life and times of 32 coco slabs/top 44

Once upon a time there was some coco nuts growing on some palms in Sri Lanka. they got harvested and had their protective fibers scrapped off during processing no one really had any idea what to do with that fiber and dust for a long time so they just piled it up on the land as a waste product. nature did it's thing and rinsed those fibers in monsoon season after monsoon season. at a certain point people discovered the potential for this stuff to be used as growing medium. to make a long detailed story short and end up in the here and now, lets say it was experimented on and treated in various ways till they started supplying it to growers in Europe, since when it has been gaining ground in use ever since.

so after all that these 32 coco slabs ended up in a grow on a table under hps first use was (1) WW (local available Clone), then the coco slabs were taken down and stored for 6 months, new setup made and same slabs in. filled the space with my own made seeds, which were made from Rez's SD ibl and H3ad's CaseyJones crossed freely together. due to various circumstances i lost that whole harvest about 1 week before the end. the slabs took a little break and grew another pheno of (3)WW, then a clone i got locally which was just called (4)Diesel, then came a round of (5)PowerPlant, then (6)Top 44, and now again (7)Top 44.

the problem the "slabs" are having recently is the pm that came in on the Top 44. you will see the plants were treated with pirex, a white powder to combat the pm. they will get sprayed with fenicure next which is also against pm and its organic.

so that means these slabs are on their 7th run not 6th like i thought. let me be clear i was kinda forced to use again at the beginning but then i noticed how well it was going so kept saying oh just 1 more. first time i said that was after losing the whole from seed crop man i'm still pissed about that loss, never even tasted any of it and those smells were very promising with loads of phenotypes.

so this thread will tell the adventures of these coco slabs from here on

first pics coming soon...

as promised here some pics, last run...

i been slabbing it up aswell, great results. sorry to hear about your loss watch that humidity!

Looks who's back. It's been a while since I've seen a patented Gaius coco slab grow.

those nugs look mighty tasty.. looking forward to seeing whats up with slabs

day 2 of 12/12

day 2 of 12/12

@ freeride high thanks for dropping in man. luckily time heals all wounds eh? even the ones where you miss out on some 70 different possible SD and CJ phenos one week before harvest lol.


@ Work2much good to see you getting in at the start. lets see what these old slabs have got in them eh?


@ hdn155 to be honest the top 44 isn't top caliber or anything, it's basically a fast finishing skunk. when grown well and flushed it's quite tasty and enjoyable, but if i had some ww clones available or the Diesel or any of those awesome strains going around in clone form i'd have gone with them. but i wasn't able to organize anything else to fill the space in reasonable time hence i went with the top 44 again. it does the job and this time i did add a few seedlings from the few seeds left from my SDxCJ batch, so with any luck i'll get a plant or 2 of something interesting.


anyway here we have the pump in the tank leading to a particle filter which has a one way valve on it then comes a connector to the ldpe pipe system



day 2 of 12/12

ive been there before. filling the room with "something" is always better than nothing. never had the top 44 before. ill never turn down some nicely done skunk though!. looking good so far. how much of a stretch you anticipate?

ok so it isn't a formed slab like a grodan slab, but a tubular bag for sawdust/perlite/milled rockwool only filled with coco coir, correct?

also, milk kills powdery mildew and downy mildew

hdn155 said:

ive been there before. filling the room with "something" is always better than nothing. never had the top 44 before. ill never turn down some nicely done skunk though!. looking good so far. how much of a stretch you anticipate?

Click to expand...

this top 44 isn't a heavy stretcher, they will be about 60 to 70 cm at the end ideally. what the few seedlings will do, i do not know they are stretchy as far as i can tell, but as i turned them to 12/12 rather small, we will have to wait and see.

Wait...What? said:

ok so it isn't a formed slab like a grodan slab, but a tubular bag for sawdust/perlite/milled rockwool only filled with coco coir, correct?

also, milk kills powdery mildew and downy mildew

Click to expand...

that's correct, it's basically a 1 meter long tube filled with lose coco coir.

yeah i heard about the condensed milk thing for pm, i'm hopping if i do enough treatments of fenicure in the first 3 weeks of 12/12 i wont need to treat during proper budding stage. we will see, if i don't find serenade locally for later use, i might try hydrogen peroxide.

