Grow Journal - Possible Painkiller XL (RQS)

[Eigholte]

Update, End of Week Six:

Pixel, my main plant looks happy. Even those light yellow leaf tips seem to have cleared up. Interestingly enough, a review of my log might indicate why: From day one, my nutrient pH's were running around 6.3 to 6.5 like clock work. In the middle of week five, I made up a batch that was otherwise the same, but was pH 6.0. The pH shift was a bit of an accident - new acid stock was more potent - but it was in-range (5.5-6.5), so I went with it. And things looked better. I duplicated my last batch for this weeks watering, and that seems to have put the problem to bed. I may have been starving it of a particular nutrient by being so consistently on the higher end of the pH range, perhaps? (Or it's just coincidence that the issue is resolved... who knows!! )



Anyhow, there is much lush, green, leafy growth, which is great. I am planning to flip at week 8. A question for you all: Would you consider defoliating before flipping here? I tucked the big leaves down to get the shoots/future colas more light. And I can 'see through" the plant at most angles. Should I try it, or just leave it?

Structure is looking strong, still. Knuckles (and their attendant scars?) are getting bigger, and the main four branches are thickening up nicely.



I learned that my 100% success rate in cloning was due to beginners luck - back then I managed to accidentally balance things to the perfect humidity it seems. This time, I erred on the side of moister, and have lost 2 of 3 clones to fungus. One of the little axial node clones is alive, and has been nicknamed "The Saddest Clone". Assuming that little thing picks up growth in the next 2-3 days, I'll work on gender-flipping it using GA3, and sacrifice it to my crazy self-produced feminized seed plans.



Finally, this week the main plant began showing pre-flowers. They look resoundingly female to me. I kinda think sexing plants with pre-flowers is easier than trying to determine the sex of three day old rabbits, and I do the latter with a surprising frequency. The plants don't wriggle or squeak at least... I will claim the plants are way better behaved. (At three days old, any warm, mammal-like object is a potential food source to small rabbits which are blind at that stage... they mostly do NOT sit still while being held. Think squeaky pop-corn.)





Have a good week, GWE!

[Eigholte]

Week Five: In today's episode: The main plant gets large and bushy, I get tempted to flip to 12/12, and the clones struggle to keep up.


Foliage has been a nice even green, mostly. I do see a few very faint yellow tips again, but nothing awful, and the oldest fan leaves (now removed), were showing some deep-green and floppy symptoms reminicent of too much nitrogen? I thought I was feeding this thing lightly (Nothing over 650ppm yet, and usually 150ppm of that is the tap water!!). But maybe it's just a little more sensitive to that than the White Kush was.




The Quadline on the main plant is filling out nicely, I think. There are a a few little scars on top of the branches - maybe I've been too rough in training? But otherwise the connections look strong and somewhat knuckle-like.



One clone (one of the axial nodes) is solidly deceased. The other two are starting to show signs that they may be rooting. I'll be looking to slowly ease the domes off them over the next week, and getting them to use their roots for moisture, rather than their stomata.

However, there is a new plant taking up the space of the deceased clone. With some prompting from the spouse, I soaked a mango and and avocado in my GA3 solution to promote germination and gave them both a "clone cup".The mango tree is up and running now. It's the tiny thing in the Froster cup at far left.



My poor plants have all these weird roommates. First it was my cotton tree, but I moved her to the Flower tent for a while to free up space for the clones. Now it's the mango... I'm deeply unlikely to get a fruit of the mango in all reality. The biggest success I could expect, really, is that I am able to keep it from becoming a 30 foot tree, and instead convince it that it would like to become my spouse's houseplant pet.

[Eigholte]

I think quadline is a really neat name for it. Picking through your thread, I thought the technique would solve some of the issues I had with my first grow - due to a really short inter-node spacing on that plant, and keeping every branch, I had some significant crowding on the lower part of my plant, and got half of my harvest as fluffy, underdeveloped bud due to lack of light.

