Grow Mediums Blue AutoMazar hydro grow diary - planted 31-08-13

[DWCocha]

looking awesome Smokey ...Im with bambud on the 12/12... 24/0 light ... I read somewhere stretch occurs most at lights out & go 24 for the 1st 3 weeks .. :smokebuds:

 

[SmokyD]

Hi trees, thanks for the feedback and sorry I've been away so long. The container is about 50 x 40 x 35 cm tall, I fill it with 25 ltrs of nutrient solution, and I pump about 120 ltrs of air p/h through the solution. In the end they stopped gaining height just in time, ie just before I ran out of tent height. Overall the system works great, I used exactly the same system for my OG Kush photos and got an insane harvest but they also got taller than I wanted. I have a new AF grow, I'll be starting a new diary shortly for this, this will be the last grow I flower in the tent, and in future it's strictly for vegging.

 

[SmokyD]

Day 78 pics

Sincere apologies I've been in Barcelona for a week! Nothing weed-related tho.
OK here's the pictures of the buds I took at day 78:

Here you can see the taller Think Different on the right:



The smaller BAM buds are on the left, some close-ups are below. The smaller buds are the BAM.

Many of the bud leaves are yellowed, they could probably have been cropped about a week earlier than they actually were.

 

[SmokyD]

Day 85

On day 85 my photos finished (insane harvest of OG Kush),freeing up the flowering room and I finally moved the Think Different and BAM into their final home, a humidity-controlled 3 sq. m. environment under 2x 600W HPS. I also flushed the tank and fed the plants plain water with Cannazym and Canna Boost for the final week.

I was in a hurry to catch a plane so I didn't have time to take any pics, sorry. However, I would like to share some pics of the OG Kush which was legendary (forgive me for my excesses):



From these pics you can also see the room which I moved the autos into.

 

[SmokyD]

Day 92 - Harvest

When I returned from holiday I found that the plants had completely emptied their reservoirs of nutrient solution and one of the TDs had shriveled up and died. All the other plants appeared to be fine, I cut them down the very next day. Here are the yields:

Think Different (untopped): 840g wet from 3 plants (the 4th died)
Blue Auto Mazar (topped): 625g wet from 6 plants

The temperature in the flowering room was 19 degrees during light, 10-14 degrees during darkness. The short cold spell turned many of the buds purple making them look very nice.

I'm really sorry for the poor quality these pics were taken from my crappy ipod camera. They are currently drying, when they're done I'll take some close-ups of the buds.

The Think Different colas were much larger than the BAM, but the quality looks the same on both. All of the buds are quite frosty and the quality is very good considering the adverse conditions.

Only the very top colas produced anything worth smoking, not surprising given the shape of the tent; everything below the top canopy was in complete darkness.

Considering the plants were grown side-by-side from the same reservoir, and assuming the genetics of the two strains are relatively similar, I believe this grow presents a strong argument for not topping the Dutch Passion auto strains. I can think of no other reason why the yield of the Think Different would be so much higher. If anything, the BAM had the better position in the tent as it had a greater share of exposure to the light.

 

[SmokyD]

Observations

Well I have had one grow which was worse than this, 8 WWs dying on me during a heat-wave whilst I was at a festival for 4 days. But that aside, this is the worst.

In my defence, I had 2 sets of autos and 2 sets of photos growing and only space to flower either one or the other. I made my choice and prioritised the photos, it proved to be the right decision as I got 800g of absolute top quality OG Kush, but sadly for the Think Different and BAM it meant they were limited by a very small inadequate grow space. Despite this they still produced a great yield, 1.5kg wet in a 1 sq. m. space, which will probably dry to between 300-350g is not bad at all, and the quality is very good. Things I leaned:

1. Don't top autos.

2. A crap hydro grow will out-perform even a perfect soil grow. This has been confirmed by my side-by-side soil vs hydro OG Kush. The trichome density of my Think Different DWC is much greater than the soil grow I did earlier this year.

3. TD and BAM in deep water culture can get very tall, over 1m, much taller than when grown in soil

Thanks to everyone who warned me not to top the BAM. I appreciate the advice but I had to see it for myself. I hope this grow has contributed something small to this topic.

I germinated my auto White Widows on 26-10-13, the diary is here:
https://www.autoflower.org/f61/auto-white-widow-grow-diary-planted-26-10-13-a-27585.html#post523044

I am using the new Dutch Passion LED and it is looking pretty sick, I have a feeling this grow is going to be a lot better

 

[SmokyD]

Smoke report - Blue Mazar

I am smoking my first Mazar joint after about 12 days of drying and curing. It is smooth with a nice buzz, a relaxing smoke. The taste and smell is not that strong. The finished product looks very frosty but under a microscope the trichomes don't appear as abundant as I first thought. I tried to capture a few shots through the microscope but it's difficult to get a sharp picture.

I have smoked quite a lot of different types of weed today tho, maybe a test tomorrow afternoon about 4:20 would be fairer...

 

[SmokyD]

Final weight

Final dry weights:

TD: 157.8g
BAM: 77.8g

Total: 235.6g

grams per W: 0.39
grams per m. sq: 235.6
grams per plant: 23.6

Costs:

Electricity: about EUR 246
Nutrients: about EUR 109

Not a disaster by any means, I am really happy with the quality of the weed and the yield is not bad considering the abuse these plants went through. Almost exactly 13 weeks from seed to smoke.

Normally I would grow 5 or 6 plants in such a space and yield 300-400g. But these plants were packed very tightly and grew very tall. They also did not have the full sq. m. of space because, as they grew to their full height, the exhaust ducting and carbon filter obscured much of the space, leaving probably less than 0.5sq. m. of canopy exposed to the light.

A great shame but I am very pleased how things turned out as at one point I had expected I might lose the whole crop. I probably let the plants flower one or two weeks longer than was necessary, but it was a busy period and the harvest had to coincide with travel/other harvests/visits etc.

Here are some browny-looking roots (shots were taken 5 days after reservoir ran dry):



The weed is very frosty, it's hard to do justice with my crappy camera but you can kind of see it:



And here is the final product plus some very THC-rich trim about to be made into hash:

 

[SmokyD]

Hash

The cherry on the cake... a nice piece of ice-o-lator hash

 

[DWCocha]

grats on the harvest :smokebuds: