COCO COIR Grow Journal - Possible Painkiller XL (RQS)

[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]

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]

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.

 

[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]

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!

 

[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 mcubed476 )

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.

 

[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]

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.

 

[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]

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!

 

[Mr.furley]

You could take a couple of Leafs, but it really isn't that overwhelmingly bushy. If it was mine I'd cut maybe 4 big ones from the top- middle and flip, week 3 is a good time to look at striping 25% of the fan leafs.

 

[Eigholte]

Thanks! That is very handy advice.

 

[Eigholte]

PS. You guys may or may not be a bad influence. Was reading another thread, and saw a link to Operation Overgrow. I missed the deadline last year, but this year I made it IN! (The concept of even HAVING 100 seeds kinda excites me. So. Many. SEEDS!) So maybe I'll have a future grow journal with "Freedom Dream", their 8-12%, <1% THC strain. Or maybe these plants will mysteriously "escape" into a nearby park system. Who knows...

 

[Canuck147]

That's the whole idea - spread the cannabis - Dana Larsen has planted them everywhere.

 

[Eigholte]

Some of his ideas include locations like in front of city hall... not sure I have the cajones for that. But establishing a self-reproducing "feral" population may be more my speed...

 

[Eigholte]

Ugh. Went to start the sex-change process on my clone, and instead ended up knocking the poor thing over and right out of its pot. This revealed the clone has pitifully few roots. This plan is starting to really go belly up.


So instead, Plan B: Take one growth tip of the main plant, give it a "salad bar shield", spray that with the GA3, and send the whole plant into flower next week.

This is one week before I planned to start flowering, but maybe that's for the best. The short axis of the plant is now butting up against my tent. My choices there are to cut off the nice tips, super crop, or just flower. The main plant is large, leafy and getting larger by the day. It is also showing alternating leaves instead of paired and preflowers are popping up, so maybe it's time to flip to 12/12 anyhow...

 

[Eigholte]

Week Seven Completed:

So, per the above, today the plant was moved to the flower tent along with the Saddest Clone (who is holding on by the tips of it's one little rootlet...), and all the various "roommates" have gone back to the veg tent together.

I think Pixel here is probably close to the biggest plant I can support in my tent. Plant wingspan is around 25" and the front to back dimensions are around 19-20", so in that direction, it's butting up against the tent a fair bit. I'm hoping once I can remove the branch with the "Salad-bar-sneeze-guard" in 2-3 weeks, that will free up a bit of space in the front-to-back dimension. I have no idea how much stretch this strain really has, I'm hoping it will be manageable as the plant has been mostly "indica"-looking, but due to the sativa genetics in the background, I am ready to adapt if something unusual happens and I end up with a monstrous stretch. At least I started with a flat, low canopy!

And here's the motley crew occupying the veg tent.

In maybe 4-6 weeks, this group will likely have to share with a new cannabis seedling, just not sure what to sprout yet. (Options are: Purple Kush, My last White Kush seed, Pure Power Plant, Blue Mystic, AK-48, or any of my remaining RQS CBD pack seeds (See post 1)) IF the pollen collection works out, I think I might like to try sprouting my Blue Mystic, because based on some of the scent and other characteristics this grow, I think I'd actually like to cross those two. They seem like they'd be reasonably compatible plant-parents. *shrugs* Ah well, I'll have to wait at least a week or so to know if that's where I should go.

The spouse has suggested I go back to growing a higher THC/THC dominant plant for the next batch, maybe try my Purple Kush seeds, as someone keeps getting into my stash from the last grow around bedtime.

 

[LurkingInTheGrass]

Mix up your pH when setting a fresh batch of nutes. Try not to always go in at the same pH

You want to use more of that pH range (5.5-6.5)

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week eight from seed / Week 1 from 12/12:

The saddest clone is STILL hanging in there. Color me surprised!

As you can see in the photo, the branch sprayed with the GA3 solution is stretching like hell compared to the rest of the plant. Since the GA3 treatment IS changing the growth pattern of the plant, it is making me hopeful that maybe I will get to make some feminized seeds and keep these genetics going for the future! The stretching in the rest of the plant is much more moderate, thankfully - the GA3 does seem to only have a localized effect. Still no pistils showing yet, but the pre-flowers are becoming more prominent as time goes on. Even the GA3 branch still looks to only have female pre-flowers, though. The process was described to me that the treated areas would stretch heavily, and would have male flowers by week 2-3 of flower. So we're pretty much on schedule by that account. Just have to have some patience, I think.

Then as soon as they appear I can chop that branch and remove it for pollen harvesting outside the tent. Muahahahh!

I just keep comparing this plant to my last grow, where at 8 weeks veg there were many pistils, and they took off like a rocket producing more pistils immediately when switched to 12/12. Then again, that previous set of plants refused to have anything to do with male flowers or pollen. I had pH issues that almost killed the 1st seedling around 4 times, issues with severe leaf drop on one plant through the whole flower period, and one of the clones was being treated with colloidal silver. Despite all that stress and purposeful goading not one of them ever made a single herm or male flower... In all honesty, I bet those "refuse to male" genetics could be valuable in another context. I should probably save that last White Kush seed to cross with something special... *chin stroke*

Current plant is taking up ~80% of the tent... after the stretch is done, that may end up being close to 100%... It's proving to be one big plant. I can't wait to see what kind of cola development happens. It's also really thirsty, and is now drinking something like 6-8L a week, at around ~750 ppm.

It's also growing up into my little blurple as it stretches, and has reached ~12" from the light without showing signs of stress or light burn. Per the manufacturer's listed PAR values (which may be lies, who knows?), 12" is the closest it should get, at around 900 umol/m2. So I've backed the lights off a little to give more growing room for the next week.

 

[Doubledealing72]

Your plant is looking great! Very lush green! So you're crossing different strains? That's awesome, and I would love to try it someday.

Keep up the good work man!