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This has been a long time coming with a false start here and there. I've been growing Polar Gelato for almost 2 years now and it remains my favorite smoke and I get how it grows and how to fill a tent with it. My first runs were 8 plants in a 4x4 tent (or two) and I've since learned I can make the same yield from four plants in the same space with healthier plants and less drama and fuss. I still make way too many clones whenever I make them. Anyway, I was running out of seeds and didn't want to lose the strain, so making seeds makes more sense or seems more fun than ordering more. I planted 6, 3 of them cracked on June 15. I also started 5 Apple Banana S1s from @Senokai at the same time. I started to flower those on June 29, one is finished way early, the others have a few weeks to go but that's for another post.
As the PG vegged I quickly started seeing problems; twisty leaves and brown spots on yellowing leaves, but only on 3 plants, the Polar Gelato. I went through a lot of triage and consultation, trying to understand my problem. 8 plants, all in identical conditions, drinking from the same reservoir on the same schedule, same lights, same fans, same exterior climate. Really a puzzler. I had repotted a quite small Gorilla Frost clone barely rooted and it started pushing past the 3 by now largeish plants while displaying perfect health, lovely leaves, etc. @Laughing Grass suggested that it might be from running too low a pH for Promix, something she had learned in discussion with another user here. I always knock a new res down to 5.8 and let it drift upward until the res is consumed. It doesn't go very high, maybe 6.2 But this didn't really improve my foliage and new leaves would eventually start to look shitty as well. So I alwent back to the specific issue of what medium I was using. The Polar Gelato differed in only one respect and that is they were in Sunshine Mix #4, not Promix HP. so I decided on a radical solution. I would repot these, by the, quite large plants, remove all the medium from the root balls and repot in fresh Promix. On August 1, I removed most of the roots and most of the tops. Cut them in half, removed all the shitty leaves and back in the same pots they went. The transformation was breathtakingly fast. 72 hours and fresh vibrant leaves were popping out. For science I decided to leave one untouched for comparison and that became my chosen target for STS reversal. I was convinced that Sunshine #4 and Promix were interchangeable but something was going on here, and I needed to do some research. I quickly discovered there is such a thing as Sunshine Mix #4 PROFESSIONAL, which is designed for high drainage applications like DTW. I did not have the professional, indeed I did not know it exists and as I continued to observe, during a fertigation interval, when every other 3 gallon pots began to run off, the one I didn't repot never had runoff. Regular Sunshine #4 is not the same as Promix HP in this critical regard. The two plants Irepotted in Promix quickly caught up and 3 weeks later look like some of the finest plants I've ever vegged. It was quite irritating that this project which was supposed to be all about making seeds turned into a troubleshooting exercise, but life is for learning.
One benefit is it gave me plenty of time to reverse the chosen plant and after a number of treatments I now have decidedly male preflowers forming. I flipped the whole tent to flower one week ago on August 14. Originally I had an extra Apple Banana in there but it really wasn't a healthy genetic specimen and I replaced it with a Gorilla Frost clone that quickly caught up while I was dealing with the foregoing matter. so my PG seed project also encompasses crossing it with the Gorilla Frost, another Sherbinski creation, because why not.
As the PG vegged I quickly started seeing problems; twisty leaves and brown spots on yellowing leaves, but only on 3 plants, the Polar Gelato. I went through a lot of triage and consultation, trying to understand my problem. 8 plants, all in identical conditions, drinking from the same reservoir on the same schedule, same lights, same fans, same exterior climate. Really a puzzler. I had repotted a quite small Gorilla Frost clone barely rooted and it started pushing past the 3 by now largeish plants while displaying perfect health, lovely leaves, etc. @Laughing Grass suggested that it might be from running too low a pH for Promix, something she had learned in discussion with another user here. I always knock a new res down to 5.8 and let it drift upward until the res is consumed. It doesn't go very high, maybe 6.2 But this didn't really improve my foliage and new leaves would eventually start to look shitty as well. So I alwent back to the specific issue of what medium I was using. The Polar Gelato differed in only one respect and that is they were in Sunshine Mix #4, not Promix HP. so I decided on a radical solution. I would repot these, by the, quite large plants, remove all the medium from the root balls and repot in fresh Promix. On August 1, I removed most of the roots and most of the tops. Cut them in half, removed all the shitty leaves and back in the same pots they went. The transformation was breathtakingly fast. 72 hours and fresh vibrant leaves were popping out. For science I decided to leave one untouched for comparison and that became my chosen target for STS reversal. I was convinced that Sunshine #4 and Promix were interchangeable but something was going on here, and I needed to do some research. I quickly discovered there is such a thing as Sunshine Mix #4 PROFESSIONAL, which is designed for high drainage applications like DTW. I did not have the professional, indeed I did not know it exists and as I continued to observe, during a fertigation interval, when every other 3 gallon pots began to run off, the one I didn't repot never had runoff. Regular Sunshine #4 is not the same as Promix HP in this critical regard. The two plants Irepotted in Promix quickly caught up and 3 weeks later look like some of the finest plants I've ever vegged. It was quite irritating that this project which was supposed to be all about making seeds turned into a troubleshooting exercise, but life is for learning.
One benefit is it gave me plenty of time to reverse the chosen plant and after a number of treatments I now have decidedly male preflowers forming. I flipped the whole tent to flower one week ago on August 14. Originally I had an extra Apple Banana in there but it really wasn't a healthy genetic specimen and I replaced it with a Gorilla Frost clone that quickly caught up while I was dealing with the foregoing matter. so my PG seed project also encompasses crossing it with the Gorilla Frost, another Sherbinski creation, because why not.
