar trim to make a salve which turned out pretty nicely. I plan on giving some to my wife and my mother for mothers day.

Anyway can't thank the AFN community enough for all the information and support I have aquired through this site. It took a lot of learning to get this far. Thanks to all who helped me and encouraged me along the way:
@member420
@lunarman
@RivetGrrl
@archie gemmill
@Tetra9
@Maria Sanchez

And those who helped me out in the infirmary:

@ChroToker
@STILLSMOKIN
@Beerhunter CDN
@Mañ'O'Green
@namvet25
@davisgirl
@BII