Teetee goes to the 'dark side'

[teetee]

Thanks for tuning in for another Teehee grow. I can''t believe it's been a full 3 months since I jarred up my last mega-harvest!

I will be interested to see what the quarterly electric bill will be like, as this is the first time I have not had the set up running 24/7 in about 4 years.

It's been lovely not having the fans on.... living rurally, I've really enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Alas, it's time to put a stop to all that, and finally get another grow on.... don't wanna run out of bud, and there's a house inspection in May.

Also it's getting into Summer here, and it's gonna be a hot one... temps are already up in the mid 30°C's, and it stays up in the mid to high 20°C's at night.

I'm used to growing Autos under 24/0 lights, and in the Summer, I have to run air-con 24/0 as well.... I was chewing up the 'leccy, so this time I thought I should run some photoperiod plants instead.... that would make a big dent in my lighting bill, but the fans will still have to be on 24/0 as well as the air-con.

There's a few reasons why I haven't been growing during the last 3 months...

• we had a house inspection in Nov, so I couldn't do anything from Sept to Nov.
• I had loads of bud from the last grow..... loads of it, man!
• I've been waiting for a package from Dinafem with my prize for winning the AFN Dinafem Best Picture competition in November.

Well, I was about to give up hope, but on Monday, it arrived! Father Christmas popped round early!

Big thanks to Mark at Dinafem Seeds for having a word with Santa and getting the elves to pack this lot up for me....

A very fabulous Humboldt T shirt and a little bag stuffed with goodies...

...skins, roaches, grinder, sticker, and most importantly:

• Blue Amnesia XXL Auto x5,
• Gorilla Fem x5
• Purple Afghan Kush Fem x6

Pretty much everything I need to get caned apart from nutes, coco and lights!

I have a nice big seed collection, about 180 seeds in all, mainly Autos, but a few Regs and a few Fems.....

I’ve only grown Autos, except for my ill-fated first ever home grow back in the UK, where I grew some Barney’s Farm feminised ‘Pineapple Chunk’ in a fancy wardrobe and RDWC set up, which I chopped early and destroyed the evidence before emigrating in a hurry, ahem.

So as I’m a relative newbie to photo's, and crossed to the ‘dark’ side, please join me on my latest quest!

I have a shiny pack of Dutch Passion's 'Des Frans' sitting there that my main man Dutch Passion Tony sent me last year, and I've been desperate to try some after reading Autoberry's numerous reports as to how strong she can be. This would be a nice addition to the new Dinafem Fems that Mark sent me.

We had a mental storm on Friday, ripped trees out of the ground, lines came down and we had a power cut for 24 hours..... not a good thing if I'm planning a photo grow......

Mind you, my tent is hardly what you call 'light-proof' - this is just the front door, lights on.....

There's a few other rips, dodgy zips and thinned out bits, so it's gonna be hard maintaining a dark period during the (bright) heat of the day, as I was planning on doing.

On top of that worry, I opened the little bar fridge that I have up here for my oil and seeds.... the fucking thing had defrosted during the power outage, and filled the lower compartment up with water.... the compartment where I keep the seeds!!!!!

The whole lot was under water, so I had to go into salvage mode, fuck Christmas, seeds came first.

The Dutch Passion metal cans all leaked, I poured out the water and found the paper packets inside were drenched... luckily they are lined with plastic, and after opening a few with shaky sweaty hands, I realised they were sealed water tight, and all good.

The Dinafem cans also had leaked, but the seeds inside were in plastic vials, and they were fine. The new 'prize' seeds didn't even make it to the fridge, cos I'm such a lazy stoner.

So Chrissy was back on!

I always grow 4 plants in 20L airpots, so that's not gonna change.... apart from that I now realise they are 25L.... I went through 2x 50L bags of Coco.

I've decided on:

• 1x Dutch Passion 'Des Frans' - 100% Sativa, super strong cross of 'Destroyer' x 'Destroyer'
• 1x Dinafem 'Gorilla' - 60% Indica 40% Sativa, cross of Chocolate Diesel x Chem Sister x Sour Dubb
• 2x Dinafem 'Purple Afghan Kush' - 100% Indica, cross of Purple Kush x Pre'98 Bubba Kush

These are some top drawer strains!

