~(Kief Junkie & Q.K.) 250w Organic Medi-Cab (Royal Hawaiian, W. Rhino, Bubblicious)~

[luv2garden]

Looking great buddy!

Looking great buddy!

Well it sure is looking jungle like in there.
Can someone say growth spurt!!
Very nice indeed KJ, the girls are taking off!
Hope you and the misses had a great 4th of July.

L2G

 

[growMEDS]

Wait till they get nugs and top heavy - will be even harder to move haha
just be very very careful is what I do :smile:

 

[K.J]

luv2garden: Growth spurt indeed! They just took off. We've had to move the light up twice already. Thanks for the kind words, we did indeed have a wonderful 4th of July weekend.

growMEDS: Yeah, the heavy nugs will make it really difficult. There's hardly any room to maneuver them inside the cab, and with nugs it'll be almost impossible it would seem. Hopefully it'll all work out.

 

[K.J]

Apologies all around for the long absence! It surely wasn't intentional, just what my current circumstances dictated. This isn't to say that the grow has been neglected; luckily for us our cab and plants operate on autopilot as long as I check them daily for water needs. This is key and it shows we did at least something right in all of our anal planning!

I did take pictures about a week ago, but never got a chance to get on here and post them. I won't post them all since they're outdated now, but here are a few just to give you an idea of where things were then. I will be taking new pictures tonight and giving a proper update tomorrow, I hope.

Barbie (Bubblicious), 10 days in flower (7 10 09)

Rhonda (Royal Hawaiian), 10 days in flower (7 10 09)

But as for where they are right now, things are going great. Every one of them has a ton of new flowers bursting forth, more than I thought they might, but I guess that's what happens when you give them a bit of veg time. These plants are huge and are really filling up all of the available width and depth space, and they're starting to get taller than I want them! I have moved up the light 4 times now, and the hood is now as high as it can possibly get in our cab. Even with this, a few of the plants are within 6-8" from the inside of the hood. Crazy! I hope they've stopped their stretch.

I'm debating whether or not I should go in and trim off some of the lower branches/flowers, the ones that are being shaded. Because we LST'd last grow, we didn't have this issue. What do you all think? I really, really wanted this grow to be as unmolested by us as possible, meaning that I wanted to just water the plants and let them grow and see what happened. But given our cabs limitations, maybe that's not such a good plan?

More to come tomorrow!

 

[immaculate]

She's grown into one hell of a babe!

 

[K.J]

She's grown into one hell of a babe!

Indeed! Even if they are a bit wild and quirky looking.

 

[growMEDS]

Nice growth KJ
keep the pics comin :smile:

 

[K.J]

More new pics; 17 days in flower

More new pics; 17 days in flower

And now for a REAL picture update. These were taken last night right before their watering, so pardon the droopiness of some of the leaves. They're turning into monsters, that's for sure. In the group shot you can get a good idea of how close they are to the light, and this is after I just moved it up about 6" (it can't go any higher, so I hope they stop stretching).

All of the leaves look pretty good, with the exception of a few that I'll explain after the pictures (not sure you can see the damage anyway). There is very little yellowing and plenty of dark green fresh growth, with tons of new flower spots (each plant has a good 25 or more flowering buds). They take a good amount of water every 3-4 days, but I still am only doing fresh water feedings with a little LK thrown in every other time. Water only is the way to go, if you ask me.

I'm getting a little concerned that they're too crowded in the cab. The bottom 1/3 of each plant is pretty well shaded by its neighbor no matter how I arrange them. And getting these things to fit side by side after watering them is difficult considering the amount of swell that occurs in the soil. I've considered trimming off some of the bottom flowers and branches because it seems that without more light those flowers will be fairly weak at harvest. I've also considered culling 2 of the plants to make room for the other 4. What do you think?

That said, here are the newest pics!


