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One week today into flower for the big tent. Preflower pistols starting to show and the plants are looking healthy. More shades of darker green are showing on the top growth. Normal feeding through the autopots is back on track. I have already topped the plants in the smaller tent but I haven't transplanted them into the autopots yet. Usually I would transfer first before training but the plants were already ready for the first top but I felt the roots were not yet established enough to transfer, so I elected to top first, let the plants recover and then transplant. I have already flushed this medium well with pH'd water and flashkleen solution to prevent any previous issues with an alkaline medium causing a nutrient lockout. I think another week and the plants will be in the autopots. Lastly in the Organic Tent™ the plants continue to develop. I have the pots and soil ready on standby to do the transfer once I feel like the roots are established enough as well.

Well, harvest done and dusted. Wet trimmed, dried for 9 days, and burped for a further week. Happy with yield and bag appeal. First time I experienced how phenotypes differ. On my outdoor plants we share seed packs, so I only ever get to see one plant per strain. With this indoor run I had 8 plants from one seed pack and the difference between the best and the worse plant is quite significant. Not only from yield perspective but bud quality and looks too. Always knew this was the case, just a wow moment seeing it first hand. Anyway, here are some of the last pics I took. Two weeks before harvest. And some pics of drying. Had to take over the guest bathroom and dining room table.. Wife was not impressed! And lastly the end product Now on to run two. Unfortunately running all 8 pheno's again, as yet to decide which to keep permanently. Will only be able to make that call in two weeks after proper cure. The second run coming along nicely. Will flip in a week and a bit. Can only hope the loadshedding stabilizes somewhat by then. Plan is to reduce popcorn to minimum.. will up the lights from 2 x 600w to 2 x 1000w.. that is what the room was ultimately designed for. Keep safe!

Big tent is looking better in terms of health. Think I am past the worst of the recent issues. I'll start adding the next net layer after I start seeing a little preflower push. Only a couple of days into flower. I will probably do one more final small defoliation soon. In other news, there is finally some activity happening in the other tents. I have another four ZxP close to being transplanted into some more autopots on standby in the former veg tent. In the Organic Tent™ I have four OMG and two Wedding Cake just getting themselves established still. If my clones/seeds hadn't wrecked during the beginning of Winter I might have been actually pretty close to harvest right now but it is what it is. Four months from now it will be a pretty jamming time anyways harvest wise, I am looking forward to what the OMG can do. Wedding Cake is a personal favourite so I also look forward to having some of that again. I've actually been considering trying to time my next grows so that I do not have anything in deep flower this coming December/January. Not only to avoid what I have found to be the harshest conditions for my setup and strains during the year, but also on costs... and stress. Added bonus is the ability to take a trip for a week without stress if plants are only in veg. The big tent should have it's current harvest around the end of August, which leaves three months before the beginning of December to push another harvest through. Can do, I must just get the clones running up to harvest timed right. I think as soon as the mothers have enough off-shoots I will start to get them going already. I don't think I'll get either of the other tents going for another harvest in time once their respective harvests are completed, so I'll expend as much time as I can in developing some sturdy ladies during veg.

These girls are really not happy with all the load shedding going on, spraying IPM about every other day now and added another extraction fan. The colour is coming back though, looking back, I think the soil would have been better suited to be re-amended before the round instead of thinking it could just be used again no problems, however the plants did get a better start in it being less nutrient rich, I co0uld have been a bit cognizant of doing regular top-dresses , so again, things I can improve on. But other than that, the buds and the frost are coming out to play. Slurrixwilson pushing the most triches, she is a stubby short and stacked lady that smells much like caramel. Crepes by lit farms is starting to get there, she stacked beautifully, sites everywhere, excited to see how she progresses GG#4 Still in the game, just like all the others, she got a solid topdress and feed, so hoping to see some solid nuggets Then the Wilsonxlotushead, very strong plant not my favourite smoke, must be super high Thc levels. gives me palpitations. Then the group PIC Have a lekke start to the weekend YO!

Plants are officially flipped.