The plan is to grow these out, take a few cuttings before flipping over to 12/12 and re-veg the cuttings for a second grow to end just before the May inspection.

They take 8-9 weeks in flowering, so with 4 weeks veg, this grow shouldn't take much longer than any of my big Auto grows... they've tended to take 12-15 weeks in total, so these Fems will be much the same.

After years of growing Autos, I feel I know the cycle of the plant reasonably well, and I'm ready to join the big(ger) boys. I know they are Fems, but it's a step closer.... I have some old Regs sitting around, but I can't be arsed dealing with males. My grow time is precious and I need to get good results each time.

I got my trusty 25L airpots and filled them with coco, soaked them with EC 0.7 feed made up of 0.3ml/L House and Garden Cocos A&B, 0.1ml/L drip clean, 0.3ml/L Roots Excellurator and 0.3ml/L Nitrogen boost mixed into EC 0 rainwater. We've had loads, so the tank is full to the brim.

I planted the seeds about 2cm under the surface, covered each pot with clingfilm and stuck them under a Skyline 400 LED at max height for a bit of warmth.

This is them before plonking some card on top to keep the light out....

They usually take 48-72 hours to show their heads using this technique, and there's no soaking of seeds, using wet tissue paper, or any handling of the root whatsoever!

I usually use a Bluelab Guardian, trusty, reliable and quick pH and EC readings. Unfortunately, my pH probe has been giving me grief for the best part of a year... I replaced the probe and I'm still getting weird readings... a good pH2 or 3 over what it should be. and I can't recalibrate it, because the unit brings up an error message whenever the pH is more than pH1 out.

I've been faffing around making 'recalibration' solutions of varying pH's to nudge the set pH down, but it never quite gets there, so I am gonna have to send it off to get looked at..... luckily I have an old Bluelab pH pen that recalibrated correctly and works, so although it's a bit slow compared to the instant readings that you get with the Guardian, it will do until I get my Guardian sorted.

I also have a Bluelab truncheon, but that seems to be about EC1 lower than it should be.... WTF.... these can't be recalibrated, so I'm stuck on that one. Luckily I keep a spreadsheet of all my grows, and I've listed the amounts of each additive I've given with each feed, and the resulting EC's, so I can always refer to that if needed.

I've recently been advised that I should have started in small pots and potted up a few times before using the 25L airpots..... Rookie Mistake number 1 then, eh?

I would have a go at potting down (?) into smaller pots - I have some 5L airpots somewhere. but no more Coco..... I dont think I'll do a very good job using the Coco that I already have in to 20L pots as it's wet and won't be easy to handle.

Plus there's no grow shops out here, and delivery will take 10-14 days, by which they'll hopefully be a bit more rooted, and I don't wanna run the risk of damaging the roots while messing around repotting them.

I dunno why, but I feel a bit nervous about this one..... the light leaky tent bothers me, and I don't want a bunch of hermies. That's why I waited on the Dinafems, or else I would have done some old Seedsman Fems that I bought 4 years ago... I need Dutch Passion and Dinafem stability to make up for any cock ups!

And with cock ups in mind, I find myself careering towards Rookie Mistake number 2..... the lights are on 24/0 while the seedlings hatched.... and yesterday, they all popped up. The PAKs were both 48 hours from sowing and the Gorilla came next at around 60 hours closely followed by the Des Frans.

100% succesful germination technique maintained!

But...... I should really switch the lights down to 18/6. Old habits die hard.

Or.... can I keep the lights on 24/0 for another 2-3 weeks to get them going?

My Autos never had a problem filling out the 25L airpots, but the lights were on 24/0.... I could treat these Fems like Autos in veg and do the same. I've vaguely heard of people starting 24/0 and dropping an hour or 2 of light every week, so week 2 is 22/2, week 3 is 20/4 etc....

Anothe old habit of mine is not to do too much with them during veg, but I suppose I can tinker around with these Fems and do some topping and training while in veg without stressing them out like Autos?

Hers's my tiny new Babies, in their fucking enormous cots.... hope they fill out quick!

Have a great weekend!

