Gettin learnt with TrevorLahey

[TrevorLahey]

Let’s get it right this time(ish)

So I made a ton of mistakes throughout this grow, and came to accept that I’m a total noob, so in humility I come here to share and record my experiences so we can all learn from my mistakes, and in doing so I hope to improve my skills and knowledge of our fine craft.

We started with 7xNorthern Lights Fem and 1xWhite Widow Fem from Canuk Seeds.

Seeds were dropped February 24th Yes that’s right, the plants vegged for 12 weeks under recycled diy T8 fixtures in a 4x4 veg room. This, combined with poor training and topping practices, led to these plants exploding in lanky, stretchy growth upwards of 5 feet tall in little 1 gallon buckets.

On May 2nd, I took 3 of the Northern Lights plants and added them to the flower room on the tail end of another 3 plant cycle I was just finishing up. Bad idea. They stretched even further to the point they were above my reflector.

On May 31st I came here looking for help with these 3 plants which were getting light/nute burnt, which you can check out the discussion here: Making the most out of a bad situation

On June 1st I followed the suggestion of @Mr.Sparkle and chopped the remaining plants down to 1/3 to 1/2 their initial size.

From this:

To this:

Throughout the next week I did some training and bending to keep the tops down as well as optimizing the light with some reflective material and on June 8th they were looking alot better:

On June 11th I transplanted them into 5gal pots, but only filled them up to about 3.5-4gal. They were then introduced to my flower room under 1000w HPS 12/12 and fed DNF Bloom at 5ml/gal:

June 13th and 24hrs of 12/12:

That gets us all caught up with their life story

Some other info:

Medium: Sunshine Mix Number 4 + More Perlite to aid in drainage
Nutrients: Dutch Nutrient Formula A+B and non ph adjusted tap water
Other Additives: 30% Hydrogen Peroxide at 5ml/gal
Temperature: 24C lights on/18C lights off
RH: 60-80%

So I’m going to post updates when I can so we can all learn from my success and mistakes, and this will act as a great way to keep me organized going forward. I may post thoughts and ideas from time to time as well, and I welcome all to join in on the discussion!

[toastyjakes]

congrats on your first diary!!
looking good…

sometimes they get really tall and we have to half them but being careful about it, as you were, shows just how hardy these little (well no little) plant can be.

but good job! keep us updated!!

[Jellypowered]

So detailed and well written, I’ll be following along.

[ReikoX]

Smart move making a diary. Lots of knowledgeable members here will help you out.

[TrevorLahey]

Not much to update tonight, flower room is chugging along. It’s getting a little iffy on a few tops on one of my NL. My fat thumbs gave it a pretty good break I’m not sure if they’ll make it.

Hey this NL is a looker:

This WW looks kinda strange, will have to stake it and open it up a little I think.

This is the one with the broken tops, it’s hard to tell what’s broken because I splinted it with a straw and am hoping for the best, some leaves were looking weird so I’m guessing that branch is on it’s death bed.

Noticed a few concerning fan leaves on this plant as well, too low to be light damage, I took them off because they were insignificant, looked at them under my microscope and didn’t notice anything alarming. A visual inspection of the plant and it’s neighbors also revealed no creepy crawlies. Staying diligent.

I saw a big black worm/centipede scurry along my wall tonight over a hefty pile of DE and he took it like a champ. I tried to stomp on him and he went under my wall. Don’t know what he is but I hope he leaves my garden alone (or maybe helps it) and isn’t a sign of a bigger problem.

My late flowering plants are still teetering on the edge of failure. One of my ties slipped and a main branch bent way over during the evening. No damage but the cola was pressing against the wall all night in a humid room I hope it doesn’t cause issues. I gotta say this again I want these out of my room they’ve just been a terrible pain in my ass from the get go.

This one got a healthy watering tonight and should be ready to chop soon:

She’s gonna be a big leafy bud for sure, I’m just hoping there’s no pollen in there dropping onto the younger plants. Pleaseeeee don’t let that happen.

The other 2 are a little bit behind, I think at some point they got locked out and became waterlogged in their nutrients. They’re still quite heavy but I think they are finally starting to pack on a little more weight. It’s funny how they look way healthier than the one above though. I’m going to leave them for now and hit them with one more heavy watering when they next dry out.

