1st Time Grow: LED, Coco, Chocolope + Sour Diesel

Hi folks, figured I'd add another project to my list first time grow here, constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Setup as follows:

Lighting: passively cooled DIY COB LED based on 6 x CLU048-1216 + two Meanwell 2100mA drivers
Strains: Chocolope Sonoma Seeds. Sour Diesel Crop Kings Seeds

20181210 - Day 2: the previous day I soaked 2 seeds and used the paper towel method to germinate. Both seeds cracked, by end of day the taproot on the Chocolope was double the size of the Sour D. Choco broke through the coco overnight. Started them under a CFL.

20181213 - Day 5: both seedlings happy, Chocolope continues to out pace the Sour D, still under the CFLs.

Day 11: 20181219 - First Lesson Learned: I transplanted them into their final homes too early. 7 Gallon Geopots are way to big, and the transplant is way to early. Next time I'll go with 5 gallon pots as their final homes and at least 2 transplants potting up before their final home:

They are now under 3 of the COBS dimmed at less than 50%, the other 3 will remain off until the plants are significantly larger.

Chocolope:


Sour Diesel:

Day 14: 20181222 not liking leaf color of the Chocolope, have been supplementing with Calmag and steadily increasing nutrient dosage. Also added a 3-14-0 bone magic meal mix to the soil that is high in cal mag and other root stimulating nutrients. Still trying to dial in the lights, they are hanging close at this point i.e. 7 inches away from the plants. Also bought a PH meter so that I can dial in my solutions, I know AN does a decent job with PH but I suspect I need a little more accuracy.

Note: the lights make the plants look more yellow than they are, my phone flash is not powerful enough to take a proper picture without lighting.

Chocolope:



Sour Diesel:

Day 16 20181224: Still dialing in the lights, noticing that I can't run them much more than 50% or the plants start yellowing and dropping. Watering is getting easier, I'm ensuring 5.8-6.0 PH every time and have started foliar feeding.

Chocolope:



Sour Diesel:

Day 20: Picked up a Electricity Monitor to help dial in the lights. At this point I have to raise the light a little every day or two. The three COBs max out at about 250W, so when all 6 are going that will be 500W. I tried running them (3) at about 150W with the Angelina reflectors and started getting some leaf burn at the tips of new growth. I'm going to stick with dimming them to about 130W for now @ 10" height, no reflectors. Will do a foliar feed of Calmag in the next couple of days and continue.

Chocolope, continues to outpace the Sour D:




Sour Diesel:


Light burn:

Day 41: Quick update. FIMed and topped both plants along with some LST. Had to cut nutrients in half as they were causing leaf burn at full strength. All 6 COBS are on now, dimmed down to total draw of 200w at the wall. I will increase this to 400+ watts during flower.

The Sour Diesel remains runtish, wish I had grown two Chocolope as I'd nearly be ready to flip now.

Decided to throw on the SCROG last night since the Chocolope was starting to spill out the sides of the pot and needed support.

Day 49: hoping I can tuck some more and get the chocolope to fill the remaining space. Probably time to flip in a week or so. Kind of wishing I had stuck to the same strains due to the size difference. On the positive side I'm happy with the size and growth pattern of this Sativa.

Three weeks into flower. The Sour Diesel is a way smaller, but its buds are already frostier than the Chocolope. Its also a constant battle pruning the Chocolope, whatever I chop off is regenerated within 48 hours. It's so dense I worry about air flow, but its getting well into flowering not sure how much more I can prune....



Didn't quite fill the scrog, close enough I guess:


After light pruning to increase air flow and expose more buds to the light:

Day 44 of flower, IMHO the Sour Diesel is looking better than the Chocolope. The SD buds seem like they are going to end up having more weight to them than the Chocolope. Strangely enough the stigmas on the upper most Chocolope buds have started browning (inner buds they are all white), not sure why because it is no where near ready. I figure 4 more weeks? I'm running 420 watts of Citizen COBS, but I think its not enough. Next grow I'm going to add in some customized high power 3535 Samsung LEDs.

The jungle :



Sour Diesel:



Chocolope:

Update day 51 post flip:

Lots of brown stigmas on the Chocolope, I think it couldn't handle the LEDS being so close at full blast early during flower. The Sour Diesel didn't have the same issue...

