600w Auto Hempy: Russian Rocket Fuel, Onyx, & Snowryder

[Richard4vt]

Details
-600 watt HPS
-18/6 throughout
-5 gallon "hempy buckets"
-100% perlite
-Closet
-5'wide X 2'deep X 5'tall
-Temps:
-85*F ON
-75*F OFF
-Humidity:
-40%-60%
-Life cycle
-Started in peat pods until first true leaves appeared
-Placed into solo cups with FoxFarms Ocean Forest Soil
-Females sexed at Day 15/16 from seed
-Were placed into 5 gal hempy buckets after sexing
-Nutes/Watering
-Water pH varies from 5.5-6.5
-Given pure water for a week upon transplant to hempy buckets
-Given nutes every other watering starting one week after transplanting
-Cheap Schultz liquid fertilizer with micronutes (10-15-10) @ 30mL/gal.
-GH Liquid Koolbloom (0-10-10) @ 10mL/gal.
-Blackstrap Molasses @ 1tbsp/gal.

-Strains
Russian Rocket Fuel (F2)
- This plant was grown from a seed that I obtained from my last grow of russian rocket fuel from short stuff. Its a cross between my bushy, tall male and my short, bushy female. I harvested the pollen from the male, intending to use it for this current grow, and one of my females got pollinated by accident. I only got about 10 mature seeds, and only one of them popped. Luckily it was a girl and it is now growing happily as my second generation Russian Rocket Fuel #1. I got about 2.25 oz from my 2 RRF plants last time, so I'm hoping this F2 strain will provide similar results.This is what Short stuff says about RRF...
..."Our russian rocket fuel strain is the result of crossing a heavy indica strain with very dense resinous buds with automatic NYC diesel which adds an exotic high and deeply fruity smell to the mix. This strain gives off a wonderful fuel-like aroma and really packs a punch."
Onyx
-I ordered 10 of these from dope-seeds.com I got 2 more for free. I germinated 5, 4 were sucessful, and numbers 2 and 3 were females. Thus Onyx#2 and Onyx#3 were named. Heres what short stuff says about Onyx...
..."This strain is another special cross from breeder 'STITCH' who tells us About the Onyx plant "well this is a secret stabilized plant which includes AK47 x White russian and diesel, but many more...
This plant is quite tall, between 50 to 90cm tall, very branchy, fruity taste, very good producer...
This strain is going to be a legend and could be the most worked auto strain ever, result of the biggest selection from crosses we have ever done!""
Snowryder
-I got 5 of these for free with my purchase of my Onyx seeds. I germinated all 5 seeds, 4 were succesful, and numbers 1 and 4 were females. Thus Snowryder#1 and Snowryder#4 were named. Here's what Short stuff says about Snowryder...
..."snowryder is a 100% auto flowering strain, a hybrid of Lowryder and Snow White. This strain carries a powerful punch and is without a doubt one of the strongest Auto Flowering strains to date, Heavy Crystaling is a trade mark of snowryder, Trichomes even appear on the males ! The taste and smell of this strain is very similar to Snow white / White widow so is sure to please. Yield is Avarage (15g - 25g under flouros per 6" pot) and the plants stay short (12" - 14") Snowryder is ready to harvest 10 weeks from planting."


So here we go...

