SOIL Aurora Indica (Nirvana Seeds), week 8 of flowering. Harvest any day now.

[Cocho]

Hello everyone!

I've been "fiddling" with another Aurora Indica for the past few months now. And she's in week 8 of flowering now, and is almost ready to harvest.

The plant is growing in a 15 liter (4 gallon) pot, and I'm using Plagron Grow Mix and feeding her with General Organics (from General Hydroponics) BioThrive Grow and BioThrive Bloom. I've also added Molasses to the feeding water the last couple of weeks.

The water I'm using comes from the tap in my kitchen. It comes out at pH 8, so I tune it down a little with some pH-down, to about 6.5 - 7.0 before mixing the nutrients.

I'm using a 200W Dual Spectrum CFL bulb and a Carbon filter to reduce odor.

So it's a pretty simple setup, but it looks like I'll have good results from it this time.














Most of the pistils have turned orange/brown, but there's still some white ones left and the brown/orange ones need to curl up a little more.
I'm going for 70/30 orange and white ones. That should give me mostly milky/cloudy tricomes, with a few amber ones in between.
It will also give the buds time to fully fatten. From earlier grown I've experienced that this strain takes a little while to fully fatten. That is most likely because of the light I'm using, so I've made sure to be more patient this time.

Looks like she's going to produce some good smoke tho.

What do you guys think? Something I should keep in mind the last few days?

Have a great weekend!

- C

[Toker1]

I would mix in nutes first, then PH adjust and test. Nutes tend to be slightly acidic. My tap is around 8 from the faucet as well. After I mix in my nutes, it typically hovers around 5.5 after that.

[SoOrbudgal]

Man that looks grand. Have you ever just taken the top most finished parts of colas off? I'm saying staged harvest and allowing the lower portion to ripen and fatten without sacrificing top part which may over ripen do to light not penetrating lower stalk? Do what feels right to you but I've done it many times without harming the grow. I do love the CFL grows just proves when done right you can get descent smoke. Great job

[Cocho]

Toker1 Well, yeah. But the nutes I'm using don't really make it that much more acidic, and the local tap water has plenty of minerals in it. At least I'm getting pH 6.5-7.0 from my runoff after feeding. And I've yet to come across any issues this grow by doing this. But I've done it like you describe on earlier grows when I used a different brand of nutes.

SoOrbudgal I haven't, and I can't really with this setup. Growing is highly illegal where I live, so the smartest thing you can do is to keep it on the down low, and don't get to eager with your projects. Odor, heat, how much power you're using etc can easily get you caught if you're not careful. So I've made sure that my grow don't stand out and/or alerts anyone. Not even close relatives and/or friends who don't really approve. So there's just a small tent from Secret Jardin called DS60 (60x60x158 cm), a 150m³ exhaust fan connected to a 300m³ carbon filter for odor control and a wing reflector with a 200W Dual Spectrum CFL bulb with a simple timer. This lets me grow one plant at a time, with minimal power consumption and zero odor. I have the whole setup in a small room, connected by door, next to my home office. And you can't tell what's going on in there without actually going in. And I keep the door locked most of the day. The room has fresh air ventilation, which lets fresh sea air in to the room 24/7. My apartment also has heated floors, so there's always a decent temperature down on the floor, so the room never goes below 20C/68F at any given time. And since the apartment is below ground, it almost never get hotter than 28C/82F in the room.

So because of the way this setup is made up and works, I only have one area where I can store a plant at any given time, and that is the actually growing space. So at this moment I am unable to harvest my plants in different stages, so what I normally do is to top the plant and do some LST and flower the whole thing in a Scrog (with a net fitted for my tent), to make more bud sites and a more even canopy. This time though, I only topped it a few times and didn't bother with the LST. But I only did this to see how well or bad it would do. But like I said, normally I would do more and make sure everything got an even amount of light.

But in a perfect world I would use a 400-600W HPS bulb, a larger tent and a area for clones and a area for drying. Maybe even a area for mother plants. But that might be a later project when I buy a house.