Sour D:


Chocolope:


Trichs, I figure 3 weeks more?

Day 57 post flip, trichomes starting to amber on the Sativa so I'm starting to flush both plants. Maybe 7 to 10 days out from harvest n

First time eh? Fantastic job man.

Nice!

Just thought I'd close this out with some final lessons learned and smoke report.

Sonoma Seeds Chocolope Pheno - grew strong, thing was like a small jungle, I could literally defoliate and in 2 days the thing would be bushed out again. Don't really like the smoke and the effects are fairly weak, maybe more effective if I wasn't dry herb vaping it. I wouldn't grow this one again.

Crop Kings Sour Diesel - maybe 15-20% small plant than the Chocolope, but the buds were way more defined, frostier. Nice larger buds, toxtailed like crazy (probably ran the LEDs to strong). Smokes nice, smells like blueberries and that tempers some of the diesel when burning. I know Crop Kings doesn't have a good name around here, but this one turned out.

Yield and Size:

Next time around I would do 3 or 4 plants and veg for half the time and probably yield more. In this case because the Choco was so much larger than the SD it required at least 1/3 more frequent watering and because this was coco I fed with every watering. Plant size isn't related to smoke quality or even yield in this case. Same light strength for both, between 350-450 watts for flower and 200 watts for veg , with anything above 400 running too bright and hot, caused foxtailing and potentially stunted growth a bit especially when run 10" from Canopy. Next grow I will raise the lights a bit as well as dim them to a consistent 350 W. Both plants yielded about the same amount however. the Sour Diesel buds were denser, frostier, larger and heavier, but as mentioned the Chocolope plant was 20% larger with lighter, airy buds so it evened out yield in the end. I used a lot of trim and popcorn to make butter, extremely potent to the point where a 1/4 teaspoon means the difference between a good day or getting worried about storm troopers busting down the door ugh.

Had a lot of a leftover popcorn that I just paper bagged and donated. The rest was trimmed and cured with Boveda 62s, I stupidly thought the Boveda would do some of the drying work and took them off the racks too early and lost 20% of the harvest to mold (LESSON LEARNED). In the end probably 450g of smokable, some butter and lots of popcorn.

Nice grow I've used 2,3&4 gal smart pots in coco & the 3 gal. has been my choice lately I've been using royal gold tupur it is very similar to coco but in my opinion performed better & I use it rightbout of the bag this grow I'm gonna try their basement mix

horribleherk said:

Nice grow I've used 2,3&4 gal smart pots in coco & the 3 gal. has been my choice lately I've been using royal gold tupur it is very similar to coco but in my opinion performed better & I use it rightbout of the bag this grow I'm gonna try their basement mix

Click to expand...

Cool this grow was Royal Gold coco (mixed with perlite), I'll check out the tupur; I agree about pot size 3 gallons, less veg, and more plants are the way to go. I'm doing a new round with 5 gallon smart pots and a home brew soil mix. Now fertilizing with water soluble bulk all purpose 20-20-20 agricultural grade ferts. I think I'll end up with similar or better yield and 1/5 the nutrient cost. The watering seems easier in soil, but I think I'm going to switch back to coco and see if I can get automated drip going. I dont like the way soil drains and aerates compared to coco.

Started preparing for round 3 now, 100 seeds on the way from GPS let the hunting begin!

Khyber420 said:

Cool this grow was Royal Gold coco (mixed with perlite), I'll check out the tupur; I agree about pot size 3 gallons, less veg, and more plants are the way to go. I'm doing a new round with 5 gallon smart pots and a home brew soil mix. Now fertilizing with water soluble bulk all purpose 20-20-20 agricultural grade ferts. I think I'll end up with similar or better yield and 1/5 the nutrient cost. The watering seems easier in soil, but I think I'm going to switch back to coco and see if I can get automated drip going. I dont like the way soil drains and aerates compared to coco.

Started preparing for round 3 now, 100 seeds on the way from GPS let the hunting begin!

Click to expand...

You're on the right track I've been down for a year & firing back up my last grow I used Greenleaf mega crop & I'm going back to it I'm really liking your cob light you did an excellent job all the way around I'm fortunate as I have 2 sources for clones nearby but the process is the same search until you get "the one" then keep cloning I'm trying to get another cut of candy land from www.kingklonebrand.com