Durban Poison RDWC 600W HPS/MH/LED Grow

DAY 58, WEEK 9 of grow, WEEK 6 of flower


The plants are definitely starting to put on some weight. I had to move a heavily frosted branch to the side and, like some dirty Marijuana pervert I couldn't resist sniffing my fingers after touching the plant......holy cow, they need to bottle this scent into a cologne. It smelled like a mixture of cotton candy, diesel fuel, and brown sugar. I've smoked Sour Diesel before, and this plant has that distinct diesel smell to it. I wonder if SD has some DP in it?

I've decided that based on what I am seeing, I will progress into the new feeding ratios when IU enter into week 10 next week. I think adding this extra week is just what the doctor ordered.

 

DAY 58, WEEK 9, WEEK 6 of flower (part 2)


The buds are getting heavier and the long side branches are starting to dip. I may need to start tying these to the main stalk lol.


My mother plant is a monster and completely out of control. I have topped this thing a half dozen times and it KEEPS GOING. It laughs at my feeble attempts to control its growth. I circled each topping I performed in one of the pics below, and include a 1 gallon water jug for scale.

 

DAY 59, WEEK 9, WEEK 6 of flower

Pictures speak for themselves

 

DAY 60, WEEK 9, WEEK 6 of FLOWER

NEAR DISASTER!!!! For the last day or two I have noticed all of my major branches starting to lean a bit. I didn’t think much of it as I assumed the plants were taking on a little weight. Well DAMN, they were taking on a LOT of weight. I opened my tent and say my entire LED DWC plant had tilted over, one of my main cola branches bent ☹


So, lack of preparation (creating a trellis!) had me scrambling to string lines along and try to prop the plant back up. I got COVERED in sticky trichomes and I really felt the massive weight these buds are taking on.


I propped the bent branch up and tried to prop all the heavy bud packing branches up as best I could. The RDWC system didn’t suffer too badly, only some of the smaller branches that were leaning on the LEDD DWC branches. I rigged a string trellis up for the RDWC as well, which should make harvest a pain in the ass .


So, will the bent bud branch recover??? It didn’t snap clean off or anything, it just bent completely over and snapped internally, I think. I have it leaning against a rpo so it is still facing skyward.

 

DAY 63, WEEK 10, Week 7 of FLOWER

I started WEEK 10 (week 7 of flower) today. I also beefed up my makeshift trellis and support structure (see pictures). I am still concerned at the small size of my buds. I am so perplexed by this strain/grow. They smell AMAZING and are incredibly sticky, but they seem small to me. Will these really beef up in the last few weeks? I guess we will see…..

I’ll try to get some pics without the lights later this evening.

 

DAY 63, WEEK 10, Week 7 of FLOWER - UPDATE

WIth the lights off, the plants sure look pretty!

I also included some pictures of my DIY bubble cloner. Just 2 air stones and a lid with holes, that's really all it takes.

 

DAY 67, WEEK 10, Week 7 Flower

The buds are still pretty small. My previous grows produced much larger flowers. That said, they are SUPER sticky and pretty dense. I have about over 2.5 weeks left on the grow and I don’t see them getting much larger than they are now, so it looks like will have a ton of dense, but small, nugs.

I was considering getting a new strain for my next grow, but I want to try making some improvements and working with the same genetics in my next grow to see if I can improve the yield. I’m going to use SCROG for the next attempt, which I think will not only be perfect for this strain but will result in much larger nugs.

I also went all in and bought a Mars Hydro TSW 2000 LED for my next grow. I’ve been a MH/HPS grower for all my grows, but I was very impressed by the results of my Bloomspect full spectrum for my DWC, and the Mars Hydro TWS 2000 seems to be the best budget LED for the size/power I want.

For now, I am excited to begin prepping for harvest.

 

DAY 69, WEEK 11, Week 8 Flower

 

DAY 72, WEEK 11, Week 8 Flower

Getting very close to harvest now! I have a little over 1 week before my nutrient schedule is up and I can see amber trichomes starting to appear.

The buds have fattened up nicely, although again, this has been the smallest bud producing plant I have ever grown. It's also one of the stickiest, so I'm hoping size doesn't necessarily correlate to potency.

 

DAY 73, WEEK 11, week 8 of flower.

I managed to snap some pics this morning right before my lights came on. WOW, the buds really have plumped up over the past few days. Just a little over one week left I think.....

 

DAY 74, WEEK 11, week 8 of flower


I ordered a USB/digital microscope that should arrive tomorrow so I can get a better look at the trichomes. I did my best using my cell phone to get zoomed in pics, but it's not very clear/in focus and it can only get so close. From what I could see....they still look clear to me. If that's the case I may need to continue to prolong the grow until I start seeing some amber trichomes. I guess I'll have to see what happens over this upcoming scheduled final week.


I'm visually impaired: what do these trichomes look like to you?

 

DAY 75, WEEK 11, week 8 of flower

Well, my photos are a little better with the digital magnifier, but not much lol. I'm not seeing any amber trichomes

 

DAY 81, WEEK 12, week 9 of flower

I harvested my LED DWC! You can see in my two trichome pics the buds are speckled with amber trichomes. I don't weight my harvest wet so I'll get a final weigh in once it has dried. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to harvest from what was originally a throw away clone sitting underneath my cheap "600W" LED full spectrum light. While my RDWC/HPS plants are roughly 30% larger/more robust than the LED plant, this blurple light (Bloomspect) really did an amazing job.

