Going Russian
When I first started growing Russian Rocket Fuel some two years ago I read up on a lot of info on this site - a marvellous place for information on Autos. I've done a few grows since and thought I'd start posting.
I recently read some thread here about problems with Stitch's strains lately. I don't actually remember where I got my Beans, but it was from some English online shop. I am pretty sure though that they were the real deal, because I've had nothing by excellent, rewarding and interesting grows with the original beans, and all the beans I've produced myself from these first ones. I went for regular seeds, since I had read a lot of good about RRF and knew I'd want more if they'd be showing to be good. And I absolutely love this strain. I have a high tolerance for weed, but this stuff can make me high any day or night. I have come across a few different phenos, including the bushy one of which my somewhat squat cabinet at the moment are housing one, and some weird fuck up ones that has its leaves curved and growing really freaky. One of these freaks appeared in my last grow, when I tried out the LED-light I had recently acquire. Due to a stint in growing vertical, this particular plant ended up really close to the light it's whole life, and it turned out one single massive round ball of flowers with a few leaves sticking out here and there. It looked really weird and was more like a globe some 15 cm in diameter, and although it's small size it yielded almost 15 g of dry. The smoke was not as pleasant as from many of my other RRF harvests, unfortunately, but I put that at least partly down to the fact that this one ran somewhat over time, since as it turned out, it matured super fast. I cut it at nine weeks, but when comparing it closely in a microscope to prior harvests it looked like it had been left a little too long. I usually harvest my RRFs around ten weeks, up to twelve weeks from planting a seed.
Cabinet of glass and solar power
So, my first RRF grows we're conducted in soil in really small cabinets (60x60x40 cm) made out of glass, actually converted terrariums. The choice of glass might seem weird, especially when it comes to stealth. The reason I did this was because I wanted to try and see if there was any way to get any amount of bud from growing only in sunlight coming in through my south facing windows high up in an apartment building. There is no building facing me and we have really long summer days up North where I live. I could not place them on my window sill, for stealth reasons, so I'd have to have my glass cabinets on an adjustable table just inside of the windows. Then I'd keep lowering the table to keep the canopy of my small plants levelled just where sunlight would hit them, while they were still not visible in any way from down the street. The other reason for a glass cabinet would be that it in fact became a small greenhouse which is nothing but good for growing : ) Thirdly, I needed to be able to move or cover them quickly, should anyone visit me that should not know about my hobby. And also, finally, I wanted to get to know the strain and have some small easily controlled bean producing rounds to see if I could get some good genetics showing, for future larger grows. Now when I say larger grow I'm still talking no larger that the cabinet I'm running know, which measures 40x80x130 - not in glass though this time. I only grow for my one personal use, and kind of like to experiment and try to get enough out of a really small space. I have definitely not completely nailed it yet, far from it, and I hope and trust I never will. I like the chase, to try and get better results, while at the same time trying to get the whole process down to its minimum. I'm a firm believer and follower of KISS, no matter what I do, and will always try to get the same results or better from less work and gear than last time.
The maximum I ever got out of the window grows, by the way, was some 7-8 g from one plant when only utilising solar energy. But since I ran a couple of plants in up to two greenhouses each run I still got upwards some 25-30 g from some harvests, from only sunlight, indoors, through double window panes and glass material in cabinets. And, I got lots of beans from different mothers and different generations. At one point I introduced some cfl's I managed to get for free as samples from some manufacturer in china, to help my plants to some more light than my window could provide, and managed to up the harvest somewhat, but I knew that sooner or later I'd move on to a new cabinet.
My new cabinet
One day I bought a second hand excellent old 70s/80s office storage unit in sheet metal, with locks, almost completely light leak proof from start, and started planning a simple setup. I read up on reputable Chinese producers of LED (yes I know some people disregard these straight up, but I also read some posts and articles on units that seemed totally working fine) and managed to win a promotional sale on eBay. I got a 300 w unit including shipping for somewhere round 220 USD, half price what the store charged regularly on eBay. I'll skip forward and say already, that it has worked, and worked well. I needed LED to keep temperatures, ventilation and sound down in my narrow smallish grow space, and boy it works out so great. More on that later.