I got some stuff to say about my propagation area but it’s late so I’ll save that for tomorrow, however I’m guessing at this time tomorrow I’ll be throwing out at least a dozen clones. Sad times.

Good night OG.

[legalcanada]

you may be surprised how well marijuana plants can heal… good decision on chopping them down and reflowering… better to have fewer BIG buds than many little buds … following along now

[Swampthing]

I agree. Great idea chopping them down. I would also “shave their legs” by cutting off a bunch of undergrowth that doesn’t look like it will get much light. As you’ve probably figured out from your first flowering plants, when you dial back the light cycle to 12/12 and put them into flower, they’ll stretch and fill in with buds. So I would take that into consideration and just imagine how the growth will continue. The undergrowth I would chop off would be lower branches that aren’t getting much light. I’m also a fan of defoliation which is taking off fan leaves which also helps light penetration. And like @legalcanada said, you’ll also get bigger big buds instead of a bunch of small buds…which you’ll learn to appreciate a ton more come the time to trim post harvest.

You’re doing great for your first grow. Don’t be hard on yourself as it’s all about learning from your mistakes and successes. It’s never a failure if you learn something from your mistakes (not that you’ve made any mistakes).

Curious how you like the advanced nutrients? I’ve always been a fan of botanicare’s pure blend pro line (grow and bloom), along with their liquid Karma, cal-mag, and Silica blast then the addition of some molasses instead of botanicare’s sweet (which imo is a waste of money). Only reason I suggest it over AN is for its mostly organic ingredients which I think you’ll find will bring you better tasting and “cleaner” medicine. I always use less than the recommended dose and scale up as needed based on the needs of the plant. Less is always more in that a deficiency is always easier to treat than overfeeding. Especially with feminised Genetics as stress can lead them to “herm” and throw male flowers that can pollenate your crop (those seeds will likely be female but also will be very likely to herm themselves, so I wouldn’t grow those seeds if you do happen to find any in this crop).

Btw, sorry if I missed it… what seed company are the NL and Widow from? From the looks of everything, I’ll echo the fact that I really think you’re doing a killer job on your first grow. Nothing like enjoying something you’ve grown yourself. How would you describe the smells from the ladies flowering?

Keep up the good work. I have no doubt your skills will increase more and more as time passes and you gain more experience.

Feel free to ask us any questions. That’s what this place is for.
Swampy

[TrevorLahey]

Worst thing about it is this isn’t my first grow, nor my second, or third. I’ve been doing this longer than some of my favorite growers on here, but this particular grow was chock full of bad decisions due to weird overlaps in my perpetual technique.

This WAS my first attempt at growing perpetually, and right off the bat I made the poor decision to leave all 8 of these in a veg room with insufficient light while I dealt with possible pollen and pests in my flower room from the cycle I had ongoing at the time. So I couldn’t move these into the flower room until I was sure. The other bad decision was neglecting them and letting em stretch because I had myself believing LST caused a recent garden to hermie. The right call was to top, LST and train em down until I could get em in the flower room but I failed to make that call.

In the past I’ve just ran one room but always run out of smoke so I wanted to try my hand at a perpetual harvest that I could keep harvesting every 60 days or so. I failed lol.

It’s the nuances and fine detail stuff I’m picking up from folks here that I either ignored or wasn’t exposed to over the years that is helping me reach the next level, and I’m pretty humble so I’m not embarrassed to show my mistakes and failures hence the point of so much disclosure.

As for the nutrients I’m working with what I got. I bought 5L of each bottle a couple years ago this stuff and I still have ~2L left of each:

http://www.dutchnutrientformula.com/gro_bloom/gro_bloom.html

Just the A+B, I don’t run full regiment due to cost. I have a few other things I’m not running currently as I’m tired of dumping nutrients on my plants without knowing whether they’re making a difference or harming the plant. I plan on picking up a PPM meter soon and learning to use it properly to feed. I will also post an inventory of my nutes/pest control/other stuff here when I get a chance.

Organics are okay with me, I do use H2O2 though to prevent root rot and pests so if I were to go organic I’d have to find new solutions to old problems I’d already solved.

