MrGreenJeans starts growing!

Another few weeks have passed, and these girls are ready to flower!

Both plants are plugging along. I gave them a top dressing of worm castings at week 11, and have been watering them with diluted compost tea for every watering, which they get every third day. I have done a bit more defoliation, removing mostly bottom branches and fan leaves. I ended up turning the temperature up a few degrees, to 80 during the day and 70 at night. With the oil heater working, the air gets drier, so I put my “humidifier” in too.

As an experiment, I saved one of the trimmed branches in a 2" pot that I’ve been keeping damp. I’ve never tried to save a clone before, and this half-hearted effort probably doesn’t qualify as an attempt. I didn’t have the right stuff on hand, so just used some potting soil with a little bit of mycorrhizae. If it takes, it takes. If not, no great loss.

Today I adjusted the InkBird to 12/12, and turned the night temperature down a few degrees. I also did a light top dressing with a combination of worm castings, Dr. Earth Flower Girl, Alaska Fish Fertilizer, and cal-mag.

On to the photos:

Week 12, group:

Week 12, Plant A:

Week 12, Plant B:

Week 13, group:

Week 13, Plant A:

Week 13, Plant B:

Clone(?) …Only if it survives.

Humidifier at work:

7 Likes

Steady progress, and the start of a stretch – especially in the non-topped Plant B – are the watchwords for the report at week 14 (one week after the flip to flower).

Week 14 Group:

Week 14 Plant A:

Week 14 Plant B:

There’s been a little more activity than usual in the past week, though. Both plants appear to be doing well, but Plant B (the “runt”) started showing signs of over-watering or under-oxygenation mid-week. They have had pretty much identical feeding/watering schedules, but Plant B – because it appeared to be lagging behind the more prolific Plant A – was put into a smaller, plastic pot while its big sister got a 7 gallon fabric pot.

That changed this week (mid-week 15). A few days ago, a week-and-a-half into flower, Plant B got an upgrade. I mixed a little bit of Alaska Fish Fertilizer and cal-mag into the bottom layer of soil, and filled in around the edges with the same soil used in both plants right from the start. So now they’re both in a 7-gallon fabric pots.

Here are some photos of leaves on Plant B. The issue seemed to affect only some of the larger fan leaves, and it didn’t affect all of them. But I have plenty of fabric pots available, and there’s enough room in the closet for two of them. So, since Plant B’s “runt” status no longer applies, she got a late-in-life up-potting.



…Which brings us (a few days later, at the end of week 15) to defoliation day.

Plant A BEFORE defoliation (week 15, 2-weeks into flower):
overhead:

side view BEFORE:


Plant A AFTER defoliation (week 15, 2-weeks into flower):
overhead:

side view AFTER:


Plant B BEFORE defoliation (week 15, 2-weeks into flower):

side view BEFORE:

I didn’t get any overhead BEFORE photos of plant B. The ones showing the problem leaves (three of them earlier in this installment) will have to suffice.

Plant B AFTER defoliation (week 15, 2-weeks into flower):
overhead AFTER:

side view AFTER:

I removed mostly fan leaves, and mostly those down low or in the center of each plant, so not likely to be getting much light. I removed a few of the lower sprigs too; the ones that weren’t going to amount to much. Still, I accumulated a pretty good pile for the composter, and a nice assortment of leaves to contribute to our POTtery artist friends, for decorative flourishes on mugs, platters, etc., :slightly_smiling_face:

Defoliation aftermath:

5 Likes

Pulling a chair my friend :green_heart:

1 Like

Sorry to read about your Venom, but the Zkittles CBD looked amazing. I like it when grow journals have detailed posts like yours, so others like me can learn new things.:green_heart:

1 Like

Thanks, Buddy! :green_heart:

Most of what I’ve learned about growing weed is from reading posts… I figured I may as well contribute to the noosphere in whatever way I can.

3 Likes

Picking up where we left off… At 3 weeks into flower (16 since germination), everybody seems content. Pistils are poppin’.

Plant B is showing signs of mild chlorosis, but nothing major. As the “runt” of the litter, she’s always been a bit shy.

Plant A is as hearty as ever.


Jump ahead another week (4 weeks into flower {17 since germination}), and both plants are, as expected, about one week more mature. :slightly_smiling_face::

Here they are, huddled together in the confines of their grow closet:

Plant A is doing fine:

As for Plant B, I’m starting to be concerned about her color. …Worrying I might be headed for a repeat of what happend with the Venom, which went four weeks into flower on my first grow, and then took a dramatic turn for the worse. I don’t like watching leaves get progressively lighter; it’s like being subjected to slow motion torture. On the other hand, I appreciate that LITFA is a crucial ingredient in the most successful grows.

