Lucas Formula. should i be adding a "bud booster" ? is lucas worth it?

meant to delete a couple of those...


edit: Oh ya, I got hovering at 50% RH now too. Temp is about 73. Day time temp. Put humidifier in there. Its in a good spot where the floor fan is blowing it around so that it doesnt hover around just like one or two plants. But, once I put that in there, and plugged the exauhst fan into the temp controlled fan controller i got the Rh to go up to 50%. The fan is hardly pulling out right now cuz the temp is where i set it to be. So the humidity is staying in there nicer. But ya man, that sealed room sounds like the way to go.

Looking great! Yup their starting to ripen up good. Still looks like a bit to got though. What day of flower is it right now? Counting from the day you flipped them to 12/12, not the day they showed pre flowers..

The cloudy trichs will look just like a cloud lol...like white smoke. Google "cloudy trichomb" in google images and you will see them. Yes there can be the odd amber ones even if the rest are almost all clear.
And the hairs going orange is a sign of ripening that comes along with them receding back to the calix BUT they also do go orange for other reasons ie. if they get bumped, touched, held, etc..they will go orange too but in your case they are ripening.

Fuck man those veg plants will be monsters. How high can you bring your shade in the room? They can triple in height when you flower them! I dunno it's a toss up whether you should top them just on the main shoot, top all growing shoots, or tie them down but no matter what they will be huge if you don't do something. At least they are very healthy looking gals.

Yes no in or out vents in sealed rooms. You could technically use an a/c that is hooked up to the rest of your house but you would have to have that "zone" on it's own controller to the a/c separate from the other zones in the house. Not a practical way of doing it. Usually in sealed rooms the a/c is set up just for that purpose. There's dif types of a/c's..spit systems where there is an indoor air handler and an outdoor compressor/condenser unit connected to each other by copper freon lines and electric lines through a wall of the house which is sealed up by foam or silicone, or self contained water/freon a/c units that are an all in one unit that sits right in the grow room, or swamp chillers that cool with water and radiators type grills..no big control panel just a thermostat in the grow room. The portable units need to exhaust warm air so they aren't good for sealed rooms. With sealed room a/c's they get rid of heat through water and/or freon; no exhausted air.

That was last night so day 57. Today is day 58.Week 9 day 2.
lol, ya i figured that would be the answer. The "cloud" answer lol. So in your sealed room, no need for carbon filters or stuff like that either? I suppose its "sealed" so it wont stink up the house right? Im gonna have to look into getting this setup before summer comes again More on that later tho when ill actually remember your answers

Do you KNOW of a early finisher strain? Of course, that is also CHRONIC in EVERY way? |pipe dream? lol| I either need to make a mother, or get earlier finishers.

Ugh... i dont know what im gonna do with veg yet... If i just leave em, they gonna get too tall to where that cage wont even be any help really.... well,,, passin out finally... have a good one man!


any hypothesis on how long you think i got before im seeing all cloudy? (which again is when i should START the flush right?)

Just my two cents... I used the Lucas formula when first starting hydro. We have since tweaked it to our liking, but I can tell you that using the normal Lucas formula plus a little booster (liquid KoolBloom for us) did well for our Indicas. We used RO water, and our solution hits 1200 so not too far off the 900-1000 Lucas gives you.

Everything turned out good. Tight dense buds, caked, good yield, cheap nute cost

Hey BT did you see some cloudy trichs yet? Did you flush? I think from your last pics you were probably about 4-6 days away from cloudy trichs. Give us an update!

Well I looked on tuesday night. and still look mostly, if not all, clear. Some I cant tell. Some look cloudy I THINK but then it seems like if i get a profile view of it then the head looks clear. I dunno tho I think for sure I saw a couple. If i had to put a percentage on it id say like 5% maybe. so frusturating lol at the same time you can tell they getting fatter. And now every bud has orange hairs all over them. Im gonna be looking agiain tonight. FINGERS CROSSED. Here's a few pics from tues





Veg... Gotta be 2.5' at least now... I have actually topped the middle left and middle right ones a couple times now... which kind of sucks because i topped them to have 4 and 6 tops. Now they will have a bunch more... damnit lol.. whatever.

Excellent BT! Ya man it sucks about the overgrowing veg plants but you are doing the right thing 100%. You are learning about that strain and finishing them off perfectly. Yes they are getting nice and fat and tight!

How much did you back off the booster? Cause I think you fixed that slight burn perfectly. I don't see any signs of continued burning on any of those pics.

When you chop those girls and smoke them you will be SO glad you flowered them fully and properly. PLEASE make sure you do a good long cold dry with a controlled dehumidifier. You need to really control your drying properly to give you dank ripe smelling flowers. Too quick of a dry at too warm a temp or too high or too low of humidity will really give you poor lawn smelling flowers. You've made some beautiful healthy gals there so keep it up man!! Great growing BT!

