HPS rockwool heresy and a tent of freebies

[G.O. Joe]

contains no:
popular clones or seeds, led, cmh, dwc, lst, scrog, sog, lucas, hempy, or anyone else, topping, defoliation, temperature or humidity measurement, added co2, o2, o3, calmag, tea, booster, silica, vitamin, neem, bacteria, fungus, fungicide, pesticide, bug eating bugs.

necessities:
grodan a-ok plug, 4'' cube, and 6'' cube, general hydroponics ph test indicator (yellow is good except for snow) and flora series 3 part, lemon juice and hard alkaline tap water, distilled water for young plants, hm digital tds ez.

old stock:
4' veg tent, 4 1/2' flower tent, sunlight supply super sun 2 and 600w magnetic ballast, 600w ge lucalox psl, sunleaves 430w magnetic ballast, 430w philips son agro, ipower 6'' inline fan and carbon filter.

furthermore:
hydrofarm 9'' planter, brick, sterilite 2 gal tub.
hand watered dtw up to this time.
soon to include drip stake irrigation, once the plants demand it.

directions: from grodan101.com but with lower ppm - 750 now, including 330 from the tap.

new stock: 7 random freebies going out of one tent and into another.
album: https://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=82136

dinafem blue widow fem:


hso green crack fem:


short stuff auto purple gorilla fem:


g13 blue cindy fem:


pheno finder star cake fem:

 

[G.O. Joe]

sensi northern lights fem:


sensi big bud fem:


Never thought I'd do autos, fems, or freebies, but here we are. Surprise surprise the NL - whatever it is - looks like the best of the bunch. Don't have high expectations for the others. These are all the same age to the day and have been treated the same, and are all 16-21 inches tall except for the 30-inch Green Crack.

 

[Fixer]

Hi G.O. Joe, How old are you seeds? I've been trying to use up all of my old stock. Unbelievable how hard it is to do.

 

[G.O. Joe]

They arrived this year as single seed samples. Usually I throw freebies away, after bad experiences with a couple other G13 freebies, strains they no longer make. An old forgotten pack of Sam's Haze/Skunk was tried before this grow - the only plant that sprouted was vigorous as hell but male.

 

[G.O. Joe]

+
18 gallon bin, century digital timer, tetra 140 gpm fountain pump, rain bird 1/2'' tube, 1/4'' barbed coupling, and 1/4'' tube, hydrofarm 45 angled drip stake - 1 in the 4'' cube and another on the opposite side on the 6'' cube.



Switched to automatic watering and bloom formula today, since the biggest plants need watering twice a day. Tap ppm is down to 275, the input total is 700 ppm, with the GH Flora bloom formula of 3/2/1 - was on the 1/1/1 grow ratio up to now.

It got a little more complicated with the irrigation system but actually it's very simple and easier than hand watering at this point. The rockwool is on top of a brick inside a planter inside a runoff tub plumbed to collection tubs under the floor by 3/8'' hose that rests flat in the tub and siphons the tub dry once there's an inch of water in the tub. The timer is set for 6 minutes just after the lights come on, and then again 6 hours later for 4 minutes, delivering about 7 gallons. The watering will soon be lighter and 3-4 times a day.

Grow threads often end badly and waste everyone's time, but I wanted to show that rockwool hydroponics does not suck, and all things considered this is the simplest most hassle-free way to go.

 

[G.O. Joe]

The girls came out for pictures 2 weeks in. It might be the last time for a while, because they are becoming more and more uncooperative about leaving the tent.

Star Cake stretched nicely to 34'':


HSO gave fair warning in their description - Green Crack is 46'':

 

[G.O. Joe]

These here did not get as tall as hoped. The light could be closer and the temperature is a bit cool, as the exhaust and tent room are never above 73, and it gets down to 66.

The only one of these to have a smell really - pine and a little citrus - Purple Gorilla is 20'' tall and finally on day 4 of bloom nutes:


The rest of these are 25-26 inches. NL:


Blue Widow:


Blue Cindy:


Big Bud:

 

[brickweeder]

nice grows.

 

[starke]

Great looking plants. Think I'll tag along.

 

[brickweeder]

I'm gonna have to give RW a go one of these days

 

[G.O. Joe]

The girls say hello and thanks for your thoughts.



Footnotes:

625 or so ppm in the res, pH as low as possible - barely not orange with the pH dye. The Floramicro has been the hard water version up to now. Urea instead of calcium nitrate I think. The regular micro formula will start tomorrow, to see what happens.

The stakes are on a rotation around the cubes. GC can barely go 4 hours without a watering - the others can handle water they don't need. The runoff ppm has always been the same as the input - so was the pH until the flip. Runoff pH almost neutral regardless of how much flushing they're given - even every hour for the first 8 hours. Fans run 24/7.

By no defoliation I mean as the word is usually used here - those lowest thin weedy branches that never amount to anything have been removed, and those lowest fans prone to rot. Over 35 years I have judged many hundreds of plants by smoking the tips of branches - the first 4-6 leaves.