[ledbud]

Nice see you growing again bro, i dont have grow now as my friend has family over for few months.
i have look for new place to grow.
You will have great grow with 12/12 they are easy just need work out best time to change from veg to flowering.
i normally go into flowering when they are about 20" to 2ft.
You got some nice seeds and good luck.
Have great 2019 brother.

[teetee]

Cheers Bro, you have a good one too. I feel your pain about not havng a grow on.... hope you don't run out!

They are just over 2 weeks old now, so I thought it would be good to compare how they progressed each week.

Here they are after 8 days....

clockwise from top left: PAK 2, Des Frans, PAK 1 and Gorilla
....and again a week later on day 13....

They are all doing pretty well, except the PAK 1.
She was the first to show, and started well, but by about day 4 it was obvious she wasn't growing.... she was getting discolouration in the leaves that now look pale green around the edges with central darker patches around the veins.

I was feeding her the same as the others... an EC 0.8 pH 5.8 light mix with 0.3ml/L A&B in EC 0 rainwater buffered up with 0.2ml/L Cal Mag, 0.3ml/L Roots Excellurator, and 0.3ml/L Nitrogen Boost. She seemed to be slowly picking up, so I was not too worried, but I did dilute her feeds down a touch.

Here at day 13 you can see she's certainly growing, but nowhere near as quick as the PAK 2.

I initially thought she was locked out early on, and so I reduced her feed strength to EC 0.7. Now I think she's under fed.... those leaves are pale around the edges, there's no tip burning, and that's making me think she needs more Nitrogen, so tonight I'm gonna up the EC to 0.8

The other PAK, was looking perfect.
Here she is on day 8....

You can see how much more PAK 2 developed compared to PAK 1.... the 1st 3 set of leaves are much bigger, and the 2nd set of 3 leaves are well on the way with PAK 2.... also the colour was much healthier.

By day 13 you could see PAK 2 had continued to grow at a phenomenal rate....

The brown edge on that lower leaf is from the fans blowing the leaf against the freshly watered medium 3-4 days ago.... so no harm.

The pot is about 10 inches in diameter, so you can see how big she is already, she's popping out her 5th set of 5 leafed leaves and she has well developed side branches under those fans.... 13 days.

The others are also doing well...

The Gorilla next, starting on day 8...

She is looking mighty fine.... there's some mutant funny business going on with some of the leaves, but she seems very healthy so I'm not worried.
This is how the Gorilla looked by day 13...

Finally the Des Fran on day 8....

In this shot on day 13 you can see the obviously different structure and leaf sihape to the others... pure Sativa, while the PAKs are pure Indica and the Gorilla's a hybrid....

Up until around day 8, I had been feeding every other day, about a litre or 2 circumferentially to keep the oxygen levels up in the bulk of the pot and encourage lateral root growth, and also a 100ml squirt using a syringe just around the stem.

Just a touch of run off, but I use Drip Clean which should reduce salt build up.... I don't wanna drown them in the early days, and I want them to have roots that grow outwards searching for water and nutrient, rather than having the tap root just racing downwards, so that's why I circumferentially water early on.

I started on an EC0.7 mix, and upped it to EC0.8 on day 5.... as I said, I dropped the EC to 0.7 for the PAK 1, and kept up with normal feeds for the others for a few more days before thinking about increasing the EC again.

After day 8, I started to give them a good amount of feed and really flushed through the airpots to re-oxygenate and get rid of stale nute.

I had them under 2x Skyline 400's, and was planning to put them under a Skyline 400 each by 2 weeks, depending on when I could be bothered to change a plug on one of them.... 3 are UK plugs and one is an Aussie. I prefer the UK style.... nice and solid... you know where you are with them! The Aussie ones are a pain, you have to pull back the rubber cover (with difficulty) to expose the wiring and you have to loop the wires inside to prevent accidental yank outs...

By day 13, they were on an EC 0.8 pH 5.8 feed, a good 3-4 Litres every other day to give them a good flush out, and a bit of time to get the roots to scavenge.

I have the lights on 24/0 at the moment I've still not wired that plug on unit number 4, so once I've done that, I'll give them each a Skyline 400 to bask under.

