Dutch Passion MedGrower does Blue AutoMazar (DWC / HS1 / Telos 0008)

[Olde School Player]

Hey MG, perusing threads and saw yours here. She's certainly a pretty girl so far!!! From your intro post, it seemed you had grown this strain before and I'm glad to hear your pain management patients were impressed. I grow medically for my wife and a couple of others & that's nice to confirm. I have this strain finishing now and she should be coming down over the weekend:

I have a question though; what height are you keeping your light start - to - finish? Ever since I transitioned from HID to LED, I am no longer getting any stretch from my auto's. None of them. Everything I've grown has stayed around 10 - 12" tall max (that's a 12" ruler in my pic above). It took awhile to register - "I may be slow but I'm not fast" - but I've convinced myself the intensity of LED lighting is keeping the plants lush and compact. I have a MARS II 700 and a MARS Pro II Cree-128; each actual 325W at the wall, each in its own 2'3" X 2'3" X 63" (5sq.ft.) tent, single-plant hydro grows in a 4 gallon ebb 'n Gro flooding for 15 minutes every two hours; 20X4 light cycle.
My next grow I'll be testing this theory by raising the light to 30"? 45"? to see if I can encourage a healthy stretch, then lower it to set and harden the buds.

Your thoughts welcomed to help confirm my suspicions.​

Like all the others I've grown with LED, this girl is healthy. The buds are rock solid. No issues. It's just that she's short & I know it's going to affect my yield. I'm guessing 4oz with this one, where I average 8 and have gone near 12 a couple of times.
My pheno definitely shows the blueberry pheno, although the scent is full on skunk with no sweetness whatsoever. I think she's going to cross some eyes & relieve some pain!!!

 

[MedGrower]

Hey MG, perusing threads and saw yours here. She's certainly a pretty girl so far!!! From your intro post, it seemed you had grown this strain before and I'm glad to hear your pain management patients were impressed. I grow medically for my wife and a couple of others & that's nice to confirm. I have this strain finishing now and she should be coming down over the weekend:

I have a question though; what height are you keeping your light start - to - finish? Ever since I transitioned from HID to LED, I am no longer getting any stretch from my auto's. None of them. Everything I've grown has stayed around 10 - 12" tall max (that's a 12" ruler in my pic above). It took awhile to register - "I may be slow but I'm not fast" - but I've convinced myself the intensity of LED lighting is keeping the plants lush and compact. I have a MARS II 700 and a MARS Pro II Cree-128; each actual 325W at the wall, each in its own 2'3" X 2'3" X 63" (5sq.ft.) tent, single-plant hydro grows in a 4 gallon ebb 'n Gro flooding for 15 minutes every two hours; 20X4 light cycle.
My next grow I'll be testing this theory by raising the light to 30"? 45"? to see if I can encourage a healthy stretch, then lower it to set and harden the buds.

Your thoughts welcomed to help confirm my suspicions.​

Like all the others I've grown with LED, this girl is healthy. The buds are rock solid. No issues. It's just that she's short & I know it's going to affect my yield. I'm guessing 4oz with this one, where I average 8 and have gone near 12 a couple of times.
My pheno definitely shows the blueberry pheno, although the scent is full on skunk with no sweetness whatsoever. I think she's going to cross some eyes & relieve some pain!!!

Hey man and welcome!

First of all good for you to provide the medicine for people who really need it and all the best for you wife. I really like how your plant is staying low and putting up these enormous colas! You've done a really good job with that.

The light intensity is one factor that affects how tall the plant is growing but there are some other environmental factors like the difference of the temperature between lights on and off (Day / Night differential, DIF) that also affects the internodal length and the elongation rates. And ofcourse the size of your pot / reservoir and its shape seems to affect the total size of your plant. More vertical space you have to the bottom, the longer it seems to take with the vegetative stage of the plants development.

It makes a lot of sense that LED light does keep your plant lower, provided it delivers a decent amount of light. LED also helps keep the day/nigh differential rather low since the lights won't heat up nearly as much as the HPS or something like that would. However, I grow in a cabinet myself and the newest Grow Northern Telos 0008 does heat up the space there up to 30 C quite easily. It simply just has so much power.. perhaps a bit too much for my needs at the moment.

