Well, today was the day! My goodness it feels like Christmas! I cannot wait until these nugs dry out so I can taste them!

3 years ago

We are currently on the 24th week, which means that these ladies are nearly 6 months old! And my goodness are they purple or what!?!? I’m loving it, these things just look amazing and I cannot wait to harvest and smoke! Of the three Red Mandarine plants, one has deeply purple buds and some leaves that are starting to change color as well; the second is a much bigger plant with heavier/thicker buds that look purple/green and grey; and the last one is just now showing signs of purple… she had a rough end to the summer as I stumbled through learning about overwatering, pH issues and nutrient lock. It’s incredible how resilient these things can be. But we are probably a couple weeks from harvest still, and I feel like a kid at Christmas! On a slightly less positive note, I have 2 other plants in my greenhouse and one of them is an Apple Pie clone (the other being Monkey Mintz) which is absolutely huge and has gigantic green buds everywhere… well, as I was inspecting her, I found several patches of brown buds in the very largest buds. I’m super worried that it’s bud rot, because even though I grow outdoors in my greenhouse in the PNW where there’s basically no humidity, I did close my windows to the greenhouse last weekend when I was down here because it’s been very windy and storming a bunch. I’ve now removed the affected areas, taking off lots of buds (which hurts like hell!), setup 2 more fans and opened the windows. I’m hopeful that takes care of it, but I’m wondering if I should move her out of the greenhouse now, or even go ahead and harvest her. Any advice?

3 years ago

Wow, thanks to my mate Mikey, the ladies are looking amazing. I’m in the process of moving, and my new place is 1.5 hours away, so he’s been watering/feeding and talking to the ladies while I’m gone (what can I say, I do it too?!). They have gotten much much fatter in the bud areas, and they are deeply purple… well two of them are anyway. Crazy how different each pheno can be. Anyway, I’m guessing there are at least 2-3 more weeks left, but we are getting close. Day 164 means I’m 23 weeks deep! And these are supposed to be the fast flowering variety! They are, but we’ve had a strange year. Cannot wait for harvest.

3 years ago

Continuing to flower, and man these ladies look good. Stacking and getting really heavy with lots and lots of purple tones everywhere.

3 years ago

Still going strong in the flowering stage. The ladies are looking great and adding weight. I am honestly not sure how much longer these girls will take to finish. I believe the flowering stage started in early Aug, and I’m guessing we are 6 weeks in (give or take). I really hope they continue to stack up, but this stage seems to make time slow down for some reason!

3 years ago

The girls have been flowering for ~5 weeks, and they are doing extremely well. After having issues with pH, nutrient lockout or whatever the hell was happening, I think we are in a very good trajectory and that we should end up with some really nice nugs. As you can see, one of the ladies has LOTS of purple hues showing and the buds are stacking nicely. Another one has some reddish coloring, and the final one… doesn’t at all have any color changes that I can see. The tallest of them shows really white pistils and smells hella good, but no purp whatsoever. Anyhow, all three look like they are going to yield lots of buds, and I cannot wait! Still estimating that harvest comes mid-October at this point.

3 years ago

Continuing to take measurements at each feeding has begun to really pay off. I have slightly altered the nutrient regiment, stripping away everything except Adv Nutrients Connoisseur Bloom base A & B; CalMag; Silica; Chitosan; and Adv Nut Big Bud. I was using several other additives (Terpinator, root zone and others), however after my pH issues, I decided to add one thing back at a time. As you can see, flowers are starting to really fill in and are getting pretty stacked on the colas. I’m sure that the pH issues I had impacted my grow and potential harvest negatively, but there will still be a good amount of bud to collect and I’m starting to see some of the colors present as they get farther into flowering. Temps in the NW are starting to go down as we reach autumn, especially at night, which I hear is an essential ingredient for those purple colors… night time temps are going to mid 40’s so hopefully that helps these ladies give me some colors!!!

3 years ago

I’ve been vigilantly measuring the pH, TDS and EC of my runoff at each watering/feeding, and things are getting so much better, and the plants are much, much healthier. They are all starting to form buds, and some of them are slightly reddish looking. Checking in with positive news and progress on day 136!

3 years ago

I have been struggling these last few weeks with the pH in these ladies… I was worried because of how the leaves looked, very small and yellow/brown tipped on all three of the plants. I began measuring the pH in the soil, as well as the pH, EC and ppm/TDS in the runoff for several weeks, and I’ve learned quite a bit from that process. I was testing out really low on the pH, and really high on the EC/TDS side. I believe that I was very close to, if not fully in, nutrient lockout, but I think I’ve now guided the ladies through that turbulence. By watering with correctly pH’d water only; watering enough to get a good amount of runoff (which is quite a bit of water for a 5 gallon fabric pot); and testing that water before and runoff after. Today, I got 6.5pH, 1500 ppm and 2400 EC, which all look like signs that things are back on track. Hard lessons to learn, hopefully though, I’ve salvaged the plants just in time! I have read that the Red Mandarine FastFlower tends to flower in 7-9 weeks or in mid to late September… both of those things seem to match my timeline. I’m growing in the greenhouse so depending on the sun to dictate.