Hello all, I hope everyone is enjoying the summer growing season. I know I am. This journal represents my third grow (2nd with autoflowers) and my first journal on RIU. I planted these seeds just over 5 weeks ago and my 5 female plants are all about 3 weeks into flowering. For this grow i'm sort of experimenting with some things I've never done. In the past I have done only soil grows, with one strain, under smaller lighting. This time i'm trying my hand at the hempy bucket method of hydroponic growing with a new 600 watt HPS. This method involves drilling a hole in the side of a bucket about 2 inches up from the bottom of the bucket. The bucket is filled with a soilless mix (100% perlite in this case) and watered like soil. The water comes out the hole and leaves the bottom 2 inches of the bucket full of water, creating a reservoir for water and nutrients. The plant will be slightly stunted at first after transplanting and will need watering daily with pure water until the roots reach the reservoir. But once the roots hit the reservoir the plant can begin being fed nutrients and watered every 3 days or so like soil, and the growth will explode.Unfortunately, after reaching this point in this grow, its my opinion that the hempy method is not ideal for autoflowers, particularly when you get a really fast sexing batch like mine (15 days). This quick sexing time means a smaller final plant. To add to this problem, autos HATE transplanting, and the switch from solo to 5 gal. really stunted them even more. My last grow in soil with autos sexed at day 22 and were never transplanted, and I wound up with plants over 2 ft. tall. This time though I transplanted and the plants sexed a week earlier at day 15, giving me an average height of only 15.5 inches with the hempy method. However, I feel that a non auto or a late sexing autflower could see huge plants from the hempy method, as the hydroponics is without a doubt faster growing. Once my autos got over their transplant shock and finally found the reservoir, they had basically stopped stretching, but the flower production was AMAZING and I can now see first hand the advantages of hydro. They're putting on weight twice as fast as my autos did in soil. I'm sold on the hempy method, i just would have seriously benefited from a longer veg period and no transplant shock.


Grow Room
So here's a Pic of the grow room as a whole...Pretty simple. Just a light, thermometer/hygrometer, timer, two fans (one above the light you can't see), and some Cannabis plants in 5 gallon buckets of perlite. As you can see there appears to be quite a bit of yellowing for only the 3rd week of flower. This was due to my lack of experience with hempy buckets. I was under the impression that it would take about a week after transplant for the roots to hit the reservoir and begin to require nutes, but it really only took about 4 days. I didn't give the plants any nutrients until a week after being transplanted and some minor nitrogen deficiency set in. However it has been long since cured and all the new growth has been lush and dark green.

Current Pictures/Info

Russian Rocket Fuel #1 (F2)
-Sprouted 5/28/2011
-Sexed 6/13/2011
-Days Flowering 21 days
-Height 20.00inches
You can see that the Russian Rocket Fuel is missing the majority of its fan leaves. I had a small gnat problem (never saw more than 2 gnats the whole time). Unfortunately, they left behind honeydew (a sticky substance gnats can leave behind that acctracts mold) on the RRF leaves and before I ever detected the honeydew, sooty mold began to form. I trimmed the affected leaves at first sight of the mold and began treating all my plants with a neem oil regiment. Since then I haven't seen any gnats! or any mold! hooray! But the RRF sorta took a beating, all other plants seemed unharmed. I plan on continuing neem oil sprays weekly until the last 2 weeks of flowering just to be on the safe side. Its hard to avoid bugs in the summer.

Onyx #2
-Sprouted 5/28/2011
-Sexed 6/13/2011
-Days flowering 21 days
-Height 14.25inches
You'll notice that Onyx #2 has a few red ties tied around some of its lower branches. These are the branches that I pollinated last night. I used the pollen that I stored from my Russian Rocket Fuel male in my last grow to pollenate just the lower branches of this Onyx plant. I'm hoping to get a couple dozen "Russian Rocket Fuel X Onyx" seeds to use next grow around. Any suggestions for a name for this new strain?

Onyx #3
-Sprouted 5/30/2011
-Sexed 6/15/2011
-Days flowering 19 days
-Height 16.625icnhes
This plant has basically been lollipopped as it had an object fall and break off one of its lower branches. The lower branch opposite the one that broke was fine but seemed to be stunted in growth so I removed it too. Now shes basically one long main cola.

Snowryder #1
-Sprouted 5/28/2011
-Sexed 6/12/2011
-Days flowering 22 days
-Height 14.625inches
So far this is the plant that is showing the best crystal production and bud density, but it has also been flowering the longest of any of the plants so its got an advantage.