I have rotated them once by 180°, and will do a daily 90° rotation every day pretty soon.... all if I can just pull my finger out!.

[ledbud]

looking good bro. i trying work out grow at my mates house but his wife not to happy.
just keeping my fingers crossed.

[teetee]

looking good bro. i trying work out grow at my mates house but his wife not to happy.
just keeping my fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed from over here too Bro. Bribe her with food!

As I said to my old friend Taipan on AFN, once you get used to having limitless supplies of top drawer bud, scoring again will be a nightmare.

It's day 21, so let's start with the group shot...

clockwise from top left: PAK2, DF, PAK1 and Gorilla.

They all have a Skyline 400 LED each to bask under, now that I finally changed the plug on unit 4, and I'm feeding them about 4-5L daily...... if I can manage it .
They seem to be filling out the 25L airpots nicely, so I'm hoping for a good run over the next 14 days and flip them at about 5 weeks.

The PAK1 is back in action, I am now giving her the same EC0.9 strength feed that I'm giving the rest.
She's just popped out her 5th node, the new leaves are looking lush and green, and although the older leaves look strange, they seem to be functioning....

I wanna give her a few more days before thinking about topping her. She is developing nice looking side branches under those 3rd and 4th node fan feaves, and I'm thinking about defoliating her to expose more new growth.

PAK2 is looking a lot more developed. I topped her last week on day 18 and she now has 7 nodes, and nice looking side branches.

Gorilla is also looking great, again I topped her on day 18, leaving 7 nodes ....

I've been leaf tucking (on them all), and you can see how those side branches are doing...

Finally the Des Frans. She is the picture of heallth...

I topped her on day 19, again leaving 7 nodes....

I'm gonna pop out in a minute to get some soft wire, and get going with LST on the longer side branches for the big three.

Cheers for looking in, gotta run!

[ledbud]

another set off monsters on the way bro.

[teetee]

another set off monsters on the way bro.

You're not wrong there mate.... they are racing away!

Even the PAK1 has picked up. After a shaky start, she's looking green and healthy.....

I think she just needed a stronger feed, so upping the Nitrogen did the job.
She's very squat though, so I topped her 2 days ago on day 24, done a bit of leaf tucking and I've removed the fan leaves from the bottom 2 nodes.

It's day 26, so at 2.30am this morning (last night), bearing in mind I had to go to work today..... I thought I should get on with some LST!!!

I started with the Des Fran. She was nice and easy to do as she is well spread out with nice thin Sativa leaves, and the stems are a good length to work with.

I pulled the stems down so they were almost at 90° to the main stem and tied them down with soft wire hooked into the holes in the airpot.

Here she is from above. You can see I topped the main stem on day 20, and I'll top the longest side branches in a couple of days.

I'm keeping her and the PAK1 on an EC0.9 feed, but I might up the strength for the PAK1 fairly soon, to match the feed I'm giving the PAK2 and Gorilla.

The PAK2 was next. Here she is from the side.....

Because she's a lot bushier with fat Indica leaves, she was a bit more difficult to do, but I managed to expose a load of tops, and I will adjust the ties on a daily basis if needed. She was topped on day 18, and I'll top some of the side branches at some point.

This is the PAK2 from above...

About 2 days ago, I noticed the newest leaves were coming out very light green, so that's why I upped her feed to EC 1.0. She responded well to the increase in feed and has greened up nicely again.

Gorilla is living up to her name... she is a beast. As she was doing so well, and because I had to make up a stronger feed for the PAK2, I decided to give her the new EC1,0 feed as well, She looks very happy.....

She has been growing perfectly, nicely spaced out with lots of light penetrating through even though she has relatively fat leaves. Her stems are nice and long so doing the LST was a breeze.

Here she is from above. Topping was done on day 18 and I'm sure I'll be topping those side branches as well.

By the time I finished, it was 3.30am! Just enough time for a group shot.......

clockwise from top left: PAK2, DF, PAK1 and Gorilla.

So did I go to bed, or did I skin up a tiddler?

Well it's 9.15am, I've got a joint in my mouth and I've spent 15 minutes writing up this post..... it's gonna be in the high 30°C's today, so I can relax in the knowledge I've called in sick today!

