[rama777]

So I’ve been hanging around the THCfarmer forum and I gather that the most experienced and likewise kind people on the website all sing the praises of Trustfall seeds very highly. I just ordered my first beans from him today 🙂

[rama777]

Cool that’s good to know! I thought maybe some strains might stretch much more than even 3 times.

[rama777]

I don’t, but since I’ll have to be guessing, I’m gonna guess 70-76 days.

That could be maybe a maximum of a 3.5x stretch? As high as 4x?

[rama777]

No not really. Ultimately everything is great shape!

[rama777]

I just looked at my photo dates and the first and largest male flower (but still not mature) was spotted on day 11. For sure nothing opened up after that. So I think that’s a solid confirmation that it was a pre-flower that must have released any pollen. How many? I doubt more than one. Even the confirmed hermie created no more than 4-5 male flowers that I could find, out of god knows how many female flowers, and only two that were sizable yet still immature.Obviously I’m just trying to talk my own fears down here 😉  50% rational thoughts, possible 50% denial thoughts..

[rama777]

Looking over your last comment does make me feel more sure that whatever flower opened would have been a pre-flip flower. Hopefully it was just one and not too loaded.

[rama777]

Thank you for the answers!

I went ahead an lollipopped and pruned two of the plants. The other is still stretching fast still. I would have liked to have taken more leaves off but since I had a plant go hermie, I got shy about causing any more stress than necessary.

Thankfully I was wrong. I only had one true hermie hopefully. The others got the green light. The one plants was just undeniably putting out some male flowers. None of them opened as far as I could tell but I think one must have, possibly before the flip. I watch these plants so closely though. It seems so unlikely that I wouldn’t have seen the flower in an open state, but it is what it is. Any previous thought I had about the plants being potential hermaphrodites was nanners later on. So during veg and until I spotted a flower at around day 13 after the flip, I was not scouting for any male flowers. Once I saw plenty of pistils on all the plants during veg, male flowers were not on my radar.

I have a fair number of seeds developing on the pre-flip flowers on the remain 3 plants. I’ve pinched some off that have brown pistils and all had a tiny green, hard formation. I’m essentially certain they are seeds.

I have some brown tips here and there on the buds that are forming. More on a particular plant that started showing some light intensity stress (no heat stress in my tent). I moved the light up and will slowly bring it closer. I just brought it a little too close, too soon. I also am questioning if my oscillating fans are on too high a setting. Hoping that the new brown tips are from light stress, wind stress or a combination of both. Time will tell. There is no two ways around the fact that some amount of pollen is or was circulating given the seeds forming, at the minimum on the pre-flip flowers.

There’s virtually no way that I can imagine that I would have missed a big pollen dump even from a single flower.  So my fingers are crossed that the seeds will be very minimal but I am admittedly feeling anxious about it. We’ll just have to see what happens..

I cut the net out since I had more space from removing the hermie. So I do now have the option of removing the plants and bleaching the room and equipment. 

 

[rama777]

I’ve got a few leaves that are lightly fading at the base of the plants, 9 days into flower. I had been blending in veg nutes with bloom nutes and tapering that down. Never the less, is this indicative of the beginnings of an N deficiency?

Watering these big pots can be weird. I was wondering if perhaps a dry pocket or two would cause this, but again it’s all at the base of the plants.

I want to nip it in the bud and give them some more N sooner and later if they need it but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

Also possible that I am overwatering some. It’s kind of difficult to judge still. Possible cause of this?

[rama777]

I’ve got a few fading lower leaves, day 9 into 12/12. Does it look like a nitrogen deficiency forming?

The canopy is very dense so I don’t know if it’s just normal for the lower leaves receiving the least amount of light to start fading of if it’s something I should potentially fix with more nitrogen before it’s past a good time to do so.

[rama777]

I’ve got a few fading lower leaves, day 9 into 12/12. Does it look like a nitrogen deficiency forming?

The canopy is very dense so I don’t know if it’s just normal for the lower leaves receiving the least amount of light to start fading of if it’s something I should potentially fix with more nitrogen before it’s past a good time to do so.

[rama777]

Got the net in. Last shot of the grow, which heartbreakingly is over. I never did any major defoliation but was taking some leaves off every 2-3 days throughout this first 13 days of flowering. Feedings weren’t perfect but I don’t think wildly off or anything. Temps were on point, VPD decent.

Found some male flowers, seeing lots of brown tips on pistils. Haven’t spotted any open flowers but I think it’s time to end the grow..

[rama777]

I figured out a different way to approach this if I get a lux meter.

A simpler question about how deep to prune is: how many minimum HPS lumens would you want at an actual bud site to be happy with the quality, density of those buds?

[rama777]

Actually that brings up one more question. If I did decide to heavily defoliate at around day 21 to allow for a significantly deeper light penetration below the canopy, would the smaller fan leaves that are developing just grow out to a large size again and block all the lower light that I attempted to create?

[rama777]

Screen going in tonight or tomorrow.

Do you have any advice about how high the colas should come up past the screen, optimally? I’m expecting about 10 more inches of growth. I could try to lower the screen down and feed the tips through for a few inches. I could then use a second screen 6” up, leaving about 5-6” of tops above the second screen.

Or I could put the screen at canopy height now, which would leave upwards of 10-11” of tops above just the one screen.

Lastly, I could wait to install a single screen so that I just have 6-8” or so of tops above the screen after the stretch is over.

Also, if you happen to see this within a few days, what are your thoughts about how deep to prune off bud sites and branches that are underneath the canopy?

Or perhaps put another way in the context of my overall finished plant height, how deep does HPS penetrate and actually create good buds? That brings up the question of the leaf density of the canopy. With about 80 tops in a 3 foot square, there will be more restriction of light passing through the canopy than if I had significantly less tops. So in my mind, it may be wise to remove bud sites to a deeper level than if I had less tops/more open light.

But, even if that logic holds true, I still don’t have much of an idea of how far up to remove bud sites and branches! Or put another way, how far down from the top of the rather thick canopy to allow bud development.

In my case, I estimate the finished canopy height to be 28” above the actual soil line.

Thank you!!

[rama777]

I had some ballast and bulb compatibility issues but that’a been sorted out with hortilux supers. Here’s the last of the pretty metal halide shots from yesterday. Nothing but ugly ass orange from here on out 🙁

 

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