These plants have had almost identical treatment ever since the last up-potting. I ~did~ mix some Alaska Fish Fertilizer and cal-mag into the bottom layer of soil when I up-potted Plant B, which I think may have made it a little hotter than the soil for plant A. As you may recall, Plant A was up-potted into fabric earlier than B, because it was thriving, while B was initially relegated to a smaller plastic pot.

Any way, I’ve been reading a lot of posts in the “sick plants” and “help me diagnose this” category, to see if I might find a solution. Of course, my natural inclination when seeing otherwise healthy-looking light green leaves over the entire plant is that it wants more nitrogen. But in this case, I don’t think that’s the issue. The fish fertilizer and worm castings and tea put into this soil may actually be overwhelming Plant B.

I don’t test the soil’s ph, so I don’t know that crucial variable. When I water these gals, I use distilled water. I’ve probably gone too heavy with the tea, since I was using that almost exclusively (rather than alternating with just plain water) for the past few weeks.

I decided to stick with LITFA, and carry on as though this is just the way Plant B wants to look. You Be You, B!

…Carrying on, at this juncture of the grow, means shifting toward feeding the blooms. I top dressed both plants with some Dr. Earth Flower Girl and worm castings, and watered it in with compost tea with a dash of cal-mag added.


…Which brings us to Week 18 (five weeks since the flip to flower). The bud sites are starting to get frosty.

Unfortunately, my simple solution to maintaining humidity (a towel draped over a shelf resting in a pot of water) has not been keeping up with the dry air of late autumn heated by a gas furnace (and augmented in the grow room by an electric/oil radiator). This worked well last year, but the grow room has been getting way too arid lately. I saw humidity levels as low as 29%. Whenever I’d run the exhaust fan, whatever humidity there was would be sucked out even more. I’d like to keep the exhaust fan running, since that’s what brings in the fresh air.

I’m aiming for humidity in the mid-50% range at this point, but rarely seeing it that high. So I upgraded to a longer towel, which now drapes over the water in sort of a cube-shape, to provide a lot more surface area. (Compare the red towel in the latest photos to the blue one in earlier photos.) Insignificant change? Maybe. I’ve ordered a humidifier too, just in case. But humidity levels with this NEW AND IMPROVED evaporative humidifier have been at least 10% higher than with the last one. I’m running the exhaust fan, and humidity is currently at 45%. (The outdoor humidity is higher too, since it’s a drizzly day. I’m sure that’s a factor too. It has been a very dry few weeks.)

On to the photos…

Group shot, week 18:

Plant A:

Plant B:

As you can see, Plant A is chugging along without too much to complain about. It has had a few of the larger fan leaves turn yellow, and there is a little bit of nutrient burn on some of the leaf tips. But she seems to be pretty healthy, for the most part. I pluck off the decomposed leaves once they’ve given their all.

Poor old Plant B has had a tougher go of it. She seems to be greening up a little better, but is showing quite a bit of nutrient burn. I gave her a foliar feeding of banana peal tea, mid-week. (Picked four banana peals out of the compost bin. One of them had coffee grounds stuck to it. I shook some of them off, but not all, and boiled the peals in water. Sprayed onto the underside of leaves at room temperature, after lights off. …Provides a quick boost of potassium.)

I’ll be watering both plants with plain old distilled water (no more tea) for the next few waterings, at least. They get watered every three days.

Thanks for reading, and for offering any helpful advice!

6 Likes

Plant b is overfed. I’ve run into the same problem. No two plants are alike and no two bags of soil are either. Same for your supplements. Looks like it caught up with itself though.

4 Likes

The struggle is ongoing. :roll_eyes: They’re probably both over-fed.

Plant A is better than Plant B, but neither of them is looking very healthy at this point. I’m considering giving Plant B a thorough flushing. …Not usually a good idea with organic growing. I’ve gotta’ do a better job of preparing my soil right from the get-go.

So here’s a question for organic growers: Does anyone stratify their soil? This would mean mixing more bloom-oriented fertilizer into the bottom of the pot, so the roots are working with more nitrogen-heavy nutrients initially (toward the top of the pot), and wouldn’t get into the P and K until later in growth. Or do you amend the soil with bloom-oriented nutrients with a top dressing, two weeks into flower, like I do?