Seeds are from Canuk seeds. They were the first beans I’ve ever purchased with known genetics. For years I’d been getting clones from a friend who had no idea what he was growing strain-wise. Before that I did large sow and go gardens outside with bagseed I had collected. I was tired of being disappointed with my crop and being told it was “just bad genes” so I saved some money and got 2 strains I loved to eliminate the “bad genes” part of things. The NL that are late flower definitely have that sweet/sour, piney smell I’m familiar with, not super pungent though. I like a strong aroma coming from my garden, hopefully the Widow will have some more character. My previous ‘unknown’ strains had zero character throughout 3 generations I often forget what good flavors are out there.

Thanks for the insight and stopping by!

Edit: @Swampthing A recent cycle, cropped early due to herm, wish I let it go. 330g on 1000w HPS 9 plants. But this is just to show I’m a noob and not a ‘newb’ lol.

[Swampthing]

Doh! My mistake! Well then take my advice with a grain of salt, as you know what’s up. I feel like a doofus now. Getting quality genetics are a big part of the outcome of the final product, but I’ve seen better flower of ok Genetics grown great over great Genetics grown poorly. You definitely didn’t strike me as a first time grower which is why I was so surprised. I’m sorry for misreading that. NL is a great strain, probably my favorite smoke from last harvest atm. Hopefully you’ll enjoy yours as much as I’m enjoying mine. Have a great day!

PS nice colas on those ladies. What size pots are those in?

[ReikoX]

@Lucy247420

In the past I’ve just ran one room but always run out of smoke so I wanted to try my hand at a perpetual harvest that I could keep harvesting every 60 days or so. I failed lol

I’ve had similar issues running perpetual gardens. I prefer having two flowering rooms and a small propagation area instead of a veg and flower area myself.

[TrevorLahey]

All good, just wanted to clarify that I’m not allowed to use the ‘new grower’ excuse. Lol

Pots are 5gal, a little big for my purposes i am learning. The 3 big plants are filled to top so say 5gal and the younger ones are full 2/3 of the way so say 3.5-4gal.

The colas in my most mature plant are about 12" long and 3" in diameter and there’s 2 main colas almost identical in size and appearance.

@ReikoX I feel as though that’s the best way going forward, Im just trying to cut turnaround time and finding the best method has proven difficult.

[TrevorLahey]

Update:

Lots to update, it’s been a busy few days for me both in and outside of the garden.

First up are the new additions to the flower room:

They’ve been looking great and starting to stretch, I was going to train and LST them tonight when I spotted this on a few leaves on each plant:

It definitely looks like a pest, but also similar to the problems my mature flowering plants had/have. Lots of lower fan leaves had died or decayed on all 5 plants over the last 48 hours. I’ve searched the leaves for mites/aphids/thrips or any bugs with my scope as per usual, and I saw traces of what appeared to be poop from some sort of pest on the undersides of leaves as well as what looked like a very very microscopic caterpillar, maybe 0.5mm length with big antennas sitting on one of the most badly damaged leaves. I might have to ask over in sick plants to see if anyone has any clue what is causing this.

So assuming it’s some sort of pest I need to make a game plan. I will chop my 3 most mature ladies who are due to be harvested very soon anyway. These plants have leaves with similar symptoms, and have had it for some time, so whatever this is must have came from them. I need to remove them from the equation and start fresh. I will sanitize my room as best as possible despite the plants still being in the room. Then I’m considering spraying my plants with something in my arsenal. It’s kind of a crucial moment, since if I wait much longer they’ll be too far into flower to spray with anything, and to stop the pests from spreading further out of control.

I have a few pest control products on-hand:

• Safer’s End-All Miticide/Insecticide (Insectisidal soap with added pyrethrins)
• Scott’s Bug-B-Gon (Insectisidal soap only)
• Diatomaceous Earth
• Some cheap permethrin/pyrethrin/piperonyl butoxide aerosols (would use this as a premise spray and not directly on plants)

I cleaned up/removed the most badly affected leaves tonight, have noted a few remaining leaves and intend to check them again at lights on tomorrow evening to see how badly the problem is progressing and hopefully have a better gameplan.

Here’s some bud porn of my most mature plant:

As you can see I’ve been picking away at the lower popcorn stuff and have taken about 10g’s from her already. I’ve already tried some uncured and it tasted great and had a nice relaxing and sedating high I was very impressed considering all the trouble I’ve had.

The others aren’t quite as far along as this one, but if I’ve got pests I’d rather get them out before they cause any more issues for their younger siblings so we’re basically at zero hour for chopping.

