K2

[Ataraxia]

A few things have changed, and plants have shown some new growth, so I thought I'd update. First I'll update the age of all four plants as of today. Alexa, the oldest, but smallest, as she was started in crap soil, is 1 month old. She is fully recovered, green, healthy, and growing rapidly. Sylvia is 24 days old and doing well, despite the discoloration on her leaves. It has shown no sign of stunting growth, but simply looks ugly. She is 5 inches tall and on her 7th node. Sylvia responded very well to supercropping and is bushing out quite nicely. Next in line is Lilah, now amazingly only 16 days old and the largest plant in my cab. She's about 5.5" tall and has 6 nodes. She's slightly taller because up until a few days ago, she wasn't being supercropped. After 2 weeks of side by side I was already convinced that supercropping is the way to go. I'm now doing it to all my plants. Someone else will have to do that side by side grow. I've already decided that supercropping is awesome! Luna, is coming along nicely, now 11 days old.

I gave some nutes to the three oldest plants. After responding well to 5mL/gal nutes, I gave sylvia 10mL/gal nutes with my 3-1.5-4 Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow. I used lime disolved in water to correct the pH. When I added the nutes, my distilled water had a pH of 4.4 :shocked: I poured some of the solution into a cup and mixed in some lime. I slowly added this back to the gallon jug until I settled in at a pH of 6.35. Is it okay to use lime as a natural pH adjuster like this? Lilah got a taste of nutes for the first time with the 5/mL/gal solution, pH of 6.5. Alexa also got some nutes from the 5mL batch. Luna got straight water. I really hope I don't burn any of the plants. I think I started light enough on the ferts, so lets hope so.

The brown/orange/crispy leaf edges are still present but don't appear to be spreading. I reduced my watering schedule to every 4 days, and now water with pH of 6.35-6.5. I watered a few hours ago and the plants looked like they really wanted it. I stuck my finger all the way into the soil and it was dry all the way down. I think 4 days might be just perfect. I changed my fan from the oscilating setting to stationary, blowing into one corner of the cab. This brought temps from 89* down to 82*. This will hopefully create an environment to foster rapid growth.

Next week my parents are coming to visit me. This presents multiple problems, mainly I have to hide my grow cab. I could risk the fact that they may not look into my walk in closet and notice the large white cabinet with orange light glowing out of it, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'm setting up a new cab which I will later use for cloning/mother plant. I'll be housing this outside in a small storage space on my balcony. It's enclosed, lockable, and is where most people keep their washer/dryer. I'm planning on exhausting air out the dryer vent. My plants don't really smell at all yet, so this shouldn't be a problem. I bought a Black&Decker plastic wall & base cabinet. It measures 26.8"x14.8"x36.5" WxLxH. It's about half as tall as my grow cab now, but if I mount my light to the ceiling it should still give me about 20" from light to plant. I plan on exhausting the cab with my newly acquired 115CFM 120mm computer fans. The DC adapter is shipping and should be here soon. My only worry is that the storage unit, being outside will get too hot. I plan on leaving my temp gauge in there and checking the max and min temps for a few days and see how viable this option is. If anyone else has suggestions on how to hide plants from nosey mothers, lemme know. I think this solution will work, and will provide me with a future cloning/mother plant cab.

Alright, now for the fun part, pics! All of these were taken a few hours after watering, so the plants may look a lil droopy.

pic1: Sylvia under the HPS glow
pic2: Sylvia on my bathroom floor for better lighting
pic3: Side view of Sylvia, notice the brown tips, and great undergrowth
pic4: Sylvia top view
pic5: Top view close up, I love the look/shape of marijuana leaves
pic6: Lilah closeup top view
pic7: Lilah side view, increase in undergrowth since the start of supercropping
pic8: Top view of Lilah, healthy as all get out
pic9: Top view of Alexa, recovered and coming along nicely
pic10: Alexa side view, after first round of pinching, showing accelerated undergrowth.

Any and all comments/suggestions/feedback are appreciated

 

[Ataraxia]

One post couldn't contain all the photographic goodnes I had to offer. Here are some more pics and a question about sex, yeah sex. I asked earlier in another thread if what I saw on my plant were preflowers. I was told they weren't and that they may show up a little later. I have pics of what I think look like preflowers, or pistils, but I'll let a pro be the judge. If these aren't preflowers, what are they? Does every plant have these?

The first picture is the structure in question. The other pictures are an extension of the update above

pic1: Preflowers? Sex? Nothing more an a vistigial structure?
pic2: Luna 11 days old
pic3: Luna side view, pretty reddish/purple stems. I can only hope the bud is as colorful
pic4: My happy little indoor garden, I smile every time I look at it.
pic5: Lilah front and center with her leaves all bent and tucked so the undergrowth gets more light, Alexa in back there

 

[bombbudpuffa]

I'm so envious!!!

