Kali Mist/Diesel grow with Supernova/UFO LEDs

[Herodias]

Quick post to start with with photos from day 55 of 12/12. I am very happy with the flowering results from my LEDs.

That said, I think that some strains do better than others under these lights. I have had great results with the Dinafem Diesel and Serious Seeds Kali Mist. I have had not-so-great results with the Trainwreck and the two Haze plants. But overall, I expect a decent yield. I will certainly post numbers after I harvest.

Here's the quick and dirty on my setup:

Room size: 7'X9'

Hydro method: DWC, each plant in a 5G bucket with a large airstone.

Nutes: House & Garden Aqua Flakes, Roots Excelurater, Drip Clean, Multi Zen, Bud XL, Top Booster, Shooting Powder. AN supplements at various times: Bud Candy and Nirvana.

Lights: 270W enhanced spectrum Supernova, 90W regular spectrum UFO with satellite ring housing (8) 3W LEDs, (6) 630 nm red and (2) blue. All lights obtained from HID Hut.

Grow medium: Sure to Grow Twister 6" netpot inserts. STG starter cubes.

Strains: All started from seed in mid-March. Seeds obtained from The Attitude. I am grateful to them for fast service and some awesome free seeds. Turned me on to Dinafem. (11) Serious Seeds Kali Mist; (1) Greenhouse Seeds ("GHS") Trainwreck; (5) GHS Super Lemon Haze; (1) Dinafem Diesel; (1) Dinafem Blue Hash.

Strains in flower today: (2) Kali Mist; (2) Super Lemon Haze; (1) Blue Hash; (1) Trainwreck; (1) Diesel

Ventilation: passive intake, 4" Can Fan exhaust which runs 24/7; 3 circulation fans which run 24/7.

Misc: I use an RO machine for my water.

Anyway, here are the photos. I have been keeping a more detailed grow journal on the forums at the Serious Seeds website.

This will show you the 6 plants I have under the Supernova with some individual shots of my best plants (Kali Mist and Diesel) and a shot of a Super Lemon Haze with mediocre/poor bud development. I am keeping the Diesel under the UFO with the extra satellite LEDs.

 

[Herodias]

P.S. This is my first grow, so I would blame my own newbie blunders if I end up with a crap yield. Also, I am a medical MJ patient in California so this grow is legal under CA state law.

 

[SunshineJoy]

High Herodias,

Thanks for posting your info and photos. For your first time effort, it looks like you've done very respectably. You have some realy nice frost going on there.

I looooove Kali Mist, and last time I grew her was before the newest LEDs started coming available so it's nice to see how they're doing under your lights. Looking good to me!

 

[DuhBlec]

Lookin' nice!! I'm also using some lighting from hidhut.. I've got 2 UFO's both with the satellite attachment. Just using CFL's in em now but was thinking about getting some of those 3 watt LED bulbs, how are you liking them?? Buds look ultra dank...

 

[Herodias]

Thanks!

Thanks!

Thanks for the positive feedback! You guys made my day!

FYI I am putting up some photos of the Diesel under the UFO/satellite setup at various stages in her flowering life. I am going to miss that girl when I chop her down next week!

I am so stoked about growing Kali Mist. I have only smoked it once, and that was one of the best days I've ever had. I wish I had cloned this big girl, but at least I will know what to look for when I sprout my next 11 pack of seeds.

I ended up with 6 boy Kalis out of the 8 that made it to veg (I accidentally killed a couple of seedlings). I kept hoping that they weren't boys, and manhandled the preflowers/early flowers looking for pistils. Dumb! I must've joggled some pollen loose because my Blue Hash (Blueberry X Hash Plant) got knocked up. She was surrounded by 3 boys and showed her flowers early. She has about 10 seeds on her but the rest of my ladies are seedless, thank god. I searched for a hermie flowers and didn't find any. So that means that we might get a cool 3-way cross to play with down the road.