Ok let’s finish on some better news:

We have roots!

So after 3 weeks my cuttings finally rooted, I know people say it can take up to a month but the longest I’ve ever waited was 11 days so I was worried. Not only did they root in my cloner, but they also rooted in the promix seeders I loaded. Now all of a sudden I have 40-50 clones I don’t know what to do with

Plus my OGK bagseed seedlings:

PLUS My next project: 3xDark Devil F2 Autos from @Mr.Sparkle (Thanks fam!) These look awesome and are going outside. I can’t wait to watch them grow and learn more about autos.

I soaked them on June 16th around midnight with just tapwater this time instead of SuperThrive and H2O2, by 10am the next day they had sunk so they went into the paper towel and had popped by 10am the next day, June 17th. Some fresh beans here.

Then into solo cups that night:

And tonight, June 19th:

[TrevorLahey]

June 20th

Chopped the rest of my most mature plant. Running low on smoke and room in the grow.

Here are the 2 main colas:

Whole Plant

Wet Weight: ~160g (+10 dried grams from earlier in the week)

This will be my biggest yielding plant this run. The others are a little bit behind and I’m pushing them as far as I can before my anxiety causes me to chop them lol.

June 21st

They’re hanging in there, one closest to camera I messed up while flopping and opened the stem wall, I doubt it will make it but still hanging onto hope. In retrospect I should have let them dry up a bit more before making such an aggressive flop.They’re starting to stretch now so they better dry up by tomorrow night or I’m going to have to find another way to keep them down.

The spotting on leaves is continuing and I still haven’t spotted a pest but my vigilance has been giving me a lot of anxiety so I really gotta chill out and take this day by day.

The lineup:

I’m really digging the form on this NL:

In other news, almost all my clones are throwing roots left and right, and I’m struggling to keep them alive while I wait to plant/send them to new homes. I’ve gotta get some of them + my DDF2s + my OGK bagseedlings outside and asap as the clones are hungry and my seedlings are getting leggy under a T8. I’m running low on promix so I might have to use some of the tons of recycled/composted promix that I dumped down in the swamp. It’s probably better than what’s coming out of the bag at this point. Or just stop being cheap and go buy some medium, but then it wouldn’t be a Lucy247420 thread

[TrevorLahey]

June 22nd

I failed while supercropping my plants and lost a few tops. They were old tops so they were hollow and were just not easy to work with.

I’m now just LST’ing them down with string because I can’t afford to be lopping off tops this late in the cycle.

Still seeing lots of spots on random leaves and still not seeing pests directly and STILL being diligent.

Hey look at this weird single bladed fan leaf:

June 23rd
Got my seedlings up potted to their final containers and placed outside today. I’m 2 days past the summer solstice so I’m definitely late considering their age, the autos should hopefully be nice and finished by the time first frost hits.

Top 2 and bottom right are Dark Devil F2 autos from @Mr.Sparkle and the bottom left and middle are OG Kush bagseedlings.
The largest seedling (OGK) was really really leggy so I made him a little stand.

Thanks for the tip @ReikoX ! I was considering burying the cotyledons on this seedling but he recommend I keep them at this stage of growth and prop it up instead.

They are being grown in 5gal buckets (except the middle is 3gal), filled with my own mix of black earth, new promix and old recycled promix I’ve had dumped in a swamp beside my house.

Tomorrow I need to get my clones transplanted. They’re hungry, they’re wilting, they need new homes. I would have done it today but I ran out of soil. I’ll have to pick some up tomorrow at the garden centre and build a mix.

June 24th
They’re stretching again, I’m tying tops down the best I can and am hoping they’ll stop before they get too close to my light (which can’t be raised any further)

Bud sites are starting to show up. I always call this the “constellation” stage as the little white budlets remind me of stars

The soil is finally drying somewhat quickly, and I am having to water every 2-3 days now as opposed to the once per week before. I’m glad I added more perlite to the mix. They were last fed on the 17th and they are quite dry tonight so I fed them 5ml/L of DNF Bloom A+B. Lots of lower growth is looking sickly I’m tempted to take it off as well as any insignificant nubs that will never fill in.