 

[Draston]

number 1 is just normal vegitative growth... no signs of sex yet.

 

[Runbyhemp]

Hi Ataraxia, all plants have that growth regardless of sex. Can't say for sure what it's fuction is though. Perhaps somebody more knowledgeable could step in ...

 

[Ataraxia]

Hi Ataraxia, all plants have that growth regardless of sex. Can't say for sure what it's fuction is though.......

It's function: to trick noobs like me into thinking it's a girl.

Thanks for stoppin by Draston, and RBH. BBP, you're envious of me? Well I think it goes both ways then. I've taken a lot of advice/techniques from you directly and from following your grows. You've been a big help, thanks!

And one more question, how soon could I take a clipping from each plant to root and then sex? I want to seperate the boys from the girls asap. Can I take a cutting now, or should I wait a week or two? Sylvia has side branches like crazy and I'm really tempted to snip one, root it and find out if she's a she.

Today I noticed that Luna, the youngest went from 3 fingered leaves straight to 7 fingered leaves on her third node! I'm excited. Beyond that, the plants seem to love the new nutes so far, no sign of burn ....yet

 

[Ataraxia]

As I mentioned above, my parents are coming to visit and staying for five days. I needed to hide my grow as I know they would not approve of it and I couldn't risk them stumbling into my closet as they would easily notice my large cabinet. Here's some pics of my project.

pic1: the front of the cabinet, light on, door closed.
pic2: my 4 plants, happily sitting inside
pic3: my ghetto rigged cooler for my 250w HPS
pic4: 1 of 2 110CFM computer fans, one cools the bulb, the other exhaust air from the top of the cab
pic5: The 2 exhaust ducts come to a Y in the back of the cab
pic6: my passive intake
pic7: The storage area my cab is in now. Can you spot where the marijuana is being grown? I hope not.
pic8: There it is!
pic9: A pic with the doors open, and my safely hidden babies

Due to security reasons, I had to move this grow outside my apartment. This is out of direct sunlight, but I think it still gets to about 90* inside that storage area, without the added heat of the HPS. I hope that it doesn't get too hot inside the cab and that the exhaust fans will do enough. This is the best I can do and really my only option so I hope it works.

 

[Ataraxia]

So my parents came and visited and had a nice time. My grow cab was placed in a storage closet on my balcony. I battled with high temps and resorted to having the light only run on an 18/6 light cycle to have it off during the hottest times of the day. I fed them only water during that week, which was two waterings. I had to sneak out onto my balcony without my parents suspecting anything to water them. I felt like I was in fifth grade again or something.

For added security, I installed a new locking doorknob on the storage closet. My teenage brother was also along for the visit and informed me that he "credit carded" my storage shed door, because he "wanted to see what was inside." I was shocked and asked him, "Well, what's in there?" And he said, oh nothing, just a bunch of boxes and pots, soil and gardening stuff. Whew, that was a close one. Good thing I camoflauged the grow cab in so well. Come friday, after my parents left, I was reunited with my girls (still wishful thinking) and thought they looked much improved since receiving only water.

I stupidly gave them a light dose, (5mL/gal) of my botanicare nutes. A day or two later they flared their mellow yellow at me again. Is it normal for veg plants to need/want so little nutes? All of these plants are over a month old, and I've fed them about three times, and each time they get mad at me. I'm using below the recommended dosage for seedlings on five and six week old plants and they still don't like it. Is there enough natural goodness in the fox farm soil to last them through vegging? :confused2:

I'm getting anxious to start flowering. My 3 gal poly grow bags finally came in the mail from ebay. I want to know their sex first though, so I don't waste 3 gallons of soil on a plant and then have it turn out to be male. I took a single cutting for clones from each plant on 7/7/07. I made a bubble cloner in the DIY fashion very similar to the one on this site. I used Rootech cloning gel, even though most of it washed off within a few hours of being in the bubble cloner. It's been 3 days now and still no sign of roots, but they are still alive and no longer droopy. Can I start giving them 12/12 or 10/14 light schedule before I even see rooting, or would it be better to have them on 18/6?

I started some LST in addition to supercropping with three of the plants and so far they seem to be responding pretty well. It looks like torture, but they don't seem to mind being all binded down. Maybe my plants are into S&M or something. I finally installed my 110 CFM computer fans in my large grow cab and it's up and running back in my bedroom closet.

Wow, I had a lot to say. Hopefully whoever reads this can sift through all the rambling and answer a few of my questions.

And here come the pics......

