Q3corn's dank mini adventures

[q3corn]

Update!

NL Blvd seedlings are back in action, I got 4 in 8oz pots and they'll be in those for the next month or so.

Mega cab in flower is looking really good. In the last week there's been a lot of growth, very few problems, and some plants are nearly complete! Gelato 33 x Purple Goat plants are in their last week probably, I'm seeing about 5% amber trichomes on the top buds currently. Gonna see how long I can push these (excuse the cat hair!)

And a full canopy pic:

I'm really excited about how well these plants are growing under this new light. I'm excited to see what kind of yield I get out of here, I'm thinking it'll be close to 3 ounces, but only time will tell...

 

[q3corn]

I've also been working on another grow cabinet. I'm interested in simplifying the modifications needed on existing cabinetry, so that anyone can turn their own furniture into a grow space. Here's the current one:

It's an ikea cabinet measuring 15"x15"x30" on the outside. It has 4 basic light sockets all attached to a dimmer, a 120mm blower fan for exhaust, and 4x 2" pvc elbows as intake. I put the exhaust and intake both on the back panel for stealth and convenience purposes. The idea is that if someone wanted to modify their own, but didn't have the know-how, they could just get a single back panel with all of the holes drilled and all of the equipment mounted so the rest of the walls can be left totally blank.

I also got super excited when I found these lights at the hardware store:

11 watts dimmable at 3000k temperature. I wanted them to be able to dim so I could A) control the temperature if it gets too high, and B) have a complete grow from start-to-finish without changing, adding, or subtracting any equipment on the inside.

So I left the cabinet with the lights and fan on full-power for 24 hours and logged the temperatures inside the space. The highest temperatures were during the hottest parts of the day (naturally), and the inside maxed out at 86F, 8 degrees above ambient temperature. That's right where my 3 current grow cabinets are, so I would call that a win.

I think ultimately I just need to figure out if this is even something that people would want. I mean, *I* want it, so I figure there's got to be some market out there...

 

[q3corn]

I wrecked my bike and messed my wrists up pretty bad. Wear a helmet, kids!


Anyway in that time I had some harvesting to do. I harvested my Gelato 33 x Purple Goat plants at 63 days. Gave them an h2o2 bath and hung 'em up. They dried kinda quick because we got a crazy dry heat spell for a few days right after that. Humidity was under 20% and it was over 90 degrees, so shit just.. dried. I got 'em into paper bags to keep the moisture in but still let them breath, and I think I saved it. They went into jars soon after and I've been burping them regularly.


End result wasn't as impressive, I was expecting about 10 grams from them and they gave me just over 8 grams each. They sure are pretty, though...

#2

#3

#2 harvest day

#3 harvest day

 

[q3corn]

And just today I harvested all my SUV plants. Big day!

There must have been some stress from the heat swing or something, because in the last week I started to see some nanners start growing on a few SUV girls, and a few also looked like they may have been recently pollinated. It must have been herm, I haven't had a male plant for almost 3 months... But luckily it was right at the end, so I don't think anything actually happened.

Either way, these plants turned out gorgeous. Fantastic bud development, nice foxtail push at the end for most of them. 3 of them smell like sour grape candy, one smells earthy and dirty, one smells like straight body odor. Bonus guttation in pic #5

 

[q3corn]

Harvested the Conifers last week, too. They came out pretty good! Number 13, the one on the left, was a lot stretchier with more compact and spaced out bud sites, while 15 had larger buds that filled up the stems more, with a lot less stretch. I was initially thinking 15 would yield more, but now that I've chopped them down, I think it'll be a close call. Smell on both is undeniably gorilla glue gas, but 15 is much more pungent, at least for right now. Number 13 was harvested on day 77, and 15 was harvested on day 82.

They got stressed, along with everything else, in these last few weeks. The problem with growing in such small containers is that messing up a feeding can break a whole harvest, and I definitely did that. All the fan leaves are basically dead, buds are good, but I know they could be better. I've got clones of them in the flower room again that are in their 3rd week already.

