Just about half way through flowering

The smell coming from the tent was already getting pretty strong from all the vegetation, but now there is a new smell.. dank sticky buds. The plants are putting on weight, noticeably more heavy when I move them. I think its all going into bud growth. Seeing the leaves covered in trichromes and even more sugar leaves forming I think the plants are very happy with the 1000W HPS light and the added co2 from the sugar/yeast mixes. They are now being fed their flowering nutrients, and the amount of water they consume is just amazing. Giving them a few gallons a week of water for each plant. The plants are showing their content with lots of bud growth and sugar leaves forming all around them.

Camera Model	Lumix GH6
Lens	Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm Macro lens
Filter	none
Aperture	f/13
Shutter Speed	1/13 sec
Film Speed	3200
Spectrum	Visual Light
Wavelength	380 through 700 nanometers
Location	Central Virginia USA.

In the last few days I moved the light up a few inches as the canopy is getting quite warm. I try to keep the temperatures at the bud sites below 85F (29C). If the temperature got above 100F (37C) it would start to degrade the terpenes. My plants can handle higher temperatures due to their co2 enriched environments but its important not to let the buds degrade from getting cooked by my powerful light.

Hard to say when the flowering will be done, since these are unknown strains its really hard to say. I am guessing a total of around 60 days but it can vary.

I ordered a digital microscope and a magnifier to look through to check on the state of the trichromes. This is a good way to tell when its time to harvest, as the trichromes change colors as they ripen. But we are still a few weeks away, maybe a month from that time.

Right now the hairs are mostly a white to lime green color. But when the plant gets closer to harvest they should change to a more orange color.

Amazing to see all the crystals forming, but I really need to be more careful wearing clean clothes around these plants now. They are so sticky, if any lent falls off my clothes it can get stuck to the plants.

We can see a few stray fabric strands, need to pull those off. Maybe its time to buy some lab coats and only wear them when working on the plants. I should get green colored ones.. lol

The underside of the leaves are looking quite strong, even though its short its a stout plant.

I am going to have lots of sugar leaves after trimming. Need to find a good use for them, maybe I will make another tea.

Zooming out and plant 1:

Mainlining has been something new to me, by training the stalks to the sides of the pot it looks more wide than tall. That gives my plant the advantage to get light to all the buds unlike growing them traditionally where only the top buds get most of the light.

The leaves are kind of small, but that is due to major trimming done during the mainline. Even with them being small I may go back and do some defoliation so none of the leaves are touching the buds and allow more air flow.

But id rather have small leaves than big ones blocking each other.

The trunks are looking the most impressive, they are approaching the thickness of a sharpie pen.

We can see where I did the 2nd mainline, going from two main colas to four.

For the last month I have been using soft wires I train the buds, but at this point I will stop training and just let grow up. At the most I may trim off some leaves as pointed out earlier.

This is the first time I have done any training, but I like it and I think I will keep topping plants and training them. Not sure if I will mainline right away again but its good to know how.

I messed up on one of the mainlines, and it started growing the wrong way. So now I have one mainline stacked on the other.

Plant 2

The second flowering plant is slightly taller. This was because I messed up on mainlining and had to redo some of the wires.

Using the plant hoop and wires it has really helped me manage this plants growth.

Moving the HPS light up recently as they grow I do not want the plants to burn, I still have around 6 inches of travel up on the light. And if I ran out then I can attach the light clips directly to the tent and get another few inches. But I hope with my training of the plant and starting flowering early I wont need to worry about running out of room.

Whats next?

Keeping up the co2 in the room at this point is crucial, as the plant is growing and putting lots of energy into the buds. Using my air quality meter I try to keep the PPM's over 1000 and upwards of 1400 and refresh the yeast and sugar water mix a few times a week.

It would probably be a good time to defoliate but since the leaves are all quite small I am reluctant to do this.

I keep using essential oil diffusers in the tent to help keep away any pests. I do this twice a week right now. A mix of rosemary, eucalyptus and peppermint is what I put into the oil diffusers, makes the rooms smell lovely.

Once my digital microscope arrives I can start looking at the trichromes and know when to harvest. It is important to wait for the crystals on the buds to go from a clear appearance to milky and finally to amber. Since I do not know what strain these are I will just go all the way to amber to make sure it fully ripens up. But with sativa dominant strains I would harvest when they are more of a milky white.