Yeah man, all is good, we had a mental tropical cyclone hit us so lots of chaos.
Here's an update from a couple of weeks ago... before the storm.....
Day 50
The tent is filling out, the Girls have been playing musical chairs again, with the Cream Mandarine and Night Queen swapping places. Now I have the 2 biggest plants (Toofless Alien and Cream Mandarine) diagonal to each other to get the most space, while the smaller Night Queen and Pineapple Express fill in the gaps.
Clockwise from top left: Night Queen, Toofless Alien, Pineapple Express and Cream Mandarine XL.
The Toofless Alien is storming away, moving up from 53cm to 63cm and now 82cm wide....
She's on an EC 1.0 feed made up of 0.2ml/L Cal Mag in EC 0 rainwater then 0.7ml/L A&B bringing the basic EC up to 0.7, additives are the usual Drip Clean (0.1ml/L) and Roots Excellurator (0.3ml/L), along with Multizyme and Bud XL (both at 1ml/L) and Bud Candy (0.5ml/L). I'm still giving a hint of Nitrogen (0.2ml/L) but Ive stopped Silicone. She gets through 6-8 Litres a day.
The Skyline light is penetrating deep into her thick foliage and it looks like there's gonna be some lovely big buds on her!
The Cream Mandarine XL is also at day 50, and gaining in size....
Although she's green and healthy looking - she has grown from 40cm to 46cm, and is 66cm wide - and drinking a good 5-6 Litres a day, she has only just showing signs of flowering.
All her tips are vegging away, but the pistils are only just seen deep within the leafy tops....
Compare that to the Toofless Alien.....
.... even the Pineapple Express which is 5 days younger has more flowering going on at the main cola tip.....
..... and the Night Queen is even younger at day 36 - 2 weeks younger than the Mandarine - and this is her main cola tip in flower....
So WHY is the Cream Mandarine so slow to flower????
I was feeding her the same as the Alien last week, but now the Alien has moved onto a full flower nutrient regime the Mandarin needs to stretch and get those flowers growing, so I have kept her on last week's feed still, but slowly move the A&B from 0.3ml/L to 5ml/L then to the same 0.7ml/L as the Alien currently gets. By increasing the Base nutes and reducing the Nitrogen additive (the NPK of the Base nutes is 4-3-9) I will be upping the P and K and not increasing the total N.... maybe that will push her into flowering a bit more.
Now that I have moved her, I'm gonna stake her out a bit to get more air and light into her thick foliage.
The Pineapple Express and Night Queen have been suffering since the last update. About 2 weeks ago, I was stupid/lazy and gave them the same feed as the Alien for a couple of days (instead of getting up of my arse and making the correct feed for them).
The feed had added Bud Ignitor..... I was giving it at the right time for the Alien, and something inside me told me to give some to the Queen and Pineapple - because they had just started flowering. I had made the big mistake of using one feed for all 4 plants and being 2 weeks apart in development, there's no way that would suit each plant's individual needs.
I flushed the Queen and Pineapple, and started them back on a slightly weaker EC 0.9 feed, as described in the last update.
The Pineapple was already looking a bit droopy last update on day 36....
But by day 39 she was showing a lot of yellowing of the lower leaves and big fans.....
Then by day 43 she was really looking poorly....
So I have got to work and clipped off all the yellow leaves.... a lot of them just came away easily by hand, and here she is on day 45....
She's grown about 6cm in the last week, so it looks like she's improving..... but she's still not very happy.... I'm wondering if I should increase the Cal Mag and reduce the EC a touch..... she's on an EC 0.9 mix, but only drinking 3-4L a day.
I'm shocked about the Night Queen, she was doing so well at the start..... but giving her bloom boosters mid way through veg (during week 4) is gonna piss even the hardiest DP Dame off.... so she really went into shock..... I dunno what was worse, the wrong feed or the EC 0 flush? I am giving her exactly the same as the Pineapple Express even though the Pineapple is 9 days older.
Last time you saw her on day 27, she was looking great... she had made great advances in the previous weeks and was showing real signs of promise....
By day 30 she also started showing yellowing in her deeper and lower leaves....
I removed all yellow leaves on day 34......
.... leaving her looking a lot thinner!
Now on day 36, she is filling out again, and grown around 3cm taller since last week. but still looking very pale green around the edges of her leaves....
Its getting to the stage where I need a separate bucket of feed for each, certainly the Alien and Mandarin have different needs, the Pineapple and Night Queen have to move up a gear or two, and I might have to get serious and tailor make my nute mix for each individual plant.
You can see why it took me so long to get this update up!