Well those pics are a little decieving i guess. i think i took them after i pruned up a little too. They still to have burn. But when i did that res change i think I didnt hear back from you til like the day after I did the res change so what I actaully did was back down on the main nutes a bit and kept the full strength liquid kool and sweet. And this is gonna be the last res so i didnt wanna just dump it and make another. shit these big res' like to eat up nutes lol.

Question, would the flowering ladies getting burned basically as soon as they went into flower and really it has continued thruought the process,,, would that possibly make it "stunt" or take longer to complete the flower cycle? So if my next ones going into flower i just start them basically at the same strenght they are now in veg, cuz they look very healthy and beautiful in veg right now,,, i keep the ppms basically teh same wich is about 8-900ppm and creep it up, and lets say they shoe NO SIGN of burning, if i get lucky. would they potentially finish sooner like their description says they should, or you think it wont make TOO much of a difference on duration time?

And YES! I am trying to find the best location in the place for drying them. I have a drying net, and im gonna have to hang some too, still on the stems. I have an area natrually that is about 60-63 degrees but like 28% RH. So i bought a humidifier. I think I wanna try and corner off an area cuz its in a big space and then set up humidfier and try and get as close a possible. Its kinda stressing me out actually cuz i would really like to be as perfect as possible at this part!!! lol

Thanks dude ur the man!

• You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to BCOGYODA again.
  
  
  
  

oh ya, lol, went ot check em out tonight. Im for surely seeing a few cloudy's now, but most are still clear. A bunch tho that are clear, have a little hint of opaque to them like they are about to turn cloudy.

And you said since im in hydro i should pretty much wait until they are basically all cloudy right? Or am i off on that one a little. If that is right, do you THINK (i know strain dependant) that 5-7 days more would be the time it would take for me to get enuf ambers in there to cut?

The answer is kind of yes to your question about nutes affecting flower time but in the opposite way you are saying..If you ran a full flower cycle with Lucas formula with only micro and bloom you would chop them sooner than using the 1/1/1 ratio. But you would have a noticeably lower yield. You would get smaller tighter nice quality flowers that finish sooner but they wouldn't blow up/swell near as much as the formula you are using. That's why I tweak the formula (like I suggested you do) towards the end of flower cycle to help them finish ripening up.
Trust me a very high percentage of seed suppliers market their seeds as finishing WAY sooner than the strain really does. And also some seed companies count flower from the day they show pre flowers, not from the day you flip to 12/12 so that can add on a full 2 weeks of flower from the day you actually flip to 12/12. It's their way of marketing them as quicker flowering strains while actually not really lying to their customers cause of the pre flower counting..

Yes when you flip those veg plants to flower just continue the ppm strength from where you left off in veg then consistently bring it up to your max ppm..Next round I would reduce the booster a bit to help them not burn at all.

The burning wouldn't keep them from finishing up unless they completely locked out a nutrient which I don't think they did at all. You would see the burn continue and work its way to discoloring other parts of the plants; even up and into the flowers and they wouldn't continue to gain weight and blow up like they did.

Yes if you close in an area where you dry that will raise up the humidity in the room and remember that the flowers are 75% moisture so those chopped down flowers put into a smaller room will naturally raise the humidity a lot.
Also keep in mind that either a humidifier or de-humidifier running in a room will quickly raise the temperature in a sealed up closed drying room so you have to check your humidity and temperature in your drying room very very often until you have it dialed into perfect drying conditions with perfect humidity and temps.

It all depends on the kind of high/stone you want when you chop your plants. BUT at all cloudy trichs you will have absolutely maximum amount of THC in those trichs. You don't have to wait till you have 30% amber. That's just a good combo of head and body high/stone. You can very safely chop them at all cloudy if you want. Especially since you are worried about how huge those veg plants are getting.
If some cloudy trichs are showing up you can safely flush if you want cause it's fine to give them straight water for a few days after your flush which will also help them ripen up too.
A combo of a few things help quicken ripening...light intensity diminishing, temperatures lowering, nutrient dosage strength/ratio manipulation.

You have watched how those flowers have gone through their ripening process by tightening up, swelling up, pistils receding towards the calix, pistils turning orange, and trichs gradually changing from clear to some cloudy. They are well on their way to finishing up. You are just days away. If you have seen say 10% cloudy I would wait a couple days then flush them give straight water and check trichs every day and chop when all cloudy. If you wait for some ambers to show up your veg plants will be hard to control in that grow space.

You will read some guys on this forum posting shit like "trich color doesn't matter with potency or maturity level" This is complete bullshit and please don't give them any time of day to consider what crap they are spreading on this forum. Read and listen to real marijuana research by medicinal suppliers and you will find the truth. We have taken pure Sativa's to complete amber to prove a head high pure sativa plant can produce body stone medicine. This is actually done on purpose by some breeders/med researchers to combine high CBD plants with certain kinds of stone effects on the body. All kinds of excellent research being done out there with medicine. Trich color with relation to THC content and high/stone affect are 100% proven truths. There is no debate. Just uneducated people.

