Alright folks a lot has changed since last time. I was able to get a lot of the upgrades I was looking at so now we have:
2-4x8 Vivosun tents set up in an “L” formation each with;
1x 6" AC inifinity exhaust system
1x turbo fan hung above the lights
1x 6" hurricane clip fan for air through the canopy
1x 8" floor fan for under the canopy
2 layers of trellis cut to slightly different sizes and hung 1ft apart (2ft and 3ft high)
Here are some shots of the 1st tent in Veg. Blackberry Breath from JOTI group buy, 3 phenos of GDP, 1x Strawberry Starburst from Irie Genetics and 1 GMO Zkittles pheno 3 from Ethos. I am pheno hunting everything but Blackberry Breath, which I hunted last run and chose a keeper from 3 great phenos.
And here is the second tent in week 1 of flower. On the left we have our red keeper of Ninja Fruit and on the right we have two phenos of Mando from Solfire Gardens we are hunting.
Everything looks awesome this week. Did a heavy defoliation yesterday and the day before one last time before I flip them in 24 days. I also topped some of them to help keep the Canopy as even as possible. For the past 10 days I have been turning the light up slowly by 5% and the last 14 days I’ll leave it at 70, then 75% at day of flip. They drink about 32 fluid ounces every 4-5 days as of now and take 7 gallon this week as a whole. Had an issue with thrips a few weeks ago and some predator mites (cucumeris) help but I realized the larvae may still be thriving because the problem is starting to come back. I have decided to treat the soil with beneficial nematodes (SF) to further help with the problem and layered a thin coating of diatamaeceous earth on the soil as a preventative IPM. I’m still learning and perfecting my IPM regimen so bare with me haha. There are 15 Black Berry Breath, 5 GDP and 1 Ninja Smash.
Well it’s been a while, but I’m back. To summarize that Blackberry Breath/GDP/Gmo Zkittles run was the best I’ve ever had in my 2 1/2 years of growing! You can find week by week updates as well as harvest and buds pics on growdiaries.com, the username is the same as on here. Now on to the grow I have prepared after that which just went into flower on Saturday. Today was Day 2 of Flower since flip.
In this run were flowering only 2 strains:
Ninja Smash (Ninja Fruit x Bruce Banner #3) - A discontinued and limited edition strain from Dojo Seed Co
Strawberry Starburst (Strawberry Fields x Arise) - A mostly Sativa strain from RastaJeff at Irie Genetics
Pictured is 1 Pheno of Ninja Smash and 4 phenos of the Strawberry Starburst that I am gonna be Pheno hunting this round.
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned so far and thrown it at these girls. Defoliation, multiple toppings, cover crops (12 seed blend from build-a-soil), LST in the form of pulling the branches outwards so there is more light in the center of the plants, and pruning branches that weren’t getting light or would later on end up colliding with a branch or blocking a budsite. I only tied down most of them. A few were left as they were because I felt it wouldn’t be needed in their case.
Also we have since switched over to a new nutrient line and have started to try living soil, hence the cover crop. I tried Nature’s Living Soil and could not get past the smell. It was straight horse manure all through my condo everytime the air come on for a solid week, but ended up working really good. I just recently got a hold of Gaia Green and love it way more. Way less smell and more of a fish aquarium/fish food smell that doesn’t escape the tent. This will be my first time ever using the Gaia Greens nutrients. These plants had spent all of veg on salt based nutrients (Advanced Nutrients).
Now that I’ve used salt based nutrients I am grate to have learned about certain deficiencies and how to combat them for the most part. With the switch to living soil, however, I can now focus on training, defoliation, and spotting pests rather then struggling to keep them healthy or chasing deficiencies. I can also view more, if not all, of their phenotypic potential and more confidently decide what to let go and what to keep.
Here are a couple updates from the last couple weeks. Some of the phenos of Strawberry Starburst from Irie genetics have really started to fill out and seperate from the pack while others have not bulked as much as I would like. Still a couple weeks so anything can happen! Their last feeding was around day 28ish at around 4 and a half weeks. I have just been giving them plain dechlorinated water since then and have been loving my switch to living soil. Much less time balancing nutes and more time just watching the plants, doing my ipm, and maintaining the enviornment.
