Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow

I am continuing on with Cinderella 99 only this time it will be an aeroponic grow. You can check out my Cinderella 99 Hydroponic Drip System Grow for more info on this strain. Last grow was all 12/12 from seed with C99 BX 1 by Mosca Seeds, but this Cinderella 99 aeroponics grow will be a mix of clones and self made seed from that grow.

I want to move away from using grow media and aeroponics is the way to do that. I had considered DWC because the amount of media used is small but I think aeroponics will give me to get a better yield in less time and I wont have to mess with air stones or air pumps.

So here is my prototype unit. It is made with a Rubbermaid 18 gallon tote, a 300 gph pump and EZ Clone sprayers. This is a low pressure aeroponic system/DWC hybrid. Plants are started in my RainForest and transferred to these modules.

I could fit 6 of these in my grow room but 4 allows for some working space and a central reservoir, which I will be adding in the future. But for now and for the sake of simplicity, I will start with 2 modules.

Each unit holds 12 plants and has 5 gallons of water in it. The roots have about 12 inches of space to grow aeroponically before they hit the water below.

C99 Aeroponic Grow Starting 12/12 Flowering Cycle

These girls outgrew my RainForest. They had a long veg time because the cuttings were taken at the start of flowering. It took a while for them to reveg and start growing normal leaves.  They just exploded in size in the RainForest and actually drank its reservoir dry at one point. Luckily I caught it before any real damage was done.

I do want to say these plants are more resilient than people say. They can go longer than you think without water. Mine went at least 12 hours with no real damage. I am a lot less worried about losing a crop due to a power outage now.

Here is a shot of the underside. These girls were quite bushy and I had to do a lot of pruning. You can see how large that one stem grew.

Here is some root porn. As you can see these girls definitely needed to go into the flowering room. You probably can’t see it from the photo but these girls have nice white fish bone roots and fine root hair development that you only get from aeroponics.

Currently I am running these at about 500 ppm. I have found that plants need a lot less nutes aeroponically and actually got a bit of tip burn at 650 ppm.

I am running these on a continuous watering cycle right now. I do have a cycle timer but haven’t hooked it up yet. The roots in the first tote are starting to touch the water in the reservoir so I will probably set up a 1 minute on and 5 minute off watering cycle.

I have run some different cycles in my RainForest, from always on, to 15 on and 15 off and plants seem to  grow just fine regardless and I really can’t say what the ideal cycle would be.

So far I am not finding aeroponics to be any harder or fussier than any other hydro system and I think people tend to over complicate things (especially the high pressure aeroponics crowd) and scare people away from trying it.

Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow Day 7 12/12

Everything has been going and growing great. The HPS messes with the colors but this is the lushest, healthiest grow I have ever seen and with half the nutes.

Things are getting bushy and I will have to probably remove a few lower branches from these girls.

Right now my nutes are at 500 PPM and my timer is set for 1 minute on and 5 minutes off. When I checked my plants the roots were damp but not wet. I was kind of scared they were too dry at first but when I checked after the 1 minute on cycle the roots were thoroughly wet again.

Here is what it’s all about, looking under the hood are some beautiful, white aeroponic roots. They look good enough to stir fry don’t they? If I could convince Asians they make your dick hard I could make a fortune selling these!

I am growing legally,  but none of my neighbors or the landlord know and I want to keep it that way. I have pond liner on the floor because I don’t want to have to explain to my down stairs neighbor why water is coming out of the ceiling.

Part of the reason I switched to aeroponics is to avoid sneaking in grow media. The other is that I wanted to do hydro but all that water in a recirculating bucket system made me nervous. With this system I get max number of plants in my space and use very little water. I estimate I could contain a 30 gallon spill but don’t want to find out. With aeroponics all I really need is a couple of gallons in the system. So for me aeroponic growing is perfect and so far the results are better than anything else I have tried.

Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow Day 14 12/12

So my girls have been on 12/12 lighting for two weeks now. Everything is looking good and there are no problems. With HPS lighting its hard to see how green, healthy and lush these plants really are. This really is a sea of green.

The sativa dominant plants have been slower to root and grow than the more indica dominant plants which is why one end of the tote is taller than the other. But in the end they usually turn out larger and I think the high is a bit more clear on them. Cindy is supposed to be 70% sativa from what I have read.

