Big Buddha Cheese Grow Report

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Big Buddha Cheese Grow Report | From Cuttings to Harvest thumbnail

2 Big Buddha Cheese plants from Cutting to Harvest

Hey there and welcome (back) to Free The Tree!
In today’s article we’re going to group together the main steps of our Big Buddha Cheese in this grow report 🙂

Since this grow is still ongoing we will be updating the content as the plats grow, here’s what we got so far:

Big Buddha Cheese Grow Report - Table of content

Context and nutrients used

The Cuttings

Vegetation Stage

The Stretch

Flowering Stage (coming soon)

Context of this Grow

Strain: Big Buddha Cheese
Cutting source: Well developed mother-plant
Grow Medium: Non-enriched soil
Nutrients or Additive Used:
– Bio-Grow during the vegetative stage and the stretch. We followed the amounts indicated. When needed we supplement with short release nutrients.
– Bio-Bloom starting the week before the stretch and until we flush.
Grow Lights:
– Vegetative Stage: 400MHz MH (Metal Halid) Blub
– Flowering Stage: 400MHz HPS (High Pressure Sodium) Bulb
Grower Experience: 4th indoor culture
More on Big Buddha Cheese over here

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The cuttings

Our friend had nicely prepared the cuttings for us, they actually already rooted and were placed in some soil which was awesome. They had some deficiencies going but still, just beautiful 🙂

Here’s their early days and first transplant.

Receiving the cuttings

Our friend had prepared us 4 nice looking cuttings, as you can see they’ve got couple deficiencies going but nothing critical.
We decided not to transplant them right away since their travel was a bit rough, although we did add a bit of soil in the pots, roots were showing.

Choosing the cuttings to keep

Since we have 3 other strains growing this round, we only have the room to keep 2 or the 4 cuttings. We’ll give the 2 others to a friend that’s going to place them at their windowsill just for fun.

The first we decided to keep was simply due to the fact that it was the strongest one. The other had strong potential for our scrog. She had 2 strong branches close to the bottom. We’ll increase that to develop 2 strong stems at the base.

Day 8 – Transplanting the plants

A little over a week after receiving the plants we decided to transplant them into their final 9L fabric pots. The fabric has the advantage of not letting the roots grow into the sides and prune themselves, no more swirling, constrained, unhealthy roots!
As you can see in the image above, we also did a strong pruning in order to stimulate vegetative growth.

On the second plant (on the right) we pivoted the plant so that the 2 branches face up. Each side will share the main tap root and root system, but they’ll also develop a couple roots of they’re own. In this configuration the plant will be able to serve both sides with a large amount of nutrients.

If you want to read more about them at that stage check out our grow post over here.

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The Vegetation Stage

The 2 cuttings really took well into the pots and grew fast, a little too fast comparing to the other strains, seems like our harvest will be composed principally of BBC.
Here’s the growth of these beautiful little gals

Day 18 – Early Vegetative growth

10 days after the transplant they had totally recovered from the travel and transplant shock, the deficiencies had stopped and new leaf and stem growth had started. Basically they were looking awesome!

On the split plant, one of the stems is growing a little faster so we decided to pinch it. This will make the plant focus on the other stem while it fixes the damaged area.

As you can see by this time these little one’s are growing great, multiple healthy looking leaves are growing, looking great.

The vegetative growth is still pretty slow, that’s linked to the fact that we transplanted them right into their final pots, meaning that right now these little one’s are working strongly at root development. As they say, strong root system gives a strong plant 🙂

Day 22 – First plant training

You can see that the stem that was growing faster had started to make some shade to the smaller stem. If we don’t do anything the difference will only increase and the plant will focus mainly on the stem that has a better access to the light source. This is not what we want..

In order to avoid this we attached each stem to an opposite side of the pot and pulled on them a little. As you can see, by doing this we’re giving room to both sides to breath and have full access to the light source.

Day 26 – Real plant training

That little plant training done a couple days ago was cute, but definitely not enough once each side started growing more, and growing they did.
Just 4 days later both plants had grown a lot, and since we want to go for a scrog we decided to accentuate this.

Before plant training

After plant training

You can see that we didn’t go gently on the bending aspect of the plants. You might think that the stress generated is bad for the plant but not really. The direct access to light and air will allow the plant to develop new colas, soon we’ll be ready to set the screen and get the to the weaving step.

If you do this on your end, make sure not to tie the rope to tight around the stem, you don’t want to be blocking the growth of the stem.
Here’s an example of how we did this:

Day 32 – Strong Vegetative Growth

Couple days after training the plants we saw nice vegetative growth on both sides.
You can see that they developed nice colas in the area’s where we’ve been pulling on, the stalk of each plants have nicely thickened.
The other plants in the room aren’t as far along so there a lot of vegetation stage ahead, I feel like these little ones are going to be monster.

Day 33 – Potassium deficiency coming in

The first signs of a potassium deficiency’s been kicking in. At first we hesitated, but it grew real fast so our hesitation didn’t last long.
We decided to water them that day with a mix boosted with potassium in order to stop this spread. Worked pretty well, within the next couple days the spreading stopped.

Day 34 – Installing the Screen for SCROG

By now these plants were ready to get weaving. Honestly we could of started this much earlier but the 3 other plants we far, far from being close to reach the screen and we didn’t want to give them shade from the screen.

Now that it’s installed we can start weaving them on the screen and letting them grow even more colas! As I said earlier, these little one’s are going to be 2 beasts.

