Diary PCBuds mini-grow

[q3corn]

If you train your plants and don't underfeed them at the beginning of flower then I bet you can get close to your 1g/w goal

 

[PCBuds]

If you train your plants and don't underfeed them at the beginning of flower then I bet you can get close to your 1g/w goal

I think that's kinda what I'm doing?

She is properly fed, and I don't need to physically train my plant to present it to the light, because she is surrounded by light.

For me, training would be in the application of light, and I didn't do that properly with this plant.

I should have slowly increased the light to "train" her to become accustomed to it.


I would have done that, but I was afraid that she would stop growing/stretching if I increased the lights.
She had really close nodes until I turned off the side lights, then it started to grow and stretch.


Next plant I'll try to increase the lighting slowly and keep measuring her growth to see if it slows or stalls.

I'm sure my current plant would be in better shape right now if I had increased the lights sooner and more gradually.

My last plant was only 19" tall because I couldn't get her to grow/stretch.

It was still a really nice plant though with 109 grams.



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[q3corn]

When I mention training what I'm really talking about is purposefully directing branches to get as many buds-per-square-foot as possible. Growing big tall plants is great but when they stretch out that much there's just so much exposed stem that's getting direct light. The stress from too much light wasn't matched with too much food, so she sucked her big solar panels dry.

 

[PCBuds]

I don't have enough room to bend branches over.
My closet is only 21" X 21", but being as I've got lights up and down the walls I've got 9X the square footage than just the ceiling.
Now I don't have to train her to get maximum buds per square foot.
(and I suck at training. all I do is break branches. Lol)

 

[PCBuds]

My closet is 3 square feet and the general rule is 25-30 Watts per square foot (for SILs).

So that would be no more than 90 Watts for my closet with flat lighting without problems.

I don't like flat lighting. Even the sun is round. Lol
I like 3-D lighting.

I've managed to put 300 Watts into my closet and managed to grow a 400 gram plant.

I guess I could turn my closet into two seperate grow spaces, but I don't want to bother doing that.

 

[PCBuds]

The stress from too much light wasn't matched with too much food, so she sucked her big solar panels dry.

I don't know?

I don't think my fan leaves would be able to handle that much light even if I had increased my nutes.

Maybe if I had increased the lights gradually the leaves would have adjusted?

This has happened before. The fan leaves just dried up and died after I turned on the side lights.

I think that the plant just ditches them because they are no longer needed?

They might have been resorbed, but I don't think anything is going to keep them alive except turning the lights back down.

I don't think the leaves were resorbed/died because the plant needed nutrition and cannibalised itself.
I think they were resorbed because they simply couldn't deal with the amount of light they were now getting.
I think that I just cooked them ?

I went from 8 ceiling strips (4 two footers) to 44 strips.

If I can get a plant to grow tall with all the lights going, then she would never grow such big fan leaves.

 

[q3corn]

Oh wow i never saw that plant! holy crap that's gorgeous

 

[q3corn]

Maybe if I had increased the lights gradually the leaves would have adjusted?

This has happened before. The fan leaves just dried up and died after I turned on the side lights.

You got it. Honestly it's the immediate increase in power that's stressing them, not the power itself. If you can spend even just 2 weeks gradually bringing the light up, you might see the plant adapt much easier.

 

[PCBuds]

Oh wow i never saw that plant! holy crap that's gorgeous

Thanks.

That was my favorite plant and I keep trying to grow another one like it.

It was 400 grams, so I must have had more than a gram per Watt.
(I don't know why I thought I didn't get a gram per Watt? I think I may have adjusted the numbers to make a more fair comparison to SILs?)

For some reason, I could grow that plant tall with all the lights on from the beginning, purple stems and everything.

My last plant didn't want to grow tall and my current plant was shaping up to do the same thing until I turned off the side lights.

 

[q3corn]

Genetics...

 

[PCBuds]

If you can spend even just 2 weeks gradually bringing the light up, you might see the plant adapt much easier.

The problem was that she spent 5 weeks with just the ceiling lights on at 5000 LUX.

Then I finally turned up the lights but only had about 5 more weeks until she would finish.
So I wanted to give her as much light as possible to help make up for lost time and hopefully increase my final yeild.

So, we'll see what I end up with in the end.

Perhaps, if I would have spent 2 weeks turning up the lights, she may have ended up with a bigger yeild because she could have made use of more of the light and filled in more, even if she would have ended up with less total light in the end ?

 

[PCBuds]

Genetics...

It was the same bean as what I'm growing now? (ReikoX's seeds).

Perhaps just a different trait for that particular seed?

Or something slightly different in the way that I grew it or its environment?

I'd like to know so that I can grow another big plant with lots of light from the beginning.

I'm hoping that low light until she is about a foot tall then start turning it up will do the trick?

 

[q3corn]

Unless you're dealing with an IBL, there's always different phenotypical expression from seed to seed. Who knows how much, since I don't know how stable the seeds you got were. That's not really the only variable though. As you've pointed out, you've done a lot of changes through every grow, so there's not a lot of consistency from grow to grow.