Maybe I’m just going too heavy with the amendments.(?) But I wonder if I can get away with the stratified soil strategy, and avoid shocking my plants with any amendments. I’m using 7-gallon fabric pots, which (I think) should allow room/time for the roots to sort things out…

1 Like

@Going2fast puts fertilizer in the bottom, I don’t remember what exactly.

I only topdress and sow beans for N, never changing my soil, perhaps I’ll chop up some fresh banana peels and topdress that during flower for extra P and K, it makes the fungi surge big time, and very fast, in a matter of hours you can see the mycelium so it becomes available to the plant very quickly.

Not recommended for seedlings and young veg stage.

2 Likes

@Rogue and @Going2fast : Thank you both for your input.

I must definitely be too heavy handed with the amendments when transitioning to flower. That, and my soil was probably not as “fresh” as it could be. I’m using the same soil I used last year. I fortified it with compost and warm castings, but didn’t give the microbes much time to multiply. (I probably ~should~ have mixed it up and let it ferment under a tarp for a while. …Didn’t do that.)

Once again, live and learn. :man_farmer:

I use homemade compost most of the time on the bottom third but I turned my heap into the garden this spring so I used 1/2 cup of standard 10-10-10 and was a little too much for 5 gallon pots. Top two thirds straight mg organics and 1/2 cup of dolomite lime. Soil straight out of the bag is enough to get the plant to flower. They don’t require much during veg. Do yourself a favor and plant a seed in straight potting soil. Don’t add anything to it. This will give you a better picture of the soils abilities. You are making the same mistake we all have done. Killing them with kindness.

2 Likes

I have a couple of those little small heaters like that. The best one that I like is a fan. I got them at Home Depot for about $20. I did have to take the red light out. But it just blows a nice little mild heat. And I like the oil heaters but it’s best to have a thermostat for it. They sell them on Amazon just hang it in the tent it’ll heat up and then cut off completely and then when it’s time to turn back on the heater come on it doesn’t just sit there and just run. It would be cool if they had a temperature gauge on them. I know it’s a thermostat, but what I’m talking about be able to set it at a certain temperature. I have a big one also but I don’t run it full power.

2 Likes

@Hemp : My oil heater is on an inkbird thermostat. It puts out a nice even heat, and is very efficient. I just put in a humidifier to replace the “towel in a bucket” evaporative device, since the humidity was getting so low. The humidifier is a cheap, quiet, cool mist humidifier with a 4.5 liter capacity, good for 40 hours of runtime between fill-ups, when set to the low output position. It would be nice if the humidifier had a humistat, and could turn itself on an off. But no such luck. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how it does…

2 Likes

And the same to you, my friend. Your plants look killer! At 6.5 weeks into flower, you’re about a month ahead of where I’m at but they look great. I’m excited to see how they finish up and I appreciate your inputs and general care of them.

1 Like

At Week 19 (6 weeks into flower), Plant A continues to grow apace. The buds are filling out, but – on photo day, anyway, the leaves are looking rather droopy. Some show signs of being burned from over-feeding too. It’s not ideal, but not bad enough to interfere with photosynthesis.

Plant B is also growing lots of buds, but showing more severe burns from overfeeding.


At Week 20 (7 weeks into flower), both plants are showing more signs of stress. Yellowing leaves abound on both plants. On Plant B especially, a lot of the tips of sugar leaves are getting crispy.

…Still, the grow room smells good. Most of Plant A is healthy.

…and the buds are stacking up.

Plant B has taken the over-feeding harder. There are lots of crispy leaf ends…

On the other hand, the buds on B are really going to town! They’re getting noticeably heavier.


Week 21 (8 weeks into flower) and we see more of the same… Both plants are showing yellow, burned leaves. They’ve been drinking only distilled water for the past few weeks – no soup for YOU! :confused: The damaged leaves are still showing enough green that I’m not plucking them or trimming them yet. The buds are continuing to fill out, and the fragrance when I open the closet door is still sweet and dank.

You can see a little baby bush hiding in the bottom center of this group photo. I stuck a couple of trimmed lower branches off of plant B into a jar of distilled water to see if they would sprout roots. Low and behold, they did! So, after a few weeks under a low-intensity burple LED, they got moved into the grow room to fend for themselves.

Plant A’s biggest fan leaves took it on the chin (if fan leaves have chins :thinking:). So she’s got some crispy tips to go along with her yellow blush.

In her weakened state, a pole helps support one of the branches made heavy with growing buds.

