Mars Hydro Cup - My first and second grow journals, in what will soon be a perpetual op

Just some more bondage this afternoon, and watering the girls near the beginning of their day cycle. I am feeling a bit better about how big they are after tying them down a bit more, but I'm still nervous about overgrowing the veg tent before it's time to send them to flower. I guess the bigger concern is overgrowing the flower tent, but the flower tent is 2.5 times as large, not counting how much taller it is, so I think we'll be okay.

I also changed the girls positions under the lights and which direction they were facing, to make sure the light and airflow each gets over its vegetative time is rather evenly distributed. I also popped a couple tops from side shoots that had overshot the mains. The gorilla cookies pheno I've labeled #1 doesn't seem to mind being topped at all, and recovers quite quickly. Which is good, because she'd be a talllllll bitch otherwise!




The Gorilla Cookies (#2) that I accidentally (or literally, depending on your perspective) FIM'd. All 5 mains seem to be growing in nicely, interested to see any differences in FIM and Topping between my two Gorilla Cookies phenos, if there is any.



Just a shot so you can see how they look untied vs tied. I've only re-tied the right two plants in this pic. You can tell they are thirsty, luckily for them today is watering day too.



All tied down. A couple side shoots I can't get much lower than they are, which I have topped in the hopes of getting them to grew more horizontally. Overall I'm pretty happy with how flat I've managed to maintain the canopy without the use of a screen. Should be easy to ScrOG it when I toss it into my 4x4, which has been the plan all along for these plants. I've also got toooons of places to make cuttings for clones because I haven't been too judicious in my defoliation and cutting off unwanted growth.

Now to take a quick break from constructing this post to finish watering and put them back in the tent, and I'll snap another pic or two.



Tent looking a bit cramped, but there's still lots of room to grow upwards. I feel that I may need it before too long.

I may snap a few more pics of grow 1 tonight, if there's anything of interest going on there. I don't think it's even a watering day for them. I feed them again on Monday.

Made another timelapse video today. I've got another camera I may try next time, I am just not happy with the quality of these timelapses.


And here's a couple more pics just to update. Watered the girls a couple days ago, it's time again for a topdressing with Terp Tea for my flowering plants.



Sorry for the blurple. Mostly just wanted to show how the veg plants have recovered from being tied down and filled up the space again. They were pretty much facing the right way an hour or two after the LST.



BCG - Left / Hulkamania - Right

Just a quick bud pic. Easy to see the difference in development here between the bud on the left and the bud on the right.



And just a shot of the flower tent's maturing buds. Hurry up!

Phew that terp tea is stank.

I damaged one of my lower branches on Gelato Cake #1. I'm not sure what happened exactly, probably just got caught on something when I was maneuvering them around.

Gonna try and save it, got it patched up with tape and help up better than in the pic with some plant ties. If I lose it, it's not the end of the world, but it was a very healthy looking branch.

Busy day yesterday. I took some bud pics on Sunday and decided to go ahead and chop my Black Cherry Gelato plant. It looks mostly cloudy with a few amber to me.



(yeah I know there's a hair)

Unfortunately the Bruce Banner (I'm now guessing based on flower time?) has weeks to go.



Anyway, I decided to chop BCG yesterday.



I don't mind repetitive tasks so much, but trimming took a lot more time than I'd expected going into it. Didn't expect to spend nearly so long (2 or 3 hours) on one smaller plant. I am sure my technique will improve and with it my speed, but that was a real wake up call.



Got all the fan leaves off. I just tossed these.



Hours of trimming later I'm left with this. I saved all the larfy bud and trims, tossed them into the freezer. I may wash them for bubble hash or try my dry sift screens, but I didn't end up with just a whole lot from this plant.



Got it hanging in my closet right now, ~72 f and ~60% rh, conditions seem pretty good. Hoping for a week and a half or so long dry, and then much of this will probably be squished into rosin.

These plants definitely didn't veg for long enough to maximize their yield. I'm pretty pleased with what I'm seeing for my first ever grow, though. The buds feel rock hard and look pretty good. I'm excited to see how they smoke, if any of them get saved for a cure, or how their rosin smokes.

I think they're about dry enough now to jar, so I went ahead and did it. Waiting on the hydrogemeter in the jar to come up, it's reading mid 50's right now for RH, hoping I didn't over dry.



Not awful for my first plant, I'll probably squish some of this into rosin soon so I can get to using it sooner rather than later. I'm pretty sure I'll have to be back at the dispensary later, but hopefully at least not until I get paid again.

I also got myself a bag of my buddy's homegrown Wedding Cake and decided to make some clones today. Hopefully in a couple weeks when I've chopped down my last plant, I'll be ready to cull the losers here and have at least one strong clone of each plant.



I didn't do anything special with the clones, snipped the tips of the leaves like you see people do online, dipped the stems into clonex gel, and shoved them into peat pellets. It's my first time cloning, I'm somewhat worried that I may have chosen some of my cutting too small, but there's no teacher like experience.



I've got them on the heat mat sitting in front of the tent so they will get some bleedover light from the veg tent when they need it.

I went ahead and pressed out around 21 grams of that Black Cherry Gelato plant I chopped last week. Got back around an eighth of rosin, and it's damn fine stuff. I wonder if it will ever fail to be interesting what comes out of the press, this stuff is hard and stiff right now, it almost feels like it's fresh from the fridge but it's never known the cold. Curious to see how it changes consistency over time.

Does anyone cure this stuff? I've heard of people setting it on heating mats for seedlings to help it run together, would that help with getting a more consistent product?



Pretty obviously from two pressings, you can see how hard and not gooey the stuff is because it's so distinct.