Cannabis Chronicles

we missed getting in pics or posts on Day 38
. . . sorry about that . . . life happens even for birds . . . the plants did get one more drink of plain water during Day 38 . . . we could have used any of our standard grow fertilizers again but chose not to . . . since these babes are already as tall as we want when we move plants into bloom . . . we didn’t want to encourage any further vegetative growth . . . today is day 39 and later today we plan a transplant into 3 gallon planters and a move to the bloom room . . . we should have pics of all that later.

in terms of when we first feed from above. it’s just by watching the plants not a specific day . . . and that’s generally true with everything . . . we grow based on the plant’s progress and needs rather than any artificial timetable . . . we made the move to bloom today . . . this included a transplant to 3 gallon planters and a move to the 12/12 light cycle under HPS lights . . . details and pics should follow if time allows.

LUI Day 39 - the backup clones

first we wanted to give the “teaser” . . . we had 100% success with our LUI back-up clones and want to show them off first . . . the LUI appears to clone easily since it’s grown nice extensive roots already . . . some of the other strains we grow are really just starting to get decent roots at this point . . . the LUI’s backups have a strong root network . . . one reason we want to show this first is to remind folks it’s best not to move your plants to bloom until you’ve established that your back-ups are rooted and ready to go . . . clones can still be taken from a plant after it’s been moved to bloom but they are usually much slower to root.
LUI-Clones-on-Day-39-from-Germination
102 LUI-12-Clone-on-Day-39-from-Germination102 LUI-Clone-showing-roots-Day-39-from-Germ

we culled our first LUI today as well . . . LUI 13 is showing some male pre-flowers and was culled today . . . although we are considering the LUI for potential breeding . . . we don’t want a male who’s so eager to show off his stuff in veg.

LUI-13-male-pre-flower

when we culled LUI #13 we also pulled the back-up clone. here’s a peak at some of the root system it developed.

here they are their final moments in the “grow show” before they move to the “bloom room”. for soil we used the same mushroom compost and FoxFarm OceanForest mix we’d used previously in the prior transplant to five qt buckets . . . this time the step up was to three gallon planters . . . after transplant each LUI bush was given a good drink of pure water . . . between the dozen babes we transplanted we used about 5 gallons of water total . . .

107 LUI-Day-39-Group
108 LUI-pre-transplant-day-39

109 12-three-gallon-planters-waiting
110 LUI-mid-transplant-day-39
111 LUI-Day-39-in-3-gallon-planters

since the LUI’s were a little “fast” . . . their vegetative vigor was better than anticipated (a good problem to have) . . . they pushed us into moving them into our bloom room before we had planned . . . this entailed a minor reconfiguration in our bloom room for a few days . . . our “normal” bloom room array is 10 2′x3′ containers arranged to give a footprint of 12′x5′ under three 600 watt PL Lights with air-cooled hoods . . . we also use track light movers to spread the light and eliminate “hot spots” directly under the bulbs . . .

12 x 5 = 60 sq feet
600 x 3 =1800 watts
1800 watts / 60 square feet = 30 watts per square foot

that’s our “standard” bloom room array . . . but one of the beauties of the 2′x3′ containers is the way we can configure them in multiple ways inside a 12′ wide footprint . . . eight containers can fit a 12′x4′ footprint . . . and twelve containers can fit into a 12′ x 6′ footprint . . . since the LUI’s were “early” . . . we accommodated them by a temp reconfigure of our bloom room to fit 12 containers . . . the temp footprint is 12′ x 6′ = 72 square feet . . . under 1800 watts that actually lowers our watts per square foot to 25 watts per sq foot . . . it’s below what we’d suggest to new growers but some growers such as “the Tick” at OG have had success with this seemingly low watts per sq foot . . . in our opinion it takes a very experienced gardener and a tweaked garden to pull off . . . this change in footprints is only possible because of our light movers . . . in a few seconds we can change a screw setting to allow a longer run and spread the light over a little more garden . . . we’ve got a couple containers of Herijuana very near harvest . . . and we’ll be culling LUI males from this grow . . . the garden will be back to it’s normal footprint before the week is out . . . but for now we wanted to share how we accommodated our fast growing LUI friends . . . we’ve placed 4 LUI each in their 3 gallon planters inside our standard 2′x 3′ tubs ( they serve to catch any watering runoff or spills and to keep our garden configuration neat ) . . . so that means there are a total three 2′ x 3′ containers of four LUI eac . . . a total of twelve LUI’s moving to bloom . . .

we’ll anticipate something close to a 50/50 sex ratio . . . so we’d expect something around 6 females . . . maybe 7 or if we’re really lucky 8 girls . . . depending on how tightly we want to pack them in their final array this means we’d expect them to likely occupy two or perhaps three of our 2′x3′ containers once the males have been culled . . . this is why we put them 4 to a container now . . . they already occupy the largest footprint we’d expect from them . . . and culling the males will make more room for the girls as they grow and bush out . . .

-clone-on-day-39-from-germination