If this were Sesame Street, we might learn that B (for Plant B) stands for “bedraggled.” It’s odd the way half of the plant seems to be growing spears of buds without much in the way of fan leaves, and the other half looks more “normal.”

Lots of crispy leaf ends in this gal. But the buds are stacking up nicely, getting good and sticky, and smell delicious. She’s overdue for a good trimming though…


Between Week 21 and Week 22, Mrs. GreenJeans and I went away for the holidays. I left my grow room in the care of my sister. She has a ~mostly~ green thumb. A multitude of plants seem to thrive at her house, so I figured she could be trusted not to over- or underwater mine. She did fine. We came home from a long roadtrip, and were greeted by the welcoming scent of sweet, ripening cannabis.

These little gals were doing their darndest to contribute to the welcoming committee. They were cut from plant B when she was already in flower, so they are nubile. …But relatively odor free. They were recently promoted from off the floor to a perch beside the fan. Although they are out of direct (LED) “sunlight,” they’re getting some photons.

The group photo was taken after both plants got their dead ends trimmed. This is at Week 22 (9 weeks into flower).

Here’s what plant A looked like BEFORE the trim:

…And here’s plant A after trimming:

Plant B BEFORE…

So, as you can see, quite a bit of carnage. :cry: That weird trait in plant B where one side of the plant is producing spears of buds and the other half is producing buds among fan leaves is more clearly evident in that second to last photo. I ended up adding a stake to help support the drooping side of spears.


This brings us up to date at Week 23 (10 weeks into flower). These gals are pretty close to the finish line at this point. I check trichomes with a jeweler’s loupe, and don’t see any ambers yet. I’m planning to cut them down when I see ~maybe~ 10% amber, hopefully well distributed through both plants. I’d rather take these a little early than a little too late.

They smell more fruity than peppery now – maybe something like fruit loops or some other sweetened cereal. I wouldn’t call it “strawberry,” as the strain’s name suggests. But it is definitely something sweet.

Group shot:

Plant A:

Plant B (leafy/buddy split even more prominent):

The closeups (from a camera phone):

Sample Bud from A:

Sample Bud from B:

I will be doing a fair bit of wet trimming when these come down (maybe some time this week). Once I get rid of the crusty leaves that resulted from an overdose of bloom fertilizers at three or four weeks into flower :roll_eyes:… And assuming I’m able to regulate humidity successfully as they hang to dry… Then after a final trim and a good, long cure, these should offer a satisfying high. Strawberry Cough is reportedly a very good smoke. (I hope my over-feeding hasn’t screwed them up too badly.)

I’ll keep you apprised. Thanks for reading!

5 Likes

Chop Chop! After nearly 24 weeks (11 weeks into flower), the deed is done.

All things considered, I think this run will turn out fine. As expected, I did do a lot of wet trimming to eliminate brown leaf ends. Both plants put out a decent amount of buds. I don’t weigh them, but I’d guess there will be enough to fill ~maybe~ five or six quart jars.

They’re both plenty resinous. The whole house now smells like freshly harvested cannabis. :grin:

Plant B started off as the runt, but eventually caught up and got a promotion; it was moved into a full-sized pot after reaching its stride. If the fragrance of the buds is an accurate indication, this one may be closer to the phenotype for Strawberry Cough that Kyle Cushman developed and has been keeping as a clone. (Both of these plants were grown from seed.) During the wet trim, the scent of the buds on Plant B ranged from sweet – sometimes something like butterscotch, sometimes grape candy, sometimes licorice – to pepper or cloves. Maybe the sweetness becomes more strawberry-like with age…

Plant A turned out more skunky. Its buds smelled like burned rubber, garlic, and skunk. Both were pretty loud compared to the ZKittles I harvested last year. The buds are not as big, but they smell like they’re packing more of a punch. Time will tell.

Here’s the goods:

Twenty six branches are now hanging to dry, after my grow room was converted to a drying room. That shelf folds up against the wall when it’s a grow room, and down into place for drying – sort of like a murphy bed.

The exhaust fan is on full time, and I’ve added a small humdifier. I tried the humidifier at the “low” setting, which got the room up to abut 45% humidity. So I’ve got it running on “medium” now.

The soil will go into the composter to be reinvigorated. A post-mortem look at the roots shows that Plant B’s roots were better developed than those from plant A. (Either that, or I was just more meticulous when shaking the soil out of B’s roots. :smirk: I may have left some of A’s roots in the planter.) The stems were both generally the same size.

Plant A’s roots:

Plant B’s roots:

I will provide a smoke report on these …eventually… My wife will be the guinea pig, since I’m still abstaining.