3 years ago

I’m continuing to have pH issues, but I think things are on the right path. I realized that I also have a TDS/EC meter, and read about how to use it, which I suppose tells you just how new I am at all of this. Nonetheless, I’ve clearly got some nutrient rich soil and I am now flushing with pH’d water. Initially got values around 5, now the ladies are up to nearly 6 (5.92 or something). My ppm and EC values were also very high, and have decreased with the plain water flush. My hope is to have that sorted and get these ladies back on track. They are in the greenhouse, and according to Sweetseeds, they should be ready to harvest mid to late September. They are certainly flowering, and they are growing, but they aren’t nearly as full as I’d expected and some of the leaves are pretty brown tipped… and oddly, the leaves are all pretty small on two of the girls, one still has nice big leaves, but man. I have learned my lesson from this. Now I get to figure just how hard this one is gonna be…

3 years ago

These ladies went into the soil back on 4/20 and today is 8/23, so 4 full months deep. They have grown most of their lives in the greenhouse, and are now on the sun’s schedule. They are “Fast flowering”, but I don’t know how much that applies to outdoor growing. All the same, we’ve been in flowering now for at least 2-3 weeks, and are all relatively healthy. I am concerned about some pH issues that I may be facing… bought a soil pH tester, and that’s been telling me that I’m around 5, which is obviously pretty acidic. But I am not sure that I believe that number, so I tested with pH strips, and that didn’t help almost at all. I have also read that plants change the soil pH themselves as needed for uptake of the nutes they need at different points. So I find myself completely unsure of what to do, but the leaves on one of these girls pictured above look both healthy and not so much all at the same time. Any advice?

3 years ago

The girls are now in their new homes - 5 gallon pots! Wow, their roots needed the space too. It was honestly quite difficult to get them out of the 3 gallon pots, get the roots somewhat clean and move them over. But all of them had big root balls and need to move. One of the girls went through quite the cycle over about a month ago, but she is coming back pretty strong and I think she’ll have some decent buds after all. It’s amazing how resilient these things are.

3 years ago

Two of the girls have done extremely well, aside from some watering issues early on, that I’ve learned and grown from (lol)… apparently not quite enough of a lesson though. As you’ll see, the third lady looks pretty bad. This was entirely my fault, I badly overwatered her and honestly thought she was a lost cause until a week or so ago… I moved her out of the greenhouse and into a place that she got only morning sun, which I think helped her to recover to some degree. Now her canopy has… well a semblance of a canopy! So we’re in heavy recovery mode, but I honestly think she going to pull through! Oh, and today was the first feeding with bloom nutes for the two girls that are in good health. They are both showing clear signs of preflowering with the little hairs everywhere. I’m looking forward to the stretch!

3 years ago

Oh shit… I had some other auto seeds that I’d started in the greenhouse along side the ladies and I may well pay the price. I’ve found two of the new plants to be males with seed pods hanging, and I don’t know if they’ve pollenated my ladies or what!!! So I suppose this is a lesson, and I hope that I’ve gotten them out in time, but if not then I will be able to tell everyone what happens when the ladies get pollenated… lol sorta. Anyway, the ladies are doing amazingly well. They are tall and bushy and entering the preflowering stage, shooting off little hairs between new grow leaves. I’ve done a pretty good job of training them and they’ve developed some great and dense canopy areas. I’m introducing a homemade sog setup that I’m building and we’ll see how well that turns out. Overall, I’m super impressed with these plants from seedsman. So far they’ve been solid preformers week in and week out. I’m not sure if we’ll see the red coloration suggested when I bought these, but I’ve been very surprised by how different flowers look plant to plant.

3 years ago

2 of the girls look great… one not so much. I overwatered I’m pretty sure and she’s taken a nosedive. Hopefully I can nurse her back with some spray nutes. The other two, however, continue to grow big and beautiful!

3 years ago

The girls are doing well generally, and have gotten much much bigger over the last several weeks. One issue that I am noticing recently is that the leaves are developing yellow/brown almost copper colored dots on newer leaves. Not all of them, but several of them do have quite a few of these spots and I’m not sure what exactly it is. I’ve read that it is likely a calcium deficiency, but that’s very odd as I’m adding CalMag Plus to every feeding that the plants receive. Any ideas?

3 years ago

The girls are doing really well. I’ve employed some super cropping techniques, which seem to be working quite well. In total, I’ve got 3 red Mandarines, 1 apple pie, 1 chocolate chimp/monkey Mintz, 2 zkittles and 3 sour gummy bears.

3 years ago

These ladies just continue to thrive. They’ve gotten quite tall already, too tall for much in the way of training at this point. They’ve all been topped, and they are branching some laterally as well. I can’t wait to see these bad boys in 2 months!

4 years ago

So we are almost 8 weeks into this thing, and two of the girls look amazing. All three are out in the greenhouse now and are humming along nicely. Huge plants, beautiful leaves, healthy as can be.

4 years ago

I’ve got 3 plants going, all started from seeds I bought from Seedsman.com; bred by Sweerseeds. These plants supposedly produce purple and red flowers, which I cannot wait to see. I started all of them out in my greenhouse, but decided to bring one of them inside to grow under my 600 watt HPS. I live in the northwest, and even though it’s light out from 5am to 9pm, we don’t get heaps of sun. The difference between the greenhouse and indoor is amazing. Honestly, I expected some difference but just look at the pics! That’s not one plant in different times, I planted all three the same day!

4 years ago