SC has a nice Froot Loops thing going for now. PG is evolving and harvest is at least 3 weeks out. Some things can be said about potency.



PG may be the least potent of the crew. NL might not be far behind. There is something special about the GC. Fan leaf hay should not be fully stony like this. I'm no friend of perhaps labless pollen chucking salesmen who shamelessly borrow names like Humboldt and G13, but I admit that efforts are underway to late-clone GC and scrog it, even with unknown nose appeal. Whatever is special about it is not a terpene. It would be good for outdoors but this is a bad area for that.

 

[justiceman]

I am a fan of your heretic methods with rockwool, hard tap water and magnetic ballasts. Gonna tag along on this one!

You are right. Floramicro hard water has reduced levels of calcium nitrate to account for calcium in the water. Urea is added to make up for the N loss.

Flora micro at 5ml per gallon has 81ppm of Ca
Flora micro hard water at 5ml per gallon has 16ppm of Ca

I'm looking forward to more updates. The plants are looking solid

 

[G.O. Joe]

The lemon juice was not working out and I can't recommend it, so its back to the phosphoric acid which had been good for a few years until trying this. No big pH swing on runoff now. 600 ppm in 7/8th quart 3x daily, half the ppm is tap and the rest is the acid and 6 tbsp. Flora added per 9-10 gallons. Recycling the runoff leads to a mildewy smell and cleaning chores, so res water is less than half runoff.

No weird, loud, dank, or bad smells from anyone. They are packed in tight and would yield better and faster under more desirable heat and light conditions.

The tent had to be moved a little. The plants had to come out and were team players about it until the 41'' SC. It's strong pot and might sog or scrog fine, but it has unnatural viney tendencies I don't care for and is too floppy in this situation. No chances taken then on the 50'' GC, because it's more likable every day despite the height - I'd love to grow a bunch under rows of 1000's. These two might be better pot than the rest. Apologies for rambling and distributing lame porn. SC:


Could not decide which distance from GC was best. You can see the buds and leaves in front are getting too much light.

 

[G.O. Joe]

The rest have no such stretching tendencies and are 27-28'' tall, except for 20'' PG. BB:


BC:


BW:


NL:


PG:

 

[Mars Hydro Led]

seems green crack fem and northern light have better looking. May i ask which one you prefer?

 

[G.O. Joe]

May i ask which one you prefer?

Neither has nose going for it, so the safest bet now is the one with hybrid vigor. Maybe both could be taken to the same height and weight in the same number of days - either 4 NL or 1 GC. GC smells meh and NL is slightly bad. GC may be more potent and less prone to bud rot. But the quest for old school dankness must continue. Still can't decide which picture of GC is best.

 

[G.O. Joe]

With some luck, my guess is NL will make 80 grams. Same for SC and BC. I'd expect twice that much from NL or BC if finished at 36-40''. GC looks like it could be scrogged in the same time to 600+, longer for SC. Different perspective of NL:

 

[G.O. Joe]

Auto Purple Gorilla dry and trimmed is about an ounce. It has moderate frost and large but airy buds. It has a lemon-pine odor, not much taste, and some potency. It is sedative and not impressive.



Star Cake made it through day 55. The others have another week, unless I pull GC before that. The others will have better pictures. SC does have a smell I like and I think Sam and Nevil would like it too. Others may find it has no commercial appeal. Right now it's a fresh minty green like a sweet hay. Emphasis on sweet not hay. It reminds me of the Mexican bagseed x ditchweed I grew mid-80's, which is a better thing than it sounds. Unfortunately like many other stretchers it has dense nugs on weak limbs. If I was to grow this again and I might, it would be topped once or twice early and sogged with no more than 30 days veg to avoid flop and prop. I'll have more to say about it in a couple weeks.

 

[G.O. Joe]

Hi everyone sorry it's all about half-ass lazy here, especially photography. The girls are lazy too, these 3 going to 65 days. BB and especially BC are tardy - it would be too early to harvest these now.

HSO says Green Crack is 1989 SSSC Skunk#1 x Afghani, but it's not clear whether this is related to SSSC M11 or what. This has the same mango flower perfume that for instance Sensi's NL5xHaze reg seed has. It's not something anyone would call dank but I would smoke this, being satisfying and not overly sedative. These might be the only buds withheld from dry sift and extract. Early favorite for best of show.

After a late burst, GC ended up foxtailing hard throughout. This has serious, impressive vigor and the leaf dieback here is more from light burn than anything else. The first picture shows the moderate frostiness of the underside of leaf with budlet.

 

[G.O. Joe]

Blue Widow is Blueberry x White Widow, Dinafem says. I've grown both and didn't like either. This was a cold blooded plant and it smells a lot like BOG genetics - it has the sour. I don't like the sour. Will probably have the lowest yield not including the auto.