Hello my CFC growmies and welcome to my latest grow! I am looking forward to improving and growing with you all in my journey. For this grow we will be doing:

• Genetics: Tony Green’s GG#4 IBL
• Medium: Coco/Perlite
• Method: HFF, Scrog, mainlined
• Light: Mars Hydro FC-3000
• Tent: Gorilla tent 2x2.5
• Nutes: Flora Series, GH’s new feed chart

I am bringing some improvements and new methods to this grow that I am really excited to try! 

Genetics:

First, I have done a deep dive into GG#4’s genetics, and have found that there are a dedicated group of breeders that are religious in keeping the true genetics alive, and it is accepted that other than a clone only two breeders have true GG#4 in seed form. These are either Mycoteks or Tony Greens GG#4 IBL. Recombinant inbred line seeds are the most stable seeds there are. Mycotek did years of backcrossing using original cuts from Josey Whales himself before he passed, and Tony Green also did so himself. Then Tony used Mycoteks work with his own for a combined 12 years of breeding and created the GG#4 IBL seeds that produce 95% or better plants accurate to the original clone cut. Even though you see a lot of other breeders with the “GG Approved”, they still aren’t close representations of the original cut, which is why you see so many different phenos of GG#4 out there. And if you ever had the original you know most representations are all over the place, some decent and some in name only.

So I chose Tony Greens for this grow. You can see his years long work breeding these seeds in a journal that he still updates over on Overgrow here. Also a 40 page years long thread by GG#4 growers going in depth discussing these seeds and other GG4 breeders here. You can see how crazy resinous it is in the pics!

Nutrients:

Next, I will be doing a bit of an experiment by trying out GH’s new feed chart. According to their website, “The General Hydroponics R&D team just wrapped a multi-year project to refine these charts—making them more precise, more customized, and easier to use than ever.”

I know Dr. Coco’s charts are based off of GH’s old feed charts, so I am really excited to try their updated charts. More is learned about cannabis growing every year so it makes sense they would come out with an updated chart. And if a whole team of scientists spent years refining it I hope it will yield good results. In my opinion this all started since they were sold to Hawthorn in 2015 and opened a “one in the world” cannabis research facility in Canada, so it looks like they are putting in some serious resources to ensure they are the market leaders in nutrients for the burgeoning growing industry. Hopefully this means good news for us growers!

One big difference you may notice is Diamond Nectar is no longer listed. According to GH this is because they found it causes the plant to uptake TOO much nitrogen, so now they recommend Floralicious Plus, which is humic acid based and similar to Diamond Nectar, but better with other organic additives. They also now recommend a lot less bloom booster, which is in line with a couple recent studies on the relationship of the P and K ratios during flowering. Another change I will be making is using Hydroguard instead of H2o2. GH swears H2o2 kills certain micronutrients in their nutes and not to use it, whether true or not I will be on the safe side and use Hydroguard. 

You can find the PDF charts here or in the pic below, and will be using the “medium feed” as GH recommends it for most grows including HFF, but with the levels of CalMag that Dr. Coco recommends. They list the total nitrogen PPM too which is helpful. Let’s see how it turns out 🤞

Other:

I took the plunge and added a PAR meter! I will be using an Apogee MQ-500. This is their latest model and more accurate for wide spectrum LED lights. Their other models were not designed for wide spectrum LED thus less accurate, according to Apogee.

Seeds are soaking right now. I will be doing my usual method of straight into jiffy pellets after the soaking. Then it’s the seedling Hunger Games where I cull the weak and keep the strong until one remains. Let’s growwwwww!!