Multi Strain Freebie Grow

[Smokebelch]

5 days on from my last photo update and my plants are pretty much ready for flowering now, the tent has filled up nicely with 9 big plants and all are around 2 ft tall.

 

I am going to probably switch them on Monday as that will be 7 days from when I acted a bit hasty and topped my Kush N Cheese, it's recovered now but I reckon a couple more days won't do it any harm.

 

All 3 of my Dinafem plants have been a joy to veg up, none have been fussy with nutrients and they have all had the same amounts of Plant Magic Grow and Bio Silicon, I started  with 0.5ml of grow and have gradually upped that to 2ml and the plants look lovely. I have been feeding 0.5ml of Silicon since I put them into the final pots. 

 

Once they are flowering I will be feeding grow until they stop stretching and then onto the bloom after that. I will stop feeding feeding the Silicon after 2 weeks of flowering. I like to keep things simple with my grows, no need to complicate things with lots of nutes and additives.

 

With the long veg they have had they are pretty big plants and I would expect to get 20+ oz from the 9 plants, The 4 cuttings I have are from my keepers and are all big yeilders which I now have dialled in and I have easily got 3.5oz from each of them in the the same set up with 6.5litre pots in the past. In my experience if you want big yields then you have to be patient and give them a nice long veg period, an extra week of veg makes a big difference to the final amount.

 

First up is the lovely untopped PAK, Mark said it would turn from ugly duckling into a swan and mine looks really nice now. I am glad I left her untopped as she is staying quite squat compared to my other plants.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Smokebelch]

Here is the late topped Kush N Cheese, I think she has recovered now and has bushed out nicely. 

 

I will have to do a little bit of LST on one of the stems that has shot up above the rest of the plants stems.

 

In heindsight I shouldn't have topped her so late but I don't think too much damage has been done. I am going to put her in flower on Monday as this will be 7 days from when she was topped.

 

 

 

 

 

[Smokebelch]

Here is my White Widow, a lovely little plant which I am looking forward to flowering out, hopefully I will get some old school frosty WW buds off her, the last time I had WW was in the Dam in the mid 90s.

 

She has turned out really nice after I topped the main stem again a couple of weeks ago. She has 4 nice level main stems.

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Smokebelch]

Here are some grow room shots of my plants, they love it vegging under the 400w mh with the parabolic shade sitting right on the tops. 

 

Here is the PAK in the centre along side Sugar Punch on the right and Champagne Kush on the left.

 

Here is the WW in the middle.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Smokebelch]

And finally all 3 plants together, this is the last time I will be taking them out of the tent.

 

Tomorrow I will be taking cuts and the defoliating the small bits around the bottom to make it easier to water them inside the tent, they will get a proper defoliation after they have stopped strecthing.

 

I am am well pleased with these genetics so far and I am especially pleased as they didn't cost me a penny, nice.

 

Left to right is PAK, WW, K n C.

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Guest]

Whew, just about caught up with this @Smokebelch! lovely looking plants here and that PAK! It was like Dumbo growing into his ears  looks like a good SoG plant!

[Dinafem-Mark]

Everything is looking great mate and ready for the flower stage

 

The kush n cheese has bounced back very well from the topping. The white widow showing some nice side growth which should hold some nice buds come flowr time and the pak is looking well like pak big fat leaves and slightly slower growth compared to the other ladies

 

Bring in 12/12 and the real fun can commence so far beautiful looking plants and real nice grow environment that we at Dinafem are pleased to be apart of

 

Thank you for the continued picture updates very much appreciated! 

 

Until the next one

 

All the best 

 

Mark..

[Smokebelch]

I have just changed the timers to start 12/12 from tomorrow, lights will go out at 4am this morning and back on at 4pm. When they go off tomorrow I will swap the bulb for a 600w hps, the changeable digital ballast is brilliant, I can veg 400w and flower 600w with the same ballast, cool.

 

The plants have been in the final pots for 3 weeks, I think from germinating it's around 7 or 8 weeks veg in total. As a result the plants are very big and I am worried   I have over vegged them as the cuttings that I know will stretch a lot are very tall already (Killer Skunk and Champagne Kush). It should be fine and hopefully I will be rewarded for my patience with a nice big crop at the end.

 

Now is the time I shit myself when they all start to stretch at different speeds and heights, I usually have to do some LST on some and also lift some pots up nearer the light on others. I do find this stage of multi strain growing the most stressful. 

 

I have taken cuts from the PAK and the WW but I didn't bother with the Kush N Cheese, the only reason is that it stinks even when in veg and I am growing in a flat so really stinky plants are out when it comes to keepers.