Group Shot, 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Barbie (Bubblicious), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Beth (Bubblicious), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Rhonda (Royal Hawaiian), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Rosy (Royal Hawaiian), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Ruby (Royal Hawaiian), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

Wilma (White Rhino), 17 days in flower (7 17 09)

And now for the bad news. We have spider mites! I noticed a few little crawlies about a week ago, but never saw them after so I brushed it off. Well when we watered this time, the little droplets of water that got on the stems highlighted some of the bastards' webs. I started looking real close and noticed them everywhere. I wouldn't say it's a horrible infestation, but certainly something to be concerned about. It's a good thing I picked up a bottle of neem oil way back when we first started building our cab. So it looks like we'll be doing a neem spray every watering for the next 2 weeks or so. Ugh!! That's the risk you take when bringing in clones/plants from another garden. Our last grow was COMPLETELY critter free; was it the clones that carried them in? Or did I bring them in on my clothes after having been outside and then tending to the girls? Or it could just be that it's summer time and temps are higher, conditions just right. WTF knows? All I know is that we need to git them off our girls!

If you have any suggestions for our grow, to improve it in any way, please let us know. We'd love to hear your advice.

 

[growMEDS]

I would highly suggest cleaning up the bottom branches - upper growth will thank you hehe

 

[K.J]

I would highly suggest cleaning up the bottom branches - upper growth will thank you hehe

Any recommendations on how I should go about that? Just start whacking anything below the shadow line? Be more selective? What's your suggestion?

 

[growMEDS]

I really just started cuttin. Even some had hairs but the light just can't penetrate to the bottom so they will be light/airy.
I would say I cut almost all branches/"nugs" off from 6" above the dirt. I have some comparison pics in my thread from when I did my trim job. It was so hard to cut um up but I really think I will always from now on.
But this is my first time still lol - so I'm really no expert :smile:

 

[K.J]

I really just started cuttin. Even some had hairs but the light just can't penetrate to the bottom so they will be light/airy.
I would say I cut almost all branches/"nugs" off from 6" above the dirt. I have some comparison pics in my thread from when I did my trim job. It was so hard to cut um up but I really think I will always from now on.
But this is my first time still lol - so I'm really no expert :smile:

Sounds like about what we'll be doing if we do decide to trim. I'll let you know soon, because we're going to be spraying for spider mites tonight, so we'll likely trim then if we decide to.

 

[#1cheesebuds]

they looken super nice.

 

[K.J]

Mites nearly defeated!

Mites nearly defeated!

The spider mites are on their way out, we hope! We've thus far done 2 separate neem oil misting's, spread about 3 days apart, and our next one comes today. I have also been very attentive at looking through as much of the foliage as I can at least twice a day (without pulling them out of the cab though) and smashing any of the little bastards I find, along with their eggs. I find fewer and fewer each day. We also used a bleach solution to clean out the flowering room when the plants were out of the cab sitting in the neem mist. It's a long process to fight these things, so I pray that none of your grows come down with them. I have to say though, that I do enjoy spending such intimate time with the ladies; it requires that I take them all out, inspect them carefully, do trimming if necessary to get rid of overly infested fan leaves, spray thoroughly both the topsides and undersides of every leaf and stem on the plant, let them sit outside the cab for a bit and drop off, then place them back in the cab. It's quite a process but it is very rewarding for me to garden them so intensely like that.

Although there is a lot of stippling on the fan leaves, they seem to be healthy still. I can tell that some of the worst hit plants are lagging behind the others in terms of flower size, but hopefully they'll catch up. One other thing I did was do a ton of trimming to clean the plants up; I took off anything from the soil up 6" or so on each plant. The bottom portions were not only mostly shaded, but that's also where the worst infestations were (where you saw most of the webs they weave), not only that but it was all old growth that was kind of a jumblefuck and it needed to be cleaned up. I think the plants look and feel (their aura, so to speak) way better now that they're cleaned up. I did have to cut a number of flowering sites off of each one, but those were likely to remain airy and not worth much anyways. I ended up with a nice little plastic shopping bag full of trim, and it STILL looks like a jungle in there. I can't wait to take new pics, I think you guys will really enjoy them with their new shapes.