The locker is positioned in the back of my walk-in closet, behind a rack of hanging clothes; stealthy and nice. If you'd see it you'd think I'd be storing my companies' paperwork or something like that. It has a passive intake in the back of the cabinet, and a small silent duct fan to remove air from inside. Since it is such a small cabinet, and since I use LEDs and temperatures are low from this, I do not need a big fan and my setup is really not loud at all.
Coco and rice husk
My first two grows in the new cabinet were still in soil in a vertical system I found in a horticulture store, actually wall mounted 3x4l racks that can be stacked. Had I some more space in there so that I could add a vertical LED to the one I have in yoyos from above, I might have continued this experiment, but as it turned out in my setup, the plants had too different distances to the lights, and due to this some plants would shade others. It was also really hard to properly work the drip irrigation system I had purchased for it, due to the differences in height. I wanted - despite some things I'd read in forums on internet - to try a Claber oasis unit. These have a 25l reservoir and run on gravity and a simple 9v battery to distribute water to drippers in a closed circuit, twice every 24 hrs. Again it is my KISS preference that had me wanting this simple unit to work. It didn't work as well as I hoped in those grows, for different reasons, but for my current grow the Claber Oasis works like a charm, although I have now upgraded to no less than two units to satisfy my plants drinking habits.The reason? I now run my first coco grow, and are "dripping to waste." This after hearing friends taking to coco, and having good results - mostly from hand watering though - as well as reading a lot of good things on the internet. In planning this grow I early on decided to try and have a go at a run-to-waste system. After reading up, this seemed one of the easiest routes to avoid problems such as salt buildups. Also, coco I understand, is less prone to attract bugs and gnats than soil - I sure haven't seen any either. I also read a lot on how many growers have started using rice husk for aeration of the coco, with as good results as using perlite. It's ecological, and as such seemed interesting, so I got some 10 kg of the stuff - that's hellofalot in volume and comes really cheap. In the end I decided to mix in around 25% of rice husk in my substrate.
The setup and propagation
So, I planned to finally flower four girls in 2gallon smart pots (that's the fabric ones) in two plastic containers (two pots in each) with wholes drilled in the bottom, to drain excess water to two other container the same size only deeper, in which the first containers would be "stacked".
I planted 15 seeds in small with around 1l of coco to make sure I'd get four promising girls. Read a lot on how you should not transplant AF cannabis, but also some posts here and there how this can be done without much, or any, stunning to he plant. I couldn't physically fit more than possibly eight pots of final size in my small cabinet so I decided to give transplanting a go. If not to learn from it. Really wanted four good looking plants to flower at the same time. I do not have an EC meter, and in order to keep thing simple I decided on an easy feeding schedule and to stick to this plan, unless of course deficiencies would appear that would have to be taken care of. I do of course have a Ph meter though. The brand of nutrition I went with is Gold Label (Coco A, Coco B, Ultra PK and Ultra Mg), mostly because I had a lot left from earlier soil grows. So, for mixing my coco up and watering I would use my nutritious according to directions on the bottles as follows: mixing my coco and watering until sexing 1/3 of "maximum recommended strength", 2/3 at transplanting and the following 1-2 weeks, followed by full strength until last week before flushing where I'd revert to 2/3, and then flushing in only Ph balanced water for one week. I know that in contrast to most recommendations when growing autos, this might seem aggressive, but I had previously used similar formulas and strengths when growing in soil, and my RRFs have never really complained : ) I decided to Ph my water at 5.8 through the entire grow. Also I use straight tap water. Tap water around here is really clean and has very low levels of fluoridation. Also, it fits well into my KISS philosophy.
The seeds sprouted, as they usually do for me, between 2-5 days from planting. All came up nice and easy and were then drip fed a small amount of water/nutrition (30-40ml/day) gradually working up to 120 ml/day/plant when I started to sex the around week 2. Now, an interesting note I've taken when sprouting in my glass solar powered cabinets, vs sprouting under my 20/4 cycle in my up to now three grows in my new cabinet, is the ratio of male/female plants. In sun and natural day/night cycles I'd end up with 85% female plants, while under artificial days spanning 20 hrs while propagating I'd get as low as 45-50% females. Provided, these are no scientific trials and to few runs for any conclusions to be made, it's still worth noting, not least in regard to what I read in the Stitch thread about issues with low female rates; might be that it was mainly regarding (counterfeit) "feminized" beans. Feminized are not really for me.