This plant has a much longer node spacing than the previous one, so it may not be as much of a problem, but I think the better branch spacing of the quadline will help my plant(s) better use my (admittedly somewhat under-powered) lighting anyhow.

[Doubledealing72]

Your plants are looking good eigholte! And please, steal my training Methods! I'm honored!

LurkingInTheGrass pointed me to a thread on a different forum that shows people using this same technique. I figured it had been done before, I had just never seen it anywhere. They refer to it as a quadline. I like the sound of it 👍

[Eigholte]

Update, end of week 4:

The now suspected Royal Medic has been growing well, and as of this morning was a rather intimidating 9" high by 15" wide. I believe this plant is capable of throwing the 418 http error, "I'm a teapot", as the resulting plant is short and stout...



But past that, it was training and clone day. I made one large clone from the top of the plant and nodes 5 & 6. Node 4 was trimmed off and each axial shoot there was rooted as well, for a total of three potential clones. I'm hoping the big clone makes it, as that one is already 'trained' into a second double mainline, and I'm hoping at least one of the axial clones grow.




So this left me with a much barer looking plant, but the branch structure looks good to me. I have planned for 4 more weeks of veg, so this thing could be a monster by then! If it takes a little longer, though, that's okay too. (Double mainline training structure blatantly stolen from Doubledealing72 )



So then everyone went in the tent together. Clones take the edge where the light is dimmer (And moisture in their domes help diffuse the light as well) Family Photo!



Last but not least, I got this crazy idea of scanning one of those monstrous fan leaves on my flat bed scanner. I am REALLY impressed. I think I might make one of these for each of my grows now, and it even seems like a good idea if I need help on discoloration or leaf issues to make a scan of an affected leaf. Fingers crossed it won't come to that last one though! This leaf is 7.5" from cut end to tip. Very leafy.

[Eigholte]

I am reasonably lucky in that I took out some from my main bottle into a smaller container when I started using it. That stuff is what got contaminated, it seems. So I still have at least 80% of it left. Just really need to nuke that smaller bottle from orbit. I've played this game of "kill the mites" before with my cotton plant - and so far have not ever won without destroying the infected plant. I'm not keen to do that again!

[LurkingInTheGrass]

LOL

last time I picked up rooting gel - I just grabbed 2 bottles. At the checkout, my wife notices. "we don't need 2 bottles of rooting gel, I'll put one back".

"yes, we need 2 bottles, If you put one back, you won't have any"

[Eigholte]

End of Week Three:

Here's a photo showing those slightly yellowed tips and that very slight fading between leaf veins.

Still only impacting the top leaves, the lower axial growth, for instance, isn't having the same issue. And I don't see it getting worse or changing. I'll hold out to see how this next set of leaves for Node 6 comes out, and if they're normal, I'll call it solved.

Otherwise, I'd say the plant looks rather healthy. 4 full nodes, with the 5th deploying leaves. 6 inches tall, and considerably wider by leaf-span.



I think it's more probable that I am growing a Royal Medic, though, than a Painkiller XL. Apparently Medic gets more of an indica look to the leaves from the "Critical" side of it's family, whereas Painkiller has more of a sativa-leaf. Also, the smell is more similar to the "Skunky, Fruity and Hashy" description of the Royal Medic than the "Lemon and Diesel" description given to PXL. (Though, to be honest, I've never smelt hash... I'm going off the fact that my plant nailed the "skunk" and "fruit - blueberry" notes).

I am waiting until the plant has 6 full nodes and is deploying the 7th in order to finish the topping for the double-mainline. I want to take the top of the plant and try to root the axial growth from node 4 and then remove everything left from node 4 and root the plant top with nodes 5/6 for a second plant. The tiny Node 4 clones would be back-ups, and for playing with - such as trying to create fem pollen, etc.

