Garden Pics I

Total Days: 54 Flower Nights: 12 BBxGS - Been bombading with WAY more light that previous cycles with these seeds and seems to have prevented the typical excessive stretch. Internodes at top are a healthy length. Might start singing some sensitive pistils starting to form, and that will trigger an adjustment to the lights. Until then, I will keep "burning" them up. One of these plants is making me regret not taking a clone off of it. It's been one of the easier ones to manage in the room. No worries as I have a 1,000 of those seeds and so far most come out great. Good thing it filled out more than 2x2 space, too. Update - after raising lights these did get the expected growth pattern based on previous seeds. Stems are thick AF. Grandpa's Stash - Vege growth is dropping off faster than a prom dress. I've had 8-week plants before, but even those still had vigorous growth through day 21 to 24ish of flower. Had a couple runty grandpa's stashes, too, unfortunately. When I pay for something it causes some decisions to be irrational. I sowed extra plants specifically so that I could toss out the runts. Not only that, i didn't put one of them in a corner slot (worst light). It is responsible for vast majority of total "gap" in canopy. Update: The slowing of vertical growth was due to too much light. Vertical growth has ramped up again, thankfully. A wake up call to monitor light distance daily, dummy. Raising 1/2 - 1" per day keeps up. Stems are very thick. Banana Hammock - I likely caused the unusual growth pattern on Ham#1 (back row, left of center pole) by over-aggressively removing too many fan leaves. The adjacent Ham#3 was also over-pruned but recovered more gracefully. The other ham was a bit small in vege but has done okay in flower. Trying my best to bombard the lanky one with enough light to slow its ascent down. Found some singed pistils today, so i had to back off with the light a bit. Update: the excess defoliation these received almost certainly caused the excess stretch as it searched for more light due limited leaf surface relative to energy needs of the plant. "i done fucked up..." but they'll still do okay. General Notes I will undoubtedly be snapping some stems of the taller plants (HST) once the shorter plants plateau. Until then some of the taller stuff may suffer some limited light stress. I'll try to do what is best for the bulk of the canopy. I'd like to have a better idea of height potential of each plant before snapping any stems of the taller ones. No point in leveling out a canopy, if it isn't going to remain level. Second time with a scrog and trying new things.. none of which will be repeated from this cycle, LOL. I need to be more systematic about it. For one, reduce number of colas per plant. All i've done is increase trimming time with excessive axillary growth. Two colas per sq ft will achieve same mass per square foot of yield and be easier to trim / less overall work. Working backward from intended number of colas in future will help. Also, eight primary branches did not consistently work well. On some, the lowest pair were completely useless and had to be removed. Start with 4-6 primary branches in future. Also, do a better job breaking apical dominance of terminal buds near end of training. These bits need to be held lower than scorg canopy and for longer before released. Possibly try topping and then reducing to 1 terminal bud if still exhibiting symmetrical growth. Setting them back early and let them catch up late. We'll see how it goes and implement a better plan next grow cycle. By next winter, it should all be 90-95% codified. Consistency in how I do things allows for fine-tuning of processes. This wasn't possible the first few years of growing and also not without some horrible setbacks to learn from. It makes you feel all warm inside as it comes to fruition. Update 4 days later - scrog actually filled in quite well by FD16 and still filling in. The gaps around smallest stash are slightly mitigated with some training of the taller Ham1 plant adjacent to it, but this is limited. compared to last scrog grow where an entire plant was removed due to herming, this cycle may actually be more productive, but can definitely improve it. Also went with 10 plants this time instead of 12 the prvious while vegeing for only 2 days longer. Had i tossed the 2 runts for the extra homebrew plants i germinated to cover such things, it'd be even better yield. Some positives to take from it, but defnitely plenty of constructive criticism too. This sort of thing is my wheelhouse.. creating a system to account for all variations.. a mindless series of behaviours (once an SOP is refined) that will incrementally control the outcomes in a specific and repeatable way - simply observe and react per day and the outcome is assured, Barring oncontrollable hiccups like a herm, staying over 1.5g/w will be easy as pie.