Another run with Sannie's Killing Fields

Week 4 started today with a little bit of defoliation.


Those fan leaves came from somewhere...


They do look kinda bare.


My AC's thermostat finally crapped out for good and got bypassed. It's running on a timer until a proper Honeywell digital controller arrives.

 

Looking good brother. From this point out I would remove no more than two or three fan leaves per week that get directly in the way of light blocking a bud. Otherwise they look good.

 

Thanks, Mr.G. I was encouraged to see no vertical growth overnight. Hope it lasts for a couple more days as I'm rapidly running out of room to raise the light.

 

Week 5 begins... This has been an interesting week. After the defoliation, the plants quit stretching for 4 days, then took off again. They've filled back in surprisingly fast. The calendar says that the stretch should last one more day, but this morning appeared to be the last of it, at 29 days. Good thing, as the light is all the way up and the top buds are a foot from the glass.


The bud development appears to be about a week behind compared to the last grow without defoliation.


Looks like I'll be needing some larger tools when the time comes. 8 weeks to go....

 

looking good man. that kf stretches like hell for sure. that trait carried across in my x.

 

Thanks, Blazer.

Week 6 starts today. Stretch lasted 29 days, which seems pretty normal. The buds are developing s l o w l y and the sugar leaves are filling up with trichs. The nutes are still at 800 ppm and I'm fighting the urge to go higher.

 

It looks perfect man.

 

Their looking good. Depending on strain it can add up to a week of flowering. I've decided to post a how to defoliate video next grow and I hope that helps a lot of people. I'll post it on the site and YouTube also.

 

It looks like I’ve managed to fuck up another grow. It took me a while to figure out what I did. So, here’s how I think things went wrong:

A couple of weeks back, i noticed that the top buds weren’t developing at the usual rate and seemed to have much more orange pistils than they should have at that stage. I wasn’t real sure what caused this. Two major things in this grow were different: Defoliation and feeding at 2/3 the normal (for me) ppm.

Two days after I fired up my AC, the thermostat in it failed for good and I bypassed it, using a timer to turn the AC every half hour during the hotter part of the day. This worked pretty well at keeping the cabinet cool. Two days later, jumping on the defoliation bandwagon, i pulled all the fan leaves off. Two days after that, we had hot weather around here and the room temp went up to 78F, causing the cabinet temp to rise to 85F. In the past, this would have been a minor problem, but with no fan leaves the plants couldn’t cool themselves and got cooked. Buds that were nearly 2 feet from the glass in the hood were affected.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that if one is going to give defoliation a try one must have one’s temperature under control at ALL times. Lesson learned. I have a thermostat now. And it looks as if I’ll have enough popcorn for a movie theatre in a few more weeks. Better than nothing, I guess. I figure that 1/3 of my yield went bye-bye.

 

I think that whole defoliation thing should be taken with a grain of salt. While it does work, I suspect it works better on some strains than others. Case in point, the candyland I am growing. I did not defoliate the table this time and I really don't see a difference, but, candyland doesn't really grow much either, at least not that I can tell.

 

I'd be willing to try it again, as it sure does get a lot of light deep into the canopy. At least my popcorn will be ripe.

There are quite a few decent buds buried in the foliage that seem to be developing properly.

 

I'd try it again for sure. The sour d I am running looks like it would benefit from it, I know my cheese krush did.

 

Week 9- You know how they say to remove the small stuff down low so the top buds get all the resources? This is sort of the opposite… Lots of undeveloped colas and vast quantities of lower stuff that is getting enough light to not look completely like popcorn. I’ve never seen so many bud sites. Trimming is going to be fun.



Got the AC put back together in permanent form a couple of days ago. The new thermostat (Honeywell T775A2009) looks a little “industrial” but it works well and has some really good features, including a relay that’s good for 1/2 hp and timers to prevent the compressor from cycling too frequently. It’s also got a clock and 2 set points, though I’m not using those, they might come in handy. I tried to get the stock part but apparently the AC unit is a throwaway model. Too bad it’s glued into the wall so well. Next big project is a mini-split.



One thing that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time finally got done: I got some 16 oz. widemouth bottles that will accommodate a 60 cc syringe easily and allow it to reach the bottom of the container. This cuts my nute-making time almost in half and keeps the counter tidy. It may not seem like much but getting liquid out of a gallon bottle into a syringe that won’t fit into the bottle is a time-consuming and messy PITA.

 

If you looked around you can probably find squirt tops for those nute bottles. Like the pump/squirt ones for condiments.

 

I've seen those pumps also. They'd be a good choice if I made larger batches, but with only 8 gallons being made per batch, maybe not so much. The best I was able to come up with were these:

I find it convenient to fill up a handful of syringes, then tote them over to the tank and squirt them in. Less potential for spills that way. Plus they rinse out easily and it's easy to measure accurately.

 

I had a syringe like those when I first started doing hydro and the writing eventually wore off. What I'd really like is if GH can make a gallon bottle of micro that doesn't dribble everywhere when you pour it.

 

Funny that you mention the micro... I've had two bottles that have developed a leak in the seam. Just enough to be messy when shook. I look at the bottles pretty carefully at the hydro store now.

The syringes don't last forever, especially the small ones. The paint does come off quickly with those. But they do help a lot when trying to formulate a tiny batch to see how the ppm of a certain combination looks. Also good for the amount of pH down that seems to go with RO water. I'm only needing about 1ml to adjust 8 gallons.