Flowering Plants To Death with Oranje

Why thank you! This last Apollo 11 was in Coast of Maine Stonington’s Blend, as was the ChemD x Sunshine Daydream.

The larger Apollo 11 and Blueberry were both in Roots Organic Original… I think the 707 is a bit lighter on nutrients than Original – I had probably 5 or 6 weeks of solid, healthy growth with just water and the occasional dash of kelp or molasses. When nitrogen deficiency started popping up around week 4 for the Roots Organic Original plants, I started giving them bottled nutes… General Organics line, what I’d used for my first and second grows this lifetime. Seems to get the job done, but it still feels like cheating at organic growing :grin:

The Coast of Maine plants did not get the GO nutrients, but I did supplement the original soil and gave them some Friendly Organic pick-me-ups starting around week 5/6 of 12/12. In the original soil, I added Coast of Maine dry nutrients … same line(?) as the soil, in fact: Stonington’s Blend. Think I used 1 tablespoon of that in the 3-gallon pot, 2 tablespoons in the 8-gallon pot. Same amount of blood meal… figuring I’d need the nitrogen.

I also hoped that my soil was alive enough to eat through topdress, so I gave them a teaspoon here an there of neem meal, crab meal, fishbone meal, and vermicompost (and probably a couple of worms, free at last). In terms of things to drink, I’d water them like someone who’s heard vague rumors of no-till but doesn’t feel like doing it right :grin: Kelp teas, coconut, lazy vermicompost tea, and a bit of molasses.

Verdict: I kinda like both, but the the Coast of Maine SBPGMix seems to have a bit more longevity but sacrifices rapid availability. I think if I gave it a bit more oomph with soil amendments to begin with (and didn’t veg for a couple of weeks before flowering), things would have looked a bit better late in flower. Then again, I went 10 and 11 weeks with those two plants :expressionless:

9 Likes

Hey look, it’s soon. Hi Overgrow! I am going to type words at you pertaining to the plants I finished, what fun! First off:

ChemD x Sunshine Daydream (8 gallons, Coast of Maine SBPGMix):


Growing: easy, tolerated cold, didn’t seem to be an especially heavy feeder. Plentiful branches after topping, sturdy frame – I had to use some stakes due to training, but should be able to hold its weight if grown naturally. I’d guess 9 weeks is the right length for flowering, but I harvested slowly between day 57 and 75 :grin: Medium-to-high odor, but not unpleasant.

Buds: Dense and chunky. Above average yield. Sugar coated to the point that your fingers feel grainy after handling the buds.

Smell: Pine, lemongrass, cedar, spice. Curing seems to be bringing out some cat piss, unfortunately :laughing:

Smoke: Thick, spicy, potentially annihilating. It’s a potent indica but almost entirely in the head… a little bit, and you’re quite chill and go about your business. A little bit more, and you suddenly notice that time in your brain is running about 20% slower than the world around you.

Blueberry No. 2 (3 gallon, Roots Organic Original + GO nutrients):


Growing: super easy. Sturdiest plant I’ve ever grown, and by far the least branching of any plant I’ve grown, even after topping. Seemed to be a light feeder, and would suck every last drop of reserves out of fan leaves before letting them go. Fan leaves were hand-sized, fat-lobed, forever reaching for the light. :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: Low odor – a little sweet, a little like feet :footprints: 9 weeks flowering seems correct.

Buds: Purple :grin: reasonably dense, long buds with delicious sugar leaves.

Smell: Blueberry-esque. Sweet, fruity, tart. Average yield.

Smoke: Thin, smooth, not especially flavorful. Burns down to pure white ash you can blow out of the bowl. High is magnificently mellow, but not incapacitating. It’s like a pressure valve on your brain opens, and you just magically turn relaxed and smiley. Makes it hard to finish writing this post.

Apollo 11 (pictured, 3 gallon Coast of Maine SBPGMix):


Growing: fairly easy. Lots of branching post-topping, mistakes were made. Significant staking required during flowering. Extremely vigorous growth, despite some general horrible growing problems I was having early in its life. Smells like “that person is definitely growing marijuana.” :cop: Seemed to come into ripening range around 9 weeks, but I let one of them go to 11 because Why Not?

As for specific notes for each of the two…

Apollo 11 no. 1 (5 gallon, Roots Organic Original + GO nutrients):
Completely unwieldy plant, but I brought it upon myself. Post-topping (mistake 1), I did some additional training to make a nice, broad canopy for flowering. As said, these turned out to be… very branchy, so I made a “sea of everything is falling over.” Huge yield, but sub-par bud density on about half of it… still excellent smoke.