3 Likes

Nicely done @MrGreenJeans ! Skunk/burnt rubber you say! Yes my kinda bud! Can’t wait to hear what the wife thinks…. I don’t know how u abstain with all that fresh dank :man_shrugging:t2: awesome!

2 Likes

Thanks Brother!

It’s VERY tempting.
Screenshot 2024-01-15 at 10.30.35 AM

1 Like

Haha no doubt! You must have some serious willpower! Me however…… very very little

SMOKE REPORT:

I ended up bottling this batch a little sooner than I had initially intended. We’ll be hosting houseguests for the next week, and I wanted to get the highly aromatic task of final trimming done before they arrive. That’s a compromise I’m willing to make in order to avoid having to deal with my mother-in-law’s inquiries about the smell, and why I’m spending so much time alone.

That, plus I’ve had a hard time keeping the humidity near my target of 60%. It has fluctuated quite a bit, from as low as 28% (when I left the humidifier off and the exhaust fan running) to as high as 78% (when I experimented with leaving the humidifier on and the exhaust fan off). For the most part, I’ve had both running at the same time. But even with the humidifier cranked as high as it goes, the exhuast fan was sucking away the moisture. On average, the relative humidity stayed in the mid 40s. So the plants were drying a little quicker than ideal. They hung for only 8 days. But they felt and smelled ready for the next step. So, on Sunday morning, I set about trimming and bottling them.

Once the dry trimming was done, I scraped the resin from my scissors and my sticky fingertips, and asked my wife if she wanted to test it. She agreed to have at it, so I put it into the bowl of my bong. There was very little material; it was just a few flakes, the size of a crumpled ant. So I was amazed at how much smoke it generated. She inhaled a thick and billowing column of it, and – true to the strain’s name (Strawberry Cough) – immediately commenced to coughing. I capped the bowl and the mouth of the bong with my hands, holding what was left inside, since she was unable to inhale all of it.

I showed her the cloud still swirling in the bong, and told her it wasn’t done yet. So she stepped up to the plate and took another massive hit as I torched the little blob of goo. Once again, she coughed out a thick, dense cloud of smoke before I even had a chance to lift the bowl. I took a look at what was left. …Still going. So, once again, I capped the bong to capture the remaining smoke.

She was a little less eager to go a third round so quickly. But it was probably only a minute later when she did her darndest to finish off the glowing ember. She got ~most~ of it, leaving only a residual haze floating in the bong’s neck. I was curious whether there was anything strawberry-tasting about it, so I sucked that down, myself.

Nothing about it reminded me of strawberries, but it was peppery. It didn’t look like much, but it expanded to fill my lungs. And a few minutes later, I realized it was also VERY potent.

When I first indulged in weed, the summer between 10th and 11th grades (in the '70s), it took me a few smoking sessions before I actually got high. I haven’t gotten high for more than 40 years, so I figured my brain wouldn’t even register the tiny amount of THC in that little wisp of leftover smoke. There was hardly anything to it! But, maaannnnnnn… That smoke was the BOMB!

Early on, my wife reported visual distortions, seeing speed trails behind objects as they entered into and then left her field of vision. Not much later, she wanted to lie down and take a nap despite having a full day’s agenda (preparing for our houseguests’ arrival). She laid down but said she didn’t sleep. Instead, she said her mind conjured a pastiche of people and events from the past and the future; just random snippets of unrelated thoughts, like a bunch of movies from different eras and different genres spliced together.

As she was resting, I set about trying to do most of what was on my to-do list. I was moderately impaired; definitely too stoned to drive, but able to tackle the chores I had set out for myself – despite ocassionally forgetting what I was doing, talking to myself a lot, and making way too many trips up and down the stairs or out into the garage for things I would normally consolidate into a single trip.

Two or three hours passed, and my wife got up. I told her the reason she was dragging was because she hadn’t been outdoors yet. It was a cold but cloudless, windless day. I had been doing a combination of indoor and outdoor chores, and was feeling invigorated by the warmth of the sun. So I convinced her to come out for a walk. We were both still tripping, and enjoyed the conversation combined with a little bit of exercise.

Any way, to make a long story only slightly shorter (sorry for rambling), we were high for most of the day. Assuming this weed cures to a finish that’s anywhere near as potent as that little chunk of resin, it’ll be very popular. I only netted three quart jars, each as full as can be. But they ought to last quite a while. I’m still abstaining, but once I get back in the game, I may be able to get high from of a small fraction of a toke. :slight_smile:

3 Likes