Chop day was yesterday! I hadn't been able to check on them much last week because of crazy work hours. GDP seemed to have quit, possibly because of the short days. Black Widow was definitely the star of this show. I began trimming today. Even the smaller buds from the lesser pheno smell heavily of fruit & fuel. As for the good pheno - holy Moses! I've never held colas quite that heavy. In fact, after I began to gather the yo-yos, I heard a cascade of snapping stems. Even Bruce snapped one.
I thought about a staggered harvest. Waiting another week to start the new batch just didn't wash with me when 5 of 6 plants were ready. I've got plenty of matured Bruce Banner already so I can try the head racing stuff in a few weeks and see if I like that better. Really, I just might. I happen to like roller coasters. In space. And with colored lights.
The first three pics are BW, and the fourth is Bruce. The last one is the tent after all the new clones were placed in the setup after a good cleaning. It took five flushes to get rid of all the old nutes and specks of coco. I hope to never move another plant out of coco to hydro from anything bigger than a Solo cup again.
I managed to make just enough mistakes on this grow to learn a few things but not enough to screw up the grow. One of the most useful things learned is that using that dawn to dusk feature on the light timer will almost certainly force all plants to finish close to the same time. It works by mimicking the sun's rising and setting once you choose that option for on and off. All you have to do is set the date to September 21 and it will shorten the days automatically throughout flowering. I will try using it again once the current batch is ready for 12/12.
I also get better acquainted with the relationship between potassium and pH and nutrient uptake. Feeding a bit of extra potassium in flower helps a bit in keeping the pH from crashing below 5.5 just 24 hours after adjusting pH. It's interesting that pH Up is a potassium compound and pH Down is a phosphorus compound. Both are vital to plants, so unstable pH might mean that more P or more K in the nute solution can help a bit with that. I'd still like to know some cannabis-safe alternatives that can't be changed by nute uptake.
When the net pot lids were pulled, I noticed no evidence of roots pulled into the return pipes so using a low flow pump was likely a good idea. It seems that the churn from the airstones is much heavier than the pull from the return pipes.
This next batch will be the first one in ages where I didn't change the light fixture mid-grow. Project Blueberry changed from a T5 to a hand-me-down Platinum LED panel once the bigger LED for this tent arrived. And speaking of Blueberry, one of those ancient cuttings is finally rooting so big sis will have more company!
I will post again once all is trimmed and dried and jarred. I never have weighed a grow - I just go by how many Mason jars get filled with bud.