[Toker1]

Understandable. Still wouldn’t hurt any to PH adjust after nutes are added.
7 is getting kind of up there for soil. 6.5 is really the number you want for the root zone.
What does your soil manufacturer recommend the PH to be at?

[Cocho]

I usually let it vary a little from 6.2-6.5-7.0, so that I cover all the different nutrients. In nature the pH varies a little, and the different nutrients don't absorb as good on one steady pH-value. Some need a little lower, and some need it a little higher. But 6.2 is as low as I can get it without directly altering the "ecosystem" in the soil. The same goes for 7.0. To get higher than that I'll have to just feed her straight tap water or something like that.

The bag says 6.5-7.9 so I usually water it with pH-regulated water (no nutrients) and letting it drain/dry for one day before planting the seed in it. I feel like this helps me make sure the soil has somewhat the right pH-range when the plant starts its life. The soil is organic, so I don't want to mess too much with it. But it's a semi hot soil, and I normally don't have to add nutrients for the first 2-3 weeks. And that is also why I like to keep it moist with fresh pH-regulated water, just to make sure the salt build up is not too bad at the beginning.

Still.. this is my second grow with this soil and these nutrients, so I can't really tell for sure how well it's going.
But I still feel like this is a good combination. I've only gotten better and better harvests with this now, and I'm sure the next one will be even better. But time will show.

It is also worth to mention that I'm not using a "propper" pH meter. I have a dripping kit, just to make sure that my feeding water is on point, and that the run off is stable. Other than that I feel like nature knows best, and with my grows being 100% organic, I believe that the micro organisms in the soil will make sure that things go the right way.

Peace!

[Cali]

What? You get cool sea air ventilation while being under ground wtf. Must be nice. Wonder how that works?? Oh and I love your grow beautiful colas Aurora is Bomb.

[Cocho]

Yeah. I can see right out the North sea from my living room window.
The house (where my apartment is located) is built on a small hill. There's a lot of houses/building here, so it's a normal thing to do.
But the way the house is built is that one part of the house goes into the ground, and the other side of the house kind of "comes out" of the ground, making it so that my office is a few feet underneath the actual surface, while my windows in my living room is level with the ground (I can crawl out of the window and straight on to the grass outside).

And the house is fitted with a pretty decent ventilation system, where the intake is facing the sea, and with the constant wind (there's always a little breeze) coming in from the sea, the air has no pollution and makes the environment inside the house super nice. And one of the intakes to the house is located where I have my ventilation system for my tent, allowing me to take advantage of the super fresh air 24/7

[SoOrbudgal]

Morning from Oregon Cocho I think your plant looks great. Lovely fade of leafs I have a auto aurora that's 2wks old. I am doing perpetual harvests in summer. One plant near ready, another gets started and yet another is 2wks from harvest. All autos this summer I've tried to stage harvest. My 4 reg. photos are close in age but will finish within weeks of eachother. You have a fine set up and proved what can be done with basic setup and you will get very decent smoke. Great job peace

[Cocho]

I cut the buds off of the branches today and placed them on glass. They've been hanging to dry inside the grow tent, in the darkness at 21C/70F and 60%HR, tor 7 days now. Cranked up the ventilation of the tent by 20%, and had a fan circulate the air inside the tent 24/7.

The results were great!

I only removed the absolute largest fan leaves when I cut her down. But the rest I left on to make sure the buds didn't dry out too fast.

And today they had that "popcorn" quality so I trimmed them and put then on glass.

After I'd done that my fingers were covered in resin and pistils. So I rubbed my hands together until the "goo" clumped up and made a nice little ball of premium black hashish. I felt like a Nepalese monk making finger hashish in the mountains.

So tonight I'm planning on grinding up some bud and mixing it with the hashish and a tiny bit of natural tobacco. Give it a little taste.

Tomorrow I'll trim one of the buds and take a picture in the daylight to show you guys.

Hopefully it'll kick my ass!

[SoOrbudgal]

By the looks i'm sure your headed for a knock out