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Day 40 – Ready to start weaving

About a week after installing the screen the plants had grown nicely over the screen, within a day or so we’re going to start weaving them on the screen.
We could start now but there’s no rush the other plants are still catching up

The light had also been a bit close to the plants, you can see that some have a little light burn.

We would raise the lamp but, again it’s not the best thing to do for our other plants. Thankfully, by weaving them on the screen they’ll be back further from the lamp, removing the issue.

Check out week 6’s grow post to read up more on all the strains growing in the room!

Day 42 – Weaving the Big Buddha Cheese plants

As we started saying in the previous update, the top of the middle cola’s were getting a little too close from the light source.
Now that we’ve tied down and weaved the branches along the screen, the distance from the light is good and new cola’s are ready to pop out!

Just like earlier, this seems rough on the plant but the light penetration gained will enable the plant to increase its energy produced via photosynthesis, thus increasing the potential of the final yield of the plant.

First version of Automatic Drip Watering System

For the past couple days we’ve been checking out ways to reduce the time of watering. Currently, in order to get a nice irrigation of the medium we’ve been spraying the water manually, which at this point can take up to an hour and a half.. Those fabric pots are big.

Needless to say, we want to be able to water them well without taking that much time out of our schedule, so we set up a drip watering system.

With less than 20 bucks anyone can do this in less than an hour or two. Our first watering took us about 5 minutes, basically added the nutrients and let the water drip down into the soil.

Day 47 – Irregular Canopy

Over the past couple days we’ve made a couple mistakes weaving-wise. As you can see, the colas of the plant on the right have grown much taller than the plant on the left.
This is mainly an issue since the optimal placement of the light source isn’t even across the canopy.
You can also see that the colas on the top are making some shade for the colas around them. This will make them “race” for the light source, making thin stretchy colas, the opposite of what we want.

To make matters worst, the reflectors on our Cool Tube are too small, which means that the dispersion of light isn’t sufficient.

In order to counter these issues we’re going to do 3 things in the upcoming weeks.
First, we’re going to prune the stems and leaves that need to go. Secondly, change our Cool Tube to an Air Cooled Hood with much larger reflectors and finally super-crop the colas that are too tall.

Day 52 – Pruning stems and leaves

The growth of these 2 gals is a little crazy, she’s been sprouting new colas all over the place. This, added to the un-event canopy we talked about on the previous update makes it necessary to go for a round of pruning.
We’re going to cut the colas that are either too small, hidden by another better looking cola, getting too close to our other 3 plants or just seem to not have enough potential.
Here’s a couple pics to show you the before/after

Before pruning the plant

After Pruning

After removing all those leaves and branches that needed to go all the colas have much more room to grow nicely. We’ll most likely have to go through couple more rounds of pruning before the end of vegetation, they sprout so many auxiliary branches it’s pretty crazy.

Here’s what we chopped off this round

Changing Photo-period from 18/6 to 12/12

Today we also decided to start the stretch. All the plants of the grow room are nice and tall, with the final growth during the stretch we should be good.

Here’s what the full grow room looked like at this point

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The Stretch of Big Buddha Cheese strain

After 52 loooong days vegetative these babies we’ve finally started the stretch and we real exited to start seeing the pistils pop out at the bud sites.
Until that moment comes, we still have the canopy issues to deal with, especially since we’re about to get some strong growth during the stretch.
Let’s go through the stages of the stretch together 🙂

Day 53 – Super Cropping the Colas

We decided to super crop the taller colas the first day of the stretch in order to minimize the differences in height. As you may know, during the stretch the plant has an intense vegetative growth sprint and we want that energy to go to the lower colas.

The other advantage of super cropping these colas is strengthening the stem. While repairing, the plant will create a knot which will allow larger storage of nutrients. She well also strengthen the branch itself, meaning that it will be able to carry the weight of a much heavier bud.

As you can see we super cropped a large amount of the colas, but we decided not to attach them. The reason for this is we want to be flexible and adapt for the needs of light penetration, so we just repeat the process as needed.

Here’s a close up on one of the colas

Day 55 – Changing the Cool Tube to Air Cooled Hood

We finally got around to getting the Air Cooled Hood from our friends house and installed it right away!
This should definitely solve the issues of light intensity in the corners of the room which is awesome. Can’t wait to see it in action

Day 60 – Change to HPS bulb

Today’s the first day of the 2nd week of the stretch and we decided to change to the HPS light.
The first pistils also started showing up which is awesome, I love this stage of life. We’re now able to have a clear view of the potential of each colas.

Within or day or two we’ll be going for another round of pruning in order to give some room to the most promising plants.

I’d like to note also that the canopy has started to flatten out nicely, the Super cropping definitely did its job.

Another round of Pruning

Now obviously we haven’t showed every round of pruning since we do it a little all along the growth of the plant. Today we did remove many long colas.
We decided to do so since they were way too close of being near better looking one’s or weren’t tall enough to get a direct access to the light source.

Day 62 – End of stretch approaching

Nothing really to report today apart that they’re just looking better and better every day.
Their growth has really slowed down by now and the pistils are showing up more and more which is real exciting.
We can see that we’re now ending the stretch and really entering the flowering stage, can’t wait!

Since these little ones are still growing that’s it for now. We’ll be updating the page regularly, click on the little bell on the left if you want to be notified! 😉

About the author

plant-lover

Plant Lover is Free the Tree's founder and a passionate grower of plants. Mostly from the city, I work on my computer all day so about 4 years ago, on my off time, I started growing to have some more green in my life. I never imagined I would fall in love with botany and discover so much about this plant. Since then I keep learning everyday, meeting new awesome people of our community and which keeps me growing constantly You can always get in touch with me on our Instagram!