For a beginner, I've had decent luck with rooting/cloning. My first grow I managed to end with 4 plants out of 2. My main failure so far has been in trying to clone from a plant in full flower - unsuccessful for many reasons - one of them being my little container of rooting gel seems to have had spider mite eggs added to it when the spouse used it to root some sweet potato cuttings from outside. NOPE! Once the bugs were identified under the dome, the clones were banished the the frozen wastelands outside. So it's possible they may have rooted if they hadn't been culled in the name of avoiding a full-scale bio-war.

Looking forward to trying more cloning later with fresh rooting gel.

[Eigholte]

Just had a thought. The scent is another clue about which strain I ended up with. This particular hint suggests I may have a Royal Medic on my hands, as that one is referred to as "Fruity and Skunky", and my impression of this was was "Blueberries and Skunks", whereas the Painkiller XL is described as "Lemon and Diesel". Just not getting either of those here.

Not definitive, but another clue, for sure!

[Eigholte]

Mid-Week Update:

Plant is growing, but is a little slower, and has a very mild discoloration that is impacting the top of the plant. Newest leaves have light yellowing on the tips, and next set of leaves down has a little bit of lightening between the veins. Current best guess is mild light burn, so I moved my LED up ~4 inches. Doesn't seem to be getting worse, so I won't resort to drastically changing things until it looks like I have a progressing problem. If it continues to not get worse, maybe the light adjustment will have fixed it.

In other news I took off the cotelydon and 1st node. Those areas were going to be removed as part of training when the plant hit 6 nodes. (It is currently deploying leaves on Node 4) I decided to remove them early in the hopes of reducing the overall stress load at training time. We'll see if it actually works... if my plant ceases to grow for the next few days, I can probably write this one off as a bad idea. I wanted the plant to focus on growing axial growth I was going to actually keep.

BUT the removed leaves gave off such a wonderful scent! I was getting skunk and blueberries... the spouse was not impressed, and when I asked their opinion got "I dunno... just mint and weed?"

It just reminds me of opening a carton of blueberries... Man, I REALLY hope that carries over to the flowers!

[Eigholte]

Update - End of Week Two.

As mentioned, the seedling has been transplanted and seems to be feeling okay about that.

Fairly even green color, though there was a little shift in color about 2 days after after the transplant, with a little more red at the top of the plant. I double-checked the coir pH in the new pot, as I've had prior pH issues cause unusual discoloring, just in case. It was normal (around 6.6 ish), and the color seems to have returned to normal color so I think I'm not going to worry about it.

Lights are now at 16" after the transplant, and over the week, the plant has consumed:
200mL of nutrient solution at 535ppm for watering
4L / 1 Gallon of nutrient solution at 595ppm for soaking the new coir pot.

I anticipate I won't need to water this one much for a while. And the larger, moist coir pot has brought the humidity in the tent up to around 50%, which is about where I want it to be.

All in all, so far so good!

[9fingerleafs]

im very glad it worked out

[Eigholte]

I took 9fingerleafs suggestion and slipped the solo cup to look at the roots last night - and they had just started to do laps around the bottom of the cup. The race winners were at about 1/3 of the way around.

So I transplanted the plant to it's new home. I'd made the solo-cup shaped hole the night before, and the soil was already moistened, drained and at the same temperature as the tent, so it was a super simple move. Being prepared is nice.

I was rewarded today with the sight of more growth on the third set of leaves - my plant does not appear to be too upset at all! So, formal updates and pictures to follow tomorrow morning!

[LurkingInTheGrass]

...and take over the world, one grow pot at a time

well
it sounded better in my head. all the reverb, deep movie trailer voice, I guess you had to be there, sorry

[Eigholte]

@Lurking in the Grass - Not much plastic. Does seem to be the heat-treated polyester or similar. It can be sewn, and isn't as hard on the machine as the canvas I'm usually working with. So it's workable.

@Mr. Furley - Aha! The lazy option! I like it. Maybe I'll treat myself to one of these, all professionally sewn. (And then model my own pot designs off of it, muahahahah!)