Whatever environmental setup you had with your 400g plant is probably a good place to revisit, right? I assume that's your goal

 

[ReikoX]

These are the same genetics as the big plant (Dark Devil x Sugar Black Rose). The small plant you grew last time was from the second batch of seeds I sent you (Ghost Rose x Cookie Devil).

That being said, seeds can be thought of like siblings. Some will look like mom, some will look like dad, and others will look like a mix of both. Rarely do siblings look alike, but they often look similar.

 

[PCBuds]

These are the same genetics as the big plant (Dark Devil x Sugar Black Rose). The small plant you grew last time was from the second batch of seeds I sent you (Ghost Rose x Cookie Devil).

That being said, seeds can be thought of like siblings. Some will look like mom, some will look like dad, and others will look like a mix of both. Rarely do siblings look alike, but they often look similar.

I remember growing two Dark Devil X Sugar Black Rose on the window sill, and they were quite different from each other.
One was more Sativa like, and the other was more Indica like.

But they were both tall, and equal in height. Lol

I think it was the lights that got them to grow tall.
I had them sharing five 10 Watt SILs.



I'm going to try a seed from the new batch next, with just the 3500k side lights on and turned WAY down.

If I can get her to stretch tall and skinny as a seedling, she might keep growing tall even as I start turning up the lights ?



This is another plant from a while back.
It was all short and bushy.

It appeared to be the lighting that caused it, but it's hard to say for sure.

 

[PCBuds]

I remember a friend growing a sprouted seed without enough light.

It grew to about 4" and fell over.
It was skinner than a piece of spaghetti and had only one set of leaves.

So I know that a sprout will stretch like crazy with low light, even to the point of killing itself by keeling over.

 

[q3corn]

Yeah if you want it to be stretchy early on, just keep the lights barely out of reach! That's a good idea

 

[Sampas92]

Buds, indeed some people have grow plants from seed with huge ammount of light, its doable but if the light increases all the other factors need to increase too, co2, temp, humidity, nutrients and so on.

you dont need all that, you need to do things gradual until they say is enough

Yeah the leafs will go out anyway, even if only when trimming for curing, but they also do other things besides storage of nutrients and you know it, they are important too. Also, wasnt better those big ass fans were alive receiving that ammount of light to help building buds?

Remember that you build your lights in that cab in that specific way for the big ass fans were not a problem to grow buds because eitheir way, if not 100% of the plant was receiving light directly, it was pretty close to it.

Having that said, i dunno how she will end, either way in the next grow, my opinion is to let them grow with the lights in the way that you see that they grow "naturally", and increment the side light gradually diminishing the top ones if needed untill you find that sweet spot and dont forget to adapt because of how different they are from each others
also being autos i guess the timming of everything counts alot in the end result,maybe right when they start stretching?

dunno, just my newbiness thinking out loud
Peace

 

[PCBuds]

Yeah if you want it to be stretchy early on, just keep the lights barely out of reach! That's a good idea

If you mean keep the lights barely out of my reach, that's a good idea.
I sure like to play with the dials. Lol


I intend to start my next plant with the 3500k side lights because that color is supposed to promote stretch.
My concern is that they might reach sideways towards the light instead of reaching up ?

I dunno?

My ceiling lights are 5000k which are supposed to promote close nodes but they are way above the plant and give very little light at the surface of the planter, even when they are turned up.

 

[PCBuds]

Buds, indeed some people have grow plants from seed with huge ammount of light, its doable but if the light increases all the other factors need to increase too, co2, temp, humidity, nutrients and so on.

you dont need all that, you need to do things gradual until they say is enough

I have grown a few big plants and things worked out pretty good with the method I was using.

All I needed to do was water with the right nutes at the right amount and I managed to avoid nute burn and deficiencies.

I could have all the lights on from the start, with them turned down at first and slowly turn them up.

But it didn't work with my last two plants, and I had to turn off the side lights to get this one to stretch.

I did do pretty good with LIFTA though and left the side lights off until she got quite tall.
I realize now that it was a mistake to wait that long, but I was afraid that she would just stop growing up if I turned them back on.

Having that said, i dunno how she will end, either way in the next grow, my opinion is to let them grow with the lights in the way that you see that they grow "naturally", and increment the side light gradually diminishing the top ones if needed untill you find that sweet spot and dont forget to adapt because of how different they are from each others

That's what I want to do.
I want to have her growing and stretching with well spaced nodes and no purple stems. (although I did have purple stems from start to finish on all my plants, except my current one.)

I figure that I can turn the lights up a bit when she has two full sets of leaves and starts to get nuted.

also being autos i guess the timming of everything counts alot in the end result,maybe right when they start stretching?

Yeah, and the first couple of weeks can make or break an auto.
I'll keep a real close eye on her especially at first and really watch her node spacing.

dunno, just my newbiness thinking out loud
Peace

I'm still a newb and still do newb stuff. One extreme to the other.

And this stretch vs. lighting thing is new to me as well.

I did get my plant to stretch tall enough to fill the closet, but she's looking kinda spindly.

I think that I should be able to get at least 200 grams out of her if she continues to fluff up and fill in.