Late Tropical Outdoors

[Faith]

Hiya amlez

You have some really nice strains there!  Love outside ones and tuning in for sure.

all the best and good growing!

faith

[MediKat]

I say drop the ww and ssh in the ground and start lst'ing. May the canna god be with you. 

  All the best

[amlez]

Mixed luck for me since my last update.

Pulled the Charas a month or so ago – yielded just over an ozzy dried & cured. Not great, but my best result to date and smoke was good (much better than the ‘chemically’ immature crap I been smoke’n for the past many years off the street!!)

Unfortunately lost her sister just as I was about to put her outside to flower.

Went from this :

to this : in the space of a week. Not sure, but I think the roots overheated & rotted in what was an extremely hot few weeks in this part of the world. I now “shield” the pots with cardboard cartons during the day to try and keep the sun’s heat off the sides of the pots

 

Of the 2 Charas clones I took prior to her demise, lost one to lack of water (went away fishing for 4 days - obviously not enough water). Managed to save the other clone, but severely setback, although did have her back on track until recently when she’s taken a turn for the worse again??

 

The Thai Skunk was really kicking along nicely , so being Sativa & all, decided to give it the benefit of the large hole I’d been preparing for the past few months (crab/prawn shells, fish skin/frames, cow shit, etc) when it was time to put it outside – a chance to grow into all it’s Sativa beauty. The bastard dropped balls 2 weeks after transplanting – bumma!!

 

OK – now the current crew. Potted both the White Widow & Super Silver Haze out into 430mm pots about a month ago – mid November.

 

Super Silver Haze:-

My lightbox isn’t big enough to take two pots of this size, so tossed a coin and decided to take the SSH off overnight 6hours light regime.

 

Within a week of being outside & taking light purely from the sun, she started flowering.

Now being a Sativa’ish strain, all my research told me that firstly the thing would continue to grow to a large size, it would take it’s time to flower, and would flower for between 65 to 80 days before being ready to harvest. My girl has been flowering now for less than 30 days without putting on any further considerable growth, and it looks to me that she’s getting ready to harvest already? Not too sure whether to let it run its course for another month, or chop her now??

 

 

White Widow:-

Wanted to get some more bulk on this one so left it at 6 hours under CFL each night and then out into the sun all day, until last weekend (100days from germination).

 

It’s now outside running purely on solar power – as at this morning no show of flowering. A few concerns over this one. While it’s had a pretty text book 3 months of veg (well for me anyway) with no real concerns with bugs etc, and looked pretty healthy for the most part, it’s now looking a bit off’ish (similar to the Charas that I lost suddenly a few months ago at 70 days of veg when it had been looking pretty good just prior).

 

Getting sort of mixed messages from it – turned down leaf tips ( indicating too much Nitrogen ??) but yellowing bottom leafs (indicating not enough N ??). I don’t think I’ve been overdoing the feed regime – alternate Seaweed Extract, Charlie Carp and plain water.

 

On & off over the past 10 days or so it’s looked kind of ‘droopy’ – not sure if it’s not liking the very tropical heat we’re getting now, not enough water, too much water??

I’m very conscious of not overwatering, and generally leave it until it’s bone dry (which can be upwards of 6/7 days), but it’s hard not to want to water it after a day baking in the tropical sun and coming home to it "drooping".

 

As always, any comments/advise taken on board in the spirit they’re given.

 

Thanks for reading !!

[Sir PsychoHashy]

It's a shame about the ones you lost, and I can understand how that would make you overly worry about your others, but to my slightly inexperienced eye your plants seem to be doing fine.  White Widow looks healthy enough from what I can see, as for droopy, can be under watering, or over, and really hot days can sometimes do it a bit as well.  Could be the root zone getting a little hot if she's in a pot, maybe.  My outdoors plants are always in the ground, even if they are in a pot, so I have no relevant experience on that, but I have seen mine suck out all their water in less than 24hrs with temps in the high 30's + and start drooping only to pick back up within a few minutes of watering.  Might be worth watering less, but more often?

 

I'd be letting the SSH go for longer yet, try and wait for the 3rd browning off, and some more bulking up.  Being in the tropics and flowering this early in the season gives you the perfect opportunity for a really long sativa flowering, so I reckon it's worth riding it out as long as you can.  Plus, she just doesn't look ready yet.

