Resimax’s Indoor Garden #2

[resimax]

Welcome to my second grow tent.

I delayed this diary for a long time, because this is a new grow tent, light, and ventilation setup that took me a while to get under control in the blazing heat of the summer, and the plant wasn’t doing well for a long time, and I wasn’t sure if it would make it.

The strain I am growing, started from seed, is Banana Jealousy, from Seedsman.

Here we have her at the worst of it all, at the end of week 2, with serious heat stress from triple-digit heat-wave temperatures (F) in my area:

Man, was I wrong. I flipped her a week ago at the end of week 5, right after super-cropping her apical stem, due to a very large internodal distance, and tying down her lateral branches. Ever since then, she has exploded in growth.

Here’s the start of my bondage treatment at the end of week 5:

We’re now a couple days into week 7. All through week 6, and the last couple days of week 7, we defoliated a ton of large leaves, to remove micro-climates and stimulate top-growth. Every day when I checked on her for over a week now, she was covering the entire footprint of my 3x3 tent, so I needed to, anyway. She’s growing in a 5-gallon fabric pot, and growing very laterally due to the super-cropping.

After a lot of defoliating today, part way through week 7, she looks like this:

We don’t have any flowers forming yet, as she is still preparing herself for a grand finale.

She has been drinking an incredible amount of water each day, more than any plant I’ve grown in a long time.

The new light I am using and she is responding very well to, is an AC Infinity Ionboard S33.

I’ll be back in a week or so with more progress, but for now, I’m pretty happy with the results of the new equipment.

[Pawsfodocaws]

Nice, we had a rather bad heat wave here as well. Plants didn’t care but wow it was hot for these parts.
Nice plant man. Definitely did some work tying those down and topping it, should produce a fair amount of bud for you.
Great job keeping her alive in that heat you mentioned, that’s hot

Paws

[Simdadon]

That is why I love these plants, they can take a lot and keep on fighting. Nice rebound

[resimax]

I’m lazy and didn’t get any pictures, but I removed all the ties today, and I think I am seeing some buds start. We’ll let her stretch if she is able to any more, as we have a lot of room. If need be, we’ll spread her open with some string to try to get an evenish canopy.

Well, I’m never good at getting an even canopy without trellising, but I can do my best and let her do the rest.

[resimax]

So it’s been a while since I had time to update this diary, but here we are again, now well into bloom. As mentioned, we removed the ties a couple of weeks ago, and have just been letting her grow LITFA-style. She switched from growing laterally to pretty vertically, from 24 inches from the last update to 34 inches currently, and still going.

Week 8, day 2:

Week 8, day 6:

Week 8, day 7:

[resimax]

Senescence is already starting to set in, almost 4 weeks into bloom. We’re getting some nice purple tinge to the leaves, and a few stigmas as well.

Week 9, day 5:

[resimax]

Well this is a new light, a new tent, a new exhaust system, and a new soil recipe I’m testing out with this plant, hence only 1 plant in this tent.

She decided to take over the tent, so it’s a good thing I didn’t do more than one. Over the years, filling my tent up, even with a good air ventilation system, lollipopping/more defoliation than I would prefer, and plenty of oscillating fans, has resulted in PWM on at least some of them. So over the years I have opted for more tents and less plants per tent.

However, I kind of wish I did test this new environment and soil with at least 1 or 2 other cultigens. I’m experiencing something I’ve never seen before, after hundreds of indoor grows.

For the last 3 or so days, some fan leaves, have started getting dark spots on them, but not mold. The dark spots are brownish black, and completely desiccated (crispy). These spots occur on the edges or the middle of the leaf – there is no consistency. It is mostly larger and lower fan leaves that are affected, and only about 2 or 3 per day. I have been plucking them off.

My only thought is inadequate water. She is the heaviest drinker out of any plant I’ve grown before, and I actually thought I have been over-watering her. I use a custom organic soil mix of my own, and as such, it is not a good idea to water until run-off. Sometimes I do get a little run-off though, because every day when I go to water her, her pot is completely bone dry – even the bottom of the fabric 5-gallon pot is dry to the touch, as well as a few knuckles deep into the top of the soil.

I am guessing she just wants vast amounts of water, and a small amount of her leaves are desiccating because of that. But, that is just a guess. I don’t believe this to be a nutrient issue, as there is never any discoloration before necrosis sets in. This plant is just a very very heavy drinker I think.

Today I removed 2 or 3 more, and then proceeded to remove a lot of lower growth, and leaves in the center or that were shadowed and weren’t photosynthesizing enough. This was in an attempt to get her to focus more on bud production, instead of keeping the crazy amount of foliage she has alive. I’ll be monitoring her closely to see if this has any effect on some of her leaves become necrotic overnight with a strange brown/black color.

The top of the plant and inflorescence are looking very nice so far. Looking at the progression, I estimate we have about another 3 to 4 complete weeks before harvest. Let’s hope we can keep her more under control, with more frequent irritations until then.

Maybe @George or someone with some wisdom that follows my organic grows could chime in on this phenomenon. I normally never have any nutrient problems show up in my leaves, and the symptoms don’t appear to be that. Hopefully my treatments rectify the situation, and it isn’t any real cause for concern.

Here she is today:

[resimax]

After watching the leaves continue to go necrotic, on the 5th day of week 10 I got a better understanding of what was going on.

Our soil had either not enough phosphorus readily available, or other nutrients were antagonizing its uptake.

We defoliated a ton, and it hurt her, but she might make it until the end.

We then applies some bone meal, basalt, and some other micro nutrients found in our bloom top dressing mix. We top-dressed with it, as well as watered it in as a drench.

This remedy happened on day 4. On day 5, she didn’t have as much leaf die-off as the previous day, and by day 7 she has been doing much better.

Stuff happens, I guess.

Week 10:

[resimax]

Banana Jealousy (Seedsman)
Week 11 (6 weeks of bloom)

The issue was indeed a phosphorus deficiency from what I can tell. A few days after applying a soil drench of the bone meal etc, she stopped deteriorating. That’s not to say she doesn’t look like she’s seen better days, but at least it stopped spreading. She should only have 2 or 3 weeks left.

[resimax]

Banana Jealousy (Seedsman)
Week 12 (7 weeks of bloom)

She’s now been flowering for 7 weeks, and her flowers are just about in their final form. We’re just waiting for them to ripen a bit more, which seems like it’ll be another couple of weeks at the going rate. She does sort of smell like a floral banana. Interesting smell. Not very strong smelling, but interesting.

[resimax]

Banana Jealousy (Seedsman)
Week 13 (8 weeks of bloom)

[resimax]

I just harvested this one after looking at the trichomes under a microscope. Perfecto.

These pics were taken a couple days ago. She’s hanging to dry in the tent for my usual 10-16 days with a good humidity for a proper slow dry. I’ll report back later after that.

@Pawsfodocaws

[Pawsfodocaws]

Beautiful man.