Transplanting
Around 2-3 weeks into the grow I could sex all of them. I thought there were 7 females and 8 males and picked the four most promising girls to be destined for flowering in the cabinet. Of the three remaining females that I simply put in the open I my flat, some foot behind some other non cannabis plants in my window, one turned out to actually be a male (I sexed really early to give my plants an early transplant). The two ones in the open are still growing fine by the way and have taken good care of any sunlight that might have reached them. They have been hand watered in a wet/dry cycle. I have no idea as to what they'll finally yield but they are somewhat behind in their life cycles compared to their sisters in the cabinet. An interesting note to take when considering discussions as to wether longer light periods could actually shorten time from seed to harvest or not. I think these might get to spend two weeks in the cabinet when the others have been harvested and I am away for holiday. It's a risky business relying on my automatic setup for 14 days, but these plants are actually just a bonus to my real grow in the cabinet, so it's worth taking a risk. I'm also excited to see what difference adding that much light the last two weeks would do.
The grow
So after putting the four transplanted plants back in my cabinet and upping the nute strength to 2/3 of my maximum strength I was expecting at least some stunt in growth and preying not to have any nutrition issues. Up to now my plants had looked very healthy and I really wanted them to remain that day. I'll skip ahead and say that they still today looks as green, healthy and happy at 55 days.
There were no noticeable stunt at all. Quite the opposite, the much added room for roots propelled the grow immensely and fast at that. Within 48 hours roots penetrated the fabric and started to get air pruned. Stems grew thicker fast. The light I kept higher and higher every day, keeping it around 15-20 cm above the canopy of the four plants. Pretty soon it was clear that on of the ladies must have that bushy monster gene, and this was the first time I had a large and powerful enough setup and/plan that I came to see it's full potency. It would grow to take up a lot of space, threatening to shade its siblings. I had to put one of the pots up a bit to get an even canopy, and move around some side branching to try and even out light provided between plants, but pretty soon I had a stable environment with even growth. The smaller ones have had to work a little, while the big one just kept adding cola upon cola on its side branching. Within another two weeks or so, the monster closing in on a meter and was hitting the LED, when this was put as high as my YoYos would let it. I had to get lower containers for the pots, get rid of the YoYos and hang the light straight on the hooks in the cabinets ceiling, AND tie the plants main stem downs for a couple of days to get it to fit in under the lights. The other plants eventually reached the same height (without any lst though). The canopy is, maybe I think, still a tid bit to close to lights and I am thinking of ways to deal with this in my upcoming grows, and amconsider a kind of SCROG approach to lower and even the total canopy. More on this later.
The total height from substrate to canopy measures around 90 cm, except for the smallest one that has been put up 10 cm to match the others, and of course the monster that would probably have measured upwards 105-110 cm had it not been tied down at one point. The somewhat cramped area has forced the plants to grow its side branching very straight up which makes for a very dense canopy. The RRF has quite lot of foliage, and this makes it hard for light to travel through my massive canopy to the nether regions where some of the sorter branches has produce beyond popcorn. These aretill very small buds that is in the risk of not maturing as well as the many top colas. To give them at least some aid I've added one of my many magnetically attachable cfl's on each of the sides in the cabinet. I could've added more, but then my temps would go up and I'd have to start messing with more powerful fans and leave my KISS regimen. The temps have been constant at 27-29C with a RH from 40-50% when vegging, up to 65-70% now that the plants are growing really dense. I even out temperatures and give the plants some breeze using a tower style fan in one of the back corners of the cabinet, with an added small fan blowing over the canopy. For my next run I might upgrade/add some more fan-action inside the cabinet. I did not expect this massive growth fan and the density have me fearing any mold should everything stand too still as RH rises with more watering and space gets cramped.
