Almost Home

It’s been about 11 weeks and for the next 6 days I will began flushing the nutrients from the plants’ medium.  I’m saturating the medium with distilled water and black strap molasses once a day.  The molasses are unsulphured with an 800+ mg potassium/tablespoon.  The plants go into 36 hours of darkness prior to harvesting next week. 

One of if not the biggest difference between these hydro grown plants and those in soil is the size of the buds on secondary branches.  On several plants these buds are the same size as the main cola with some even bigger.  All my soil plants had significantly smaller buds than the main cola.  Anecdotally I’d say the trichomes have taller stalks also.  All plants except one will be harvested because their trichomes are starting to turn opaque.  From the literature I found that a majority of the trichomes do not have to be opaque to initiate harvesting. 

In week nine I poured 450 ml of Bio Boost in 15 gallons water in the reservoir for the second round of two of treatments to increase bud size.  During this time and for two days I did not notice that the reservoir pump had disconnected from the feeding line.  The result was drying out of the medium and accumulation of “hot” phosphate around the roots and subsequent burning of bottom leaves on nearly all the plants.  Reattaching the pump allowed water to flush out the pots with the buds showing no ill-effect.  This incident may have been good for the buds in the long run, giving them a big jolt of phosphorous and jack up their size. 

While these buds aren’t “High Times” size they are above average and should have professional grade potency.