Snowryder #4
-Sprouted 6/2/2011
-Sexed 6/18/2011
-Days flowering 16 days
-Height 12.875inches
This plant is about 5 days younger than the rest. Her seed just didn't want to sprout, but it finally did. Unfortunately, she suffered some nute burn when I tried to correct the nitrogen deficiency that my plants were showing. I made the mistake of giving her the same amount of nutes as the other larger plants and she got a bit burned, but has fully recovered at this point. A little on the small side but she has the strongest smell.

Conclusion

So thats pretty much it. They should have about 5 weeks left total. I grew my last crop of autos for about 73 days before harvesting, so a 10 week total is what I'm looking for. I'm hoping to harvest sometime close to the first week of August. Please let me know what you think and i hope someone can find this journal useful. I will be trying to post new pictures and updates once a week. If anyone has any questions i'll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion. Thanks for checkin out my grow!

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All
Its been a week since my last post so its time for an update. The girls are all about 6 weeks old now and about 4 weeks into flowering. I posted some before and after picks from last week till today. Major bud production.

Enjoy!


Russian Rocket Fuel #1
46 days old, 30 days flowering
7/6/11 7/13/11

Onyx#2
46 days old, 30 days flowering
7/6/11 7/13/11


Onyx #3
44 days old, 28 days flowering
7/6/11 7/13/11


SnowRyder #1
46 days old, 31 days flowering
7/6/11 7/13/11


SnowRyder #4
41 days old, 25 days flowering
7/6/11 7/13/11

 

[FrequentFlyer20]

Are you sure your getting those plants enough nutes? Have u tried any yet?

 

[Richard4vt]

yeah they're getting their nutes, every other water, so about once a week. 2 tsp. Schultz, 1.5 tsp. KoolBloom, and 1 tbsp. molasses per gallon. I had a pretty bad nute issue when the autos went into the pure perlite. Its completely free of any nutrients and I waited too long before I began feeding them. The result?... They got stunted (about half the size of my previous Auto grow in soil) and developed a nitrogen deficiency. While trying to correct the deficiency, my smallest plant got burned, so she really got hit hard. If you look at the pics, the RRF #1 and Snowryder #4 appear to have the worst foliage damage. This is due to the RRF being the biggest, and therefore being the most nutrient deprived by the time I fed them, and the Snowryder being the smallest, and getting burned on top of its nutrient deficiency. All I can say is that they haven't gotten worse since the initial problems began, but it took a serious toll on my girls.

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

So my autoflower hempy grow is still going really well, I'm just a little disappointed in the lack of height and foliage loss. These plants are small and at this point I dont expect to get more than 3-4 ounces off of these 5 autoflowers, but the bud is all super dank, crystally, sticky, and should be an awesome smoke. Just low yield. So I decided that I'm wasting my light using 600 watts on an expected yield of only 100 grams. 1/6 grams/watt is pretty inefficient. So I've made a change. My autos are now underneath 220 watts of HPS lights (a 150 watt and a 70 watt) which I feel is much more appropriate for their size.

So what am I gonna do with that 600 watt HPS I have laying around now? Well, it turns out I've been keeping a secret. I have another plant thats been growing in another room since the autos started, and its a monster. Along with the autos, I received 2 free feminized regular seeds from dope-seeds. i germinated one with the autos just for shits and giggles, expecting the plant to be too big and to never actually grow it out. But it was just too damn nice of a plant to stop growing, so I topped it twice and ScrOG'd it and now I've got a monster. Here's what i'm working with. The plant is 52 days (7.5weeks) old from seed and 15 days (2 weeks) into flowering. I grew this plant in a 3 gallon bucket of Fox Farms Ocean Forest potting soil and have had great results, but I had some tricks up my sleeve. *mwah ha ha (evil laugh)

The strain is.....

BLACKSKULL PEPPERJACK HAZE (Fem.)

