Lighting Monsters in my closet, my ongoing grow thread

[trailanimal]

While peeking in on the ladies this evening, I noticed the #4 has done a neat little split branching near the top that essentially has mutated it to have two main cola's starting. All four are starting to show their sex and all look to be ladies thus far. Getting some nice upward growth starting. Should be getting into about the fifth week, so seem like they are right on schedule for your average auto. Should start transitioning soonish.

My mutant:
View attachment 554317 View attachment 554316

had a blue dream do that last season, basically 2 tops, although the main stayed a little bigger, be a good trait to try to breed for

 

[Ozone69]

had a blue dream do that last season, basically 2 tops, although the main stayed a little bigger, be a good trait to try to breed for

Suppose that could be interesting. I don't know breeding (yet...it's on the "someday" list) but makes me wonder if one could shoot for a basically self mainlining plant with perfectly split off nodes.

Thanks for stopping by!!!!!!

 

[Ozone69]

Ok, I realize I should probably take this to potpros, but....hard enough for me sometimes to remember to keep up with the documentation on one site so afraid if I split them it'll just get worse.

That being said, though....today was some fun. Weeeeeee!!!!

The real start to the mainlining adventure was today. Cut both my photo plants, giving them their first trim. I'm working off of Nugbuket's tutorial on mainlining, so made my cuts above the third node after the the fifth node had started to come in. I'm probably pushing it a little on these little things and could have let them go a few more days, but anxiousness said today was the day.

To get started, let's engage the clone tray pre-warming kitty apparatus...

Grilled Cheese plant before and after:


Ghost of LeeRoy plant before and after:


Still undecided if I'm going to fully flower my clones or not. This is my first time cloning, so it's partially about the process. Mostly about identifying the sex of the main plants the cutting were taken from, though. I'm really antsy to get the Kindsoil, Blumat test grow going in the closet once the current auto's are done, and don't mind using it for a couple weeks to flower the clones, but dunno that I want to give it up for the time it would take to fully flower them out. Probably getting a bit ahead of myself, though. Should wait and see how many root, then see where I'm at time wise once I've been able to grow them out enough and switch 'em over long enough to determine sex. Could turn out to be two boy plants, after all, which would make the decision for me.

The cuttings:


Everyone all ready to go (minus the humidity dome for the pics sake):

 

[Ozone69]

Seeing some nice growth on the remaining nodes after all the trimming on the Grilled Cheese and Ghost of LeeRoy photo's being mainlined. Sooooo....I didn't kill them! YAY!!!!!

Meanwhile...the four ladies in the closet are pretty much just ripening and maybe fattening up a bit more at this point. Most of the fans have fallen off them at this point, so don't know that they've got much energy to be doing much. Still giving them some nutes every third or fourt, but mostly plain water lately.

I was thinking on it last night, and it occurred to me that these four are also using the last of the back of Ocean Forest soil that I had. I mixed it with some Happy Frog, but I also seem to remember that I was running low toward the end so one pot may be more HF to OF than the rest were. Part of me is starting to wonder that some of what I thought was me over watering or over feeding could also be the commonly documented "too hot" Ocean Forest soil causing problems, and my one plant that seems to have done better than the others being the one toward the end of the mixing when the OF was running low. Shouldn't be an issue moving forward if that's the case since I don't plan on getting any more of that particular soil. Plan is still to try out Kindsoil next, but might have to revisit this down the road some day. Try hand feeding again with a different soil to see what results I get.

 

[Ozone69]

Started basic training today....

 

[Ozone69]

Harvest day for the four Grass-O-Matic assortment pack plants. Not very big, but some good smells coming off them.

#1


#2


#3 Smallest plant, thickest main cola bud


#4 Split, double main cola

 

[Ozone69]

Took eight of the cuttings from the Grilled Cheese and Ghost of LeeRoy photo's in the mainlining project and planted them into soil today. I wasn't seeing any roots on the cuttings, but did see what looked like maybe roots trying to poke out of the cube here and there. After a week they just weren't responding the way I was expecting, so I'd decided last night to pot them tonight. I'm just using the soil from the last auto grow, and using the same three gallon airpots. The pleasant surprise of the evening is that two of the Grilled Cheese cuttings had actual roots growing out of the cubes like I was hoping tonight finally as I went to put them in. Kind of surprising the change from last night. I did notice that both the cubes were on the drier side, which contributes to my theory that the problem with my cloning try as that I didn't give the cubes a good enough dry cycle around day three or so to get them really sending out the roots. The bad news is that the two cuttings that I ended up not using I pulled out of their cubes and they had ZERO rooting that had taken place. Soooooo....while I've got at least the two GC cuttings that had roots, the other six including all four of the Ghost of LeeRoy cuttings may or may not do anything at all. Time will tell. Hoping to give them a week or two to get some growth going and them switch them to 12/12 lights to determine sex.

 

[Ozone69]

YAY!! Last part on order for the low maintenance test grow showed up yesterday. So just waiting for the cuttings/clones to finish up and free up the closet to start getting it all set up...

Coming soon.....

 

[Ozone69]

Both plants in the mainline project were growing well, so I went ahead and did round two of the cutting on them this morning. Grilled Cheese is off to an early lead over the Ghost of LeeRoy plant, so to try and even things out a bit in the next round I took the original main fans off the GC this time, but left them on the GoL to give it a little extra energy production capacity and (hopefully) let it catch up a little before the next, final round of cuts. I also cut the GC after the second node on each of it's branches and removed the first, while on the GoL plant I took everything after the first node on each branch. Partially because the GC is a little bigger plant but mostly because those nodes looked like they had the best symmetry going.

Grilled Cheese before and after:


Ghost of LeeRoy before and after:

 

[Ozone69]

Well, they survived round two of being cut and are starting to grow strong again. The Grilled Cheese has got the other plant on size and growth. It's also had the most success with the clones. All four of the cuttings in the pots look to be growing, though to different degrees with two taking off faster than the others. There is still one Ghost of LeeRoy cutting that doesn't look dead yet. But it hasn't shown any growth that I can tell, either. I'm thinking I'll give things until Monday to see if the GoL cutting does anything, and then switch over the 12/12 bloom lighting either way. Worst case, I'll find out when I flower the main plant. The clones are just a means to try and find out sooner to save time on grooming and growing the main if it's just going to be a boy in the end anyway, so not a necessary step. Anyhow, the original Ghost of LeeRoy plant is much smaller than the other. It's growing, but not as aggressively. May be genetics as they are from two totally different breeders. Could also be a male vs. female, sativa vs. indica, and probably a couple other variables as well. There's also some symmetry issue on the GoL plant where one of the nodes is a little out of sync from one side of the stem to the other. I think I'll be able to let it go another node on that "main" before the next trim to hopefully get a more symmetrical node upstem for the next cut. Up for four "mains" now, so should just be one more round to get to eight and then grow them out.

Really looking forward to getting the autos going again once the clones are done, but have to say that the mainlining project has really be a fun little "side project". Also feel like I'm picking up some good LST and trimming skills along the way. Though I'm starting to worry that the timing is going to be off and I'm going to have a batch of autos in mid grow when these are getting ready to flower, so may force my putting a lot more thought into a lighting upgrade. I would hate to waste all this effort to bloom them under just the little wimpy 4 bulb, 2ft T6 fixture that I've got in the tent. It might do the job, but just don't feel it worthy of the task if it came down needed to flower them in the tent.