My first Claber unit did well dripping for the first 4-5 weeks, but it soon became evident that the volume it could serve from one full reservoir (which provides up to 1 weeks watering when on "full" duty") would not be enough for all four plants. The unit comes with 20 drippers that were carefully arranged in circles around each plant - divided in amount between the plants according to each plants individual need for water to achieve 20-25% waste (which goes to water my flowerpots around the flat by the way. They love it.). I bough another unit to double my watering capacity per week which ended me with up to 10 drippers per plant and even more possible watering schedules than the one unit should serve me. Now each plant has two loops of drippers circling them to even out the watering. As it happens the monster and second in size each has twelve drippers while the others each has eight each. This gives my the right amount of runoff. Weekly the reservoir/s will reach close to empty, and I'll mix up another batch of nutes according to my schedule to fill the Oasis's, and empty and clean my plastic bins/reservoirs for waste water. This feels like a good interval to make sure nutrition is fresh and valid. It's also about the only maintenance I need to do with my cabinet. When changing/filling water I need to take out the plants, which gives me a chance to study them and look for possible problems and see what's developed during previous week. All I all this takes me 30-60 minutes a week. Other than that I mostly check in on them to see how they look, and to make sure everything in my setup is up and running.
I have considered defoliating to help light travel and battle potential mold, but in the end decided not to. If I'm going the sort of SCROG type of way I'm thinking of for next grow, I might try this, though most posts I seem to have read on the subject regarding AFs disencourage from defoliating. Most do seem to disregard transplanting as well, but for me doing that worked flawlessly as far as I can see. You just seem to have to be really careful and have a good plan and reason for doing it.
My grow is now closing in on day 56 - it's actually at the time of writing this sentence 10 minutes to day 56 - and I have a holiday coming up on August 24. That Monday happens to be exactly ten weeks from seed and would typically be close to when I would harvest my RRFs; in general this happens between week 10-12. Due to me and my girlfriend going away for two weeks I will need to either harvest at week nine in order to dry the weed for a week before going away (and let a friend cure/burp my jars while away) or rely on my automatic system to not fail while being away and possibly encounter dead plants when I come home, or mold or anything else not desired. I pretty much have decided to let my girls have a weeks flush starting tomorrow and trust that the weed will smoke well after a nice cure. I have taken RRFs slightly before schedule before and they have turned out really good. Also, the plants in the cabinet seems to be pretty close to ready to go within a week or so anyway. Progress is fine and my only concern is that I've had almost no leaves yellowing/dying on me so far. Usually by week 8 I would've started having some of the bottom leaves yellowing and dying off, but this run has been all healthy and green all the way up till now; it's almost scary. Me and my girlfriends long awaited holiday has me wishing I could let the flowers go an extra week or two to see if I'd get an even more dense canopy and further development on lower branches, but instead I'll be looking forward to see what two weeks in the cabinet can do for my two plants, that has been standing out in the open since week three.
So tomorrow sees the last stage before harvest: flushing. This will be done with pure tap water Ph'd down to 5.8. I'll drip an even larger amount of water through my setup/ day then with nutrient solution, and I expect to harvest around day 70 to give me at least up to week of drying before putting in jars and handing over curing to a dear friend while away.
The Future
This has ended up a really long post, and I need to come to an end for today. I'd be happy to take any comment/critic/ideas on my grow and what I've written. If anyone has ideas as to how to improve my setup - preferably while sticking to the KISS principle, please share. I am especially interested in opinions on defoliating and SCROGing, but anything else is of interest; I'm a learner.
My idea for a scrog is to build small squarish constructions in where I can place one pot in each. The top of each little unit would have a "personal" screen on its top where the plant in question can have its colas twined. These units would be placed on shelves inside my cabinet that will let water/nutrition waste drip into containers below. The idea is to have individual miniscrogs for each pot so that they can be removed from the cabinet while keeping its screens canopy intact, in other words not having a static screen set up inside my cabinet. I need this to be able to empty waste reservoirs, but also for any sudden need to evacuate/move my grow. The idea is to have any plants that are not bushy monsters still grow in similar fashion as the bushy ones because side branching will reach the height of the main cola faster. If I could keep the colas some 50 cm above substrate level as opposed to today's 90 cm, I'll also be able to kickstart propagation of seeds within my cabinet - on a top shelf - and cutting another 2 or so weeks on each harvest, while still not having to have another cabinet or tent around the flat just for this.
Good nigh for now. I'll try and find time to post some progress posts in the two weeks following.
Some photos to go with he post:
Cabinet day 55
Canopy close up day 55
Simple tower fan
Small canopy fan and power socket inside cabinet
My two Claber Oasis drip units, fan outlet and small water pump for stirring reservoirs
The two females that has been stood in my living room since week 2-3
When I first started growing Russian Rocket Fuel some two years ago I read up on a lot of info on this site - a marvellous place for information on Autos. I've done a few grows since and thought I'd start posting.