Well lookey here

Been waiting to watch a good ole GM slab grow for a while man, PM or not Looks like they're healthy otherwise... be very interesting to see how the SD x Casey come out the casey gets killer reviews

I'll be taking my seat nice n early bro

I've read all your previous grows with slabs which inspired me to do my own 4x600 32 slab op as well.

When I sourced my clones, vendor said they might have some PM so first thing I did was make a batch of greencure and dip every plant. been 2 weeks and still no sign of PM.

Gotta be careful when you put them back under the light after dipping however, I had some burnt foliage, but they recovered after a few days.

Anyways, best of luck with this grow! I look forward to learning more from you.

Hey GM, just noticed some of your clones look like they are planted in the side of teh 3" cubes, did you root them directly into 3"er's using the corners?

good of you to drop in ~Shhh~, it's always nice to have some company on these threads.

those plants with the hole empty in the middle of the cube are the seedlings i added, in the hope of something a bit more interesting then the top 44. i wouldn't officially call them SDxCJ as i don't know which seeds come from which type of male. so there could be SDxSD, or CJxCJ, or CJxSD, or SDxCJ, hoping it wil become clear as the flowering progresses. so i just popped the seed in the corner of the rw cube.


hi svrn

nice to see you here for the start. glad my threads inspired you man, that's high praise indeed. i do like the simplicity a lot with coco.

most of the pm treatments will work for 2 weeks or 3, the trick is finding one that manages to get rid of it so it doesn't return in the last weeks of 12/12. the white stuff on my plants above is mainly the white powder treatment i gave them called pyrox. if you look at the hose in the middle of the table you will see the powder. anyway thanks for the tip about greencure, will research it? can it be used during budding?

yeah any spraying or dunking has to be done with hps lights off, leaving them off till the plants are dry again, otherwise you get burns from the water drops acting like a magnifying glass.

i have sprayed them with fenicure once too so far and the plants are looking very good, plan to do a preventative spray them again in the next days.

Thought they looked smaller.... all of those crosses sound superb mate! Has one of my all time faves in the mix (Sour D) so it should be stellar whatever!

Watching with interest and sorry to hear about the bad luck with the last lot. Swings & roundabouts

Update:

Update:

yeah wasa bit late deciding to add the seeds, but in the end it will work out i think as the top 44 don't stretch much while the seedlings will.

spray day




Day 7 of 12/12:

Hey Gm, they have grown quite a bit in 5 days. Is that spraying to keep the pests at bay? If so what are you using bro?

Hi again ~Shhh~ mate,

yeah they are growing at a nice pace, first week of 12/12 stretch over, 1 more week of stretching to go.

was talking about the pm spray called fenicure, will be re applying it tomorrow. seems the seedlings could use higher ec levels, they are very light green, compared to the top44. btw, first male spotted tonight from the 8 seedlings. my cats were happy as i gave them a fan leaf each from the male. they just love that kitty grass lol.

Update:

Update:

ok time for some more pics of my ladies and alas gentelman, doing their thing. yes you heard right found the first and probably the second male by now from my 8 seedlings. the t44 are doing great, seems like the seedlings could handle a heavier nute dose. but all i can do is give them a bit extra by hand now and again, as i dont want to over do it for the top 44. tank ec is at 1.7 ph was at 5.8 but rose to 6.0 recently which is still ok.

overview:


the male right on the edge


close up of the first male SDxCJ or CJxSD etc (home made seeds)




the top 44 canopy side on



it will be fun when i have more then just male flowers to show ya





peace out

Hell yea, dude. You are the one who got me growing in slabs to begin with. Best method for coco growing I've seen so far. A little medium goes a long way.

MarquisBlack said:

Hell yea, dude. You are the one who got me growing in slabs to begin with. Best method for coco growing I've seen so far. A little medium goes a long way.

Click to expand...

thanks for dropping by. cool to hear my threads had a hand to convince you to try slabs. it's funny i never felt the need to change systems, apart from a few experiments, even though you do have the slight disadvantage with slabs, of not being able to move the plants around after planting, i have found i can normally tell what clone to place where to keep the canopy some what even. specially with a few spare clones on hand to begin with.

yeah i love the way a small amount of coco can support such a large plant mass. does save a lot of lugging medium.

Top44 has some vigorous growth, nice looking plants. Whenever I have grown from seed the males are always the first to show themselves.

Are you recirculating this run or dtw?