5 different strains and at least 3 but maybe all 5 will go as single cola plants.  The ones that don't will get trained somehow, or not.  So flip day is gonna be *whenever*, not later than Feb 1 though.  One is a reg, the Master Kush, so coin flip its just headed for the compost tub in the fridge.

2 -32 oz yogurt tubs per plant, one filled with perlite and the other is it's removable reservoir.  Plant bucket has a dozen 1/16th"  holes drilled in the bottom, rez bucket an overflow drain hole on the side hempy bucket style.  Water level inside the grow bucket is about 3/4" deep, the perlite will wick up a couple inches above that.  Light blocked with black vinyl tape and then white tape.

3x3x6 Tent, couple fans, couple humidifiers, action figures

Photontek SQ300w Pro light

TPS One nute but with a bit of this and a dash of that as needed, currently running it as a real One and only to test and its surprisingly pretty good so far but I think it has room for improvement.

Picture is of the Grand Daddy Purple test plants for this bucket system and the TPS One today.  They will get flipped NYE and are their own journal.

May a state of eternal zen chill fall over these tents for the next 4 months. 😑   

Toast be with you in 2023!

Day 8

Master Kush is the first to be cast out of Shangrow-la.  Don't know why but the seed cracked and went no further, just did nothing once in the cube.  Dance World and Bubba Kush came out strong on day 4 and 5 but Euphoria and Purple Afghani took till late on day 6 to come and were very weak, the rockwool lids may have been too heavy.

All the cubes are now in the perlite double buckets and into the tent.    Bit early for 2 of them but I can't delay what's right for the good plants to accommodate the crappy ones.  The tedious part of keeping the perlite wet for the roots to find the rez begins, usually takes about 7-10 days of 3-5 times a day watering.

Now the struggle to keep 2 tents at a decent temp and Rh which means either one good and one terrible or both mediocre mostly likely.

Day 15

Slow start that should speed up this week now that I have the steam humidifier and heater moved over from my other grow.  Shangrow-la remains at 4 seedling residents for the moment, 2 happy and healthy, 1 small but doing mostly ok and one horror show.  Euphoria is likely going to get dumped very soon as it's just not healthy looking in any way.   Previous try on the same Euphoria seeds was also a hot mess so the seed pack itself might have gotten nuked.  Once I get to 3 I need to revise my plans for length of veg and single cola possibilities.

The first 2 weeks were started just with TPS One but now I will start adding a bit of the N boost and calmag to the mix.  My first experiment with this nute in another tent is going well but it clearly can benefit from some extras.

And then there were 3.

Euphoria had a fairly explosive last day of growth, unfortunately it was of the mangled and monstrous variety and she stopped at node 2 so out she goes. 👎 

First seed from that pack did the same thing, quit at node 2 and looked all screwed up but not as bad and it did finish, sorta.   

Day 21

Got the tent all cozy and nice at the expense of my other grow, pretty solid around 78-80F 63-65%rh lights on.  Bubba kush looks great, dance world is mopey and droopy and its growing crazy amounts of roots from the sides and top of the cube, not sure what that's all about.  Purple Afghani is sailing so close to being thrown out, just refuses to grow *up*.  Has 5 nodes same as the other 2 but from the coty's to node 5 is maybe 3/4", its just a tiny little stack of suck.  Probably just keep it to have some sort of single cola plant, need to get some more yield from the other 2.

Day 28

Dunno what is going on.  One decent plant, one crappy and one sorta crappy and small.  Same bucket system and nutes in the other tent is going just fine in spite of a really terrible environment meanwhile here its 80F/66rh most of the day and very stable but even the good plant is only good in comparison to the others.  

2 got topped on Monday, the new nodes are growing out pretty well even on the fucked up Dance World.

5 weeks of veg, flipped to flower last night.

Got tired of waiting and they got perplexingly stuck in slow mode for 3 weeks so I just went and flipped, I need them done so I can do a spring run.   I'd hoped to only go 4 week veg but they were impossibly small and pointless last week.  I believe I've figured out my main problem, calcium lockout of Sulfur and probably other things.  Normally reading leaves is a crapshoot since so many problems look similar but in addition to the very pale and slow new growth I got some pink patches under leaves that seemed to point to an S problem.  The TPS One is supposed to have enough calmag to run even in coco with no extra but I figured an extra half dose couldn't hurt right?...wrong.  Seems their calmag is pretty potent stuff in the Ca department and the base indeed does have an already stout level and once I cut that from the mix things started turning around in just a few days.   Color is coming back, growth perked up and the crispy tips halted.  I also did 2 epsom salt foliars during the week to get some S back in quickly and some Mg in the bargain.   Normally when shit goes awry everyone will yell "just add some cal/mag!", that would have been a full on disaster.  My test plants that I ran only on TPS One didn't show any real problems other than lightish color leaves so I figured a bit more Ca/Mg and a touch of N couldn't hurt with this run, well we can delete the calmag from that notion.  The N boost however is very subtle and slow release and with the other issues I had it's impossible to know if it was worth adding until I do another run where I only add it to the base and not the calmag.  I think if I try this TPS stuff in coco I'd add a 1/4 dose of calmag as insurance, or maybe just in a foliar, I really hate the spots but the lockout really sucked too.   It can't be beat for ease of use though, if I can iron out the kinks and build a roadmap of what extra it does or does not need it'll be great.

