Thanks, @Pigeonman ! I just hooked up the blumats, hopefully I’ll be able to keep them mostly on autopilot.
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D’oh! I somehow had the timer set to cycle through 5 different light cycles, so true 12/12 just started a few days ago. So these are about 3 weeks behind and will probably become monsters. Oh well. Gave 'em more plant food to compensate.
On the plus side, the blumats are well dialed in at this point and all 3 plants seem healthy. I’m gonna leave the male terpenado plant in just long enough to hopefully “lightly” pollinate the other two plants, but I honestly don’t know what to look for development-timing-wise to achieve that goal; happy to hear any suggestions.
I’m starting to plan what seeds to start next, but there’s a lot in the backlog to choose from! 
All these problems fall into the “nice problems to have” I guess. Cheers!
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i like your style, not long ago i was growing with a viparspectra and also terpenados those girls were insane smelling but the flavor wasnt quite there, also it’s leafy, i only had two females but thats what they were, thats my advice about the male lol
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do you have another space to separate your male out into? i’m still a very new grower, but i just recently went through my first pollination. while not a great separation of space, i did take my male out and put him in a big cardboard box in the same room. after harvesting his pollen, i dusted certain branches of my females in order to pollinate them.
i thought this controlled pollination was nice so that it could leave the other branches seedless for smokeable flower. since my technique and process wasn’t dialed in, i did get some accidental pollination, but i think that’s fine.
while this is more work, requiring that you harvest the male’s pollen and then apply the pollen to your females, i felt like it allowed me to control the timing better. i grabbed my male’s pollen when it was ready, and i pollinated my females when i felt they were ready. and again, i could control which branches i wanted to heavily seed and which branches i wanted to leave alone.
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A simple way to check how well you are controlling the pollen when doing selective pollination is leave some surrounding branches unpollinated.
It was quite educational for me.
Cheers
G
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yes, agreed. i have also learned this lesson! lol… it’s a great way to see how well you’re controlling the environment and your pollination process, because if those branches that weren’t supposed to be seeded start showing signs of pollination, you know you weren’t quite dialed in and isolated enough with your work.
the good thing is that those other branches will generally still only be lightly pollinated (unless you were a drunken sailor during pollination). but if you’re using multiple males, you can’t be totally sure of who the father is any more.
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I do have an extra tent in the attic I could use to isolate the male. I might give that a shot. On the other hand…I’m lazy 
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lolol, then i say let it be and ride it out. i totally understand that interplay between wanting to take care of your babies and also wanting to relax and enjoy life a little. i do agree that collecting pollen is a chore, at least how i’m doing it right now. but still, someone who is experienced and efficient would have to isolate, collect, clean.
i think you’ll have a pretty good idea from just looking at your plants and judging their growth and development what a “light pollination” will be. keep in mind that you can always use moisture and water to de-activate your pollen if you wake up one day and find your male has gone to town. depending on how quickly you catch the pollen, you may be able to stop any major bursts from really sexing up your ladies.
you may also think about adjusting your air flow when your male starts dropping pollen. more airflow will spread his pollen better, less airflow might limit some of his magic, no airflow will mean his pollen sacs will need tapping in order to release the pollen.
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Finally some pistils and sacs! LSD:
Master Kush:
Terpenado:
I do have another small tent I could chop/hang this male in, probably getting close to that time… right?
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It is time. Move him before he blows. 
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Trippy man, oh I thought you meant lsd lol Nice work props 
Quick update: I chopped and hung the terpenado about 10 days ago, got a good amount of pollen after 5-6 days. I brushed some on to one branch of each of the females after spraying everything else down with water, as you guys suggested. Both are still looking good, got some deficiency on the LSD, been using a little calmag which I think has it under control.
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Here they are last week, deficiency got worse in the LSD. I recalibrated my pH meter and realized I wasn’t adjusting far enough down, so I flushed and refilled the blumat bucket with new water that’s hopefully acidic enough. Fed some more plant food, too. Hopefully that’ll all get it through the next 4-5 weeks.