Pic1: A pic taken yesterday. Plants were temporarily just open in the closet with HPS hanging from the shelf above. Beer bottle for size reference. Obvious nute burn. :doh:

Pic2: Plants nestled safely in their new home. Some more LST shown. I have also topped two of the plants, not sure if I mentioned that.

Pic3: Bubble cloner with humidity dome, cost me about 5 bucks as I already had airstones and a dual outlet pump

Pic4: Grow clones, grow! (red and blue are from the LEDs above)

 

[420check420]

man those are lookin good i like your setup too... theyre lookin spot on so far.. keep it up!

 

[Birdman Burke]

i like the garden ya got growing there
very nice job dude i will be interesting
to see how the look when they bud K2 is
a very cool strain.

take care

peace.

 

[Ataraxia]

Some good news for a change, I'm pretty sure two of my plants have shown sex. I could only get decent pictures from one of the plants, but the other plant looks exactly the same. At the node there is a little sorta pear shaped thing with two small white hairs coming out of it. From what I've seen pics of and read I'm pretty sure these are "preflowers." Have a look at my pics and see if you can confirm my suspicion.


All pics are of the same plant, same node, but from different angles. The preflowers are quite small and easier to see in person than in a picture. If you look closely you can spot them in the picture. The last picture shows where I topped the plant. I have purplish/reddish stems on most of my plants. I've read that this is a trait of K2, but I've also read that it can mean a calcium deffeciency. Anyone else that's grown K2 also see the reddish/purple stems?

 

[Jemini22]

You've come a long, long way from the Monster soda can, I am proud!!

 

[bombbudpuffa]

Is it normal for veg plants to need/want so little nutes?

Plants are like people. They are all different. All of my plants like different strengths of nutes. One of the down sides of doing multi strain grows. I usually just feed water until they look like they need something. If you have good soil it should have enough nutes for at least a few weeks. Looking good.

 

[Ataraxia]

About a week ago I made the executive decision to throw my runt of the litter plant which coincidentally was the oldest (had a rough start with the MG soil) into the cab I'm flowering clones in. It was just starting to show signs of sex and I was excited to see the changes. At first I thought what I saw was small bunches of hairs on the main nodes, but tonight when the lights came on I looked and I'm pretty sure it's a male :hairpull:. Here's some pics, lemme know for sure,but I think its a male. If it is a male it's not that bad I guess, as it was the smallest plant, and I didn't plan on transplanting it to a larger pot anyways.

pic1: The spot where I topped it. The stub of the old main stalk is in the middle and on each side are what I thought may be female flowers.

pic2: Left main top (showing male sex?)

pic3: Right main top (also showing male sex?)

hopefully some experienced growers can let me know for sure if my suspicions are correct.

 

[Ataraxia]

I've kept the three better looking plants in veg. I've recently transplated them into 3 gal grow bags. I used a mix of FoxFarm Ocean Forest, FoxFarm Happy Frog, about 25% Perlite and the two biggest plants got some jamacian bat guanno at a dose of 2Tbs/6gal mixed in with the soil. The package suggested 1Tbs/gal, but I figured I'd go on the light side. Since the transplant, they seem to be doing well, although I don't think they've had enough time for their roots to explore to show me that boost of growth I'm looking for after the transplant. There was minimal transplant shock, they didn't droop at all. Before I transplanted them, they were having a rough time. The lower leaves were turning yellow, then brown from the tips on in and eventually dying. It was diagnosed as an overnute issue and I flushed, and fed straight water for a week with a slight improvement. Yesterday I noticed that overall the plants looked kinda pale yellow, so I gave a very mild nute dose to them of 2.5mL/gal of my Botanicare and a half a capful of superthrive. 24 hours later, they look greener and improved. I only watered the two bigger plants (Sylvia and Lilah) with the nutes. Luna is still problematic. All the leaves are starting to brown and dry up. I'm not sure if this is still nute burn or what the heck the deal is. I'll post some pics and see if anyone can give me some input.

pic1: A lil blurry pic of my star of the bunch, Sylvia, now about 7 weeks old
pic2: Side shot of sylvia, showing some of her yellowing/browning leaves
pic3: Another side shot, pretty heavily lst'd, I'd guess she'd be over a foot tall at least if she wasn't tied down.

pic4:Lilah (left) Sylvia (right) in their 3gal bags, still showing some yellowing/browning, hopefully it's getting better since the nutes yesterday
pic5: Get low! Both plants are lst'd keepin em low, I'm not really cramped for space, but I want even growth of side shoots and the main stem. Plus I want it to grow in a creative shape.

pic6: The problem child, Luna, now about 5 weeks old and lookin worse than ever. I haven't given her nutes in about two weeks and what I thought was nute burn hasnt gone away. Any ideas what's wrong?
pic7: Same plant more yellow/brown/crispy leaves. It was topped a few days ago, thats why there are just two big fan leaves at the top.

pic8: on a happier note, a recent purchase at the local headshop Can't wait to smoke some of my home-grown k2 out of it!

