El Dorado (+freebies), SCROG in soil

Alrighty, I'll have some catching up to do here now that I'm migrating stuff over from some other forum ....

I'll be starting out with a SCROG setup, but eventually the goal is to have two screens a couple months apart and maybe a few other plants in the room once I upgrade the ventilation fans, scrubbers, and lights to accommodate them. Right now I'm just using CFLs, which I've had good luck with in the past for SCROG setups, but I will probably upgrade that at some point too. This is a purely recreational operation, so weight of yields isn't my goal, quality of the smoke is my goal.

Enough intro, now for the photos.... first, two El Dorado seedlings, a few days old (from about two months ago).

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Next, a couple weeks later... during the interim, I had germinated some of the mystery "freebies" Nirvana sent with these seeds, one of which proved to be a little mutant.

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Now, a series showing the development of the little mutant over the following weeks. Not sure if you can see it clearly, but she (yes, she) put out a couple female flowers before ever putting out her first true leaves.

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I'll finish with a photo of the two El Dorados under the screen today, after one week of 12/12. One still hasn't sexed, so the other may get the full screen if she proves to be the only lady.

I have some other photos I'm leaving out, but I figured a highlight reel was a good way to start and I'll be adding more as the grow develops. Hope you enjoy!

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I should add that the mutant princess is in the seedling starting chamber (which she has not yet come close to outgrowing), along with a new El Dorado seedling and a clone that was a branch I accidentally snapped from the plant on the right under the screen. Those are under 24/0 now, which I'll switch to 18/6 when I get a second timer.

Your plants look good. I do not quite understand your set up however? I do not believe that the shelf you have over the plants is not going to make a good scrog screen. When doing a scrog, you train the plants to grow horizontally under the screen. The growing tips are pushed under the screen until the screen is about 3/4 full. Then the growing tips are allowed to grow up through the net and you end up with a bunch of buds growing up through the screen. Right now you just have a regular grow with a shelf over the plants (which I am confused by?) It can be difficult to scrog when growing from seed. By the time the plants show sex, you should have them so interwoven below the screen that it would be impossible to remove one of them...and you will want to remove males.

Just so you know--those are not female flowers, but simply new growth. All your plants will look like that as they grow. New growth and female flowers do rather look the same, but no plant anywhere is going to put out female flowers when it just pops from the soil. So, it may or may not turn out to be female, but those are definitely not female flowers...you won't really know for 4-6 weeks when you start getting alternating nodes and preflowers.

Rather than being a mutant, it is apparent that it originally had a leaf, but something damaged it and it is healing over the place where the leaf was removed. I am happy that it is surviving.

You might want to read up on setting up a grow space. I would get rid of the foil--foil is a horrible reflector of light (regardless of what it looks like). When it is wrinkled it can create hot spots that burn the plants. As can spraying the plants with water. No benefits to spraying your plants and a lot of reasons not to. You are going to need substantially more light and you are going to want to put up some kind of reflective surface (panda film or mylar, hate mylar by the way) or paint FLAT white. I would also make some kind of movable partition to get the space smaller. You are underlit for your space and getting up partitions that are pushed right up next to the plants will make the most of the light you do have. I would remove the screen, do some lst or fimming, and put the plants in separate containers. I would also lower the lights significantly. See the big space you have between the branches? This shows us that the plant is not getting enough light and is stretching for the light. Run your light 24/7. An 18/6 light schedule also encourages stretch, it is especially bad if you are underlit anyway. The problem with large internodal spacing is that you end up with a tall lanky plant that does not have very many bud sites. Learning everything about this plant that you can and utilizing it will help insure a good harvest....in 3 or 4 months.

Thanks for the feedback. However, this is probably my 15th grow, about half of them scrog setups, usually with sativas. I know what a scrog is, I know what a cannabis pistil looks like versus new growth, I know that CFLs need to be almost touching the leaves (I raised them for the photo). I know not to use foil, my walls are mostly flat white, there's a layer of mylar and a layer of plastic sheeting sandwiched between the white hard board and concrete walls to insulate the space a little from the cold basement walls. I ran out of hard board, so that's why there's a slight gap in the corners where you can see the mylar poking through.

I have grown three harvests under this lighting setup. It has additional holes for adding fixtures and sometimes I add clamp lights to the periphery (one was removed from the front for that photo). Right now it's a total of about 280 watts (actual) CFLs, but i usually finish with more like 380. The node spacing was fairly tight until I switched to 12/12, so that accounts for most of the stretching you see.

The mutant is definitely a mutant. When the cotyledon opened, there was no set of true leaves waiting to open. It went a full week without so much as putting out a leaf. During that time, half the cotyledon fell off and it put out two pistils. Definitely pistils when examined under magnification. I assumed it would die, but instead it put out a leaf shoot right around when I assume the cotyledon was running out of energy reserves.

Oh and the one on the right has sexed, he's male. I want a batch of seeds and these are landrace, so probably pretty stable, so I've begun aggressively pruning the male to restrict root growth since that photo, but I'm going to let him flower a little. In my experience these basically pure sativas will keep flowering pretty aggressively even if you let some pollen hit the first round of flowers on the female. I'll pull him once it looks like a few flowers have gone to seed, residual pollen will likely add a few more through the grow.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the mutant's flowers under magnification, but these cropped-out excerpts from the photos above should show them pretty clearly. They only lasted about a week, and shriveled up once the shoot got going.

