Mephisto Genetics Whats the trick/technique to getting tall, stacked colas of bud?

[Olde School Player]

I'll stick responses within your quoted thread, that way I can keep up with thoughts.
Genetics are good. Meph and Sweet Seeds and Dutch Passion. Nice, very nice bud. What strain is that?
It's Dutch Passion Blue Auto Mazar. Drying in prep for the cure. It was one of the smallest plants I have ever grown. I concentrate on single plant / max yield grows with LST. This one stayed so compact it had to affect total yield; guessing 4-5 oz once cured. The theory I referenced in my sig link is that light intensity will result in small dense compact plants if taken far enough. Take 30 minutes & give it a read when you can. I can use your results in my study.

Ok, going to try and make sense with this reply. Your reply was full of nuggets and advice and insight. Its taking me a while to digest it all.

My canopy space in the 8x8 tent is 24 sq feet. The long dimension from front to back is 6 feet. The width of this garden is 4 feet. That space is a rectangle in the middle of the tent. And I grow 6 plants at a time in that space. Not filling up the tent with plants because I don't need that much product and I like space down the sides of the tent to walk, work, setup fans, germ station, keep water warm in buckets etc.
Great plan, I like the way you think.

I have a SCROG setup bordering that space but I removed the netting and kept the frame in place because my plants and my skills are not ready for SCROG yet. I will get there one day. Once I learn how to shape and groom my plants properly.
SCROG is a bit of work but not that hard. You just keep pulling growing top and branch leaders back under the screen until the buds form. Then let them grow vertically. Every side node of every branch becomes a new top cola. You can "aim" each branch to a different spot on the screen to encourage an even canopy. And SCROG requires a bit more defoliation than regular grows, but that pretty well happens as you pull the top leaders back under the screen. But the greatest factor in SCROG success is that it demands plants that stretch a lot all the way into early bloom. Once again, my study link is an attempt to figure out how to encourage stretch during veg, transition and early bloom. This is a MUST HAVE for SCROG to work. Until we figure that out, I would highly recommend LST as your primary training method. And in the long run, I prefer LST over SCROG because it's easier with almost the same level of success. Take a look at the LST how-to I posted with Nosias' permission on his latest grow thread. I think this link will take you to the beginning, but in case it's post # 98. This will take your yields a huge jump forward:
https://www.autoflower.org/threads/fast-buds-and-sweet-seeds.64526/page-10#post-1758725

And I should say my goal is not to grow the biggest colas. Its to have a plant that has a nice number of colas that are space out, level on top, but are a good 12 inches tall and just nice and dense and full. Not looking to break any records. Just a modest but nice looking plant.
LST really helps you to do that. And with walking space around your tent it makes access much easier. But don't go past that 4' width, you can only reach & work 2' in before you run out of arm (reach).

I will reduce the light schedule once it warms up here. But right now I need the heat from the HPS fixtures.
So I was thinking last night about all that wattage for keeping your garage / tent warm, and I recalled a solution I did years ago for a friend. There are propane space heaters available for around $150 with electronic lighting and thermostatically controlled cycling. With a simple regulator change you can adapt standard 5 gallon / 20# propane cylinders to run these and most ACE Hardware stores offer cheap refills. It will solve your heat source very reliably, and equally important, propane burners generate CO2 with NO CO (carbon monoxide). Totally safe. CO2 enrichment increases resistance to heat stress, and gives your plants a healthy boost. In fact, CO2 generators are nothing more than an expensive space heater. For around $200 including cylinder you can save 1200 watts of electricity usage. Keep that in mind for next winter.

I use GH Diamond Nector as well. I create teas basically and top water them manually in to the autopots once and a while.
Great choice.

What else? Man there is a lot of stuff going thru my mind right now. Lights. The autocobs are 3500K. And 55 watts each. So i have 630 watts now and another 100 coming next week over 24 sq ft. And 1200 watts of HPS at least during the winter.
I'm having trouble making that math work - you said earlier six autocob's - at 55W each that's 330Watts; two more would bring it to 440. Is that at-the-wall or inflated / rated maximum? The two 600W HID's alone would give you 50W / sq. ft. during winter; that alone is sufficient for a quality grow. 600W HID is the most efficient on the market in lumens per watt. So the questions confirming exact spec of your LED's will be for Spring - to - fall grows.

I'll look at that other thread in a bit.
Please do. Invite others to play as well. The more trackers that play, the faster I will be able to confirm final specs. I can use all the help I can get!!!