 

[q3corn]

Everyone buy Conifer-15 has been taken off the drying rack and trimmed, and so far my harvest is looking really good!
Total weight of the GPGs: 18 grams
Total weight of the SUVs: 24 grams
Conifer 13 weight: 20 grams
Conifer 15 weight: undetermined

So far I'm over 2oz with what looks like another 20 or so grams from #15 yet to be checked. Score! First run hit nearly 3 zips in this thing.


Unfortunately while I was trimming up the conifer 13, I learned that she was the one who put out nanners in the last week. I found a few pollen sacks on some lowers, one of which burst as soon as I touched it! Whoops! I'm not sure what happened, but a lot was going on right before harvest, and any number of things could have made that happen. Smoke from the fires, bad water or poorly ph'd water, high heat, etc... It was a rough last few weeks but we got through it! This was a big deal for me. First time growing in this cabinet, first time using solstrips, and first time growing this many plants in solo cups. Considering nobody died I would call this a win.


Now to burn some scissor hash

 

[blazeoneup]

Congratulations on the harvest enjoy the fruits of your labor. Until next time be safe and take care!

 

[El Tigre]

Great mini grow!

 

[q3corn]

Great mini grow!

Thanks!


Updates on the next run coming soon

 

[q3corn]

Well I noticed some hermie flowers on my plants in the mega cab! Shit!


Did a check and it seems there's some light leaks coming through my exhaust fan. I taped those up tight and triple-checked all the seals around the door. Seems there's a few hairline gaps that must have formed recently after regular use, so I sealed those up with either tape or new weather stripping. Had to cull one plant that was going full-herm on me. Snipped some lowers and balls off my conifers. I'll be keeping a SEROUS eye out now.

 

[q3corn]

I got my new ikea cabinet running and decided to throw my NL blvd plants into some new pots and test out the cabinet. After a few days they're still getting used to the new pots, but the space is working out great. I'll be taking cuttings of these soon and flowering them. I'll probably take pollen from whatever males I get to make seeds, too. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for as far as a keeper goes, but these should be fairly similar since it's all NL5/NL2 genetics. One of the plants has looked a little stressed/saggy, and it seems like if I dim the lights down a bit it perks back up.

In the flower cabinet I haven't seen any new pollen sack development, but I'll be diligent. There's only 6 plants in there, all of which are Conifers, so if there is some issues I'll at least know where the pollen came from.

Also, 2 weeks ago I threw some Conifer F2 seeds into paper towels. The 3 seedlings I got have rooted and I actually threw them into the flower cabinet. I wanna do 12/12 from seed for these just to see how they fare. Not taking cuttings, just curious about what's gonna come up.

 

[q3corn]

Ok, been away from this site for a while. No pictures to update but I'll fill in with a summary of the last few weeks.


NL Blvd plants are doing great. Their clones haven't quite taken root yet, so I'm not ready to flower them. But as soon as I see roots growing I'll be throwing them into the flower cabinet. Males will be pulled out and I'll take pollen from them before killing them. That pollen will be used on the females so I can have some extra seeds from this line to really hunt through. Difference in plants has just started to show up in the last few weeks. Two plants are noticeably taller than the others, but all of their leaf shapes and sizes look damn-near identical. Curious what differences show up once flower kicks in.


I sprouted 3 seeds from my Conifer-13 plant to see if they were viable. They sprouted so I put them into solo cups directly into flower, so they're basically running 12/12 from seed. At about day 30 from sprout I started to see some female hairs on one. A few days later the other 2 showed female flowers, so 3 for 3 on female! They're very short, only a few nodes tall. I'm thinking the solstrip lighting was too strong for them, because their leaves never perked up, they always sagged regardless of my watering. Next time I do 12/12 from seed I'll do the first few weeks under weaker lighting, maybe that'll give them an extra few nodes and maybe another week before they start pushing out pistils.


