nineandfive wrote:What kinda feed chart or system are you using with the fox farm stuff.. i am curious. i have all the fox farm nutes myself

I consult the feed chart but I take no solace in it. It's based on a 12 week grow and my plant is allegedly a 9 week grow, yet to be determined. So how do we amend it to 9 weeks? Plus it's not geared to autos which require less food. Plus again, since we grow in FFOF we don't have to add any more food for a few weeks. In retrospect I think you can start adding Big Bloom pretty early on. It's relatively gentle, organic and may be beneficial. Then I subscribed to this philosophy:

Weeks 4 - 6. The plants are now entering a pre flowering stage. During this time the plants should exhibit explosive growth, often as much as a new set of nodes and 1" vertical growth a day. This is the time when they will gain most of their vertical height. Many people make the mistake of switching from vegetative to flowering nutrients at this point, assuming that since they see flowers it must be the proper time. This is incorrect. If the switch to flowering nutes is made at this time the vertical growth will stop and the plant will put it's energy into producing buds. If you need to keep your plants small, or want them to finish earlier, they by all means switch nutes at this point. But if you want to get the most out of your plants continue feeding vegetative nutes until you see the vertical growth slow and stop. Depending on the strain that will usually be sometime during week 5 or 6.

So I give Grow Big and Big Bloom eventually including Tiger Bloom. Then Grow Big and Tiger Bloom equal parts so you're giving the 3 main nutrients in almost equal parts. I think the main thing is to make all nutrients available. The plant will take what it needs. Just make them present. (This was told to me by a person at Cornell Cooperative).And not too heavy. Then flushing shd be unnecessary (I now know).

That's pretty much it. Oh, and a teaspoon of calmag each feeding..........

Yep i agree... Ive just been trying to figure out what a feeding chart would look like when it comes to autos. I am assuming you seen the normal FF chart. This is what i came up with .... HOWEVER! it holds no value as of yet cause i had a serious nitrogen problem. BUT i did kinda push my own luck with the autos and i should of flushed when i even had the flush put down on my own chart ! I pushed my luck a bit to far with the nutes... However iam happy to say that i flushed them quickly enough tho that today they all seemed to bounce back quick ! In 4 weeks i hit 27.5 " so iam guessing i was going ok till now lol... Anyway i have and use the whole FF line up and its nice to see someone else on here using FF as well. Its good cause i like to see what and how much your using at what times.

On the clock. One week till the breeder's harvest as-soon-as date, two weeks till my totally uneducated guesstimated harvest date. I have one yellowed plant, one green plant. I think this may be what happened:
I unadvisedly flushed with a clearing solution 9 days ago. I asked lots of opinions how much to flush given a 3 gallon container and got answers from 2 to 15 gallons with the median falling around 3 times the container size or 9 gallons. The recipe on the back of the bottle calls for 7-15 ml per gallon. I conservatively mixed 10 ml per gallon and flushed Plant 1 with 3 gallons. Plant 2 then got a 1 gallon flush, no good reason. I measured the runoff PPM and got 500, 265, 220 after each gallon in Plant 1 and 728 after Plant 2's gallon. My tap water is 105. This is a low ppm and suggests there was no big salt buildup to dissolve and may explain why Plant 1 always had a tendency for yellow lower fan leaves going way back, always a borderline N deficiency. First grow and advised better to under water and under feed I may have been under feeding. The regimen to start at 1/4 nutes and build to no more than 1/2 strength, I never got over 1/4, waiting for a compelling signal from the plants to increase.

Anyway, now I'm guessing when they'll finish and when to put them on a water only diet. I considered that I had to replenish nutrients that had been depleted. So they were fed on May 29th, watered on June 1st, and fed again yesterday June 4th. My original projected flush day was today. That's not happening.

This is what my unpracticed eye sees. Pistils that are about 50/50 white to brown along the upper reaches and white in the majority below. Trichomes look mostly clear though at 30X I can't get a close enough look and at 60X I can't steady it. I'm not sure I'll notice the change towards cloudy.

Next water is water. The one after that will be June 9th, ordinarily feeding day, that could be swing day, to feed or not to feed. This is based on calendar watching. Plant 2 is still green. Plant 1 yellow, maybe prematurely.

Signing off,

on the fence

Personally, I wouldn't flush more than 1 or two waterings before harvesting. Don't water too often either. I wouldn't go by calendar, it's the trichomes that will generally tell you when it's ready.

Looks real good !

Today is 2 months from sowing, the day Buddha marks as the day harvest can be realized.

Today is watering day so I got a chance to get a look at the girls. Plant 1 looking a little haggard for a girl as signs of aging march on. Plant 2 a little less battered. But the flowers look ok. Best I can tell they can use more time. There are no amber trichomes although it looks like the majority are some kind of cloudy. I'm trying to tell how much the color is affected by the angle the led light on the scope hits them. The ones with leaf backing look cloudier than the ones hanging over the edge as if the light shining straight through makes them look clear. One thing for sure, I will know the amber ones when I see them. If I get there.

To return to the matter of soil ph. I got an Accurate 8 soil ph meter. I used it right after watering and got a reading 6.4. Is it an accurate Accurate 8?

On the matter of lighting (what matters most to CLW) I switched off the uvb lighting yesterday waiting for clarification from CLW about the best way to implement the uvb lighting. I noticed that lots of uvb users turn them on about 25% of the time either 15 minutes on/45 minutes off or 4 to 8 hours constant around the middle of the lighting cycle to replicate midday sun. That uvb has an effect by stressing the plant and that too much uvb can be too stressful. I don't want to totally hammer poor plant 1.

My guess is withn the next 10 days..........

Hang tough for 20% amber.
When 20 % amber then 65% cloudy and only 15 % clear. Optimal weight, taste and potency. (IMHO)
Biggest mistake made by growers is not waiting till "ripe"

CLW suggests using the UVB for the last 2-3 weeks so turn it back on.

The amount of amber for harvesting is subjective; some people prefer more some less...

TeeJay1952 wrote:Hang tough for 20% amber.
When 20 % amber then 65% cloudy and only 15 % clear. Optimal weight, taste and potency. (IMHO)
Biggest mistake made by growers is not waiting till "ripe"

Could only hang tough so long. I'll be away in a week so kind of forced my hand so cut 'em down June 27th, 78 days from sowing. It's not like they didn't look ready in many ways cause they did. Only in terms of % amber did they not get where I was looking. I thought it prudent especially to take down the bigger one which was basically defoliated by this point.

Anyway, I weighed them on an entirely untrustworthy kitchen scale and came up with, including plenty of stem, 12 oz for the bigger plant 1 and 11 oz for the baby sister, wet. I put no credence in these numbers. They make no sense. The bigger one has to be more than an ounce bigger than the smaller unless it was in a much dryer state. Plus, I'm expecting pretty modest yield the plants being small and me being essentially clueless. Using the oft used 75% loss in water weight.... No way.

They're drying in a room conditions around 75-77*, 50% RH. Pretty good.

Pictures attached...

Looks good to me! Hope they smoke as well for you.

Autos won't yield as much as a female plant of the same strain. One downside to growing them.

RKY