This strain is relatively new (I think) because I hadn't heard of it until recently, it was being promoted by dope-seeds, and I can't find any info on the plant other than what dope-seeds says. They have an entire line of BLACKSKULL feminized seeds that all seem really dank, and the pepperjack haze looks really nice. I've been overjoyed with its growth

The monster is born...

So I call this plant a monster for two reasons. For one, its HUGE...I've topped the plant twice and ScrOG'd it to keep it at a manageable height. I'm 100 certain that if i had let it grow normally this plant would be around 6 ft tall right now. The second reason is that this plants potting system is something I have personally never seen before. Its a soil/ hydro hybrid. Sort of a frankenstein of a grow. I'm sure there are designs out there for soil/hydro hybrid systems but I've just never seen this done. At about 5 weeks of age I cut the bottom 2 inches of plastic off the planter (careful not to damage the soil or roots) which allowed the plants roots to continue to grow down freely. I then placed the planter on top of about 3 gallons of perlite in my extra hempy bucket and made a hybrid system that is 3 gallons of FFOF soil on top of 3 gallons of perlite hempy bucket hydro. The system works really ingeniously in that it automatically adjust pH when watered. I water the soil every 3 days with pH 6.5ish water and the pH drops as the water runs through the soil. The soil drops the waters pH to around 5.5 before it hits the perlite (perfect for hydroponic watering). This 5.5 pH water then waters the hempy bucket.

I was worried the hybrid system might not work but boy was I wrong. The plant absolutely loves it. The growth is incredible and the plant is putting on pistils and crystals like crazy all while growing at about 3/4 of an inch a day. The plant has over 30 main budsites with dozen of smaller budsites as well. Based on other ScrOG grows, other hempy grows, and the 600 watt light, I'm hoping to yield a 1/2lb off this plant.

So here's the pics... These were take 2 days ago when the plant was 50 days old and 13 days into flower. None of the pics are close enough to see bud shots yet but when I post my Autoflower updates on Tuesday I'll post some close up pics. The buds look great.

Enjoy

 

[Richard4vt]

Thats the weed fairy sitting on the edge of the bucket in the first pic. She brings the good vibes...very crucial

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

The plants are doing fine in their new lower wattage home, and i don't expect the change to lead to any noticeable loss in weight. Here's the week 7 updates.....

enjoy....

These are the current budshots.

In order: 1)RRF 2)Onyx #2 3)Onyx #3 4)Snowryder#1 5) Snowryder#4



Really starting to crystal up and look nice and juicy

And here are some growth comparison shots to show the change since last week

*Most recent photos are on the right...

Russian Rocket Fuel #1 (52 days old, 36 days flowering)



Onyx #2 (52 days old, 36 days flowering)



Onyx #3 (50 days old, 34 days flowering)



Snowryder #1 (52 days old, 37 days flowering)



Snowryder #4 (47 days old, 31 days flowering)



Peace

 

[rathacker]

such nice plants im jealous man

i havent seen many snow ryder grows, yours is veryy nice hope alls going well, how many more weeks do you think your looking at until harvest?

keep it up man

 

[Richard4vt]

Should be about 2.5 weeks left till the chop, depends on how they're looking. I think the RRF and the taller snowryder will be done first, maybe even 2 weeks. The two onyx plants should be done right at 2.5 weeks, and the runt snowryder will probably need about 3.5 weeks to finish.

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

Time for the weekly update. The girls are now all 8-8.5 weeks old, so if all goes the way it did on my last auto grow I will begin harvesting by about Friday/Saturday next week. The smaller plants need an extra week though maybe. The harvest is drawing near! Exciting times

Here are the usual comparison shots....