Closing this post by saying I get all the environment stuff is important and believe be I did something wrong and learned from it in every aspect. Screwed up lighting. Temp spikes. Bad PH. DIdn't know what I was doing with nutes. Over watering. It was all necessary things I had to learn by doing them wrong to start with. Now I think I'm at the point where I want to learn more about canopy management as in topping, LST properly, prune and defoliate when necessary, lollipop to reduce larf. And finally, thanks man. I appreciate the sharing of knowledge and insight provided above!
Repeating myself, check out the link to my LST tutorial, lots of pic's to clarify. I can guarantee it will improve yield and bud quality.

Edit to add, light management is also something I think about a lot. I play with my lights a lot trying to get them in the right place.[/QUOTE]

 

[lunarman]

I'll stick responses within your quoted thread, that way I can keep up with thoughts.
Genetics are good. Meph and Sweet Seeds and Dutch Passion. Nice, very nice bud. What strain is that?
It's Dutch Passion Blue Auto Mazar. Drying in prep for the cure. It was one of the smallest plants I have ever grown. I concentrate on single plant / max yield grows with LST. This one stayed so compact it had to affect total yield; guessing 4-5 oz once cured. The theory I referenced in my sig link is that light intensity will result in small dense compact plants if taken far enough. Take 30 minutes & give it a read when you can. I can use your results in my study.

Ok, going to try and make sense with this reply. Your reply was full of nuggets and advice and insight. Its taking me a while to digest it all.

My canopy space in the 8x8 tent is 24 sq feet. The long dimension from front to back is 6 feet. The width of this garden is 4 feet. That space is a rectangle in the middle of the tent. And I grow 6 plants at a time in that space. Not filling up the tent with plants because I don't need that much product and I like space down the sides of the tent to walk, work, setup fans, germ station, keep water warm in buckets etc.
Great plan, I like the way you think.

I have a SCROG setup bordering that space but I removed the netting and kept the frame in place because my plants and my skills are not ready for SCROG yet. I will get there one day. Once I learn how to shape and groom my plants properly.
SCROG is a bit of work but not that hard. You just keep pulling growing top and branch leaders back under the screen until the buds form. Then let them grow vertically. Every side node of every branch becomes a new top cola. You can "aim" each branch to a different spot on the screen to encourage an even canopy. And SCROG requires a bit more defoliation than regular grows, but that pretty well happens as you pull the top leaders back under the screen. But the greatest factor in SCROG success is that it demands plants that stretch a lot all the way into early bloom. Once again, my study link is an attempt to figure out how to encourage stretch during veg, transition and early bloom. This is a MUST HAVE for SCROG to work. Until we figure that out, I would highly recommend LST as your primary training method. And in the long run, I prefer LST over SCROG because it's easier with almost the same level of success. Take a look at the LST how-to I posted with Nosias' permission on his latest grow thread. I think this link will take you to the beginning, but in case it's post # 98. This will take your yields a huge jump forward:
https://www.autoflower.org/threads/fast-buds-and-sweet-seeds.64526/page-10#post-1758725

And I should say my goal is not to grow the biggest colas. Its to have a plant that has a nice number of colas that are space out, level on top, but are a good 12 inches tall and just nice and dense and full. Not looking to break any records. Just a modest but nice looking plant.
LST really helps you to do that. And with walking space around your tent it makes access much easier. But don't go past that 4' width, you can only reach & work 2' in before you run out of arm (reach).

I will reduce the light schedule once it warms up here. But right now I need the heat from the HPS fixtures.
So I was thinking last night about all that wattage for keeping your garage / tent warm, and I recalled a solution I did years ago for a friend. There are propane space heaters available for around $150 with electronic lighting and thermostatically controlled cycling. With a simple regulator change you can adapt standard 5 gallon / 20# propane cylinders to run these and most ACE Hardware stores offer cheap refills. It will solve your heat source very reliably, and equally important, propane burners generate CO2 with NO CO (carbon monoxide). Totally safe. CO2 enrichment increases resistance to heat stress, and gives your plants a healthy boost. In fact, CO2 generators are nothing more than an expensive space heater. For around $200 including cylinder you can save 1200 watts of electricity usage. Keep that in mind for next winter.

I use GH Diamond Nector as well. I create teas basically and top water them manually in to the autopots once and a while.
Great choice.