My RDWC still has one more week I think. I'll go into my ripen week starting Monday, and after a week of that, I'll flush for a day or two and chop. That's a massive jungle to chop down, and I was not expecting to have so much from my smaller DWC grow. I had to order more hanging supplies to accommodate that massive forrest. I am not looking forward to harvesting the RDWC de to the work, but I am looking forward to it being harvested and drying.

 

DAY 84, WEEK 13, week 10 of flower

These ladies are stubborn! The trichomes are turning cloudy on my 4 plant system, but still lots of clear trichomes and no amber trichomes yet. Hopefully they start appearing this week.

I am using my "ripening" nutrient formula for week 10, and HOPE I can chop at the end of this week, but the trichomes will be the determining factor. I need to see amber trichomes peppering the entire bud.

 

DAY 87, WEEK 13, week 10 of flower


the plants in my RDWC system continue to flower. Freaking stubborn ladies refuse to turn amber so I just wait.


In the meantime, my LED control plant buds were dry so I clipped them, gave them a sloppy trim, and 2.5oz are now curing. I have 1.75oz of trim/trash buds drying out some more and they will be used for edibles and hash. That gives me 4.25oz of usable bud from one small, 50$ light that I only bought to veg a mother plant. NOT BAD AT ALL!


Besides the buds themselves, I was able to obtain two extra "bonus" harvests. The first was a ball of hash I formed by peeling the thick layer of resin that had formed on the fingertips my of gloves that I wore during trim. My scaled is being a jerk and won't register lower than a gram, so I would guess it's just below a gram or a half gram harvested from fingertips off of gloves!


My second bonus harvest was the kief in the bottom tray of my trim bin. Again, I need a new scale so I can't give a 100%accurate measurement, but it looks like 1/4 gram or thereabouts.


My 2.5oz are somewhat lackluster in that they are leafy (I don't trim much; I like sloppy buds). I am still blown away by what was grown under a cheap LED, but it is not my most robust bud. The buds under my HPS are fatter and will be more like what I am used to. The LED bud is super sticky, very potent, perfect for smoking (especially in joints), it smells AMAZING, and will become my regular smoke until I get to my 4 ladies that are still growing. These will get better and better as they cure too. It has a heavy narcotic feeling, great for body aches but probably best for night time and/or staying at home.


I'll probably make dry ice hash on Sunday to give the material another day to dry, then a day in the freezer. That should yield a nice pile of resin and I'll press that into hash. Pictures to come.

 

DAY 93, WEEK 11 FLOWER - H A R V E S T D A Y!!!!!!!

It took me a marathon 16 hours to chop, wet trim, and hang all 4 RDWC plants. There was SOOOOO much good bud ALLL over the plant, I only started my "hash/trash bud" bag for edible/hash production during the last hour of my harvest, or the last 15 percent of the lower buds. AMAZING! I have two full 1 gallon freezer zip lock bags full of these lower buds.

Besides an insane amount of bud, I gathered a ton of keif because I used my trim bin for the entire chop. SO MUCH KEIF! I also had gobs of resin hash balls that i scraped off my scissors every 20 minutes, and of course smoked a bunch.

I'll continue to update this journal over the next month with hash production and dry weigh in.

 

FINAL HARVEST AND CURE WEIGH IN


My buds have been curing for almost 2 weeks and they smell absolutely amazing. Between my 4 bucket DWC system and my DWC control plant, I grew just a bit over 20 ounces dried, with about 15 ounces being smokable buds, the rest being used for kief extraction/edibles.


The buds are considerably "larger" than my control/LED DWC harvested buds, and they are noticeably more potent. It's amazing how much they transform with an good cure!


The smaller/32oz jar contains my "private reserve" stash, as I LOVE bud that is cured on the stem, and this is something I pull out to smoke with good friends.


Although I was intending on doing a back to back DUrban Poison grow, I had no idea I'd grow so much bud, so I decided to pop into my local clone shop (legalization is rad) and secured some new genetics for my next grow. In my own little experiment, I CHOPPED my 5 foot tall Durban Poison mother plant at the base and left one sad little stem connected just to see what she would do. What did she do? She don't GAF! That branch is the new top LOL. So now I have a Durban mother if I want to do that for Grow #3.


My system has been cleaned....I have replaced my lighting system....and I have a new strain. Time for Grow #2. Stay tuned.

 

I had two bags of "non smoking buds". One was the super undeveloped stuff at the bottom that was sticky but white/pale and not developed enough to smoke. The other bag (about 4 ounces) were more developed, but small buds. I actually dried and cured the small bud stash and that's what I made that mound of kief out of (dry ice method).

The bag of underdeveloped buds did indeed go straight into the freezer. I haven't used that yet: I have done dry ice extraction on frozen buds that have not been dry and the kief needs to dry after extraction. I don't think it matters for making butter though, so I'm not sure what I will use it for right now/