Here are a couple of photos of my full UFO setup with the satellite bulbs. Yes, I would absolutely recommend getting the 3W bulbs to supplement. I would've gotten the 660 nm red, but I got the 630s by mistake and they've worked fine. I set up the extra bulbs about 2-3 weeks into flowering and the Diesel just went crazy. Super dense bud development on the lower branches. The extra $180 for the 3W bulbs was hard to cough up after I had already spent a fortune on the other two lights, but now I know it was a good investment.

 

[Herodias]

And then there were six

And then there were six

Day 56 updates . . . so I harvested the Blue Hash today and moved the remaining girls around. I had to raise the Supernova a few weeks ago to accomodate Big Kali (I have two Kali Mist plants that I call Big Kali and Small Kali) but quickly realized that the other plants were not getting enough light, even though I have them in stacked buckets and/or on top of makeshift platforms.

Now I have Big Kali under the UFO/satellite setup which allowed me to lower the Supernova by about 8 inches. I feel better already. I am curious to see how Big Kali does under the UFO, namely how her lower buds do.

So now I have five plants under the Supernova: Trainwreck, Diesel, Small Kali, and the two Super Lemon Haze plants. The Diesel will be ready to harvest next weekend. SLH and Trainwreck the week after that, maybe. The Kalis still have a ways to go if they truly take 13 weeks to finish. Fine with me.

One other thing . . . I can't remember if I posted this here, but I have been experimenting with molasses during the final flush period. I put five TBSP with plain RO water in the Diesel's bucket a few days ago. She seems to be doing great with this setup, although her roots look like they're awfully sticky. It sure has helped make the buds extra frosty! I will throw her in plain water with some H2O2 if things start to stink.

I am starting the Kali plants on H&G Top Booster today which they will have for a week before I start the Shooting Powder. The other girls have been on Shooting Powder for over a week and they seem to love it. It makes the pH go crazy which is kind of a pain.

I read some H&G product literature where they tell you not to put an air pump into the reservoir because it could cause dangerous pH fluctuations. The guys at the Hydro shop say that this is bunk, but I have indeed experienced these severe pH drops and spikes. If you are using H&G nutes with a DWC setup, be prepared to check and adjust the pH twice per day. I recommend the Hannah pH/EC/Temp combo meter which has worked great. I calibrated it the other day and it was still dead on. I had not calibrated it since March.

Have a great weekend!

 

[DuhBlec]

Yes, I would absolutely recommend getting the 3W bulbs to supplement. I would've gotten the 660 nm red, but I got the 630s by mistake and they've worked fine. I set up the extra bulbs about 2-3 weeks into flowering and the Diesel just went crazy. Super dense bud development on the lower branches. The extra $180 for the 3W bulbs was hard to cough up after I had already spent a fortune on the other two lights, but now I know it was a good investment.

Nice dude! You can really see the power of those 3 watters... damn!! Definitely something to think about... I'm only 10 days into flower.. so may need to add some of these! Looks nice brotha

-DuhBlec

 

[thal]

Just a suggestion - to improve your yields try topping or training your plants to get an even canopy. That will help your yield.

 

[Herodias]

Agree

Agree

Just a suggestion - to improve your yields try topping or training your plants to get an even canopy. That will help your yield.

I could not agree more. I especially should've topped the Kali plants. I saw some photos at the Serious Seeds website of a guy's beautiful Kali crop that had tons of GIGANTIC colas because he FIMmed a couple of times.

But I didn't for two reasons: (1) this was my first grow and I didn't want to overdo it and kill anyone and (2) this was my first time even seeing a full grown cannabis plant up close. I have been smoking off and on for 20 years but never knew any growers. Isn't that a trip?

So anyway . . . lesson going forward if I grow multiple strains: top the tall sativas! I'm doing a soil grow next time so I'll be able to tie the tall girls down and maybe top them too. But I will probably grow 1-2 shorter strains and less plants. I'm thinking a couple of DInafem Diesel and a couple of Serious Seeds Chronic.

 

[Herodias]

Smells like freedom

Smells like freedom

I'm at the hurry up and wait point . . . it is very hard to ascertain the color/opaqueness of trichomes when the LEDs are on so I've been snipping off those juicy, sparkly leaves by the buds and peeking at them under regular light using my crappy EcoPlus pocket microscope. I don't know how close the Diesel is to harvest. All I can think is that I want to make bubble hash sooooooo bad.