I recently read some thread here about problems with Stitch's strains lately. I don't actually remember where I got my Beans, but it was from some English online shop. I am pretty sure though that they were the real deal, because I've had nothing by excellent, rewarding and interesting grows with the original beans, and all the beans I've produced myself from these first ones. I went for regular seeds, since I had read a lot of good about RRF and knew I'd want more if they'd be showing to be good. And I absolutely love this strain. I have a high tolerance for weed, but this stuff can make me high any day or night. I have come across a few different phenos, including the bushy one of which my somewhat squat cabinet at the moment are housing one, and some weird fuck up ones that has its leaves curved and growing really freaky. One of these freaks appeared in my last grow, when I tried out the LED-light I had recently acquire. Due to a stint in growing vertical, this particular plant ended up really close to the light it's whole life, and it turned out one single massive round ball of flowers with a few leaves sticking out here and there. It looked really weird and was more like a globe some 15 cm in diameter, and although it's small size it yielded almost 15 g of dry. The smoke was not as pleasant as from many of my other RRF harvests, unfortunately, but I put that at least partly down to the fact that this one ran somewhat over time, since as it turned out, it matured super fast. I cut it at nine weeks, but when comparing it closely in a microscope to prior harvests it looked like it had been left a little too long. I usually harvest my RRFs around ten weeks, up to twelve weeks from planting a seed.
Cabinet of glass and solar power
So, my first RRF grows we're conducted in soil in really small cabinets (60x60x40 cm) made out of glass, actually converted terrariums. The choice of glass might seem weird, especially when it comes to stealth. The reason I did this was because I wanted to try and see if there was any way to get any amount of bud from growing only in sunlight coming in through my south facing windows high up in an apartment building. There is no building facing me and we have really long summer days up North where I live. I could not place them on my window sill, for stealth reasons, so I'd have to have my glass cabinets on an adjustable table just inside of the windows. Then I'd keep lowering the table to keep the canopy of my small plants levelled just where sunlight would hit them, while they were still not visible in any way from down the street. The other reason for a glass cabinet would be that it in fact became a small greenhouse which is nothing but good for growing : ) Thirdly, I needed to be able to move or cover them quickly, should anyone visit me that should not know about my hobby. And also, finally, I wanted to get to know the strain and have some small easily controlled bean producing rounds to see if I could get some good genetics showing, for future larger grows. Now when I say larger grow I'm still talking no larger that the cabinet I'm running know, which measures 40x80x130 - not in glass though this time. I only grow for my one personal use, and kind of like to experiment and try to get enough out of a really small space. I have definitely not completely nailed it yet, far from it, and I hope and trust I never will. I like the chase, to try and get better results, while at the same time trying to get the whole process down to its minimum. I'm a firm believer and follower of KISS, no matter what I do, and will always try to get the same results or better from less work and gear than last time.
The maximum I ever got out of the window grows, by the way, was some 7-8 g from one plant when only utilising solar energy. But since I ran a couple of plants in up to two greenhouses each run I still got upwards some 25-30 g from some harvests, from only sunlight, indoors, through double window panes and glass material in cabinets. And, I got lots of beans from different mothers and different generations. At one point I introduced some cfl's I managed to get for free as samples from some manufacturer in china, to help my plants to some more light than my window could provide, and managed to up the harvest somewhat, but I knew that sooner or later I'd move on to a new cabinet.
My new cabinet
One day I bought a second hand excellent old 70s/80s office storage unit in sheet metal, with locks, almost completely light leak proof from start, and started planning a simple setup. I read up on reputable Chinese producers of LED (yes I know some people disregard these straight up, but I also read some posts and articles on units that seemed totally working fine) and managed to win a promotional sale on eBay. I got a 300 w unit including shipping for somewhere round 220 USD, half price what the store charged regularly on eBay. I'll skip forward and say already, that it has worked, and worked well. I needed LED to keep temperatures, ventilation and sound down in my narrow smallish grow space, and boy it works out so great. More on that later.