This is why i feel fuckin blessed that u stumbled onto my thread man! lol Everything you have told me so far has been right on! And i 100% appreciate every letter of it!

Ya, that would make sense then if they only started their "flower time" when pre flowers started aobut two weeks in. Stupid.. Great plant, just dickhead salesman lol. Oh well i guess. Now i know. And I decided Im going with a couple mothers with the clones im gonna take from Veg. That way I'll take clones from the mom when these next ladies will be at like 4 or 5 weeks in. Then they will be perfect sized.

Something I wondered. Does a BIGGER vegged plant, even with smaller size thickness in their stems because they started to over grow their veg space, always produce more buds than a smaller size vegged plant? This smaller one would probably be a little more structurally sound with less SHIT everywhere like my vegging ones are now.

The ones in flower NOW actually looked a lot like the vegging plants do now when they were waiting for flower. But maybe a little smaller. These new veg plants are getting huge. lol... i'll be tieing up more buds lol..

Cool cool. I will wait for a few more cloudy's and flush. Will cut at all cloudy. If theres a couple ambers in there sweet, but I dont think i have the time to wait for them. Next run ill be able to. THEN ITS THE PURPLE PARALYSIS Cant wait for that.

do you actually have any experience or ur buddy's with a super chronic strain that you/they love that is an earlier finisher? I saw Stinkbud on here after years of strains said he loves loves loves the Kandy Kush and all the cancer patiennts he gives to LOVE it too. It's his absolute favorite, at least up to now Was thinking of trying those eventually, along with some Grapefruit deisel, i wanna grow a super skunky TASTY blueberry strain, and OG KUsh strain, and a white widow strain. On the wish list if you know of WHO i should buy those from, im all ears

Just FYI. Flushed on sunday night. Now they just getting water. wating to see like almost all cloudy then hit two days of darkness.

Hey BT right on can't wait to see the final product!!
Yes bigger vegged plant means better yield potential than smaller vegged plant.
Sorry I don't have any advice for you for quick finishing potent strains. Best to do a lot of reading about what growers have found with different strains. There's books on strain guides etc..

For sure. Is the OG Kush ur fav then? Thats a 9 weeker you said right? I forget..
Anyways, this is from last night. they been just getting straight water since sunday night after i used the florakleen for a day.

I was hoping last night to be seeing close to 50% cloudyand to be able to cut the lights for 48 hours and cut this weekend. But i THINK i was only seeing like 25% give or take. It's hard to tell with the loupe i have. I also went and bought a "hobby microscope" that plugs into ur PC. The scope i think the light is too bright on it cuz it just LIGHTS up the trichs and its hard to tell. Then the ones you thought looked cloudy with that, dont look cloudy with the loupe... Shits driving me nuts lol. At the same note, there are definetly, sparatically some amber trichs. Unless they got damaged somehow to become amber. And a lot of my trichs dont really HAVE a round head on them. Lots do, but lots dont too.

I also lollypopped my veg plants, pulled clones that im gonna make a mother or two out of and cut off unwated branches that were just weak as fuck looking. Looks a little drastic but now there is some room to brethe in there. They still have minumum of 3 days in there to fill back in.




I dunno man. im thinking im gonna cut the lights after tonight though. Then 48 hours darkness and cut... Hopefully im at 100% cloudy or damn close too. The veg plants are going on 10 weeks now... These flowering ladies are for sure 5 10 times better than the first run where i DEFFINETLY cut them like a week or two or more early. What are you thoughts? I'm gonna try and get a pic of the trich's. That scope that hooks up to the pc takes pics. lemme see if i can get a few good ones.

Here we go. These are from yesterday. Day 69

Yes!! you have lot's of cloudy trichs in those pics. And if you look at the clear ones they are on their way to cloudy. Some of the clear ones have like a light cloud swirl starting up in the base of them. And the trich stocks without heads on them can be broken or undeveloped. They break off very easily from pruning, bumping them, moving them around etc..Trich heads are very fragile when brushed against etc..Perfectly normal.
See how long of a flower that strain really is though. You're not at 100% cloudy but darkness will help with that too and if you can drop your temps a bit too.
That strain is probably a full 10 weeker counting from day of flip.
Yes I love the true OG. There's so many strains out there using the OG wording in them now though. Years ago there wasn't so many..I truly think it came from a White Widow lineage originally. There's some controversy on the internet about the true lineage of it..