This is what happens when I get bored, I TINKER

My roommate is not much of a smoker but has gotten a kick out of this grow. He's a good sport. One thing we've butted heads about is the smell of the plants. Not the smell from the room, but the bouquet, if you will, from the various plants. The Trainwreck smells like dogshit (literally), but the Dinafem Diesel smells like lemon blossums, and the Kali Mist smells like even sweeter blossums or herbs. I comment on this whenever I leave the room. Until the other day, he has always said, "Nope. I don't smell lemons. It just smells like weed."

No dude, it smells like freedom.

But anyway, he finally realized what I was talking this weekend because that Diesel plant smells exactly like our lemon tree. It is incredible. It doesn't smell like a weedy lemon tree, just the lemon blossums. God, how I long for the day when I will be able to grow this outside, in my own yard.

I took the Diesel out of the molasses water because it was starting to get very frothy and foamy. I put her into a bucket with just plain RO water for the last few days. But I will definitely try the molasses water again when the other girls are ready to flush next week. The resin on the Diesel increased with the molasses.

Don't bother adding molasses to anything other than plain water. I dumped some into one of the Super Lemon Haze buckets and it spiked the pH up to 6.89 in a few hours. Oops.

I will post a photo of the Diesel after she's harvested and drying. I can barely lift the bucket lid with her netpot so I'm guessing that I'm going to get a decent yield from her.

And after she has dried, I will finally be able to post the Grams/Watt numbers that everyone is interested in. She spent most of her adult life under 114 watts of LED glory, so I guess I better hope that I get at least 50G from her so I don't get mocked.

50G would save me $1000, actually, so I would be quite thrilled. I pay (happily) $20/G at the dispensary.

Bye bye for now. Ask me anything that I am not telling you.

 

[Herodias]

Super Lemon Haze buds improving

Super Lemon Haze buds improving

This photo is a follow-up to the one I posted a couple of weeks ago, admitting that the buds on my SLH plants are tiny. The Shooting Powder seems to have picked things up a bit, or maybe it's because I lowered the light. But I am no longer ashamed of the bud size. The buds are very very sparkly and appear to be quite dense.

These girls have a 70 day flower period supposedly, so I am starting them on molasses water this weekend. Today is my 62nd day of 12/12. .

I am going to post some more photos below of my other girls in some separate posts. I took a couple of true-color photos this morning so I might as well show you what's going on in there.

 

[Herodias]

Not so much

Not so much

Of all the ladies in my stable, this GHS Trainwreck is quite a mystery to me. As you can see, she's pretty healthy looking, but her bud development is just plain weird. Not very many crystals, and the buds are the size of lima beans or peas. Most of them are clusters of maybe 8 swelled calyxes. Not many pistils either. They look better in the photo than they do in real life.

There are a lot of buds on the lower branches and they are dense enough to weigh the branches down quite a bit. But unless something radical happens over the next couple of weeks, I am going to have a lot of weird looking "buds" that will resemble shake more than anything.

Anyone know the flowering time for GHS Trainwreck?

 

[Herodias]

And now for the teacher's pet!

And now for the teacher's pet!

I am posting a true color photo of my star pupil, the Dinafem Diesel. As you can see, she is sporting more red pistils now.

I have no bloody idea when I'm going to chop her down. Dinafem says that her flowering time is 60-70 days and now I'm on Day 62. She's still throwing off brand new flowers with white pistils. I did a trichome check under a microscope yesterday and didn't find any cloudy ones at all. All clear.

I am verrrrrrry excited to get a harvest under my belt. I am suffering from the newbie jitters. You should've seen me when I was trying to sex the Kali Mist plants. I was a shivering wreck. I wanted to go down to the collective and pay someone with experience to come over and tell me which plants were boys. But that ain't how things work.

P.S. This is why tightly wound people like me truly benefit from medical marijuana.