The locker is positioned in the back of my walk-in closet, behind a rack of hanging clothes; stealthy and nice. If you'd see it you'd think I'd be storing my companies' paperwork or something like that. It has a passive intake in the back of the cabinet, and a small silent duct fan to remove air from inside. Since it is such a small cabinet, and since I use LEDs and temperatures are low from this, I do not need a big fan and my setup is really not loud at all.
Coco and rice husk
My first two grows in the new cabinet were still in soil in a vertical system I found in a horticulture store, actually wall mounted 3x4l racks that can be stacked. Had I some more space in there so that I could add a vertical LED to the one I have in yoyos from above, I might have continued this experiment, but as it turned out in my setup, the plants had too different distances to the lights, and due to this some plants would shade others. It was also really hard to properly work the drip irrigation system I had purchased for it, due to the differences in height. I wanted - despite some things I'd read in forums on internet - to try a Claber oasis unit. These have a 25l reservoir and run on gravity and a simple 9v battery to distribute water to drippers in a closed circuit, twice every 24 hrs. Again it is my KISS preference that had me wanting this simple unit to work. It didn't work as well as I hoped in those grows, for different reasons, but for my current grow the Claber Oasis works like a charm, although I have now upgraded to no less than two units to satisfy my plants drinking habits.The reason? I now run my first coco grow, and are "dripping to waste." This after hearing friends taking to coco, and having good results - mostly from hand watering though - as well as reading a lot of good things on the internet. In planning this grow I early on decided to try and have a go at a run-to-waste system. After reading up, this seemed one of the easiest routes to avoid problems such as salt buildups. Also, coco I understand, is less prone to attract bugs and gnats than soil - I sure haven't seen any either. I also read a lot on how many growers have started using rice husk for aeration of the coco, with as good results as using perlite. It's ecological, and as such seemed interesting, so I got some 10 kg of the stuff - that's hellofalot in volume and comes really cheap. In the end I decided to mix in around 25% of rice husk in my substrate.
The setup and propagation
So, I planned to finally flower four girls in 2gallon smart pots (that's the fabric ones) in two plastic containers (two pots in each) with wholes drilled in the bottom, to drain excess water to two other container the same size only deeper, in which the first containers would be "stacked".
I planted 15 seeds in small with around 1l of coco to make sure I'd get four promising girls. Read a lot on how you should not transplant AF cannabis, but also some posts here and there how this can be done without much, or any, stunning to he plant. I couldn't physically fit more than possibly eight pots of final size in my small cabinet so I decided to give transplanting a go. If not to learn from it. Really wanted four good looking plants to flower at the same time. I do not have an EC meter, and in order to keep thing simple I decided on an easy feeding schedule and to stick to this plan, unless of course deficiencies would appear that would have to be taken care of. I do of course have a Ph meter though. The brand of nutrition I went with is Gold Label (Coco A, Coco B, Ultra PK and Ultra Mg), mostly because I had a lot left from earlier soil grows. So, for mixing my coco up and watering I would use my nutritious according to directions on the bottles as follows: mixing my coco and watering until sexing 1/3 of "maximum recommended strength", 2/3 at transplanting and the following 1-2 weeks, followed by full strength until last week before flushing where I'd revert to 2/3, and then flushing in only Ph balanced water for one week. I know that in contrast to most recommendations when growing autos, this might seem aggressive, but I had previously used similar formulas and strengths when growing in soil, and my RRFs have never really complained : ) I decided to Ph my water at 5.8 through the entire grow. Also I use straight tap water. Tap water around here is really clean and has very low levels of fluoridation. Also, it fits well into my KISS philosophy.
The seeds sprouted, as they usually do for me, between 2-5 days from planting. All came up nice and easy and were then drip fed a small amount of water/nutrition (30-40ml/day) gradually working up to 120 ml/day/plant when I started to sex the around week 2. Now, an interesting note I've taken when sprouting in my glass solar powered cabinets, vs sprouting under my 20/4 cycle in my up to now three grows in my new cabinet, is the ratio of male/female plants. In sun and natural day/night cycles I'd end up with 85% female plants, while under artificial days spanning 20 hrs while propagating I'd get as low as 45-50% females. Provided, these are no scientific trials and to few runs for any conclusions to be made, it's still worth noting, not least in regard to what I read in the Stitch thread about issues with low female rates; might be that it was mainly regarding (counterfeit) "feminized" beans. Feminized are not really for me.