In the interest of testing my F2 seeds, I also put about 16 F2 seeds of SUV, 6 from one plant, 10 from another. 2 of those seedlings died from being under watered, and the others are at about 2 weeks since sprout. They're under 17/7 lighting now, and as soon as I put them in something larger than the 3oz seedling cups, I'll put them into 12/12. I really am just interested in the variability I find in these. I don't plan on keeping cuts or males just yet.


The other big plan was to sprout some SOURxAO seeds I got from catnip. After attempting to germinate 7, only 3 ever sprouted a tail large enough to put into dirt, and those 3 all died within a few days of being planted. The white fuzz took them over. I'm not sure what that fuzz even is, but I think these older weaker seeds just don't have much stamina in them anymore. I ordered some GA3 online and plan on using that on a few more just to see what I'm able to get sprouting. Whatever I get, I'll be damn sure to open-pollinate to preserve whatever work Dr P did, because those private breeder projects are just too good to let die.


My harvests from the first mega cab run are all curing just fine, and a few samples I've taken have turned out great. I think I can get this space dialed in pretty well. I have another round of conifer-13 and conifer-15 about 50 days in flower now. They're looking pretty rough, they definitely got underfed their first few weeks in flower and just are not gonna recover at this point. Whatever buds I pull off of these won't be that great, but it'll be acceptable.


I'm starting to get sick of mixing bottles of nutrients and am considering going dry amendments for a bit. I have some kelp meal and malted barley to help supplement, and I'm waiting on some vermicompost from a friend. I don't know if that would all cover my needs, though? I've considered doing something like Roots dry amendments since I've used those before, but never for such a small grow. If anyone has any input on that sort of nutrient regime for such a small root ball feel free to chime in!


Gonna keep building grow boxes now

 

[q3corn]

Dry amendments are tough to manage for such small pots! I miscalculated my needs and went overboard on kelp on a few plants. Salted the hell out of 'em! Luckily I could flush the soil a bit and top dress with some fresh worm castings to mellow things back out.



I decided my makeshift dry nutrients weren't gonna cut it, so I looked into some local soil companies and picked up a bag of KIS organic's nutrient blend. It's got a whole load of stuff that would otherwise have costed me just as much to order on my own. That's showing up hopefully early next week. Until then I'll keep doing my biobizz bottled nutrients. Maybe do a side-by-side with the KIS nutes when they come in.


One of my CON13F2 plants has stretched like crazy! But it's at day 14F and is already producing a heavy amount of trichomes. The smells are not too pronounced, still smells like a plant in veg. The other 2 plants aren't quite as sparkly or stretchy. One of them looks stunted actually, hasn't grown up at all and has just a cluster of white hairs at the top for the last week. Maybe that was a result of too much light as a seedling, I dunno. It's sisters did fine, so who knows.


My GA3 came in, so I did a soak of two SourAO seeds in 300ppm mixture. After 12 hours they both sank, so they got put into paper towels. I'm hopeful that at least one of these germinates and survives!


I watched a video on future cannabis project about vermicompost, and Allison Jack had a presentation about seeds exposed to worm castings having a protection against pytheum. So when these plants go into their starter pots I'll add a bit of worm castings to the earth plug which will hopefully have some beneficial microbes to help break it out of the soil. I'm thinking GA3 and worm castings could be the trick.



If this goes well, I might end up making my own worm bin.

 

[q3corn]

(posted this in my conifer thread, decided to cross-post it here too)

I have three seeds from the Conifer #13 I threw into solo cups and put directly into flower, just to see what sorts of plants show up. When people say f2 is where a lot of variability exists they aren't lying

I got lucky with all females, but holy cripes could these not be more different! All three of these were as short as the middle one right when they started to show sex. Obviously one doesn't stretch at all, and one nearly quadrupled in height! She also threw out one or two dicks and knocked herself up in a few spots. I have no idea what's gonna come out of that plant or how long it'll take. I'm guessing those characteristics came from the deep sativa lineage in the tangie? It started to develop trichomes really early, like day 14 or so, and it smells sweet and sour. Other two are a lot more solid bud structure, less noticeable frost, and the smell is still fairly vegetative.

I'm excited to have these finish out, but holy cripes, that plant threw me off and thought it was worth sharing.

