COCO COIR Grow Journal - Blue Mystic (Nirvana)

[Eigholte]

End of Week 8:


Plant A and Plant B are looking happy in the veg tent. I've been way better about maintaining a more consistent watering schedule this week, so that likely helps.

It's the end of Week 3 from 12/12 for Plant C as well, and little proto-buds are forming.

Plant C is developing honest-to-goodness balls in addition to the normal buds!

But it's grown well above my light on the GA3 branch and was starting to die back in that area:

So I cut off the areas that were dying back. I found there was a tip that had gone 'crispy' for lack of a better word.
The non-crispy balls have been placed in a paper bag to dry (Hoping they're mature enough to have pollen!), and I tried something crazy with the crispy one

I smashed up the crispy one and rubbed it on a flower! So maybe in a few days, I'll see if there was any mature pollen in that cluster. Failing that, I can give it another shot in a few days to a week, and I still have some of the lower flowers on the plant maturing, in case both of those fail.

I'm just going to keep trying this until I get seeds, apparently!

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 9 (BMA and BMB-Veg), or End of Week 4 (BMC-Flowering)


So, Poor BMA and BMB are very thirsty, and I just can just barely keep up. I left them alone for 2 days and came back to this:

Poor thirsty girls. I'll have to adjust my schedule. Right now they're drinking probably 2 gallons a week, and they obviously want more.

BMC is proceeding well during flowering. Not the best trained plant ever, but lots of nice white pistils are forming.

Last week's pollination experiment appears to have been a success as there were between ~4-10 red, curled pistils on that bud in the next few days afterwards (example photo below).

I took the undamaged harvested pollen sacks from last week, ground them up in some flour, and painted them on the same branch. I'll see how many red pistils I get this week. I also took the smallest of my other pollen sacks and cut them down to dry so that I have just the one branch left with male flowers. I don't want to harvest too early, but I also want to avoid the males doing all the pollinating work for me - I'm told it's hard to get loose pollen out of a tent!

Anyhow, grow is progressing along nicely, apart from my inability to keep up with the water demands! Seriously, maybe I should invest in an auto-water system like we have for the birds... I'm sure the plants would love it.

 

[Eigholte]

Quick update: The plants in veg bounced back after watering... but at that point, I noticed how tall they were - again. They'd grown up into the lights. So, I gave them another haircut to bring them back down to size.

I guess the repeated topping IS making them bushier at least.

 

[HappyDaze]

You might consider putting some netting up and SCROGing them into submission...you have unused horizontal space you could be taking advantage of, just bend 'em over.

 

[Scarletwhitewidow]

Bloody hell your enthusiastic. Well done eigholte

 

[Eigholte]

That is sounding like a really good idea for when I finally flip A and B over to flower. Given that they'll be at least 9-10 weeks in veg at that point, I'm kinda expecting they'll stretch like heck - so training that growth into a SCROG might be the way to go.

 

[Eigholte]

Heh... thanks! I feel like these plants are doing their best to keep me running. Since day one, they've been growing and reaching milestones faster than I've been ready to deal with it!

But I've just managed keeping up with the weekly updates/photos, etc. and documenting the whole thing as I go.

 

[HappyDaze]

Can I ask...why the long veg? They're already overgrowing your space and they'll double in size when you flip.

 

[Eigholte]

I'm mostly just trying to nail down the timing for creating feminized seed from the first two. The original idea was that out of 3 regular seeds there should be at least one male that I could flower early enough that this wouldn't have been an issue. But that didn't work out, so now I'm trying to refine my Colloidal Silver/GA3 game to produce female pollen and time it so I can use that pollen on the other plants. Each setback keeps making this increasingly frustrating.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 10 Veg (A&B), End of Week 5 Flower (C)


So, mostly kept up this week. A and B didn't get too thirsty, but A was in solid need of a drink this morning, as you can see.

