New Grower Trans Siberian grow (take 2) mah jounal

[cocolopez]

Trans Siberian from Auto Seeds via Attitude Seed bank

20/4 light cycle, 270w of CFLs cause she's sharing a space with her older sister, henceforth known as "the experiment" (but we don't use that term to her face)

Soil: OF cut almost 1:1 with perlite in a 3-ish gallon bucket

Temps are now running mid 70s under lights and I'd say it drops to low sixties at lights off. The area around the plants is heated by a 100w ceramic bulb heater (like for pets), and I trapped the heat as best i can by putting bulb foil all around. It can get chilly down there, and the ambient temp outsid eth grow space is mid 50s, and low 50s outside the grow room. As such I don't actually have any ventilation running right now, but I do have an exhaust fan built into one of the walls for when I need it in the summer.

Built a grow room in my basement by adding walls to a corner space. Very DIY setup. Made my own reflector out of bubble foil, coat hangers and duct tape (sorry it's sideways)

Here's the plant at week 3-ish (don't have my notes handy for an exact date). She looks a little stressed cause I just dug her up and did some soil surgery: took out MG Organic as best I could and cut the remaining Fox Farm Ocean Forest with almost a 1:1 ratio of perlite since the experiment was showing signs of nutrient problems and she is in uncut soil. Again sorry for the sideways ... gotta figure that out

Just get her a big drink last night to settle the soil and once she dries out I plan to go to more frequent small waterings. Unless she shows signs of wanting it, not nutes til second week of preflower (maybe end of the month). And then she'll get some diluted Big Bloom and we'll go from there.

 

[cocolopez]

So I snapped her trying to do some training. Should have started earlier or not pulled down so much. Live and learn.
The good news is I taped her up and she's responding well. Used thread seal tape (a.k.a. plumber's tape). Works FABULOUSLY for this type of thing: it's relatively water proof self adhesive and has some elasticity to it. You can see the pink tape in this pic:

So the bad news is that instead of growing she needs to take time to repair the damage. Anyone with experience know if I can take the tape off in like a week?
Thinking that she'll want some extra nutes to help repair, I dressed the top of the pot with two handfuls of MG Organic that I had leftover. I figure this will give her a shot of extra N just in the course of regular watering, but shouldn't last that long. And I can remove it if the plant looks like she really doesn't like it.

 

[Eekman]

Hello cocolopez

Good going so far. Good growing karma's sent to you my new friend.

You probably can remove the tape in a few days, unless it is split down the center, then it still may need time.

Peace

Eek

 

[cocolopez]

I learned another valuable lesson last night ... don't eff with your plants too much. I wanted to remove the tape to see how it was healing and tape got all stuck to itself and I yanked at it too hard and snapped the top right off ... sigh.

She's got side branches to keep going with that will definitely produce some kolas, but the whole main stalk is gone. She was just getting preflowers so I don't know how much time she'll have to veg before flowering kicks in. Either way, the harvest will certainly be less that it could be and a valuable lesson learned.

On the plus side, my #1 trans siberian that I kinda overnuted is making a nice 6" main kola that will help me get over this screw up.

 

[cocolopez]

Update on this plant: My number #2 has absolutely exploded with growth. I've got three cola sites due to the unfortunate snapping of the original main stem. They're all quickly getting into flower probably because they're a bit behind and need to catch up. I'll get some pics up soonish. I'm planning to do some bonsai work on it because it's an absolute bush right now.

Leaves are looking much better color-wise than my first grow. A nice kelly green, not so dark ... some of the leaves on my first plant were literally flirting with the color black. Cutting that OF with perlite and taking out the MGO was the right call looks like. We'll be going into molasses and heavier feedings soon. Very interested to see how this one comes out.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Got a little rust in the leaves from the pictures I've seen. Hope you're feeding the plants with cal/mag along with other nutrients.

 

[cocolopez]

actually, that rust is miracle grow burning the leaves. In fixing my soil I got some on the leaves, and then misted the plant thinking it would be a good way to wash off the dirt, and it burned the leaves (yeah yeah, seemed like a good idea at the time). Those leaves are still attached to the plant and are three times as big now

 

[cocolopez]

picture of this girl now ... she's kind of a bush. You can see the three main colas now, a result of the un-intended toppping. bunches of bud sites hidden down in those leaves. Going to need some defoliation to get the light to penetrate. Also trying to pull the main stalks down with pipe cleaners so they're more or less even in height: should help break the apical dominance for more even development.

 

[cocolopez]

Found some curled and rusty leaves and dry soil when I came back after leaving her unattended for 3 days. The rusty leaves are likely some deficiency, assume cal-mag ... so good call you guys on watching the rust. Wasn't just burns.

So the plan is to let the leaves that want to die, die (all appear to be old fan leaves anyway), and give her a good shot of blackstrap molasses while continuing to feed big bloom. Don't think I need to run out and get a thing of Cal-Mag just yet, but I'll def pick some up for the next grow(s).

 

[cocolopez]

Still having cal-mag problems. Ended up ordering the real deal as the backstrap molasses didn't seem to be having any effect--the calcium in there is probably not immediately available. I'll do some picks later. I hadn't done any flushing to this point so my theory is there was too much junk down in the soil. So I flushed her last weekend which will hopefully reset everything. Still going to be a few days until I get the Cal-Mag. She's still pumping out flowers, but there's no smell and they haven't started putting on weight.

Interesting that the calcium deficiency is a result of cutting the O soil, which was nitrogen toxic. Clearly, I cut it too much ... or you could say, I should have had that cal-mag waiting in the wings from the start ... live and learn. Bean has sprouted for my third plant so ... third time's the charm!