 

Best of luck

[Jagged]

Check ur PH

[amlez]

It's a shame about the ones you lost, and I can understand how that would make you overly worry about your others, but to my slightly inexperienced eye your plants seem to be doing fine.  White Widow looks healthy enough from what I can see, as for droopy, can be under watering, or over, and really hot days can sometimes do it a bit as well.  Could be the root zone getting a little hot if she's in a pot, maybe.  My outdoors plants are always in the ground, even if they are in a pot, so I have no relevant experience on that, but I have seen mine suck out all their water in less than 24hrs with temps in the high 30's + and start drooping only to pick back up within a few minutes of watering.  Might be worth watering less, but more often?

Cheers Pscycho.

I think I might experiment with my 'soil mix' next grow - thought I was on a winner using my beautiful homegrown compost mixed 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 with perlite & coir, but the compost really seems to hold the moisture (or maybe it's the coir??). I think this may be leading to lockout & roots ability to suck up any nutrients (and I may still have a tendency to overdo the Charlie Carp, Seaweed Extract & GoGo - although I thought I was using them fairly sparingly, and also thought it difficult to 'overdo' any of the products I'm using!!).

My issue continues to be inability to get really good strong early growth that I see in so many grow journals here & elsewhere. I get mine going OK and kinda healthy, but seem to be very slow to gain any girth, so tendency to want to throw additional feed at them. I continue to struggle with the dilemma of slow growth, yellowing leafs - need more nitrogen - tip over the line of too much feed, etc etc??? I keep hearing the " they're just a weed" "don't over love them" thing, but tried that also and get snail pace growth rates?

Might try 2 alongside each other - one with my original 1/3,1/3,1/3 mixture and just PLAIN WATER sparingly, and another in 50/50 perlite/coir but regular daily?  watering alternating with CharlieCarp, Seaweed Extract (and occasional GoGo).

I wonder if my veg regime of 6 hours under CFL overnight, and then put in natural sunlight daytime hours is confusing them??

 

I'd be letting the SSH go for longer yet, try and wait for the 3rd browning off, and some more bulking up.  Being in the tropics and flowering this early in the season gives you the perfect opportunity for a really long sativa flowering, so I reckon it's worth riding it out as long as you can.  Plus, she just doesn't look ready yet.

 

Best of luck

On the SSH, what do you mean by '3rd browning'. I've learnt it's the trichomes color that's the tell tale rather than browning/orangeing of the pistils, but when you're an old bugga like me, no matter how hoochy koo the magnification, I got no chance at seeing individual little trichomes!! I guess I'll ride it out for another week and assess whether the heads have bulked up any - so long as they continue to get bulk I'm happy to leave them (but they certainly haven't been going gang busters for the past week!)

Should I continue to feed it?  (I gave it a couple of teaspoons of Richgrow Rose/Citrus fertiliser a week after it flowered, and a couple of teaspoons of Sulphate of Potash a week later - both just watered in with rain water).

Cool guerrilla grow ya got going by the way - hope it comes to a lovely yieding end to reward all the hard work!!

 

Check ur PH

Jagged - I didn't think pH was such a concern in soil grows as it sort of self adjusts itself or remains pretty stable? - more of a concern in hydro? - but I'm most likely wrong??

I certainly don't worry about pH'ing water (used to have a saltwater coral reef tank and used 'aged' water from tap and never had any problems with water - and corals are very sensitive to any pH fluctuation).

I have got a dodgy pH meter that i started using 6 months or so ago, but stopped using it as every reading I did over a period of about 3 months came in at bewteen 6.7 - 7.

Maybe I should get a bag of Dolomite Lime and mix 50/50 with a pot of soil and test that - see if it moves off 6.8!!!

 

 

[Sir PsychoHashy]

I think PH in soil is 6.5-7.2ish or something, but you'd need to check that.  If you were having PH issues you would likely be seeing some obvious signs of deficiencies, and soil is a lot more forgiving of PH than hydro as well. 

 

Don't know about compost, but coco is pretty good at water retention, but the plant also has no trouble getting that moisture back out of it.  It could be a soil consistency issue, but with perlite and coco in there I would expect it to be fairly light and airy, but again I don't know how the compost would affect that.  Grab a handful of your soil mix and squeeze it, if it doesn't break back up easily then it may be too dense. 

 

By coir, do you mean good coco, or the cheap nasty shite from Bummings?  The cheap stuff hasn't been flushed, can be full of salts and all sorts of crap, and hasn't been pre buffered, and can also have fertilsers added to it. 

 

I'm way out of my depth with soil mediums though, so it's probably worth seeking advice from someone in the know.  Especially with the compost added, I would assume that it provides good enough plant nutrition within the 2 other inert mediums you are using, but????  I will tell you that if you try a 50/50 coco/perlite medium (70/30 is the preferred ratio) you will need to feed with a coco specific nutrient, as that will be an inert hydroponic medium.