*oldest photos first

-enjoy-

Russian Rocket Fuel #1 (59 days old, 43 days flowering)


Onyx #2 (59 days old, 43 days flowering)


Onyx #3 (57 days old, 41 days flowering)


Snowryder #1 (59 days old, 44 days flowering)


Snowryder #4 (54 days old, 38 days flowering)


As you can see they are starting to slow down a bit, they are focusing more on fattening up their calaxyes and getting denser at this point rather than working on new budding. So these nugs will get a little bigger, but for the most part you can get a good idea at this point of how big the final nugs will be...Eyeballing it I'm gonna go with about 4 zips. Far lower than my original hope of pulling a half lb. off my 5 autos.

I figured with hydro and a bigger light I would get more than I got last time in soil (Just over 1 oz per plant). Unofrtunately, I kind of botched the nutes for the hempy's and I'm actually gonna get less (around .80 oz per plant). I think some plants like RRF#1 and Snowryder #1 will likely get an ounce. I expect that both of the onyx plants will pull just under an ounce. But I expect to get less than a half ounce off of Snowryder #4.

This is still a testament to the benefits of hydro. My last grow had 2 ft tall plants and got just over an oz per plant. This grow had plants that were just over half the size, and I'm still gonna pull around an oz per plant if you don't count the runt.

-PEACE

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

So while watering today I gave the buds a good looking over with my magnifying glass and have decided that I will harvest the Russian Rocket Fuel, Snowryder #1, and Onyx #3 on Wednesday. Trichromes are looking pretty good and all of the pistils have turned orange and have receeded back into their calaxyes. I will be putting these 3 plants into complete darkness Monday morning which will give them just over 48 hours of darkness to fatten up and put out one last Hoorah before I chop Wednesday afternoon. This will also give the plants 4 days without water before the chop which will help increase resin production and speed up the drying process. As for the other 2 plants, I plan on giving them an extra week as they still have a lot of immature white pistils popping out that need to mature and receed before I can harvest. A week extra should do it. So if this all goes as planned i'll be harvesting at 67 days from seed for the RRF and Snowryder #1, and 65 days from seed for Onyx #3. However, Onyx #2 is going to take a little over 70 days and I think Snowryder #4 is going to take right around 70, which is what "Stitch" states as the finishing time for all 3 of these strains (10 weeks from seed).

So this means I should have a dry weight by Sunday or Monday next week, and a detailed smoke report for each of these strains within the next 2 weeks. I plant on then giving another smoke report about 4 weeks from now when the buds have had about 3 weeks of proper curing to develop their full bouquet. If these plants are as good as my last autoflower run with Russian Rocket Fuel, then I will be one very happy (and very high) dude. The Russian rocket fuel smells and looks exactly like it did last go around, and the last crop was superb. Dense fruity, diesely, resinous buds with tons of trichroms and a light green almost silverish color due to heavy crystalling. The high started out as a great uplifting head high that gradually faded into a long lasting, heavy couchlock body high after about an hour. Great shit! I'm hoping that the Snowryder and Onyx are as good as the Russian Rocket fuel. I'm getting really excited to try these strains.....

....If only flash drying didn't ruin bud and make it taste like garbage. I find the most difficult part of the process in terms of patience is waiting for the buds to dry. So hard to look at those crystal covered nuggets of goodness and not want to start picking off of them before the bud is ready. But i'm a stern believer in doing it right, and its my opinion that flash drying your crop and smoking it without a proper dry ruins the experience and the excitement of trying your strain for the first time. It will be harsh, terrible tasting smoke, that will probably leave you with a nice headache later. It really does the bud a discredit to grow it out patiently for 10 weeks and then impatiently flash dry the buds and destroy the flavor and aroma that you so patiently spent months growing.

just my 2 cents

I won't be updating on Tuesday like I usually do, but stay tuned for harvest pictures Wednesday night and a dry weight with more pictures next Sunday.

-PEACE-

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

So I did another close inspection this morning and decided that I was still going to harvest the Russian Rocket Fuel and Snowryder #1 on Wednesday. But, a closer look at Onyx #2 revealed a good number of new pistils popping out and it seems to me that this onyx has another week of potential left in him so I decided to let him go another week with the other 2 plants. So that mean just 2 plants are in the dark now, and I will update again in two days for the first chop!