This takes us to the question about what height I keep my lights from start to finish. Well, quite frankly it depends on the light I am using. Let me give you couple examples:

Grow Northern HS1 (75w light with holographic diffuser)
Early vegetation: 40 cm / 16 inch (keeping it there for first couple of weeks)
Mid vegetation: 30 cm / 12 inch (keeping it there until the bloom)
Bloom: 20 cm / 8 inch (keeping it there the rest of the cycle unless I see light stress or other problems)

Note that you can do this close proximity only with a LED light that is gentle for your plants and doesn't create any hot spots. I use this similar way on this grow now, currently using 2 x HS1.

Grow Northern Telos 0008 (240w with very efficient PPF 1.9/µmol/J)
Early vegetation: 100 cm / 40 inch
I then let the plant grow and not changing the light distance, until the plant has reached the distance of 50cm / 20 inch and then maintain that distance the rest of the cycle. I think doing it this way will enable the plant to adjust to the light dynamically. When I change to Telos mid growth I rather set it to something like 70cm / 28 inch distance at first to see how she will reach and go from there.

Each light are a bit different but I hope these two extremes can give you an idea about the distances. It is not just about the lights but also about the space they are in. Proper reflective materials on the walls of your tent / room / cabinet makes a difference in this too. I very much recommend Orca grow film for that.

I see my personal issue will be soon to battle the heat in the spring and summer time. It tends to really mess up things in my garden sometimes. I think in your situation I would try to give the plant less light at the early / mid stage vegetation and gradually increase during the bloom in an attempt to make her gain some length. Also, if your solution is too strong to keep a proper osmosis going, this will result in loss of turgidity in the plant cell walls resulting in less growth overall and in vegetative stage it will lead to smaller, generally darker, plants. Keep those PPM's / EC at the low end for the vegetative period for good results and save some money and some of the environment in the process

EDIT: I indeed did grow this strain before, there is actual Dutch Passion blog about it. It was interesting to see how growing with that good old MS 0006 I got the plant to strech out that much. Little silly really but it did provide a very good bang for the wattage used back in the days.
Hope this helps and good growing!

 

[Olde School Player]

MG, thanks for the thorough and well thought out reply. I concur with everything you touched on, and your thoughts help support my developing theory of light intensity preventing stretch. I'll acknowledge some of your key points here, but rather than trash your grow thread I think I'm going to start a thread on this topic.

I've grown photoperiods since forever, and stretch has always been a thing to plan for. Several years ago I decided to experiment with an autoflower freebie I received, and since then I've done (12) autoflower

single plant hydro ​

grows . To the point that I'm not doing photoperiods anymore. Nutrient regimens (General Hydroponics expert recirculating) have been tweaked slightly but nothing to account for my stretch dilemmas.
I began auto grows with a 250W HID, cooltube reflector, in a 2' X 2' X 63" Secret Jardin tent with (2) 170CFM centrifugal fans for light cooling and odor control. The first seven grows used this equipment, and virtually every one of those stretched like crazy. An 8th grow had to be aborted when the seed (a G-13 Labs Pineapple Express auto) turned out to be a full on male. Other than varying nute strengths slightly, the only changes made during those grows was a changeover to RO. My home water is from a well, 350-375ppm, and I've had it analyzed to confirm a healthy amount of cal-mag and no undesirable other elements. But the wife wanted a softener for laundry / dishes, so rather than fight and lose that battle I went RO. No biggie / no ill effects from the change. Key point being, every one of these first grows stretched, including a TH Seeds Auto Original BubbleGum that yielded 7.3oz cured. Some strains did even better but that's a different story for a different day.

For grow # 9, I decided it was time to start a transition from HID to LED, but I wasn't willing yet to bet the farm on a technology I was unfamiliar with at the time. So I bought a MARS II 700 drawing 263W at the wall in veg mode, and ran that through transition when I switched to bloom mode drawing 325W at the wall. I also added a second tent, 2'3" X 2'3" X 63"; 5 sq. ft. Thinking being the increased footprint of the tent would minimize differences in power between the old 250W HID and the new 325W LED (I know, wattage is not the best indicator of light performance, but it does get you to a small - medium - large point). And to help make a meaningful comparison, I chose another TH Seeds Auto Original BubbleGum which had sooooo pleased me previously. This first LED grow did a

personal best single plant yield of 11.76oz. after a 30 day cure. Great yield, wonderful smoke, but no stretch. 10" tall. ​

After BubbleGum, I did another G-13 Pineapple Express @ 8.07oz (decided to not fault G-13 with their male bean, chalked it off to poor quality control), a Dutch Passion Cinderella-Jack @7 oz., and the currently finishing DP Blue Auto Mazar (guessing 4- 5 oz). All of these were OK to good yielders but virtually none of these plants stretched at all. So for grow # 11 I decided to experiment with a Dutch Passion Blackberry Kush, and I ran it under my original 250W HID. It went back to the stretch-like-crazy trait, but it developed open calyxes halfway through bloom. Very good smoke but a disappointing 3.7oz. yield. But she was a beautiful girl - she's in my avatar.

