Critical Skunk Grow Journal

mstam

Member
I see little information is available on this strain so I like to share my experiences. I will keep you informed from germination to first commercial harvest which will be either end of November, if I can get sufficient cuttings from the mother plants I'm gonna grow, or end of January.

Currently I'm growing White Widow and even with temperatures of around 29 degrees Celsius both day and night (I live in Spain) I do minimal 0,8 grams/Watt and when it's colder 1 gram/Watt under 2x 600 Watts regular Cooltubes. I plan on upgrading to professional reflectors and digital ballasts soon which should increase my crop at least another 10 to 20%. My goal for the first Critical Skunk harvest is 1,25 grams/Watt. I used Advanced Nutrients Grow Micro Bloom and Bud Candy, now I am trying Bud Ignitor, Rhino Skin, Connoisseur and Bud Factor X. I grow on a 80/20 mixture of Perlite and Vermiculite, 36 plants total, each plant 4 to 6 main buds. Because cleaning the substrate mixture every harvest is very time consuming, next harvest I'm gonna either use Coco or some new white substrate I forgot the name of.

Last week I put the 19 in stead of 18 seeds I received from Seedsman in a cup of distilled water for one night, then a day or two between some moist cottonwool and two dishes. All 19 seeds germinated and a week later I have 19 healthy little plants which is a very good thing!! With other words: These seeds are of an excellent quality.

Because I don't have the space and equipment to grow an additional 19 plants indoors, next week I will put them outside under the Spanish sun and as soon they are large enough, and before they start flowering, I will make 2 cuttings of each plant which I will keep indoors. Somewhere later in August I should be able separate the males from females so if everything goes as expected I will have approx. 8 healthy female plants and 16 small plants from the cuttings I made earlier. At the end I will choose the best plant so 2 plants from the cuttings remain. With some luck these will be big enough to make 45 cuttings for my next grow or else I have to wait another 2 months.

Attached you will see the White Widow week 7 and 19 little Critical Skunk plants. I keep you all posted as soon I am ready to make cuttings!

Also, and I don't know if I am allowed to post it here, I am working on a modular climate control system that can be managed from anywhere you are in the world with a web interface and I am looking for an investor. 40k initial, up to 100k euros short term credit for stock. Please PM me if you know someone. Thanks!
 

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Wecome

Hi mstam
Firstly welcome to MNS forum.
If your white widow is anything to go by your critical skunk should be awsome.
Are they going in pots or straight in the ground.
all the best with your grow.
JT
 
This week they are going in pots wrapped in reflective plastic to prevent the roots from burning. It's a little late in season but the weather here is sunny somewhere up until mid November.
 
cool im glad someone has finally gonna do a grow log on this strain . I do have a pack in the fridge and would love to see how these turn out for you. good luck and keep us posted.
 
Little update. They are all doing well to very well. This coming week they are going outside into 3 liter pots covered in reflective plastic to keep the heat out. Once I determined gender I'm gonna re-pot them into something between 7 and 10 liters.

I hope they don't start flowering before I can make cuttings. They are currently under 16 hours of light and outside the day currently counts 14 hours. I am thinking of putting some cheap CFL's on top of them to keep the light artificially at 16 hours until I made the cuttings. Like I mentioned before I don't have the space indoors to flower hopefully at least 9 female plants.
 

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Hi mstam
Your grows comming along nicely, what are you using to support your seedlings.
keep up the good work
all the best JT
 
Good to see the forum is back online!

The boys and girls are doing very well. One issue is they are very late growing side branches. Only some of the plants I can take cuttings from at the moment. Some plants don't have side branches at all and grow very high, I assume these are males?!

Since some of the plants barely produce side branches is there a reason to keep these plants? For my grow room I want bushy plants and I can use the extra space saved by chopping a few of them.

I am feeding them Advanced Nutrients Mother Earth Grow. The first image is from August 19th 9 days ago, the 2nd image from today.
 

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I could make cuttings from 11 of the 19 plants at the moment. See attached photos on how little branching some plants do. I just sprayed them with Forbid 4F. This stuff rocks and keeps your plants spider mite free for 2 months!
 

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Today I flushed them vigorously with tap water then with RO water with a pH of 6.5. I spaced them better, staked them with bamboo sticks, Wednesday I'm gonna make 2 cuttings of each plant and then they go to my roof terrace where they have sun all day.