 

Its going to take them a few days to realise thay are in flower so no photos for while, I will get some once they start their journey skywards up towards the light.

[jadenugs]

KnC looks well after the topping mate, plenty of shoots ready for flowers. Liking the 4 even mains on the WW.  You've got them well sorted and nice and even, ready for the stretch. If you're worried about your known stretchers going wild, why not leave the halide in until the stretch is over?

Another one I often forget and overlook is the temp range. The closer together you can keep your day and night temps will minimise stretch

[Smokebelch]

The plants are still thinking they are in veg and haven't started stretching yet, looking at them I think I shouldn't worry about the stretchy ones as most of them are quite tall already so I think it will be a case of hopefully just having to raise 2 or 3 of the shorter ones up instead of LST the tall ones, fingers crossed.

 

At the weekend I installed my new 100cm x 100cm Biogreen heat mat into the bottom of my tent underneath the tents base insert and then a 100cm x 100cm plastic tray on top of that.

 

It came with a nice good quality digital thermostat with a probe that can buried in the compost in one of the pots. I have it set to 22c and as I have been sleeping with my window open and the lights going off at 4am it's been pretty cold and the heater has kicked in and kept the pot temps at 22c at lights out. When the heater is on the plastic tray in the tent feels only very mildly warm. It's going to be a god send come the winter I reckon. I am hoping 22c is ok for root zone, what do you guys think? 

 

During lights on at the moment the soil temp is going up to 24c. I have to say it's going be nice not having to worry about having 3 tube heaters all on timers and I should be able to create a more stable environment with the heat mat set up. It's the first time I have had the option to monitor and control my root zone temps, I have been reading a lot on the subject lately and many people think it's more important than the grow room temperature.

 

I can veg plants ok as you can see from this diary, the start of flowering starts ok and then around week 4 or 5 I start getting issues and I think it's because my roots get too cold when the lights are off for 12 hours as I usually start later than this and it usually well into winter by the time I am flowering them out.

 

Edited September 6, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Smokebelch]

Sorry I mean to pop up some photos of the heat mat, I will get some of the plants in few days for you.

 

 

 

Edited September 6, 2017 by Smokebelch

[Smokebelch]

@jadenugs I have never even considered keeping the halide in until they stop stretching, sounds like a good idea but I have already put the HPS in now. Cheers for the advice though dude, I am always learning new stuff on here. 

 

I am am hoping the day/night temp range will be more dialled in now I have the heat mat, before that it was not uncommon for my lights out room temps to drop to 19c during flowering  and I would imagine the root zone temps would be a bit lower than the room temps and then the room would heat up to 25c when the lights are on. It's interesting times for me with this new bit of kit in my room.

[Guest]

Nice buy @Smokebelch 21/22c is perfect, what you don't want is massive fluctuations from lights on to lights off so if your temps are 24 on then that's spot on.

 

I had a look at the Bio Green mats some time ago but they were well out of my price range so use an electric blanket plugged with plug-in thermostat with probe instead, the elements are the same though, the blanket just gets a bit grotty but no biggie as you can throw them in the washing machine.

[Smokebelch]

@SMEG HEAD they are very expensive for what they are dude, mine was £130 notes. The thing is this is my only hobby and I live on my own with no debts or dependants to worry about supporting so to me it's worth spending the money as the end result for me is invaluable. Who knows dude I still may get my usual problems mid flower even after splashing out the cash for this.

 

I have to admit I thought the mat would be a bit better built, it seems quite flimsy and is just made of a foil like material, the actual heatng elements are in small plastic tubes which seem sturdy enough, I guess they would be the same heating elements as what they use for underfloor heating as well as heated blankets. It should be ok as the bottom of the tray I use is completely flat and the 9 pots are never always full of water at the same time so it's not too heavy. The thermostat on the other hand seems like a good quality, well made and simple to use bit of kit, nice long and good quality leads so you can monitor it all from outside the tent. The temp sensor seems good quality and can be left down inside the pot in the compost, the sensor lead is very long well over a meter so it's easy to put into any pot in the grow room.

 

The long leads are great, the tube heaters always came with a lead about 1foot long and were a right pain to wire up, I never could work out why the lead was so short on those.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Smokebelch

[botanics]

On 02/09/2017 at 5:43 PM, Smokebelch said:

 In my experience if you want big yields then you have to be patient and give them a nice long veg period, an extra week of veg makes a big difference to the final amount.

 

 

Spot on mate, in the past I would never bloom them until alternate internodes, can't always do it now with restricted height but good advice there, cracking grow this too, excellent plants and work bud, subbed