It's all fun and games growing powerful ganja and we all like to show off the final results but it's the hassles and struggles in the background that are the real juicy parts. This is where I tell you how I've been struggling my schlong off recently, but those of you who have kept up probably already have an idea of what my hassle has been. First number one bullshit is the fade and deficiencies I'm experiencing in my big tent. First thing I did was raise the EC from 0.7 - 1.4 EC. Autopots you can usually get away with adding a lower EC because the nutrients are being continuously fed to the plants so technically you do not need to match the recommended EC on the bottle. So naturally that was the first thing I tried because I thought that the EC was simply too low. After a week of no change I decided it must be the medium I am using. I tested the pH at the reservoir and then the pH in the actual trays and I found that no matter the pH in the reservoirs, it would always be 0.3 pH higher in the trays. This made me think maybe the pH of the medium is too high and maybe the addition of a nutrient lock-out. Some of the medium is reused so this might also be a factor, although I did flush the medium thoroughly before using it again. Maybe I just messed it up somehow. I flushed the pots and the Autopot system with Flashkleen solution and ran about 5L through the system and drained it. I then waited for the pots to dry (which was this morning) and I will now add nutrient solution starting at half strength sometime this afternoon once the nutrient solution has warmed up to room temperature. Another suspicion is an old bottle of Micro I was using. It was given to me by a friend who wasn't using it but I have a feeling it's too old or off, so I am completely removing that bottle specifically and replacing it with one of my new bottles. Second number two bullshit is my veg tent. I had an entire round of clones just wreck itself which has set me back quite a bit, to the point that I have two empty tents chilling doing nothing that could have been close to flower by now. I am certain it was because it was too cold and too dry in my veg tent and they just couldn't take it. I decided then that I might as well get some fresh seeds and pop them along side the fresh clones I had taken after the first round of clones bombed out. I got 5 seed packs of Dinafem - Blueberry Cookies and OMG - Ripper Seeds. The company I bought from also provided some free seeds. I decided to pop all of them, because I just had this feeling... Well, the clones worked out this time, all of them rooted and are currently in pots. That's a full 100% turnaround from the last round! wtf. The weed gods giveth, and they taketh. Speaking of taketh, only 4 OMG seeds popped. Yes, only 4 out of 15 seeds popped, and it was only the Ripper Seeds that popped. I don't know if I have to say this, but I think I am only going to purchase Ripper Seeds from now on. I will bow and become a whore of Ripper Seeds because frankly they have provided the most for me up until now, first with my most successful strain ZxP, and now with being the only seeds to pop in my time of need. So I am thinking of throwing the four OMG into the previous Organic Tent™ so they can do their thing, and then I might take two Wedding Cake and four ZxP and pop them into Autopots for the other empty tent. I am thinking of using 6 instead of 4 plants per 1.2m² because I feel that even in the big tent currently I could have fit in some more plants. 9 plants per 1.2m² was certainly a bit ridiculous but I think the 6 plants will be the sweet spot.

I spent the morning giving the big tent a trim and slight reposition of some branches under the net. I think I have got a good spread going. I am trying to sort out the slight fade I am experiencing with adjusting the feed. The new growth is at least looking good, I am going to let the plants fillup the gaps for the rest of veg and as soon as it looks like it's bounced back from the trim I will start the flip. Really looking forward to it! Before After

Canopy is coming along. I've got the itch to hit the flip. I am about a week past when I would usually flip so far. I feel like I want to still push veg for a bit. The cold is making the plants a bit droopy during the morning but they perk up during the afternoon. In the past I've had to battle with sub 10C temps but now the temps don't dip more than 16C and my current max is 24C. Not ideal for veg to have such cold periods, but it won't be for much longer and the general growth seems to be coming along regardless. The canopy would probably look a bit more bushy if the leaves were praying up. The last few days the plants were looking a little pale so I've since raised my LED wattage to a total of 640W and the nutrient feed is at 1.8 EC. They are looking much greener today already.

Speaking of the big tent, I've gotten the first net installed to keep the initial canopy spread level. This time around I have also removed all the LST lines seeing as the first net will now do the majority of the LST and when I add the second net shortly after flip that will also help shape the final canopy. I want to really develop a solid canopy this time around, so I will let the canopy grow close to where the LEDs are sitting now and then flip. I am hoping for this round to be the yielder I have been looking for

Harvest update, the Organic Tent™ yielded 168g total between the four plants. Growing naturally I yielded roughly 37g per plant. With the new growing technique I managed 42g per plant... progress? I don't know. I think I need to try the same manifold again, but bigger plants. What a coincidence! That's exactly what I am going to do with my autopots in the big tent! Watch this space.

Growth in veg is going well, all healthy plants and the training is even and flat for the most part. I will soon add in the first net to act as the initial spreader and leveler of the canopy. At that point I think I will start looking into flipping. In my last grow I flipped around here already and after harvest I felt I could have used a little bit more height in the space for some fatter buds and maybe less canopy. I got a few more pocorn nugs than expected so I would like to reduce that on this run.