As a note these didn’t get a feeding of oyster shell flour, which I picked up recently. They did however get a feeding of botanicares liquid cal-mag plus iron in week 4. On the next run I’d like to include the OSF in the mid flower feeding (and all feedings) and then I think I’ll have the nutes dialed in.
Update for 8/15. End of week 7, Day 49. Everything looks good and the fade has started throughout all plants. The Ninja Smash is looking great. It’s pistils have more of a bright pink tint to them rather then the orangish/tangerine color that the Strawberry Starburst has. Of all 4 phenos of Strawberry Starburst the #3 is looking the best yield wise, has some purpling barely coming through on the edges of the leaves, and looks pretty frosty. I will wait to mention smells until harvest and reupdate at the end of the dry after I trim for the final update.
In terms of yield the plants go as follow:
SS #3
Ninja Smash
SS #1
SS #2
SS #4
Frost:
SS #4
Color:
SS#4
SS #3
SS #1
SS #2 & Ninja Smash (Both no color on leaves yet)
Easy to clone:
SS #1, SS #3 and Ninja Smash - Yes
SS #2 and SS #4 - Moderately easy; mothers were slower growers
The winners of the pheno test so far are #2 and #3, but if #2 had even a little color during the fade it would have been the only winner. We will run them again in the future to determine if there is a clear cut winner, but for now cutting 2 out means 2 less mother I have to keep and maintain so that’s a win on some levels lol. Here are some harvest pics from yesterday. I didn’t get all the phenos, but I got ninja smash and most of the Strawberry Starburst phenos I believe.
Also I will be doing my first tester run of Blueberry Diesel. These seeds were put into dechlorinated water on 10/17 and were left to sit for 3-4 days. After that they went into 1g containers and a week later all 10 had broken the surface. Fast forward a couple days and they are doing well still not quite at what I would consider the Veg Stage, but we will get there don’t you worry!
Day 39 update, Blueberry Diesel (from Thursday).
These plants are incredibly uniform, all 10 are almost the exact same size. Super close internodal spacing amongst all of them as well. I have learned and I think mastered how to better water them as they look good for this stage of growth compared to other times I’ve grown from seed. Starting them in 1g pots I think helped as well over putting them in. 5g nursery pots. Next update they will be put into 3g smart pots and we will top dress them for the first time. Just water and ocean forest soil until this point.
Day 41 and I decided to top them all. I don’t know if it’s my new watering routine or just the genetics, but I haven’t seen the branches be so large and well established after being topped the first time in quite a while. A rare occurrence indeed!
Purple Urkle BX1 polyploid from @G-paS. Usually they grow out if it and it’s normally limited to 1 set of branches, but I have only had maybe 2 in my 3 years of growing. This one has had it since the cotyledon showed and has continued the mutation even now. I’m interested to see how and if topping it will affect the mutation or now. Guess we will see .
Here are a few random pics from the past few days of The Moontower. I defoliated and lollipopped aggressively this past Monday-Friday and plan to flip them to flower tonight, if not in the next couple days.
Out of the 8 Purple Urkle planted 6 were healthy enough to survive germination and early veg 2 are female, 1 was male, and 3 I am not sure about yet.
Out of the 10 Sour Diesel planted 6 were healthy enough to survive. 3 are female, 2 were male and the last I am not sure about yet.
Out of the 6 Feminized Nanaz we dropped 5 survived and are looking great. Since there fems all 5 will be flowered to determine the best Pheno.
The 3 truffle runtz we germinated all survived and we had 1 male and 2 females (not bad!).
We will be running Purple Urkle, Sour Diesel, Nanaz, and Truffle Runtz all in the next run as soon as a tent opens up in about 6-7 weeks.
Power went out for 2ish weeks and the Moontower/Blue Hawaiian run had to be chopped a week or two earlier then expected. Also the Blueberry Diesel/Bahama Mama/Strawberry Starburst run was a bust and had to chop at week 6 due to them drying out .
On a better note I dropped 30 Spotted Lime F3’s from the Co-op run I did on Sunday night and 11 of them have already popped decent sized tails. Hoping to get 8-10 females and fill a tent so I can replenish my stash .
! I really liked how u were using a 4x4 tent but laying it on its side very nice 
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