 

[q3corn]

Back for some more updates!

Harvested the conifer 13. These plants struggled quite a bit and definitely went hungry for a long time. Despite that, the buds actually look like they chunked up really well and got some nice color to them! Smell is mild like it always has been for this pheno. I'm guessing I'll get somewhere around what my last 3-plant harvest was, roughly 21 grams.

_______
NL Blvd plants are about one month into flower now. I collected pollen from the males and successfully isolated them so that nothing else would get knocked up, which is great! I even managed to pollinate the lower branches of the NLB females without messing up the tops. No clones kept, but at this point the fact that I have more pollen saved and F4 seeds on the way makes me feel pretty confident that I can really test how inbred this line is.

Here's a pic of how much training I needed to do to keep these dudes in their space

_______
SUV F2s got put into flower today, too. They're about 7 weeks after germination, and I've got 14 of them crammed into that same 1x1 cabinet that the NLB males are in. There's gonna be no male selection here, I'll just be culling them as they show up and repotting the females into larger containers to carry them through flower. This whole run is also going to be done with only dry KIS amendments. I really want to see if it's possible to keep a living soil going in such a small space.

_______
And Because I've got all this room now, I decided to get some more seeds going. This time I'm gonna do a full 10-pack of seeds from East Coast Originals. Double G. G13 x 88G13HP. I've been wanting to try one of my 88g13hp seed packs, and I figured the one closest to being original would be a good bet. I'll F2 these for sure, but also collect the pollen to use in the future.
Dropped 'em in some h2o2 and tap water, and thrown in the dark. Check back in 24 hours!

That's my updates for today. Happy growin'

 

[q3corn]

Those SUV F2s took off after I put them into flower. I mean it was incredible. Here's a few shots to show just how big this was


First day of flower:

Day 4 of flower:

Day 8 of flower:

Day 11 of flower:

I had to move the males out of the cabinet entirely, the one was already stretching above the lights before the end of week 2, and these little guys were just a few inches tall 2 weeks ago! I have never seen plants so consistently shoot up with one super-long internodal spacing point. By day 12 all had identified themselves. 7 females, 6 males, and 1 intersex plant. Considering these were put into some serious rootbound situations for a while now, it's surprising only one went herm.



The females have moved into my MEGA cabinet and have been repotted into solo cups. You can see just how big these plants got in such a short amount of time by comparing them to the rest of my flowering cabinet

Absolute beasts... I'm seriously considering making F3 seeds from some of these this run. I was planning on culling the males but after seeing this incredible growth from every single plant I'm just smitten.

 

[q3corn]

My Double G seedlings have done well, too! I got 10/10 germination, and one died off between being planted and breaking ground, I think maybe damping off...

After seeing what happened with those SUV seedlings, I'm really excited to see what I can do with these

 

[antheis]

Double G on paper is perfect for your small cab. You got a lot going on in here dude. Nice work!

 

[q3corn]

Thanks!


I could never get those Sour x AO seeds to germinate. I still have 8 left but after 12 duds I'm just getting discouraged. I found some Agent Orange seed stock from a few years ago, so I've got that lined up.

 

[q3corn]

Ok, so those SUV F2 males just kept on growing. Here they are at day 20F


This cabinet is 29" floor-to-ceiling on the inside, and some of these guys have been supercropped to keep them from hitting the light. In this pic you can see overnight one of them actually did! Luckily these boards don't get too hot or too bright so it's not as dangerous as if it were a COB or something, but holy freakin' crap!

I'm still not sure exactly which ones i'll be collecting pollen from, but i'm inclined to focus on the shortest of the bunch. I guess the shortest one with the quicker flowering time, since those are really the only metrics i'm able to judge these guys on. I've done plenty of stem rubs and I just can't get much of a smell out of them, or at least no unique smells. They all have a bit of a vegetative teatree sort of aroma, with a little bit of a skunk undertone... but that's so subtle it might just be me projecting that... The ladies haven't really shown any unique smells either, so I guess I can't really expect the guys to be stinkin' it up yet.