Once I determined gender in a day or 10 hopefully, the females go into 11 liter pots.

I added a better photo and at the same time I'll also post some photos of my White Widow grow because I'll grow the Critical Skunk the same way. The White Widow is 4 days into flowering, each plant about 6 main flowers, and for the first time I am using Advanced Nutrients Bud Ignitor and Rhino Skin. Currently using Sensi Grow and in 3 days I start using Connoisseur and Bud Factor X.

After only 4 days of 12 hours light the plants already start the formation of flowers. I use Sensi Grow and will use Connoisseur at 2.5 ml/liter in stead of the recommended 4 ml/liter which is way too much in my experience. Bud Ignitor and Rhino Skin at the recommended 2 ml/liter, Bud Factor X I will use 1.5 in stead of 2 ml/liter. From 2 weeks into flowering once a week I give the ladies about 2.5 liters of pH'ed water each to bring the EC down. I always keep an eye on the EC of the exit water and keep it between 2 and 2.3.

Some say Advanced Nutrients is overpriced marketing crap but so far I can only say that their products rock! And they recently decreased prices significantly.
 

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I made cuttings 2 days ago. Two cuttings from 16 plants each, one cutting from 1 plant, 2 plants haven't grown any branches yet so not using them. And I put the plants on my roof terrace. Hope they flower soon because the 3 liter pots are getting too tight.

I used large rockwool blocks, watered them in with distilled water, 2ml/liter Advanced Nutrients B-52 and pH 3.5 (only one drop acid on 3 liters water). After one day the pH turned out to be a perfect 5.8.
 

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If I was you, I'd tie the main stems down. This will encourage side branching. Grow legends such as shanti and hempy do this too. It worked wonders for my current outdoor crop.

GM1
 
my CriticalHaze grow similar to that but once they got outside they really took off and filled out nicely. never topped or bent mine . I wanted to see there natural structure.
well nice job plants are looking good.
 
my CriticalHaze grow similar to that but once they got outside they really took off and filled out nicely. never topped or bent mine . I wanted to see there natural structure.
well nice job plants are looking good.

I am thinking the same. It's normal for seedlings to first grow straight before they start developing branches. How was the quality?

I ordered some extra 5,5 liter pots and soil because I can not hold them much longer in the current 3 liter ones. Should be in Tuesday. Then hopefully in a day or 10 they will show gender.
 
the quality of the CriticalHaze was good . I score it a 7 out of 10. I only did half a pack though . got 6 females. the best one was the lowest yielding and covered in crystals and had a NICE smell. I still have the cuttings of them .
overall I was very happy running them . Shanti gave me advice on what to run and they did well . They were very vigorous and after about 1 week they started taking off. I had them in 35 gallon smartpots and they were getting the beautiful Cali sun. I have a thread in the CH section.
peace and good luck
 
Yesterday late afternoon they got struck by a storm and they were all over the place.

The good news is that I was able to determine gender: 9 females out of 19 plants. I put the 8 largest ones in 11 liter pots, a smaller one in a 7 liter pot.

The other good news is that there is time enough for them to recover. I leave them on my patio for a week or so before I put them on my terrace again. They had all the Advanced Nutrients treats from a little fertilizer, to enzymes, to B-52 vitamins and to NoShock to recover from re-potting :)
 

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16 healthy cuttings from 8 plants starting to grow again. It took them between 8 and 14 days to shoot roots in large 2 inch blocks. 1.25 liter pots, 1ml/liter Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow (once they show healthy grow I go to 2ml/liter), 2ml/liter Sensi Zym and each cutting a one-time 50ml shot of 3ml/liter NoShock.

The 9 plants I have outside pretty much recovered and show healthy grow. They are all like 2 weeks flowering.

And my White Widow is at 25 days flowering now showing nice bud formation. My experience with Bud Ignitor so far is that the plants stretch a bit more, have smaller leaves, looked a little uglier, and formed a bit more dense buds. I will know in 5 weeks if this line of nutrients is worth it.
 

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Little update. Plants outside survived some heavy rains and a storm yesterday and are doing fine. Need a few weeks more as it seems like. Because they had to endure so much stress and because it's late in season it will be hard to select the best plant so I might grow mothers out of 2 of them and then after one grow select the best one.

Cuttings are doing fine as well with a 100% success rate. Today I'm gonna top them to grow 2 pair of side branches.

And a photo attached of my White Widow grow 4.5 weeks into flowering.
 

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