I plan to do a watering tonight, along with the neem misting, so I'll try and get pictures before I wet the girls down.

Please send up a prayer, or whatever you like, in hopes that our garden survives and thrives this infestation. We REALLY need this medicine. I am now officially out of our last harvest with the exception of the crown of one of the plants, which I'm saving for another time, since it was our first grow and my favorite of the 4 plants. Medicine is too expensive for me not to have a continuous harvest of my own, so it'll really hurt if these damn mites win the battle! We're doing our best to fight them off though, wish us luck!

 

[#1cheesebuds]

Please send up a prayer, or whatever you like, in hopes that our garden survives and thrives this infestation. We REALLY need this medicine. I am now officially out of our last harvest with the exception of the crown of one of the plants, which I'm saving for another time, since it was our first grow and my favorite of the 4 plants. Medicine is too expensive for me not to have a continuous harvest of my own, so it'll really hurt if these damn mites win the battle! We're doing our best to fight them off though, wish us luck!

OK Ill send up a bunch of prayers for ur plants.

 

[K.J]

Please send up a prayer, or whatever you like, in hopes that our garden survives and thrives this infestation. We REALLY need this medicine. I am now officially out of our last harvest with the exception of the crown of one of the plants, which I'm saving for another time, since it was our first grow and my favorite of the 4 plants. Medicine is too expensive for me not to have a continuous harvest of my own, so it'll really hurt if these damn mites win the battle! We're doing our best to fight them off though, wish us luck!

OK Ill send up a bunch of prayers for ur plants.

Awesome, thanks cheesebuds!

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey mate lookinhg good - nice to see a fellow 250 organic grower!

you miight think about scrog or lst next time to get more primo buds in the sweet spot. the neem should work for the mites but i wouldnt spray them too far into flower. i find if i spray a couple times in veg that i dont have a problem with mites - the best time to spray if before you see them

good luck

V.

 

[K.J]

hey mate lookinhg good - nice to see a fellow 250 organic grower!

Thanks for the props!

you miight think about scrog or lst next time to get more primo buds in the sweet spot. the neem should work for the mites but i wouldnt spray them too far into flower. i find if i spray a couple times in veg that i dont have a problem with mites - the best time to spray if before you see them

Last time (first grow linked below) we did LST, but this time I wanted to see how they turned out in our setup if I just let them grow as natural as possible (with some trimming thrown in when necessary to clean them up below the shade line).

Our first grow was completely pest free as far as we could tell, so I suppose we expected to be pest free this time. Oh well, next time we'll know to spray in veg. We won't be spraying the neem at least a few weeks before harvest (or at all, if this next one works to get rid of the last of them).

 

[feltonmuggs]

I just id'd spidermites as well....picked up from a dispensary clone bummer.

I've done about 3-4 neem sprays and it learning I'm won't kill the eggs....there are a few other solutions too. I have Prytherum (sp?) and others have suggested fog bombs (2-3 of em) to kill the eggs. I suspect you'll be dealing with them for several weeks in the veg and flower room, but you have to be vigilant and use multiple layers of defense (neem and something else). GL GL GL and Good Vibez for the battle!

FM

 

[K.J]

I just id'd spidermites as well....picked up from a dispensary clone bummer.

I've done about 3-4 neem sprays and it learning I'm won't kill the eggs....there are a few other solutions too. I have Prytherum (sp?) and others have suggested fog bombs (2-3 of em) to kill the eggs. I suspect you'll be dealing with them for several weeks in the veg and flower room, but you have to be vigilant and use multiple layers of defense (neem and something else). GL GL GL and Good Vibez for the battle!

FM

Thanks for the kind words Felton. Sorry to hear about your mites. I have heard a ton of different ways to deal with them, but the only organic ways I can think of are neem and parasite mites. So far the neem seems to be working really well for us; I think I'll only have to do one last spray (tonight).