Apollo 11 no 2 (3 gallon, Coast of Maine SBPGMix):
Topped but not trained. Still required support for every branch :grin: The branches themselves were plenty strong, just needed to pull them back up towards the center. Also huge yield, but buds have a lot more girth and density. This is the one I let go 11 weeks…

Buds: Also purple-ish? Most of them turned a dark green/purple by the end of things. Sativa cattail buds that seemed like they’d grow indefinitely if given the time. As said, no. 1 was “quantity over quality” in terms of density. As for no. 2, c’mon look at that thing :laughing: Trichs on everything, but not quite sugar-frosted indica levels.

Smell: Awful :smile: While cutting, I got whiffs of lime-citrus with spice undertones. Now curing, it smells like putrid exotic fruit. Imagine some creature too unique to live, deep in the Amazon rain forest, that subsists solely on a bright pink fruit that’s nauseatingly sweet. These buds smell like what that animal shits when it has a belly ache. With spice undertones.

Smoke: Thick, spicy, entirely pleasant. Extremely enjoyable high, a little silliness but energized and fairly functional. I think my initial “bye bye focus” had more to do with my activity than the smoke – it is actually a pretty good high for going about your business. Heart-pounding, mind-racing, edge-of-your-seat sativa? No. Will I keep it around? Absolutely.

In conclusion, growing plants is fun and challenging the end.

20 Likes

Great read, thanks.

99%

:thumbsup:

Great words. I enjoyed your reports.
Your photos are fantastic. I love the use of living plants in the background!
Outstanding.

3 Likes

There is a sort of comfortable quality to those shots, isn’t there?

99%

3 Likes

Beautiful grow man! Wow

I had check this thread of yours. What soil recipe did you use in the end? Do you feed anything other than water?

Again, congratulations for a job well done. Looking forward to get some info, to step up my soil mixes and grows!

2 Likes

What…!!! Oh, no!!!
Shit!: All we prefer MiG’s way of do it: he invite us to eat the leafes…

6 Likes

I used store-bought soil this time around: I was having some pretty bad problems in veg last August/September and didn’t want to add new unknowns by using an untested soil. One of the soils is sold as a water-only mix (Coast of Maine Stonington’s Blend Platinum Growers Mix) – I did amend this with some extra dry nutrients, and would water with teas/coconut juice/molasses every-so-often. The other two were in Roots Organic Original, which is water-only for the first month, but required bottled nutrients afterwards.

I have a large barrel filled with The Rev’s TLO soil mix, and will be giving this a try in the next few weeks. Stay tuned :grin:

4 Likes

For sure brother. Amazing purples in those plants. I’ve never had a blueberry that’s on my list too lol.

Everything looks great :slight_smile:

2 Likes

any update on this new soil mix? whats happening in your garden now?

2 Likes

That sounds kind of perverted but made me chuckle great looking ladies BTW!

1 Like

I had a pair of Tahoe OG Kush females which I wanted to clone and flower at the end of the summer, but instead I cloned, repotted, topped, and flipped to 12/12. Oops. So, here we are:

Day 13 of 12/12:

Using Coast of Maine Stonington’s Blend soil again, I like it. Added in about 10% rice hulls by volume, couple cups of vermicompost, and a dash of Coast of Maine dry nutrients. Plants seem quite pleased so far.

I’m impressed! Fast start, but these are supposed to go for ~70 days, so I’m not sure how this is going to play out over the next 8 weeks. Vigorous growth, and unfortunately for me, ridiculous stretch.

I was trying to keep these short and small, dammit. Repotted from 1 gallon -> 5 gallon buckets a few days before flipping to 12/12, and they’ve more than doubled in size since then. I spent my afternoon doing some training to shave about 5" off of their overall height, hopefully that’s enough to keep the top buds from burning to a crisp :slight_smile:

Smell is mild so far, but a distinctly earthy, savory spice. Hopefully I can keep them alive with blumats over the course of my summer travels, and come September I can see what all the hubbub is about.

8 Likes

Quick update on day 19 of 12/12:

These plants are way too big for my tent :sweat_smile: I think the stretch is coming to an end, but the lanky one (pictured left, middle-bottom, and right) is completely unwieldy. If/when I grow these again, I’ll probably use 3 gallon buckets instead of 5, and start them flowering when they’re under a foot tall.