What else? Man there is a lot of stuff going thru my mind right now. Lights. The autocobs are 3500K. And 55 watts each. So i have 630 watts now and another 100 coming next week over 24 sq ft. And 1200 watts of HPS at least during the winter.
I'm having trouble making that math work - you said earlier six autocob's - at 55W each that's 330Watts; two more would bring it to 440. Is that at-the-wall or inflated / rated maximum? The two 600W HID's alone would give you 50W / sq. ft. during winter; that alone is sufficient for a quality grow. 600W HID is the most efficient on the market in lumens per watt. So the questions confirming exact spec of your LED's will be for Spring - to - fall grows.

I'll look at that other thread in a bit.
Please do. Invite others to play as well. The more trackers that play, the faster I will be able to confirm final specs. I can use all the help I can get!!!

Closing this post by saying I get all the environment stuff is important and believe be I did something wrong and learned from it in every aspect. Screwed up lighting. Temp spikes. Bad PH. DIdn't know what I was doing with nutes. Over watering. It was all necessary things I had to learn by doing them wrong to start with. Now I think I'm at the point where I want to learn more about canopy management as in topping, LST properly, prune and defoliate when necessary, lollipop to reduce larf. And finally, thanks man. I appreciate the sharing of knowledge and insight provided above!
Repeating myself, check out the link to my LST tutorial, lots of pic's to clarify. I can guarantee it will improve yield and bud quality.

Edit to add, light management is also something I think about a lot. I play with my lights a lot trying to get them in the right place.

[/QUOTE]

That link to the page 10 post 98 looks really interesting and the kind of thing I was looking for when I started this thread. Thanks for that. I got some reading to do.

 

[MickJ]

Great to see guys so passionate about their grows! Good reading and great question to get the thread Rollin.

Sent from my comfy chair.
[emoji16][emoji41] [emoji43][emoji848]

 

[lunarman]

Great to see guys so passionate about their grows! Good reading and great question to get the thread Rollin.

Sent from my comfy chair.
[emoji16][emoji41] [emoji43][emoji848]

Thanks bro. We're rockin along, @Rollin_along

 

[McDee]

@lunarman Hey I have noticed when I get seeds that are bigger they have grown the best and biggest. Not sure if that's a fact just so far seen this to be true. Which plays into the genetics part, but when picking seeds out take the largest 1s. But like what others have said you already got it. Keep your ph good so you can take up as many nutrients. Try supercropping let more nutrients to buds. Just like people some plants are "alpha males" and just bigger and badder. But only so much you can controll. Supercropping is my goto tho, you want those gnarly knuckles. The bigger they are the more she will drink, and they bigger she will get.

 

[Olde School Player]

Yeah seed size is not really a determining factor in the size of the plant. Like way back, many people preferred speckled seeds instead of single color. Seed size is just another phenotype thing. But seed color can be - if it's pale, leaning toward whitish, it's a premature seed that was not allowed enough time in the plant to mature.

 

[midIN]

Imo the small solid brown seeds have always been the most lush green bushes from the start, now the bigger striped beans have been the taller ones out of the gates and have reached the 3-5 Node faster than the small brown ones, least this is what I've decided in last 12 that I've done, now the in-between beans have been medium height out of the gate but have shown the same lankey branches as the big striped ones, but the smaller beans have had stronger limbs at the start. If this makes any sense.

 

[Statgator]

Large stacked colas is a formula once you ensure that you have a capable genetic.

1. Proper genetic
2. Proper canopy temp and root ball temp
3. Two prunes.

Trying to get big colas will usually reduce overall yield.

Good luck as it takes experimentation for each genetic you run to figure out the right formula that gets you big buds and maximizes yield.

 

[lunarman]

Large stacked colas is a formula once you ensure that you have a capable genetic.

1. Proper genetic
2. Proper canopy temp and root ball temp
3. Two prunes.

Trying to get big colas will usually reduce overall yield.

Good luck as it takes experimentation for each genetic you run to figure out the right formula that gets you big buds and maximizes yield.

Can you explain more on the two prunes? When do you like to do them usually? And are they like lollipop prunes?

 

[Statgator]

First let me state that 98% of what I know is from photo period but based on observing my first autoflower grow I believe it is very applicable. If you've grown girls before and have experience you know what the first major stretch in the flower cycle is. That is when you do your first prune. Essentially at this stage you remove any side branches that aren't going to make it to the top and you remove all the pre-flowers below the main canopy.

The second prune you do for an autoflower around 25-30 days before they are done and it is really a very light prune and you are removing lowers that are going to take away from your tops.

That's it. It's a formula. The stretchier a girl is the more you can take. If you really want to turn this into a science you have to keep notes and take pictures. I would use a calendar for you notes that way your timing is recorded.

Reminder your yield will go down.