 

[Herodias]

Big Kali is awesome

Big Kali is awesome

This big lady is loving life under the UFO, though I don't think she's ever going to get the big giant spiral cola that I've seen in other photos. Fine with me. I think that the airflow is better over there and she has room to spread out. She takes up a whole meter squared!

She still has a good three weeks to go. She'll start on Shooting Powder tomorrow.

One weird thing . . . she has only consumed 50ppm of nutes this week. The MAX that I've given any of the girls is 710ppm, which is just under 1.5 EC according to the Hanna conversion chart that I have. Since Big Kali is the healthiest, and has not shown signs of a severe nute burn like some of my other girls, I started her on Saturday at 700ppm with the Top Booster.

Most of my girls are doing better around the 500 ppm range (1.0 EC). As you can see from my photos, I have a lot of burnt tips! I think the combo of the LEDs and the DWC method I'm using make for a very very light feeding schedule. I would recommend reducing the numbers from the H&G chart to about 1/2 strength. In my experience, even 75% strength (of the normal/light feeding schedule) was too much.

Of course, I won't have to worry about this stuff when I switch to soil in September. Woo hoo!

 

[Herodias]

Diesel harvest

Diesel harvest

Chopped her down yesterday morning at day 63. Probably could've let her go longer but the humidity in the room was 70% at sunrise so I figure that the risk of mold is high for at least another week. Luckily the RH drops to 54% during the day. I will have to buy a dehumidifyer next winter.

It took me several hours to trim the Diesel's buds and I am really liking what I'm seeing. Most were pretty dense so I hung those on cables in a giant drying box. See the photo below of the top bud placed on top of one of my grow books. The other buds were airier but still beautiful, lime green with some red hairs. I have those on two large dinner plates. Amazing smell, and they seem to be drying fairly fast and evenly. I think when they're dry they will resemble the size and consistency of Green Crack or Mr. Nice.

I vaporized one of the mini buds and WOW! There's nothing quite like getting high on your supply, is there?! Classic sativa rush right to the forehead like a third eye and it was surprisingly motivating. I was multitasking yesterday with changing a couple of buckets whilst trying to trim and I have to admit that I was whining a bit. I am soooooo sick of changing buckets. But as soon as I vaped the Diesel I found the energy to do it. Pretty cool.

I can't wait until she's fully dried and cured. I also can't wait to try one of the bigger buds. I have no idea what the yield will be. Maybe an ounce? I'll post the numbers ASAP--maybe next week.

Cheers!

 

[Herodias]

Diesel now in curing jars

Diesel now in curing jars

Thought you might like to see the Diesel harvest in perspective. These are medium sized jelly jars. I don't have a scale but will borrow one for all of you number crunchers.

The smoke is incredible. Gets better every day. I can't believe how awesome this plant is. What a gift.

 

[Herodias]

Day 69 updates

Day 69 updates

Please note that pix were taken with LEDs running, so the colors are not accurate. None of the leaves have turned purple or pink. I have many more dense nugs on these girls than I did on the Diesel. Should be a completely different harvesting experience.

I am posting a few random bud shots of the two Super Lemon Haze plants and the two Kali plants. The SLH are supposed to be done tomorrow but I think that I'll let them go a few more days. I only started their final flush last Saturday, and I think that 7 days is the bare minimum amount of time needed to get all of the chem taste gone. I let the Diesel flush for 10 days and that ended up working nicely.

One of my SLH plants has much weaker bud development than the other. I put the weaker one on molasses water last weekend and the stronger one on plain water. I noticed that the molasses water helped to plump up the buds better than the Shooting Powder.

So I think it's safe to say that if you're using the H&G line, you only need to use SP for one week and not three. I didn't get any burn with the SP--I had already gotten a burn from just the regular nutes at 1/2 strength.

I'm going to put the Kalis on the final flush schedule within the next couple of days. I think I'd get an even better smoke with a 14 day flush. I finally smoked a bowl of the Diesel today (I'd been vaping it all week) and noticed that the ash is a little blacker than I hoped it would be. Maybe that will change after it's cured for longer. The good news is that it has a great taste and is not harsh at all.

Man, this is fun.

Guide to photos:

photo #21: Small SLH. Will not get much of a yield from this gal, but I like the resin development. She has done better with the molasses.