So here I am starting my 14th autoflower grow, and I'm waiting for an old HID favorite to germinate, a Blimburn Seeds Mamba Negra Auto. This is one of the most impressive strains I've ever grown. Frost was off the chart (did over 12% hash by trim weight using an ISO quick-wash) and smoke was some of the best ever. Yield was 8.5oz after a 30 day cure. Now I'm hoping for another run under LED's at a much greater height to see if I can generate some stretch that's somewhere comparable to my old HID grows.

In support of the fine points you made in your reply:
- Pot / reservoir - pot is a 4 gallon ebb n' Grow container with approx 3 gallon net pot insert; 14" tall, consistent across all autoflower grows. These plants veg'ed FAST in the past; I had some plants reach 15-16" in 10 days when starting to show bloom. They loved the hydro!!!
- Day / night temp differential - indoor climate controlled to human comfort, 61 degrees F winter night lows (when lights are on / tent warmer) to 78 degrees F daytime summer highs (when lights are partly off - 20 / 4 cycle). Temps inside the tent range from 61 degrees F lows, 78F highs, with usual end-of-light cycle at 75F. The "old days" HID tent ran a bit hotter during summertime grows, up to 84 - 86 degrees F at the end of the lights-on cycle. But nighttime lows were higher as well so total differential was actually less. Basically, temps all good with no taco-ing or other heat stress symptoms.
- Less light early / mid stage & increase during the bloom. I've done this twofold with LED but I think not enough. Both of my LED's have veg only modes that lower power consumption to 263W and 170W respectively. And I have always (HID and LED) started veg at 30" light height, but quickly dropped to 12 - 14". Always used the old "back of the hand" method - hold the hand at plant canopy height, and if heat was comfortable, lower it some more. If the hand burst into flames, that meant the light was too close
- Nute solution too strong? I've always observed weak starts & stronger finishes. Veg progresses from 700 - 1000ppm, with 250ppm of that attributed to cal-mag & Si, so net 450ppm start-veg to 750 ppm starting transition to bloom. Bloom formulations provide for

increasingly stronger ​

early, mid- and late-bloom strengths. These formulations have not varied much since my first HID grow.
- Reflectivity - I am also a huge fan of Orca film; used it a lot with my indoor photoperiod grows under 400 & 600W HID grows. But auto's have all been in tents using standard foil-type reflective tent material. No change from HID to LED days.

So this brings me to the last topic, light height. Looking at your experience seems to support my thoughts. Your weaker lights can support much closer positioning to the plant canopy, while your stronger / more focused ones need to be raised considerably.
I did try to access your Dutch Passion blog, but got errors each time. I'm curious, what types of stretch you have experienced with each of those spacings? The blog might have answered some of that, but since it's not working ...?

This all makes sense. Even during my younger days on the farm and in the garden and moving to outdoor cannabis grows, any plants in direct sunlight always seemed to be more lush and compact, while ones in increasingly less light to shading, seemed to stretch or just grow in a spindly fashion.
I'm betting the answer to my question is that tall starting heights, followed by closer finishing heights, are going to yield the results I'm looking for. I WANT that stretch so I can train my plants for higher yield. And I want that light intensity to encourage dense bud formation resulting in improved yields.

Let's face it, a 4 oz grow is not too shabby, but with a 12 oz grow I can offer more meds for those in need.
And another side of this equation. Anyone struggling with limited headroom should be able to use this to their advantage. Lowering the light to control or eliminate stretch could make 12" max height plants a reality. With LST, every one of my auto LED grows have stayed below 12". Some people would LOVE that, but I can't be satisfied, gotta keep looking for more!!!

Once again, thanks so much for the detailed and well-thought reply. If you have no objections I may copy your reply into the thread as well. I'll tag you in when I get that thread started & welcome any further input.

 

[MedGrower]

DAY 29

pH 6.1
EC 1.1
RH n/a
T 27.0 C

Her very first top up tonight as I observed she suddenly went and consumed 7 litres of solution in couple days. She is getting a lot larger and stronger. Noticed the EC going down from 1.0 to low end of 0.9 so I went and bumped the feed up a bit overall. Did some very minor defolation to the bottom to keep the bottom tidy. Still going with 2 x HS1. I am planning on tuning down my Telos 0008 to function like Telos 0006 with just 180w by rewiring the unit to bypass the last two modules. I am doing this because I've been having some heat build-up to my cabinets having it running in full power and I don't like that. I hope this would fix the heat issue and my babies would enjoy it better being cooler. I think I will be making a switch to Telos in the weekend.

