How many branches you want is mostly personal preference and kinda depends on your space, more branches, more space, and you’re gonna get minor branches that come up as well if you let them, so I like 4 or 6 main branches and let the center minor branches come up to help fill the canopy/screen.
Both of you start your journal and make an initial post to open it. Put it in the ‘Grow Journals’ section under beginner or wherever most appropriate. Tag me in to the thread you want moved and I’ll take care of it.
You are very welcome. You’re gonna love flowering time when the buds come.
@Hellraiser, well day 38, the girls are healthy and happy. I also picked up a few bags of happy frog for our upcoming transplant 
I moved everything to the 3x3x6 tent yesterday.
Girls are looking big and healthy!
Just need to get them a little bigger to fill up the tent then off to flowering. The upcoming transplant will help give them a nice push. And nice clean bottoms!
@Hellraiser. What temp and RH do we need when drying? I plan on drying in my extra tent. However think I will need to get some tools to create the right environment. I know you will go over this, however me being a week behind you, I need to be prepared. Thanks in advance!
I use a humidifier, keeping the drying room about 50RH, ceiling fan on low for some air movement and temp at 69F.
Pick up a couple dozen wide-mouth quart size mason jars too, gonna need them for all the bud you’re gonna harvest. Also will want some hygrometers to monitor the RH inside the jars for final drying/curing, don’t need one for each jar but want 3 or 4 so you can at least monitor a few jars at a time.
PPM run off was 720 and 740 for the girls today, which says they’re ready for nutes. They went 4 days between watering, and of course expect the # to decrease. When I pulled up the FF feeding guide, I wanted to ask: when you used FF:
Did you use hammerflush, or good old water?
How much of the recommending doses did you follow? I know the rule of thumb is 1/4 to introduce, and yes make sure to adjust for the week feeding. As I will have to do a 1/3 or 1/5 of the 1/4 due to possible watering everyday.
The guide also is also broken down by veggie and flower stage. Should I start on week 6? Since that’s where we will be, or week 4 because that’s still in veg stage?
I know you push the envelope on things…why I wanted to know about nutes, you’re very successful at it!
When using FF, I just used ph’d water for the flushes, took them to the bathtub and ran 3 gallons of water through the pots, let them drain out for a while then back to their home. I’d do a flush for the last watering before the transplant to clear out stuff before moving to the new soil. Then want a nice weak 1/8-1/4 dose water/nute mix for that transplant watering to give them something to munch on while waiting for the big 7 gal pot to dry up.
You would follow the week 4 schedule for the rest of the time in veg, then start week 5 bloom feeding whenever you start flowering/flip lights to 12/12. I never went over 1/2 dosage of the schedule and that was with the feed, water, feed method. I would not feed more than twice a week, regardless of how often watering. Then there’s the other method of feeding every watering but I’d save that for when you move to Advanced Nutrients. With FF, I like the feed, water, feed method and use your just water days to give your cal mag.
With the cal excess one of your girls got, that makes me think your tap, even with really low TDS has a decent amount of calcium in it, I’d take the CalMag down to 1.5ml/gal on your water only days just to make sure they get enough but not too much.
But there are no hard fast rules I follow, I often just look at the plant before putting together the water and nute mix and if I think they’re a bit too dark green, I’ll go water only or very weak mix, if they look a little light green then I’ll up it a little bit. You’ll learn to “read” the plants and know when to cut back and when to push it some.
Yeah I push it, I give nutes long before most people advise it, I use more light than most people think is needed, and I get big rewards from it, fast growth and heavy harvests. People will tell you a 600 watt MH/HPS is too much light for a 3x3, when I think it’s perfect. Other people were puling 8-9 oz harvests out of a 3x3 with their 400 watt HPS when I was pulling over a pound my 600 watter. I try a lot of things that people will tel you is too much and I find out for myself what works and what does not. A 1000 watt MH/HPS is too much for a 3x3 tent, of course I tried it, LOL.
Lol, I believe it! I respect your approach to things. Thanks for taking the time, I understand completely.
My wife asked me after I ordered the Mason jars. “why did you order so many? You won’t fill them up.” I responded with “Yes, I will. Hellraiser said we would” lol.
I have always been one to challenge the norm, following what people haven’t done, helps me set my boundaries. Life is not challenging playing inside the lines. I really enjoy following yours, as you have set the pace, way ahead of anywhere I would be, and as so many others that follow. Thanks again Hell, appreciate you!
Experiment time: My wife’s cucumber garden is taking a beating due to rain so far. I thought to myself, I got time and tools to grow some indoors, and thought I would throw a twist in it.
Am going to grow 6 cucumber plants, 3 in MG soil and 3 in FFOF, starting from seedlings, using @Hellraiser method. I will start indoors and move them out in about 5 or 6 weeks. They will all get the same treatment. I thought this could teach me a few things about soil nutes. I will be growing them in my extra tent, under the burple light (235W).
Cucumber’s like water pH at 6.5, just like weed, and have a veg and flower stage with a life cycle of roughly 70 days. Let’s see how this goes.
Seeds are currently sitting in tap water, will do so for 24 hours. Seeds will go in solo cups with soil, just as we have done with weed.
I also ordered another temp and RH gauge. I will be using the extra tent for drying my harvest. I will need to get the readings to adjust accordingly. It went in this afternoon.
Nice, I used to do bonzai trees along with my special plants.
How cool! I am really enjoying growing. Wonder what else I can get into.
Noticed you haven’t been around much, please let me know if we need to bounce.Ive kept quiet the last few days
No bouncing needed, just had a few really long days at work with a dead critical server and other problems, been pulling 18-20 hours a day since Sunday night, did not even want to look at a computer the short times I’ve been at home, finally got everything back on track.
Do I need to keep these branches? When I looked at your last trim of your veg you cut a sucker branch off, and I think these are what I have. 2 on each plant, and it’s the bottom branches of the plant. It’s like I have 8 colas.
Also, when we trim the girls, does that put them in any shock? I was doing trimming every other day, but cutting back to weekly. I read it stunts growth…
Yeah I’d cut off those little low branches, they’re not going to make it up to the canopy, won’t get lot of light, might as well divert the energy to other bigger taller branches.
You can cause some slowdown/shock issues if you take too much off at once. I go with 25% rule, don’t take off more than 25% of the plant mass at once. That’s why I like the weekly maintenance, take off some leaves and smaller branches continuously through the veg period, rather than waiting til right before flowering and cutting off a whole bunch at once. But there are many days where I leave the tents with a handful of leaves, specially in late veg, like now.
Keep in mind that when you enter flowering, you really don’t want to have any little branches/bud sites on the lower third of the plant as they won’t get much light and aren’t worth the trimming time, these would be the small larfy popcorn buds you hear about, I’d rather they not be there at all (less trimming, yay!) and that energy given to larger denser buds higher up on the plant.
It’s like my bonzai training, visualize the tree you want and make the cuts to make your vision a reality.