 

The supplemental night time lighting will not hurt them, but should stop them going into flower. 

 

Don't expect to get grow results that mimic those of experienced growers until you become one yourself, as expertise is learnt, and it is the application of that expertise that gets the results.  Different environments and different strains will also make a big difference to how plants perform.  Try to relax and enjoy the grow experience, getting stressed won't help you or the plants.  Try to keep an eye out for disease and deficiency, but otherwise don't kill them with kindness.  They can take some abuse, especially after they are established, but overwatering is one of the biggest problems for new growers.  As you are moving your pots around regularly, use the weight of the pots as a guide to when they need water, letting them dry right out won't kill them unless you leave them dry for too long.  If they are droopy while the pots still have water weight in them, but watering perks them back up, then it's most likely a problem with the root zone getting too hot.  Over time you will get to recognise the needs of your plants.  Just remember that some plants will grow different to others, some will have pert leaves reaching for the sun, others will be naturally a bit droopy, which is why you want to pay more attention to how healthy they are.

 

The 3rd browning is where pistils come out, then turn brown (or whatever colour the particular strain goes), then push out fresh white pistils, brown again, and then a 3rd time.  If you have problems picking trich colour through a scope this is probably a good alternative.  Another option is to take test buds until the effect is what you are looking for.  The buds in the SSH pic just don't look ripe enough to me, and look like they've got some filling out to do yet.  Sativa's also tend to do their filling out late in flower rather than early like indicas.  Patience can be a virtue with growing canna, but it's a lot easier when you have plenty of buds left in your stash.  You need to make sure that your plants are still getting all their nutrition up until a week or 2 before harvest, but how you control this in soil mediums I'm not sure.  I would assume that with organic matter in the soil straight water would be sufficient, but someone else would be better for advice as even my bush grow is semi hydroponic.

 

Best of luck

[Jagged]

Reason i said check PH is ur nutrients might be locked up, if thats the case it wont matter how much nutrients you add to try and fix perceived nutrient deficiencys, they wont be available to the plant.

 

Going back and looking at ur pics, even the ones that you harvested look to me to have have the same problem? Cant hurt to check ur PH

[Green Jay.]

OK - apart from my rambling post in the 'Hello/Greetings' area, this is my first post here.

 

Apart from grow journal, I will probably indulge myself in asking for a few tips, and seeking knowledge (historically I just throw some bag seed in a pot of garden soil and hope - nothing overly scientific).

 

First grow in over 20 years for me due to getting ripped off a few times, and unavailability of bag seed these days - mate recently got some seeds in from OS and flicked me a couple superfluous to his needs

 

They're Charas - predominantly Indica, so not the best choice for my part of the world (far northern OZ tropics).

 

I planted the seeds directly into peat jiffy pots 29th May. They had both sprouted & popped their heads thru within 2 days. Left them for about 10 days, then potted into 15cm pots containing an even mix of perlite, coir and cheapo Bunnings potting mix - no fertilizer.

 

They're getting about 7 hours/day full sun and an additional 4-5 hours indirect sunlight (days here ATM are roughly 11.5 hrs)

 

At about 30 days, repotted into large pots with same mix but with a good couple of hand fulls of Dynamic Lifter, and fed with 1/3 dose of Maxicrop Seaweed Extract (10ml/9ltr).

 

While they both seem healthy enough, very slow growth rate is evident, as is yellowing of the lower leaves - probably overwatered in the early days, but for the last few weeks have really been controlling watering to wait for very dry topsoil (roughly every 4th day - and only feed on second water < i.e. only every 8th day>).

 

Already in flower - appears I got pygmy's

 

Here's some fotos - would have liked to spread them out through the post with some explanatory text and timelines, but seems the file attachment 'add to post' facility don't work?? Earlier ones taken a few weeks ago at about 30days, later ones yesterday at 45 days.

 

Happy to except any comments, criticism and/or advise 

 

ps (ignore last pic - mate also gave me a couple of 'freebie' seeds, only 1 germed and has already thrown balls - not even 2 weeks old???  -  but also a pygmy ...)

Hozit goin. Yeah I'm in FNQ too & it appears that I got pygmies as well. Strain is  Big Bud. I've learnt now that Indicas Dont fair that well in the high tropics. Got a couple of Aussie blues that are goin mental @ the moment. Big Bud will be planted earlier around August next time.

[Carnage]

you can dig real deep ....

.... into the past.

 

you dug up a real old one here