The petite sister (vertical branches in the center) looks like she’s going to have a ridiculous yield, and is frosting up like a champ. Good job, plant.

Blumats have been in for a few days:


I like them so far. They seem to be powered by magic – I poured some water near one that was “on” to see if/how quickly it would stop dripping, and it stopped dripping instantly. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but so far these little guys seem to be better than watering than me :grin:

7 Likes

Day 26 of 12/12,

My pair of baby giant Tahoe OGs are going strong. Blumats seem to be doing their job nicely… I hope. The two girls together are drinking about 3.5 liters/day, but the pots aren’t too heavy and the plants are doing quite well. Definitely have an uptick in fungus gnats, but I topdressed with neem meal and crab meal, which seems to be getting the job done.

After doing some warm-up stretches, I managed to twist through the canopy to get some non-awful shots of the progress.

The top of the canopy, plants interleaved. The chunkier buds are from plant 1, which also stretched significantly less. Center bud (also pictured below) is going to be a little stunted from heat stress/light burn. The slightly-crisped leaves to the right are a branch from plant 2 that decided to steer directly towards the CMH bulb. I tied it down better, but… too late.

As said above, there’s some obvious heat stress on this bud, but I’m out of places to bend/pull branches, and my lights have already been raised to their max height. Live and learn.

That said, even the little scrub side branches on plant 1 are frosty and chunking up.

… and this will probably be the trophy bud. Pic does not do it justice – it’s quite frosty and has some girth to it. Good job, plant.

This is (mostly) plant 2. Oddly, the inner buds on plant 2 are turning into little balls of frosty fun. The buds at the end of branches are oddly thin, but I’d say this plant looks a week-or-so behind her sister overall. We’ll see what happens over the next (checks his watch) 6 weeks.

… and the whole stretchy, unmanageable mess.

9 Likes

Day 41 of 12/12,

The girls received 13 days of LIFTA and lived… Blumats seem to have done their job, but I’m guessing the reservoir was dry halfway through that time. The girls were wilted quite a bit when I got home, but recovered nicely after 3 liters of water a piece.

Tahoe OG #2 had a rougher time, and I don’t know what to make of the plant overall. Buds are quite stringy and airy, though some of that is probably due to heat/light burn… arguably it has 4 weeks to go, but it seems like the yield will be on the low side.

Tahoe OG #1, on the other hand, has some girth!

This one is starting to ripen, I’m guessing 2 to 3 weeks until it’s ready to harvest. Yield will be excessive.

Odor is fairly low, sweet with a dash of rot. The buds themselves are a sweet pine/lemon with a hint of diesel.

11 Likes

Hey @oranje plants are looking great! Just had ordered some blumat jrs. Myself What ru running? I order just five for now have a feeling I’ll be getting more from what I can see them as doing an excellent job! Thinking about obtaining parts for a five gallon DYI what’s yours thoughts if potentially saving a little $?

I’m running the standard Blumats, 2 stakes per pot. If you mean making your own 5-gallon reservoir, absolutely do it :grin: I got a kit and the reservoir is a standard bucket with two holes drilled in it, nothing more.

1 Like

I’v seen parts list but un sure of what to actually order on a certain website maybe I’ll run a few pics by ya !

Hey @oranje found this on https://www.sustainablevillage.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59_91_257 Is this pretty much all your bucket has then!

https://www.sustainablevillage.com/tropf-thru-hull-tank-connector

On the late, the A11/BB round was beauttifull man. I love these bloods too. This pic was the climax for me :

https://overgrow.com/uploads/default/optimized/3X/2/f/2f877b750ed85e113e787a5391beb7aaae35b856_1_690x451.jpg
Seeing them praying Jah with these beauttifull colors was just an epic rape of my eyes lol

https://overgrow.com/uploads/default/optimized/3X/f/9/f91c919b046d799e8cb41ce104b9c39a59691702_1_666x500.jpg

On a couple of setups, i’ve used blumat carrots with pleasure. I love this system. But in small pots (SOG), the “hairy” root system have the tendency to stack on the surface of the medium and to live too much dry/wet cycles. I will try to draw the trick i used back in the days, can’t explain with my bad english.

On small pots, it have increased the autonomy of the tank and stopped the production of the roots we hunt for at the surface mainly. Just two cents if any ^^

2 Likes