Have a great day everyone. I will!

[ledbud]

Lovely bro

[ledbud]

How your girls coming on bro.
Do you see any difference from Autos, i think to early see any difference.

[teetee]

Hey Ledbud,

I'm not finding these as easy to grow as Autos, for sure.

Autos generally need a lower EC feed, so growing multiple Auto strains is a bit easier to manage as there's little variation in the ECs required.

What I'm finding with the Fems, is that Sativa strains (like my Des Frans) need lower ECs, Hybrids (like Gorilla) need mid strengths ECs and full Indicas (like the PAKs) need higher EC feeds.

As a result of me giving one feed for all most of the time, and also cos I perhaps pushed too hard on some of them, I am seeing my plants suffer.

Anyway, it's day 39, so lets start with the obligatory group shot, taken on day 31...

clockwise from top left: PAK2, DF, PAK1 and Gorilla.

The big three were all about 40cm high, and 50-60cm wide.

Des Fran was probably the biggest. She had reacted well to the LST and topping, and was filling out with side bracnches and potential bud sites.....

I then put her on an EC 1.0 feed, having raised her up from EC 0.9 on day 29, mainly by adding another 0.1ml/L more of Amino Extract.

A week later on day 37, this is how she looks....

Light green leaves with yellow patches..... am I under feeding her?
The EC of the run off was lower than feed strength last week, but now it comes out higher - so over feeding, right?.... but the leaf tips aren't browning, so maybe that's not the case?

She's grown taller than the others at 48cm, with the top two stems formed after topping being 29cm long, with 8 staggered nodes.

From above you can see she takes up a good amount of space, but should I stake her out a bit, or top some of the side branches?

The side branches that I LST'd a few weeks ago, by pulling them out at 90°, have now grown up and have a good 8 or so nodes on them. I might have to do some more LST before I flip her.

Back on day 31, Gorilla was on an EC 1.0 feed, but slightly stronger than the Des Fran feed, as it has a touch more N.

You can see how nicely she had grown after the LST, but I was concerned that she's going a bit pale, and some of the leaves are yellowing down below....

One week later, and she's very poorly, and has hardly grown. A lot of leaves have yellowed and needed removal, but I have to stop somewhere.....

She looks worse in real life.... the leaves are really pale at the edges then brown off at the tips.

She is still around 40cm high, as the other two were last week, and the 2 new stems from topping are only 18 cm long with 5 nodes.

Here she is from above....

PAK2 was also on the same feed as the Gorilla, and she is much darker green and healthier in general, but the new leaves are a bit lighter green in colour....

In this shot, you can see she has a lot of action going on in there, and is growing pretty well...

Sometimes, like in these shots, she can look a bit droopy, I especially see it at 'lights on', but after an hour or so she really picks up again.This shot was taken an hour later, and she was looking much perkier....

On day 37, she has continued to do reasonably well...

She stands at 45cm high, and the two highest stems where I topped her are 25cm long and have 8 staggered nodes.

I've had to snip a few old fans off, but she's pretty much the pick of the bunch.

From above, she's looking good....

The PAK1 is growing, but so much differently to the rest.... she was only 13cm high on day 31, I topped her (badly) so topped her again, and also removed the top 4 large fan leaves - they were so velvety and healthy, so it was a hard decision, but it had exposed all the inner new tops.....

A week later on day 37, she's about 15cm high, so has a lot to do if she's gonna catch up with the others.

I removed a lot of lower leaves, old fan leaves and inner stringy stuff, so she can concentrate on what she's got.....

I need to know what to do from now on.....

How much more veg time.... it's day 39 from when they popped out the coco, and I am thinking maybe 7-10 more days till 12/12?

I reckon the main 3 will be ready to flip soon, but do they need more growth after the LST I did?

I want the PAK1 to be flippin with the rest, so how do I prep her to make the most of it?

I gave them all a good flush with an EC 0.8 feed last night, and will do the same again today to see what the run off EC is like.

Then I plan to put the PAKs on a slightly higher EC 1.0 feed as they seemed to be in the sweet spot there.
Des Fran is recoverable, but I am worried about the Gorilla.
To be honest, I'm struggling to work out how to save her.