But I think I need to just flip everything to flower. It's been 10 weeks. I should have been finished with the seed-making process on C by now, but I'm finding the male flowers I'm picking are not particularly potent - lots of green 'nanners, not a lot of happy yellow pollen. I might have successfully pollinated a branch with a few seeds on that first try, but the second one didn't seem to do much. I made a third go of it today... and perhaps I should give up, and just get my flowering and harvesting on. I think I am getting lower and lower potency from the males anyhow...

That said, with 10 weeks in veg for A and B... it might be one heck of a harvest. That would be nice, I think I'll like this one based on the smell.

C is trucking along in Flower. This week, the buds started thickening up a bit.

It's starting to form an honest-to-goodness continuous cola up there. That's really exciting. This is the worst-trained plant I've ever grown, so I have high hopes for what might happen with better training and more light on this strain.

Game Plan? Cut back aggressively, to try and leave enough space for the stretch, let it recover for a week, then flip plants A and B to 12-12.
Also: Give up on seeds, and see what that branch on C gives me.

Worst case is I make another not-quite-legal seed order from Nirvana to stock up again. Not ideal, but also not a crisis.

 

[HappyDaze]

I'm looking forward to seeing how your seeds grow out. We'll be able to see how stable Nirvana's genetics are. Maybe all you'll get is the Blueberry gramma and the ruderalis grampa.

 

[Eigholte]

Fingers crossed that I get at least a few! I am curious to know as well just how much variation is in the strain. I'm also wondering tri-whorl trait I was seeing in 2/3 seeds remains stable, gets more pronounced, disappears, or what.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 11 Veg (A&B), End of Week 6 Flower (C)


Status updates:

I am pretty sure I have at least a few areas on C pollinated. I may have produced some selfed feminized seeds out of my Blue Mystic plants B and C. I will keep trying to self A, because I like that plant, but I'm not going to wait any longer.

Plants A and B are obviously very well established, as they seem to be able to suddenly grow 10 inches in a week. The time to go to flower is now, I think! In preparation for that, I cut them back heavily and removed all the little stems at the base of the plant. Since light is my limiting factor, I rarely get any buds worth having there. I also plan to try and build a bit of a DIY scrog net above them in the next day or so, to train the new growth into. I plan to officially flip to 12/12 later tonight.

C looks like it might take longer to mature than plants I've grown in the past (Maybe some sativa in there?) The pistils are all still very, very white where I haven't chucked pollen.

Also, I snapped a stem on Plant C, the poor thing, and had to tape it up. Wish me luck.


Plants A and B before the trim:

Plants A and B after the trim:

Plant C:

And the current state of the buds on C, at 6 weeks into flower:

 

[SoOrbudgal]

This is kinda like a Frankenstein grow. That's so huge bummer it's taken so long for possible seed formation. I'm gonna keep watchin.

 

[Eigholte]

Oh! Thanks for the reminder. This Frankenstein grow may actually be a bit crazier still - I have a clone of A that is planted outdoors now. Going to see how that turns out. I'm far enough north that frost may come before my harvest does, but it'll be neat to see how that timing works up here and the extra clone cost basically nothing to produce so I'm not out anything if the plant dies off in a frost. So maybe I should start posting updates on that plant, too!

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 1 Flower (A&B), End of Week 7 Flower (C)


Alrighty! Well, it took a few days after my last update to get everything set up and adjust my timer, but we've finished week one of 12/12 for Plants A and B, plus or minus two days or so!

I handwove myself a little SCROG net in that tent and I am training my two plants through it now. I am hopeful that I should be able to restrain some of that vigorous stretching, and who knows, may be it'll even yield well! I did clip off any of the lower branches that weren't likely to make the net by the end of the stretch (anything that would have had to grow more than 200%), in an attempt to get the plants to focus on filling the net.

Plant C is still going. That massive break I caused seems to be healing with the duct tape on it. (Phew!)