Transplanting
Around 2-3 weeks into the grow I could sex all of them. I thought there were 7 females and 8 males and picked the four most promising girls to be destined for flowering in the cabinet. Of the three remaining females that I simply put in the open I my flat, some foot behind some other non cannabis plants in my window, one turned out to actually be a male (I sexed really early to give my plants an early transplant). The two ones in the open are still growing fine by the way and have taken good care of any sunlight that might have reached them. They have been hand watered in a wet/dry cycle. I have no idea as to what they'll finally yield but they are somewhat behind in their life cycles compared to their sisters in the cabinet. An interesting note to take when considering discussions as to wether longer light periods could actually shorten time from seed to harvest or not. I think these might get to spend two weeks in the cabinet when the others have been harvested and I am away for holiday. It's a risky business relying on my automatic setup for 14 days, but these plants are actually just a bonus to my real grow in the cabinet, so it's worth taking a risk. I'm also excited to see what difference adding that much light the last two weeks would do.
The grow
So after putting the four transplanted plants back in my cabinet and upping the nute strength to 2/3 of my maximum strength I was expecting at least some stunt in growth and preying not to have any nutrition issues. Up to now my plants had looked very healthy and I really wanted them to remain that day. I'll skip ahead and say that they still today looks as green, healthy and happy at 55 days.
There were no noticeable stunt at all. Quite the opposite, the much added room for roots propelled the grow immensely and fast at that. Within 48 hours roots penetrated the fabric and started to get air pruned. Stems grew thicker fast. The light I kept higher and higher every day, keeping it around 15-20 cm above the canopy of the four plants. Pretty soon it was clear that on of the ladies must have that bushy monster gene, and this was the first time I had a large and powerful enough setup and/plan that I came to see it's full potency. It would grow to take up a lot of space, threatening to shade its siblings. I had to put one of the pots up a bit to get an even canopy, and move around some side branching to try and even out light provided between plants, but pretty soon I had a stable environment with even growth. The smaller ones have had to work a little, while the big one just kept adding cola upon cola on its side branching. Within another two weeks or so, the monster closing in on a meter and was hitting the LED, when this was put as high as my YoYos would let it. I had to get lower containers for the pots, get rid of the YoYos and hang the light straight on the hooks in the cabinets ceiling, AND tie the plants main stem downs for a couple of days to get it to fit in under the lights. The other plants eventually reached the same height (without any lst though). The canopy is, maybe I think, still a tid bit to close to lights and I am thinking of ways to deal with this in my upcoming grows, and amconsider a kind of SCROG approach to lower and even the total canopy. More on this later.
The total height from substrate to canopy measures around 90 cm, except for the smallest one that has been put up 10 cm to match the others, and of course the monster that would probably have measured upwards 105-110 cm had it not been tied down at one point. The somewhat cramped area has forced the plants to grow its side branching very straight up which makes for a very dense canopy. The RRF has quite lot of foliage, and this makes it hard for light to travel through my massive canopy to the nether regions where some of the sorter branches has produce beyond popcorn. These aretill very small buds that is in the risk of not maturing as well as the many top colas. To give them at least some aid I've added one of my many magnetically attachable cfl's on each of the sides in the cabinet. I could've added more, but then my temps would go up and I'd have to start messing with more powerful fans and leave my KISS regimen. The temps have been constant at 27-29C with a RH from 40-50% when vegging, up to 65-70% now that the plants are growing really dense. I even out temperatures and give the plants some breeze using a tower style fan in one of the back corners of the cabinet, with an added small fan blowing over the canopy. For my next run I might upgrade/add some more fan-action inside the cabinet. I did not expect this massive growth fan and the density have me fearing any mold should everything stand too still as RH rises with more watering and space gets cramped.