PICS:

sideview

topview

 

[Journey Man]

She's looking superhealthy Medgrower and she got power in every one of those tops.

 

[MedGrower]

DAY 32

pH 6.0
EC 1.31
RH 42
T 25.1 C

Light distance from the canopy 50cm

Moved her to a another grow cabinet for flowering and switched the light source to Telos 0008. Actually, since Telos 0008 with all of its 8 modules has brought the heat in my cabinet up to a nearly intolerable levels and the summertime is looming ahead, I went ahead and rewired the unit to run only 6 modules out of the 8. This brings the wattage down to 180w and therefore is practically Telos 0006. Test runs has proven very promising as, by comparison, the bigger heatsink keeps the unit very cool and does not heat up my cabinet nearly as much. Perhaps about the same or even less than 2 x HS1 would.

Plant keeps on streching perhaps a bit too much for my liking so I keep monitoring how it will reach to the new environment. If this trend continues, I may need to introduce some LST methods but I'd rather it keeps its pretty form.

Also introduced a new and heavy feed. It looks like this is going to be peak feeding time for the plant so I try to be proactive. I keep an eye on the EC and see how she reacts to this level.

PICS

topview

sideview

budsite

telos 0008 downgraded to 6 modules (180w)

 

[Wingsuit]

Hi all and your plant looks very happy and healthy! My Bam is in coco 15l mesh pot and she is i think 44 days old and she is 4ft tall without height of pot ! With pot its about 5ft tall and she is fattening nicely. My small advice is do her a nice hair cut and you will see your plant getting bushier after few days. So it means more buds ! Its good when you grow one or just few plants to maximize usage of growing area.forgot to mention i m running under hps 600w with umbrella spreader. 4x4 tent. 9 plants now. My bam drinks well every day. If you dont mind i can post pic of her just to show you what you can expect from yours after 2 weeks time.

 

[TheMongol]

She's gonna be a beast when stretch is done!

 

[Olde School Player]

Man, she's exploded since I last looked, beautiful girl!!! Trying to guess but don't have a point of reference; where is her height now, 50cm?
That's certainly more stretch than I've seen with my LED grows & something I would love to work with. Keep good notes, I'll be hitting you up for full specs when you finish her.

 

[MedGrower]

Hi all and your plant looks very happy and healthy! My Bam is in coco 15l mesh pot and she is i think 44 days old and she is 4ft tall without height of pot ! With pot its about 5ft tall and she is fattening nicely. My small advice is do her a nice hair cut and you will see your plant getting bushier after few days. So it means more buds ! Its good when you grow one or just few plants to maximize usage of growing area.forgot to mention i m running under hps 600w with umbrella spreader. 4x4 tent. 9 plants now. My bam drinks well every day. If you dont mind i can post pic of her just to show you what you can expect from yours after 2 weeks time.

I appreciate the advice but I am no stranger to defoliation or other methods. My philosophy for employing these techniques is to use them when they are needed and this seems to be one of the rare times I am seeing a phenotype that is having a decent amount of fan leaves still leaving very good space for air circulation around the budsites. I've usually resorted to moderate defoliation only when I am having too bushy plant and I want to free up some breathing space for the budsites. Other reason for defoliation is to inhibit vertical growth when I want to keep the plant more down low and it seems to work for me. I may end up having to do something like this if I see plenty of strech still because I need to keep a decent level of headroom for the canopy with this strong light source. I've done some defoliation only to the bottom part of the plant so far just to keep it tidy and improve the airflow.

Feel free to post a link to your grow or if you don't have one, a pic or two about your plant. BAM is a fantastic strain indeed.

She's gonna be a beast when stretch is done!

Thanks bro! Let's hope she is done with it soon and we can start pumping up those colas. :smoking:

Man, she's exploded since I last looked, beautiful girl!!! Trying to guess but don't have a point of reference; where is her height now, 50cm?
That's certainly more stretch than I've seen with my LED grows & something I would love to work with. Keep good notes, I'll be hitting you up for full specs when you finish her.

Thank you! I took a measurement and the plant is 74cm from the top of the netpot. Definately this one is exceptional phenotype with the streching and all since I've kept the lights relatively close same way I've done with almost all my grows. It is interesting to see how it goes from here for sure