Class 207: Grow At-Home with SmokeeeJ and Drogado del Gato, Pt. 5
Stepping back into our grow, and I find I am ready to go to take my plants into our last phase of growth. I start by setting up my Gorilla Grow 5×5 tent and Growers Choice ROI-e680 420w LED horticulture light setup. I want to start by verifying that my environment is going to hold an acceptable range of temperatures and humidity for my flowering plants. I set up my light in the tent on its flowering light cycle of 12 hours light, 12 hours dark with a Govee Thermometer/Hydrometer bluetooth sensor. I monitor the changes, and arrange my plants to sit in for one cycle to watch for any big changes. I am glad that I did, because I found myself with a problem of the humidity shooting up to 90% at night! I was not only surprised by this but prepared if I needed to adjust the environment. To do this, I decided to add an exhaust and intake fan along with a carbon scrubber to help control any odors.
I decided to go with the AC Infinity line of ventilation options for my tent. I decided on the CLOUDLINE models in the 6 inch and 4 inch sizes to use as an intake and exhaust fan. I also decided to try the AC Infinity brand of Duct Carbon FIlters as well as some ducting to connect everything. I place my 4 inch fan in a bottom draw-string port, and secure it using the draw strings on both ends while running the power and control cords to where I need them. I then connect my 6 inch fan to my carbon filter, then I run a line of ducting from the fan to a port as an exhaust. I use hangers, velcro straps, and zip ties to secure everything to the tent frame running my power as well as controls to an accessible part of my tent. The carbon filter will control the odor while the fans exchange the air inside the tent every 6-8 minutes. My tent stays between 70 and 82 degrees with humidity between 40-60%. I would not want to vary farther than these ranges in my flower tent or I would run the risk of mold or sickness in my plants.
In addition to my intake and exhaust fans, I also add an oscillating fan to help create air flow within my tent. I move my Ace of Spades pheno #2, Blood Diamond Pheno #2, and my Nightfire OG into the tent to begin flowering. Before I do this, I transfer all of the plants into 5 gallon SmartPots, using a soil/coco mix, Dynomyco, organic micronutrients called #jerrysballs, and place the new pots of soil on the risers inside the tent. After the first night, I defoliate my plants of the lower ⅓ of growth, as well as any leaves going up the branches, leaving only the top leaves. This is also the time I will do any more low stress training because we won’t want to disturb the plants after week 3 or so. I train and keep my plants fed and watered roughly a gallon per day of water with a pH of around 6.0. On week 3, I remove any of my low stress training material along with any bud site that have formed on the lowers of the plant. We want several cohesive areas as our bud sites so we can maximize our yields. I defoliate the large leaves once more, and any interior canopy leaves so we get maximum light penetration. My last move will be to set up a trellis netting to arrange and even my canopy for my plants before entering the final phases of flower.
I see a difference in every plant when looking at budding sites, density, and canopy growth. The Blood Diamond #2 is the surprise star of the tent with an even canopy and a healthy amount of bud sites already thick with growth. Aside from a difference in a few inches, my plants maintained an even canopy with healthy development of flowering stages. The Ace of Spades #2 suffered some shock when I broke the root ball when transplanting pots. The result is I might see a reduced yield because it struggled to recover instead of developing fruiting areas early on, and when recovered, the majority of the bud sites were located at the tops of the plant. I will continue to run all of these plants, and I hope all will still be excellent when finished. Nightfire OG also saw some noteworthy growth, and the amount of budsites was a pleasant surprise. That said, I discovered that Nightfire had turned hermaphrodite early in flowering.
Nightfire OG before it flipped to hermaphrodite, the buds stacking on top of the leaf stem was a warning to watch this plant.
The finding of a hermaphrodite plant can be good, bad, or indifferent. Some don’t catch these changes when they happen and their entire flower room gets pollinated which can be bad. A note on what to look for is the formation of pollen sacks on the middle of the central stem. A cultivation who finds this might cull the plant, or the entire strain because they’re indifferent to flawed genetics when space matters most. This Nightfire OG, was sourced from a local vendors seeded batch sold in dispensaries. The good will be that we will attempt to create a positive from the situation. I removed the plant as soon as I discovered, and isolated it to its own flower space. I will attempt to let this plant self-pollinate which could breed the hermaphroditism out and result in seeds that are roughly 95% female. I will continue to flower this strain to collect the seeds which we can try to explore at a later date. We will continue to master our grow setup and collect clones from confirmed females, while we make changes to teach more as we go.
The spring equinox is March 20th, and around that time I’ve decided to get some plants outdoors to flower. This would be the perfect time to capitalize on the photo-cycle of the sun here in Arizona being about 12 hours light and 12 hours dark. If you started germinating seeds, or raising clones in December or January, you could move your plants outdoors to possible great success. Hopefully, you can determine sex in preflower, or continue a plant that might have flipped herm in flower for seeds. I will be doing both. I will be taking my Nightfire OG to an outdoor greenhouse to isolate it for self-pollinating and raise it from feminized seeds. I will also take one of my raised Fuerte plants from @wcgt_ and utilize the sun to flower it. With some planning, you can catch some great sun to flower with in the ideal temperatures here in the southwest, but beware the extreme heat that may destroy your plants. We will continue and diversify our methods to see the difference in quality we get from an indoor tent using a light, to an indoor-outdoor hybrid that we flower with natural sunlight. Keep up with the progress and results in a future episode, and let’s see what is coming for a Sea of Green cycle in our next run.
To prepare, I continue to raise my Sunset Sherbert and Wedding Cake clones from @birdman378. We also got some new clones from @dinosaur_barber who provided a Strawberry Cake and Space Candy clone. I also helped a friend transplant some hydroponic raised clones into a soil/coco medium. In return, he provided clones of MAC Cap’s cut, so quickly I will be ready for our next cycle with a more pronounced diversity of genetics. I am looking at popping some Banana Biscotti Sundae x Wilson seeds I also got from @dinosaur_barber. It is amazing how fast 12 plants can be met or exceeded. As you learn and master the skills needed to keep a revolving flower tent, you will be able to control the growth cycle for your plants as needed. We are looking at some cool new methods to explore in the future, and I’m curious what the readers would like to learn about next? Check in, grow with us and help us teach home cultivation 101 on the Cannabis Cactus App under the Connect Tab, and let’s check in with SmokeeeJ!
See the whole cultivation series to keep reading and learning.
Adrian Ryan was born in New Mexico and attended school since elementary in Arizona, his time growing up split between the two states. He hopes to work towards recreational cannabis, enjoys reading, writing, film, music, and also writing music.