My first Claber unit did well dripping for the first 4-5 weeks, but it soon became evident that the volume it could serve from one full reservoir (which provides up to 1 weeks watering when on "full" duty") would not be enough for all four plants. The unit comes with 20 drippers that were carefully arranged in circles around each plant - divided in amount between the plants according to each plants individual need for water to achieve 20-25% waste (which goes to water my flowerpots around the flat by the way. They love it.). I bough another unit to double my watering capacity per week which ended me with up to 10 drippers per plant and even more possible watering schedules than the one unit should serve me. Now each plant has two loops of drippers circling them to even out the watering. As it happens the monster and second in size each has twelve drippers while the others each has eight each. This gives my the right amount of runoff. Weekly the reservoir/s will reach close to empty, and I'll mix up another batch of nutes according to my schedule to fill the Oasis's, and empty and clean my plastic bins/reservoirs for waste water. This feels like a good interval to make sure nutrition is fresh and valid. It's also about the only maintenance I need to do with my cabinet. When changing/filling water I need to take out the plants, which gives me a chance to study them and look for possible problems and see what's developed during previous week. All I all this takes me 30-60 minutes a week. Other than that I mostly check in on them to see how they look, and to make sure everything in my setup is up and running.
I have considered defoliating to help light travel and battle potential mold, but in the end decided not to. If I'm going the sort of SCROG type of way I'm thinking of for next grow, I might try this, though most posts I seem to have read on the subject regarding AFs disencourage from defoliating. Most do seem to disregard transplanting as well, but for me doing that worked flawlessly as far as I can see. You just seem to have to be really careful and have a good plan and reason for doing it.
My grow is now closing in on day 56 - it's actually at the time of writing this sentence 10 minutes to day 56 - and I have a holiday coming up on August 24. That Monday happens to be exactly ten weeks from seed and would typically be close to when I would harvest my RRFs; in general this happens between week 10-12. Due to me and my girlfriend going away for two weeks I will need to either harvest at week nine in order to dry the weed for a week before going away (and let a friend cure/burp my jars while away) or rely on my automatic system to not fail while being away and possibly encounter dead plants when I come home, or mold or anything else not desired. I pretty much have decided to let my girls have a weeks flush starting tomorrow and trust that the weed will smoke well after a nice cure. I have taken RRFs slightly before schedule before and they have turned out really good. Also, the plants in the cabinet seems to be pretty close to ready to go within a week or so anyway. Progress is fine and my only concern is that I've had almost no leaves yellowing/dying on me so far. Usually by week 8 I would've started having some of the bottom leaves yellowing and dying off, but this run has been all healthy and green all the way up till now; it's almost scary. Me and my girlfriends long awaited holiday has me wishing I could let the flowers go an extra week or two to see if I'd get an even more dense canopy and further development on lower branches, but instead I'll be looking forward to see what two weeks in the cabinet can do for my two plants, that has been standing out in the open since week three.
So tomorrow sees the last stage before harvest: flushing. This will be done with pure tap water Ph'd down to 5.8. I'll drip an even larger amount of water through my setup/ day then with nutrient solution, and I expect to harvest around day 70 to give me at least up to week of drying before putting in jars and handing over curing to a dear friend while away.
The Future
This has ended up a really long post, and I need to come to an end for today. I'd be happy to take any comment/critic/ideas on my grow and what I've written. If anyone has ideas as to how to improve my setup - preferably while sticking to the KISS principle, please share. I am especially interested in opinions on defoliating and SCROGing, but anything else is of interest; I'm a learner.
My idea for a scrog is to build small squarish constructions in where I can place one pot in each. The top of each little unit would have a "personal" screen on its top where the plant in question can have its colas twined. These units would be placed on shelves inside my cabinet that will let water/nutrition waste drip into containers below. The idea is to have individual miniscrogs for each pot so that they can be removed from the cabinet while keeping its screens canopy intact, in other words not having a static screen set up inside my cabinet. I need this to be able to empty waste reservoirs, but also for any sudden need to evacuate/move my grow. The idea is to have any plants that are not bushy monsters still grow in similar fashion as the bushy ones because side branching will reach the height of the main cola faster. If I could keep the colas some 50 cm above substrate level as opposed to today's 90 cm, I'll also be able to kickstart propagation of seeds within my cabinet - on a top shelf - and cutting another 2 or so weeks on each harvest, while still not having to have another cabinet or tent around the flat just for this.
Good nigh for now. I'll try and find time to post some progress posts in the two weeks following.
Some photos to go with he post:
Cabinet day 55
Canopy close up day 55
Simple tower fan
Small canopy fan and power socket inside cabinet
My two Claber Oasis drip units, fan outlet and small water pump for stirring reservoirs
The two females that has been stood in my living room since week 2-3