 

[THE BROTHER'S GRUNT]

Whats up mang. Yes the pics above do look like a male. I would let him go for a few more days just to be sure though. As far as your plant goes the one with nute burn have you tried flushing her with plain water? If not you should or she will continue to burn.

 

[Ataraxia]

Thanks for chiming in TBG, I flushed that little lady once already, but I flushed it again because the first flush didn't seem sufficient. I ran over a gallon of water through it, and after a few days not much improvement. When you suggested I flush, I did it for the second time, and it appears to have stopped the burning and the rest of the leaves are starting to look a bit more green than yellow.

My two other plants, Sylvia and Lilah, have been taking off, the transplant seems to have given them vigor in all the new soil to explore. In four days they've gotten a lot greener and lost the pale green/yellowish color from before. (Compare the pics from 7/26 to todays) I did give them a feeding of 2.5mL/gallon of Botanicare (1/3 of the seedling dose) and a few drops of superthrive. Lilah and Luna have had their main cola topped, both now have two new colas, of uneven length. I hope to counter this growing patern with lst to more evenly spread light, but one side is like two to three times larger than the other out of the top.

The bushiest plant, Sylvia hasn't been topped, but lst'd to the max, and supercropped a bit. Her stem is wrapping around the edge of the bag. I've been topping the tallest sideshoots in an effort to keep the canopy even. The sidebranches heal quickly and within a few days they fork out and increase overall bushiness.

I want my plants to finish around four feet, but with all this lst, I feel like I'm gonna have to let em go another month before switching to flower. My tallest plant is only 7.5" tall. Sylvia has probably at least a foot of main stem length, but with lst, is only 5.6" tall. How much longer do you think I should go before flower? I was thinking at least another two weeks. I'm in no rush and want to get the most out of the 250hps

I discreetly sent Alexa off to "a farm out in the country where male plants are free to release their seed." I have a clone of each Lilah, Luna and Sylvia in my small cfl-powered sexing cab. They've been in there for maybe like a week and a half and still no signs of sex. They rooted very well in the bubble cloner, (with the help of RooTech, which I was very satisfied with) and I put them into soil in none other than those red 16 oz party cups. I cut their light back to 10/14 in hopes that they may sex quicker. (Go figure a man wanting to speed up sex)

New idea I've been bouncing around: Once I know sex, take clones of my best plant, (Sylvia if it's a girl) and root them in rockwool, and grow them in the cfl cab on an ebb and flo system for 8 weeks while their mother is flowering. I was thinking then I could flower a SOG with right after cropping the first batch. A pretty bold taking on, I'll have to do some more reading up.

Anyways...here's to the pictures

Pic1: My big bushy plant, Sylvia, untopped, lst'd, supercropped
Pic2: Lowrider aint got ish on me! 5.5" tall

pic3: Lilah, all tied up and bent this way and that.
pic4: Top view of Lilah, just repositioned and retied everything

pic5: Luna, the problem child. Recovering from her second flush, looking better, old leaves still burnt though.
pic6: Luna's two new top colas, one massively bigger than the other

pic7: My "secret garden"
pic8: angled view of all three plants

pic9:My three clones, the nute burn was from the Olivia's cloning solution I put in the bubble cloner, they've gotten better, but still yellow. Now in dirt, hopefully will show sex soon.
pic10: My cfl-a-nator in action. All 26w cool blue 6500K, about 15750 lumens total. Plannin on using this to grow clones in the future.

Happy growing and thanks for responses

 

[bombbudpuffa]

Very, very nice grow you've got here. Can't wait to see some buds. Beautiful plants. Is K2 from KC Brains? Can't remember.

 

[Ataraxia]

Thanks for stoppin by BBP, and thanks for the compliments. You've been a great influence. I got my K2 from Nirvana, not sure if they originally came up with the strain or not. From what I know it's a "White" strain which carries with it a pleasant, spiced, fruit-like taste and a tangy aroma. K2 gives a very zoneable high that affects the smoker quick. It's related to white widow, so I wouldn't expect any less. It's a sativa/indica hybrid, 70%Indica/30%Sativa, grows short and stocky and loves sea of green. BBP, you're not the only one who wants to see buds NOW! How much longer should I wait to flower?

 

[bombbudpuffa]

Hey man, they're yours, whenever you'd like. Bigger plants=more buds though.