On another note, my buddy just harvested the other day and had a bunch of trim so we decided to try our hand at homemade bubblebags. Call me cheap....but I WOULD NEVER PAY 400 DOLLARS FOR SOME FUCKIN BAGS WITH SCREENS IN THE BOTTOM.... I honestly look at these professional bubble bags online and my mind just can't comprehend where they get off on charging hundreds of dollars for such a simple, seemingly cheap product. I guess maybe the low micron screens are hard to come by, but my local art store carries 3 different grades of silk printing screen at 08xx, 12xx, and 14xx which corresponds to LPI ratings of 109, 124, and 138 respectfully. LPI stands for Lines per inch so a higher LPI means a finer screen (or a lower micron rating). According to what I've found on line, these number correspond to micron ratings of about 150, 120, and 100 respectfully. However, the accuracy of these numbers depends on the thickness of the string used so the numbers may be slightly off, but basically these micron ratings are pretty similar to the sizes used in bubblebags. Bubblebags website states that full melt bubble hash is generally found in their 73 micron bag, so I feel that a 100 micron bag shouldn't be too much worse. So we made our own bubblebag out of a waterproof compression bag used for sleeping bags when camping. I cut the waterproof bottom out of the compression bag and added silk screen to the bottom. Used some of my 5 gallon buckets and made some hash last night. Unfortunately the material used was not of very high quality so the hash was not of the best quality. I also used a drill with a paint mixing bit to stir the mix, which apparently causes too much plant matter to get into the hash and lower the quality. But either way the bubble bag worked like a charm. We got a half gram of some pretty good looking hash. I'm not sure how much trim we used but it couldn't have benn more than an oz, and it was a lot of fan leaves and stems that don't really have much to offer for bubble hash. But the bottom line is.....make your own bubble bags and save yourself 400 dollars.

Heres a fun picture of the trim after it was washed....gross

Does this look infected??????


Looks like the nastiest main cola ever harvested

-PEACE-

 

[DinafemHashPlant]

Wow what happened???????????Thats nasty looking bro sorry...

 

[Richard4vt]

Wow what happened???????????Thats nasty looking bro sorry...

Haha no worries dude...I guess you didn't read the post itself and just looked at the picture

Its not an ACTUAL cola. I made bubblehash last night and this is just the wad of wet fan leaves, trim, and stems all stuck together. It just happedned to come out looking like some radioactive swamp creature like cola so I couldn't resist taking a picture

But thanks for the concern...

 

[ulnair]

It looks like you pulled that thing out of swamp thing's vagina.

 

[Richard4vt]

Ah yes! Do you know her too?

 

[Richard4vt]

Hello All,

So I went ahead and harvested Snowryder #1...and it made me change my mind about harvesting the Russian Rocket Fuel. The bud appeared and felt like it was ready, but once I got the bud off the plant and started trimming, it was apparent that the plant could have used another week or so. Most of the hairs had receeded into their calaxyes but a lot of the calaxyes had not yet swelled. So I wound up with a much fluffier product than I would have liked, and a lower yield as well. Either way I'm still happy with it, but it made me change my mind about the Russian. So I put the Russian back into the grow room and I don't plan on harvesting her until this weekend, probably Sunday. I will also push back the harvest on the other plants to next weekend probably instead of early next week.

Anyway here are the pictures of some of the nugs as well as a pic of the whole harvest in its drying box. I only got 60 grams wet from this plant, sO I'm expecting 15-20 grams dry....not great but the quality is superb...


I'll be back in a few days after the drying is done and let you know how it smokes.

-PEACE-

 

[bigslama912]

nice! Those look like some fat nugs

 

[Richard4vt]

Thanks....

 

[Wrekstar]

final weight of russian rcoekt fuel?