The 2 mature flowering plants also got a light watering tonight as I’m just letting them go until I run out of smoke or they start dying whichever comes first. They seem to actually be ‘re-flowering’ so to speak, as if they were locked out for some time and all of a sudden started eating and photosynthesizing again, and the buds are swelling up.

I picked up some “Mega Soil” and some potting mix at the garden centre today, came home and mixed it up with some more recycled promix and got all the clones from my cloner into 1gal buckets. These are a mix, the ones with popsicle sticks are White Widow and the ones without are Northern Lights.

As you can see they are looking quite sad/sick and hungry, so tonight they got 2ml/L DNF Grow A+B and 5drops per gallon SuperThrive (10ml/gal is recommended for transplanting) in hopes of fixing this stress they’re experiencing. Most of them had solid 3-4" roots on them with lots of micro hairs and I thought I took a pick of them in a jar to post here but I don’t see it now.

They’re due for a cold, wet night tonight so lets hope everything survives!

I still have ~40 clones in seeder trays under a T8 that have roots coming out of the tops and bottoms of the trays but some of them appear to have been light bleached (under a T8 whaaat) I’m hoping I can still salvage a good chunk of them for some guerilla locations around the property.

[TrevorLahey]

It’s been a long week so please excuse the lack of updates.

June 24th Lots of bud sites on all 5 plants. Am worried about spotting on some of my leaves and had discussions over in the sick plants forum and while I’m still not sure what is/was going on they do improve over the next week.

June 25th This is not cool, I don’t know what caused this yet, but @Mr.Sparkle suggested its a feed issue and since I’ve been using half dosage I fed them vigorously tonight with a full dose after seeing this:

June 28th Seems to be getting better, not seeing this damage as widespread as before but still seeing small random patches. I’m in the midst of slight defoliation so this stuff gets picked as I find it.

My lone White Widow. she’s definitely got a unique shape to her, I’m not a big fan of how much foliage she has so densely packed together.

June 30th Looking good, as you can see I cropped out my 2 most mature plants as they were pretty much finished. I found some nanners in them while trimming and some slight microseed so I’m hoping they didn’t pollinate the young ones.

It does look nice without them in here though:

July 2nd

This is now day 21 of flower, lets hope we can push through for 5 more weeks!

[Hoodini]

looks like your dialing it all in now

[TrevorLahey]

July 5th

July 6th Stacking up nicely I must say. nothing too important to note. I’ve been giving em a light watering at lights on and a heavier watering a few hours later. They’re at the point where I have to do this nightly so I’m much happier with this than the once a week schedule I was on before. This allows me to feed every 2nd day or so and I’d say the plants are loving it.

Remember my broken main cola?

Just stuck it flower and all into my slimy unwashed cloner alone with a dash of tap water and LITFA,

This rooted faster than my clones from same plant taken during veg but rooted in 1/3 the time. Pretty cool.

Other news: Working on a 2x2x4 Cabinet to practice microgrowing. Cabinet is built, still needs paint and a door but its ready to go. All my materials for my light are ready to put together too. Will post pics once I’m comfortable sharing

[ReikoX]

@Lucy247420

This rooted faster than my clones from same plant taken during veg but rooted in 1/3 the time. Pretty cool.

Now you just have to wait 37 weeks for it to reveg

[TrevorLahey]

July 10th

Been noticing signs of hermaphroditism on almost all my plants these last couple weeks, bulbous calyxes with orange pistils forming at lower nodes, strange large yellow calyxes forming below other calyxes. What looked like nanners/stamens as well, especially over the last 48 hours.

I’m ~3 weeks out from harvest so I don’t know. It’s not genetics, this has happened to me too many times now to use that excuse, plus these are 2 different strains and all did this roughly the same time. There’s something about my environment that’s causing this issue. My heat has been quite high lately (29C at some points) and my RH is 65% lights on 85% lights off. But I’ve had this happen under perfect heat and rh conditions before too so like I said, I just don’t know.

It’s heartbreaking to lose another sensi crop I had a lot riding on this one. I’m going to have to grow them out I guess as this was going to have to medicate me for the next couple months. These are gonna be some seedy seedy buds for sure and it’s gonna be hard to keep a level head for these next 3 weeks while I wait for them to be harvest-able.

Sucks

[Hoodini]

Think positive. . . You know how exactly how to hermie plants so just do the opposite and you will be fine lol. . . You know for sure for sure it’s not light causing it??