So once they perked up by mid week I decided to get a bend in a few days before they flipped and that will pretty much do it on the training front.  From my test plants it seems the quart bucket doesn't have the root mass and rez capacity to really push more than a couple tops, the 2 cola mainline in that tent is very strong but the 8 top manifold plants are unimpressive.   Initially I wanted 4 cola mainlines here and I still think these buckets can do that but waiting another week wasn't in the cards this run.  The Purple Afghani will be the single cola challenge plant, it's never grown quickly and right now is maybe 3 inches tall at 10 nodes, pretty stupid, but should make for a nice pocket sized single cola plant.

Post to click the flip button.

Day 42, last day of the first week of flower.

Things have really turned around since taking the cal-mag out of the mix. The color still isn't what I'd like on the Purple Afghani but I've read in a couple different places that epsom salts need to be avoided in this first week of flower since it can mess up flower formation so I need to wait a couple more days before hitting it again.   Bubba Kush got her first pistils only 6 days from flip day, still none on the other 2 but I wasn't expecting any at all till maybe Monday or Tuesday at the earliest.

Just found pistils on the Purple Afghani at 4pm today too, so thats pretty cool.

Day 49 - flip day 14

Pistils showed on the final plant Dance World Monday so they were all quite fast and both Dance World and Bubba Kush have a good start on their pom poms already while the Purple Afghani is still jetting out nodes.  Drama free in the tent with temps from 77-79F 55-56% and I'm hoping to get 76-77F 52-53% stable for week 3.  TPS nute concoction seems agreeable now that the calmag is banished.  This week started the tapering down on the N boost and introducing Bloom and Signal which is a K additive that is supposed to do some terpene work and bud hardening.  These are all going in at quite low rates to just steer the TPS One a bit through different stages.  Having much less kickback on the ec level at this stage compared to using the TPS One alone in the other tent and the rez Ph level is not shifting as quickly.   

End of 3rd week of flower

Things are much more agreeable on the EC stability front as I'm figuring out what the TPS One needs more or less of in my little buckets.  Running low feed rates in a tiny rez really shines a light on shortcomings in the nutes quickly, unfortunately then you have the infuriating task of deducing *what* exactly is coming up short.   In this case Magnesium and or Sulfur seem to be where One has its issues and looking at what's in the extras they want to sell you in the TPS One "pro kit" that tracks.  In that kit they have 2 extra bottles, a foliar that is just Mg and the Signal terpene goo which is a K boost + magnesium sulfate.    Adding in epsom salt in the mix as well as a the few foliars I had time for has made a positive change to their eating and drinking habits and noticeable increase in smells.  Leftover tip ugliness aside all 3 look great as they speed run the flower period.    

End week 4 of flower

Nothing much exciting,  no drama headed to week 5 is a nice place to be.  Bubba Kush and Dance World are both stacking up very well, Purple Afghani isn't filling out as quickly.  Plants starting to want less EC over the last few days, currently down to 1160 while the tent has been running about 75-77F / 49-52%.

Week 5 of flower, where dreams go to die...but not today

Guess I traded a typical flower failure for my early veg shit show this run.  For the most part everything is still pretty good, lots of plumping going on and the single cola plant is looking to be a monster if I can keep bud rot from entering the conversation. 

One interesting thing is I seem to have gotten a bit of a deficiency that *nobody* gets, chloride, its like an American getting a sodium deficiency.  The required level to stay out of def is so tiny, like 2ppm, and it happens so rarely that there is barely any info to be had.   But I've got a leaf bronzing on the Bubba Kush that seems to only point to a chloride def or tox which look the same...and it sure ain't the second one in this case.  Doing the math and digging into ingredient lists and calling companies leads me to believe this unlikely scenario is happening.  My substrate has nothing, I use chlorine treated zero PPM RO water and there is not a single chlorided ingredient in any of the bottles.  I can understand not wanting to make a tox situation worse for tap water users but damn kids, if 2ppm is going to be the tipping point for someones water they probably have plenty of other problems to sort out so c'mon throw in just a pinch.