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Just a quick update (I'll add photos later). I swapped out a couple 26w (5000k) bulbs for 32w (2700k), I'm up to 291w total, broken down as follows:

65w X 1
42w X 2
32w X 2
26w X 3

I'm going to grab a few more 42w bulbs this week, eventually I'm aiming for 65w X 2, 42w X 6, totaling 382w.

I also took a cutting from the female 2 days ago, it looks like it's gonna root fine, but the seed starting box is getting a bit crowded. Might have to build the mother keeper I've been planning for awhile.

well, i am confused, are you making seeds or growing dank? And I have to say, that was not a female. Pollen escaping makes me very nervous about the whole room being ruined for next grows unless vigorously cleaned. You seem to be very comfortable with everything so I am wishing you green mojo for this grow.

I don't view a few seeds in my bud as ruining it, and when I've allowed other mostly pure sativa strains to have a few seeds it never seemed to noticeably affect potency to me. Since I'm the only one smoking it, I don't need to worry if other people want occasional seeds in their bud. This is my first time growing El Dorado though, so it's possible it behaves differently from the Asian and African landrace sativas I'm more familiar with. The closest I've grown is Super Silver Haze, but I got that feminized so didn't try making any seeds that time. We shall see!

As for whether those two white pistils emerging from that seedling are flowers, I guess it depends on nomenclature. Those pictures aren't clear, but under 60x magnification they were undeniably pistils, of the kind you'll usually see when a plant has sexed but hasn't really started flowering yet (i.e., smaller and shorter than proper flower pistils).

I'm sad I've been neglecting my grow journal, but work and family have taken so much of my time recently that I've only just been able to keep up the plants, no time for documentation!

Here's one photo I snapped tonight of the main El Dorado female, around day 30 of 12/12. I pulled the male after his flowers started popping pretty heavily, and I see a few swollen ova scattered on the female, so I'm guessing I'll get about 10 seeds unless there's enough pollen floating around the room to add to that figure. I moved one of the mystery freebies into his place since she had just sexed.

Hopefully I'll have time for a proper update soon!

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My neglect continues, but the good news is the plants seem OK despite only once-daily check-ins by me. Lights are off now, but I had a minute so I thought I'd post a photo-less update.

The main ElDorado female is starting to crank out the flowers, smells wonderful. Now just three more months until harvest..... The freebie who's joined her under the screen looks very sativa dominant too, but it's hard to say this early (she's on day 17 of 12/12, ElDorado is on day 35). I'm monitoring a bug problem in the soil, but so far it's not clear whether any damage is being done. They look like some kind of tiny soft bodied insects, but for all I know they're eating chunks of organic matter in the compost and might even be helping the micro fauna. They could be root aphids, but the photos look different from ones I've been able to find. If the plant shows symptoms of suffering I'll consider a neem drench or something like that.

Finally, I've re-rigged the lights because it was getting unwieldy and I had a few more 42w CFLs to swap in. Now it's 42w x 4, 32w x 1, totaling 13,400 lumens over the 12" x 26" screen, or about 6200 lumens per sq ft. Sufficient, though not as much as I've used before for this same sized screen.

In other news, I've started my first DWC bucket, which seems to be doing OK. I'll start another journal for that with photos and info when I have time, though.

Photos should follow tonight when the lights go on!

Time for photos.

First, the canopy. It's not as full as I like, but this ElDorado doesn't seem to stretch and grow as much during 12/12 as the sativas I'm used to. The mystery seed one still has a bit of stretching left to go, so maybe it can help fill the voids, at least on the right side.

Next, a closeup of the most vigorous top on the ElDorado. You may notice some burnt leaves. I was using a different fixture for the lights before and it wasn't staying put well enough, so I kept finding bulbs touching leaves.

Then, the mystery freebie. As you can see, she looks even more sativa dominant than the ElDorado based on the flower structure, but it's a little early to pass judgment.

Next I am including a wide shot of the flowering room.

Finally, a closeup showing how I ziptied the clamp lights together so they can be hung and raised/lowered as a unit. I know horizontal bulbs are best, but this seems to be working OK for now. Can't wait until I have the funds to upgrade the room to HPS and higher powered ventilation fans.

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Just a few nicer photos, the last batch were taken with my cell phone, I pulled out the DSLR for these.

First, the main front cola of the ElDorado, which is starting to fill in nicely. Day 36 of 12/12 for the ElDorado.

Next, a couple photos of secondary tops in the back. There were 4 main branches, but it seems to be focusing most of its energy on the front center one and rear center one (harder to photograph that one).

The last two photos are of the mystery/freebie plant, which looks to be very very sativa. I brought it in right after I'd pulled the male ElDorado, but it looks like there's a single seed on it from residual pollen. If I see one, there are probably at least 2-3, so that's somewhat exciting to get a few seeds crossing a known sativa and mysterious sativa. That one's on day 18 of 12/12 now.

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Nice buds starting!

Day 38 for ElDorado since start of 12/12, Day 20 for Nirvana freebie. Just a few photos from around the canopy. I get the feeling this freebie is going to grow a lot, I'm kind of glad the ElDorado slowed it's growth more quickly than I'd expected.

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I meant to add that, for anyone curious, the lights are now as follows:
4 X 42w 2700K (2800 x 4)
1 X 42w 6500K (2800)
1 X 32w 2700K (2200)
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242w, or 111 per square foot
16,200 lumens, 7480 per square foot

Just started some seeds to become a second screen, staggered a couple months behind the other one. Went with just the freebies this time, in case they can't survive my weeklong absence in a couple weeks. All three popped, look good if a little stretchy, as seedlings can be. Moved one into a larger pot, other two will follow tomorrow when I pick up a couple more flower pots.

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