At this point, pistils are now browning all over - I think we're starting to close in on harvest time! I was worried with all that endless white pistil growth that I would be dealing with a longer path to maturity, but I might be finished by around 10 weeks like expected, actually. Maybe 11-12 at worst.

Unfortunately C is just too dang tall, my light is at it's maximum position, and I'm stuck. So the top cola is totally getting light burned. My options are to cut it off, or just let it burn. It's not near ready yet, so I think I am willing to let this one burn. Maybe it was a good thing I flipped C earlier - I learned enough about this strain's habits to know the A and B need a SCROG net at least! And I'm sure there will be some salvageable buds - I mean, I do love me some extracts, so very little of my plants actually goes to waste.

Right now, thankfully, it's mostly the leaves/sugar leaves taking the hit. Hopefully this matures reasonably quickly, and I can cut it down before it gets too bad!

And then! Plant A Junior - is planted outside and appears to be slowly recovering from transplanting. Has one or two new leaves. Is all of 4 inches tall.
Looking forward to seeing how that plant behaves at this latitude!

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 2 Flower (A&B), End of Week 8 Flower (C)

So... Plant C is getting the thickest buds I have ever grown. Also the most light burnt. Unfortunately, but that is the way of the learning curve. C is looking a little rough, but I think I might have about ~2 weeks left to harvest, so I am hoping to just tough it out and see what happens instead of making drastic changes.

So here is C, in all her fat, crispy glory.

The worst of her buds:

And the best:

A and B are training well into the SCROG net, and appear to have been more than ready. We have protobuds forming already.
I have a lot of hope for these two, I think I should be able to avoid pretty much all of the problems I found with C, and if I can optimize the light, I think I can get a really good harvest out of these two in SCROG.

Go, Little Proto-buds!

 

[SoOrbudgal]

WOW what and endeavor this has been. Could you not pull that tall one away from the light with twine attach to tent pole? How's seed production looking?

 

[Eigholte]

Oh, hey, SoOrbudgal. I might have missed your message last week. I started shifting the light to the right, a little away from the tall plant. I'm a little afraid to tie that plant - it's a little top heavy.

On the topic of seed production, I'm am hopeful! No calyxes have split open yet, so I can't see any seeds. But the buds I attempted to pollinate are not thickening and producing more calyxes so I think at least a few of them took. The pollinated areas are thickening like mad, even on the base of the plant, so I think its' likely to be related to that area producing seeds rather than buds.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 3 Flower (A&B), End of Week 9 Flower (C)

I am closing in on harvest time for plant C, and I can hardly wait. The plant doesn't have much of a smell, really, but when I get the resin on my hands, it's a sensory delight. I have a hard time describing the scent/flavor, but I know that I like it. Also, these are the thickest buds I have ever grown. I can't quite tell if that's due to the strain's genetics, or if it has to do with the switch in nutrients I made this grow (Moved from the Basic AN Grow-Bloom-Micro trio with no supplements to the MegaCrop with the Sweet Candy and Bud Explosion add-ons. So the add-ons may be helping with getting more bud weight. Would need more science-ing to know for sure).

The most notable change is the weather this week did a full 90 degree, and suddenly it's hot here. (as opposed to unnaturally cool and rainy over the last few weeks) This has shot my humidity and temperature values in my tent through the roof. I think I have a risk of mold for the first time. So I bumped my fan up to high (I am glad I got a fan with about 2-3x the CFU rating I needed), and I'll keep an eye on this. I think I should consider doing a clean/air out of the tent as well, because I saw a hint of something fungus-y on a smart pot.

Looking at C, I think I might be about 2 weeks away from harvest - I see a good proportion of cloudy trichromes when I look, but no amber on the buds yet.

Here's C's Photos

And the bud close up

A and B have formed a lush green carpet of SCROG, and I couldn't be more pleased. I think this will be a more successful grow than C, but I owe plant C a debt of gratitude for teaching me the hard lessons I needed to learn before setting A and B to flower.

And I think at this point, I can call these legitimate little buds, rather than proto-buds.