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my plants used to look like that not too long ago, i used to think my PH was wrong too, the first thing that worked for me was Dr. Earth dry fertilizer, you throw a couple handful on top of the soil in the pot, the roots will grow up to it to eat it very fast, and you’ll have the greenest plants you could imagine
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I waited too long to give updates (again)! I chopped these plants down around Sept. 2 - the LSD was definitely ready. The Master Kush was not filled out all the way; I discovered some fungus gnats in its soil, probably I didn’t have the blumats dialed in right. The soil had been staying pretty wet. I’m not sure if the gnats caused growth to slow, or if the MK just wasn’t ready…Anyway, down they went.
I tried doing some bud-washing this time, which I never do, but was a little paranoid about the gnats. The wash water looked pretty clean when I was done - probably the indoor tent and filter over the air intake is doing its job. I didn’t notice any flying insects or bugs in the wash water, nor any sign of insect activity on the (very few remaining) fan leaves.
Here are some budshots:
LSD
MK
You can’t tell from the photos, but the LSD is nicely dense. I got about 100 grams off that plant (about 1.0 g/watt for that plant, which is what I typically get with these lights).
MK is much fluffier, only about 60 grams of that total. Still a fine haul for me, it should make nice flower rosin.
And I got a bunch of nice dark seeds! I got probably 50-60 good looking seeds from each plant, mostly isolated to the one branch on each plant that I hand-pollinated from the Terpenado. So mission accomplished!
Starting a new, lazy grow of a few new (to me) varietals in some tiny pots, trying to go for more, shorter grows.
- 4 Pure Michigan x Divine Gelato F1s from someone on strainly.
- 2 Hindsight feminized seeds from Twenty20 mendocino
- 3 Mendo cookies x Cake Fighter from Bad Dawg.
I had germinated some old Bodhi Lemon Afghani and Space Cake, but none of those popped out of the soil ever. I’ll have to try some scarification or other “old seed techniques” with the rest of these old seeds.
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Well, I really messed these up in the two months since the last post. Those plastic pots plus the soil I used initially had very poor drainage and everything was extremely stunted. I sexed them under 12/12 and re-potted the females in fabric bags with ocean forest soil, then switched back to 18/6 to get em growing. Added some recharge a few weeks ago, that seemed to kick start growth pretty good. They’re looking great now considering how bad they looked about 6 weeks ago. Still have 2 of everything, but one of those divine gelato crosses is a real runt. Anyway here they are a week ago looking all weird from re-veg. Back in 12/12 now to flower.
In summary: I fucked these up. On the plus side: I fixed it.
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The next grow is always better.
Cheers
G
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A few more pics from today, the stretch has made the re-veg weirdness more apparent.
Even the little runt is looking better!
These were all in a really bad state, wish I had pics from like 5 weeks ago to compare. I’m pretty pleased with where they’re at, all things considered.
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You really picked them back up! Huzzah and congrats! 
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Whoops, forgot to post anything in the last [checks notes]…9 months! I started a new run with a new process that’s wrapping up now. Still in a 3x3 tent, but tried a simple SIP grow this time, consisting of:
- One 14 gal and one 8 gal thick sided totes
- A couple bags of perlite spread out on the bottom of each.
- About a dozen 1 gal fabric pots.
- Mostly top dressing with fertilizer.
My goal was to try a little bit of everything I haven’t tried before. Ended up with a couple pre-98 bubba Kush from 20twenty:
Some bubblegum breeder mix from fleur de mal:
Some bodhi peach hashplant:
And some Goji QM crossed with… something…I got in the OG auction last year:
It’s 11 female plants in total, should be lightly (maybe moderately) seeded from a peach hashplant male I left in the tent until just a little pollen was released. SIP was super easy and the plants have mostly thrived. I fill the totes with a few gallons of water every 7-9 days, occasionally hand water with some Recharge and flower fuel. Only downside is I need lots of airflow to manage humidity, and the always-damp soil led to fungus gnats. I got the gnats under control with spinosad soap and yellow sticky traps. Gonna stick with this method going forward, it’s great for a lazy grower!
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