The OG I have is a solid 11 weeker at 70% cloudy 30 % amber but I chop it now at 10 weeks cause 11 is just too long lately and customers etc like the full cloudy high. I personally like more of a couch lock so I smoke more indicas myself but I'm not a heavy smoker these days. I used be a chronic and did nothing but smoke weed back in the day. Have a family and a lot of responsibilities these days so I smoke or eat edibles in small amounts before bed mostly..

Ya I hear ya. I basically smoke instead of drink. Both sides of my family have major alcohol prblems. And every male on both sides of my family has either died from drinking or has been hospitalized from it. From literally drinking til jondis. Not car crashes. I like to drink like once every couple weeks these days. At most before it was at least every weekend. Shit hurts too much lol. But its a terrible thing to be hooked on. Still have family issues with it ongoing all the time. Just differnt family at different time. SOOO I RATHER come home and smoke some weed, eat some food, grow a few plants because its my honest new found passion! And sleep. Go to work. pay my bills. do it some more. get a few extra bucks to go out to eat and shit. Gas money. lil splurge on somethin here or there.

lol anyways Ok, so like, looking at the 5th pic. to me i feel like there a tons of clear ones there. Or am i expecting too much cloudyness? and i didnt know i was really taking the STALKS of the trich into play. but i AM supposed to? i always thought it was the head you were looking at.

Ya never been much of a drinker either. Just social for get togethers etc.

Ya no sorry I worded that wrong. At the base of the head where it sits on the stalk some of them look like they are clouding. And yes some of the trichs in the last pic are more clear but there are cloudy ones there too.
Where on the plants are you taking those pics from? Buds right up on top of the plant will ripen faster than others and this is due to environmental conditions and lighting at the bud level. Another reason why we heavily prune our plants in our tight sog's we grow in; to get the light to penetrate to the lower buds and get better air movement down lower.

That's why lower buds mature later than upper buds on plants. A lot of growers just think that's the way it goes that lower buds mature later but it's their positioning on the plant which hastens their ripening speed. Our fully pruned plants have 80-90% of the flowers ripening at the same time because they are very pruned at harvest time.
It's not as noticeable with plants grown with more room between them and with more light and air penetration getting through.

You should take some close ups of the very top colas and compare to mid and lower buds and see if you find a difference there.

those are getting taken from like mid upper plant.

how heavily should i be pruning? lots more than i have? i've heard both ways. prune and dont. But trust ur judgement so let me know how you guys do it

Well the amount of pruning (we call it flaggin) is dependent on how blocked in the lower buds are from light and air circulation. If the plants are spaced farther apart from each other and they aren't very bushy with leaves then not much pruning is needed. But if you can see that lower buds are shaded then you should prune to let the light and air circulation get down to those flowers to help them ripen with the other upper ones.

Man I gotta try and put some time aside this weekend to find you some pics of my before and after pruning sessions on my tight sogs. I used to post the pics on the net years ago and it was funny reading people freaking out at me for doing it lol. Then when I posted pics from later on in flower when the buds blew up like crazy and the plants were bent way over from how heavy all the buds were on all the branches even lower ones people started realizing what was happening. But I prune very heavy cause I grow very tight sogs.
60-70 plants per light in most of my sogs. Only 2 weeks veg though, and the lowest branches are removed (we call that lollipopping)

Marijuana grow books from back in the 70's and 80's used to say "Never remove a fan leaf" "Never prune a marijuana plant" There are so many busted myths about marijuana plants from that generation of growing. We have come a long, long way since then and we should never stop learning cause I'm sure growers will produce better results still in the future.

One of the funniest things I have read growers saying on forums is that "Never remove the one big fan leaf directly under each main cola" LOL cause they think that, that one fan leaf gives all the nutrients and life to that one flower. Man some of the stuff people come up with is entertaining.

So I have a room right now that just got most of the plants heavily pruned in it. I WILL get some pics of that room tomorrow for you to show you how heavy I prune my plants. Then I will update you with pics along their flowering progress. You will be amazed if you haven't ever seen this done before. The plants look so bare when they are first pruned.

For you with only a few plants under the light pruning doesn't have to be that drastic at all. What I do suggest to you though is for you to do an experiment with one plant on your next grow and compare the flowers on that plant to the other un pruned plants at harvest time. So that you can see first hand the difference in how those lower flowers mature, blow up more, harden up more, and produce more sugar than the other un pruned lower level flowers do.
Seeing it first hand is much more enlightening than hearing it from me.

Actually man I just went back over your pics and it does look like you have quite a bit of air and light being able to get down pretty well on your plants. And your veg plants look very well pruned on the lower parts of the plants. GREAT JOB!
Did you do some pruning of leaves also on the mid and upper parts of your flowering plants? Hard to tell if that's the way they naturally are or if you thinned them out.
I think even your lower flowers are looking good and hard man.
Sorry too tired to read back through the thread to see if we talked about this before with your plants lol. Kinda think we might have. Gotta hit the sack soon.