#22: Big Kali. My favorite. I'm not getting the tall Foxtail on her--I think that's a limit of the LEDs but the buds look GREAT. She is a monster, and the buds are getting very plump and heavy. I can barely lift her netpot lid!

#23: Big SLH. Really really nice chunky, compact buds all over the plant. Lots of great resin/crystal development. This is one of the lower branches that is a good 4 feet away from the light. These LEDs do penetrate pretty far IMO.

#24: Small Kali. Really strange calyx development, but beautiful.

 

[Herodias]

Day 75 updates

Day 75 updates

Long overdue updates . . . seems I have become quite the little pot piggy, vaporizing the Diesel so much that the days have just blurred together.

Updates:

The Kalis are doing great! They now have the grow room to themselves. I moved Big Kali back under the Supernova and put Small Kali under the UFO with the extra 3W lights, hoping I can plump her up a bit now that I'm in the final stretch. I'm interested to see what happens.

I started the Kalis on plain water on 7-17-10. I think that Small Kali might finish before Big Kali, but I'm not going to check their trichomes until Saturday. IMO, one week is not enough time to flush all of the strong H&G chemicals out of the plant tissue.

The Diesel has dried nicely and is curing well in my little jam jars (BTW yield was 46G). Great flavor and a really clean burn. The buds have dried into nice orange nugs covered in crystals. I was relieved to see a pipefull of nice light ash yesterday. The stone is different now, more sedative, less chatty. But still very high quality. I am delighted.

The GHS Super Lemon Haze plants were chopped at Day 71 and Day 74. The first plant appeared to have lots of dense nugs but once I chopped her and started trimming I was pretty disappointed both in the yield and the airy buds. The second plant looked less impressive in the room but I think gave me a bigger yield. I have a photo before of two jelly jars with the yield from the first plant. Not even half what I got from the Diesel. Boo!

Here are the good things I have to say about these plants: The smell is lovely, like spicy lemon. The buds on my drying lines look like they were sprinkled with fairy dust they are so sparkly. The stone is also very powerful. I vaporized a bit of some semi-dry bud the other day. Wonderful taste, fast-acting stone that hits your heart and head at the same time. It was sort of psychedelic at first, and then just stupefying.

Unfortunately, it's not my ideal buzz. For some reason, there are a couple of strains that get me so high that it gives me heart palpitations. I felt this with the SLH and previously with an excellent batch of King's Kandy (California clone, not the GHS seed). I guess I need less THC?

The Trainwreck is featured in the round olive jar at the far right in the photo below. Yes, that's all I got. Double Boo!!! I chopped her at Day 73 as I could never figure out how long her flowering period was supposed to be. I think I overcooked her. Her mini-buds were easy to trim and sticky but dried super fast and now appear to be really airy. They are sparkly, but not as much as the SLH. She smelled like dogshit when she was growing and now smells like really powerful skunk. Not good for a stealth grow!

I am not sure what to say about the high. I love the Cali-grown Trainwreck I've gotten at my dispensary, but it was nothing like the TW I just harvested. I vaped some, turned into a zombie, and then fell asleep for 12 hours. I can't even give you a description of the high. I'm going to have an expert grower here tell me what I did wrong or if it was just a shitty pheno.

I guess that's it for now. I'll post some true-color photos soon and also some more close ups of my nugs. The Diesel is really pretty now that she's dried (see small photo below)

KALI COUNTDOWN . . . . ONE WEEK TO HARVEST!!!! YAHOO!

 

[Herodias]

Chopping time

Chopping time

Took some photos of the Kalis with LEDs off this am. Glad I did because they are both much more ripe than I thought. I was hoping to give them a longer flush but it ain't gonna happen. The top of Big Kali is starting to feel a bit dry and the bucket of Small Kali smells funny. Last thing I want is a mold outbreak when I'm so close.

I had a lot of trouble uploading photos yesterday so hopefully these will work. Have a good weekend.

 

[Zeltar]

Plants look great man, how tall did they grow?? what was your total yield for the entire harvest

well done on the grow mate