Day 32 Update
So much has happened since the forum went down! I’m not even sure where to begin. Plans have changed, plants have changed . . . Let’s get to it!
Crystal M.E.T.H.
The Crystal METH is looking as sad and mutant as ever. She’s the slowest grower of the bunch. I ultimately decided not to top or quadline this one, as she just doesn’t seem robust enough. As such, I did some pretty intense LST to flatten her out. My plan was to spiral her structure, but unfortunately, I’m not sure she’s going to make it.
Looking at her, she’s already begin the jump into flower pretty heavily. She’s ahead of the others in that regard. My concern? That she’s prematurely flowering due to stress. I worry she’s not going to grow much bigger, but will now focus on buds instead. If that’s true, I’ll be getting a tiny, tiny harvest off of her. I guess we’ll see.
Finally, it appears Crystal M has an infestation of some sort. Not a very big one, but I’ve found some small crawlers that I can’t identify. They aren’t swarming; there are just a handful of them. They don’t use the underside of leaves. I’ve checked my leaves carefully; no eggs, so social events on underside, etc. When I see these things, they’re usually by themselves wandering around the plant or soil.
What I’m wondering is if these bugs are beneficial? They don’t seem to match the description of any of the pests listed on GWE. I also wonder if they’re responsible for my plant looking so bad; but this plant has been ugly since the very first leaf, and I don’t think these insects came until later. Plus, my White Widow has them, and she looks fine.
Guesses, thoughts?
Six-Shooter
The Six-Shooter is doing pretty well. I’ve continued training the quadline structure. I’m trying to have it staked out as far as the edges of the pot. I did some serious defoliation (based on Green75’s auto mainlining videos), and she’s currently growing back out.
I think I goofed by bending the main nodes down too far when training. I read a post about quadlining from the guy who invented it, and he said that your plants will slow WAY down if you bend the nodes to horizontal. Something about hormones. So I think I bent a bit too far, but I’ve tried to go back to fix that.
You’ll notice I haven’t pruned off all of the growth on the quadline. I’m curious how it will yield if I leave more of those interior bud sites. I may still end up pruning them off, but we’ll see. Thoughts?
White Widow XXL
The White Widow has also been quadline and trained. You just can’t tell because of how bushy she is! I’ve decided NOT to do much defoliation on this girl, as I’d like to compare her progress with the Six-Shooter (which I am defoliating). I can’t help myself. I love experimenting!
The White Widow also has the same bugs as the Crystal Meth, but seems to be healthy, largely. Here’s a pic of one of her bugs:
GSC
The GSC is coming right along. Rather than topping above 3 after 6 nodes, I went ahead and topped once the 4th and 5th node started showing up. I’ve decided I’m JUST going to top this one plus some LST). Again, I want to compare to my quadlines. Also, the GSC is growing kinda slow, so I figured I’d reduce the stress on her.
So, that’s the girls. Because of the insects, I went ahead and treated all 4 with PureCrop1. If you haven’t checked this stuff out, please do. It looks like the first of a new type of tech that acts as both an insecticide, a fungicide, AND a biostimulant. And it can be safely used as late as the day of harvest! All organic, etc. I hope it works, because it was $40 for 16oz! Anyone here have experience with PC1?
So that just about captures it all. There’s been some minor stuff I would have reported, but this post is long enough! Thanks for stopping in!