I expect to start seeing flowers very soon and will begin some pruning to let light in and get rid of more lower branches if needed. I have been using DynaGrow Grow Formula  7-9-5, but as flowering is almost here I cleaned out the res and switched to their Bloom which is 3-12-6. I like the DynaGrow, it’s clean and pH stays stable with it. I do notice that the Bloom is more acidic than the Grow and I needed to bring my pH up a bit. I actually have my nutes at 400 ppm right now because I was seeing a bit of tip burn at 500 ppm.

Actually when lights came on this evening flowers are starting to show so here’s a couple of pics and by next week there should be a sea of buds.

Changing nutes was a bit of a PITA and so I will probably raise the totes a bit to make draining them easier. I am considering one central reservoir and pump. I know I said I wanted to keep things simple by using self contained modules but with multiple totes in my small grow area res changes will be difficult.

By raising the totes and having them drain into one reservoir things will be easier. Also will be able to run only one pump for all the totes. Since all the water will drain to the main reservoir the roots wont be growing in water bringing this closer to true aeroponics. So far my roots are still above the water. There’s not much in the tote, maybe three gallons, just enough to cover the pump inlet.

I have some homemade C99 seed sprouting that will go in my other tote soon and eventually I may run four of these totes eventually.

Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow Day 21 12/12

A lot has happened in this week. Cindy has been growing and flowering like crazy. I was going to prune the underbrush but wound up moving half the plants to another tote. I realized that some plants were much larger than others and would be pruning away too much of my yield to keep them all in one tote.

If I were growing 12/12 from seed I think I could get them all in one tote but given the difference in sizes between the cuttings I think this was the best move. I still need to prune even with splitting them up. Growth has been lush, green and incredible.

Because my room is long and narrow (32″ x 72″) it is really hard to fit everything in one pic so here’s the smaller other end.

Here’s some bud porn developing nicely

Had some Cal Mag lockout start this A.M. because the pH dropped really low but fortunately caught it early. Things happen really fast with aeroponics. Last night they were fine and this morning showing symptoms. I think I am going to have to go to a central reservoir to make monitoring easier.

So I raised the two totes up about 6 inches so they can gravity feed to a res. I am now thinking about adding one more unit to my grow. That will give me 36 sites if I use them all.

Finally dove in there and did some badly needed pruning. Removed some lower branches and some of the fan leaves too.

Removing fan leaves is a controversial subject but if they are blocking light to the buds I will remove some of them.

I am trying to grow bud and not leaf and buds need light to produce.

 Cindy 99 At 28 Days Of 12/12

Well another week has gone by and the girls are growing well. Flowers are growing and expanding nicely. There is a light fruity odor when I enter the grow room. So far Cindy has not proven to be very stinky at least not till you break the buds up.

Have been removing some fan leaves to let more light in to the lower buds and to improve ventilation between plants. I used to find moisture between some leaves that were touching in my other grows but not on this one.

I am actually finding humidity is way better and more stable aeroponically. Maybe because all the water is in the enclosed totes or maybe because with direct water to the roots the plants transpire less. Either way I am happy. Highs are in the mid 40% range and lows around 20%.

Also found my nutes are screwed up. There is a lump of crystalline stuff in the bottom. Not sure what it is or what the actual composition of what I am feeding is. I have been using DynaGro because I heard good things about it. But this is the second bottle it happened to. The first was old so I discounted it, but this was a new bottle open only 30 days. Will probably go with Canna Aqua Flores because I had good luck with their coco nutes in the past.

Some Nice Cola Shots

Once in a while I actually get some decent shots of my girls.

Same cola, slightly different angle

More Cindy Bud Shots

Another bad attempt at macro shots but you can see a bit of frost on the leaves in the second pic at least.

Cinderella 99 Day 35 Of Flowering

Cinderella is now at 5 weeks of flowering. It has been an uneventful week, thankfully there are no lockouts. I am finishing the grow with my current Dyna Gro nutes but will change to Canna Flores for the next grow.

I suspect the crystallized nutes had something to do with my nutrient lockout. Plants are growing fine but the yellow leaf edges are showing the results of what I believe was a cal/mag deficiency caused by a rapid pH drop.

Buds are fattening now and the plants are not drawing up much nutes which is a sure sign that ripening has begun and harvest is not far away.

I have removed some more fan leaves to let more light in at some of the lower buds. One nice thing about this set up is being able to move plants around and I did some rearranging in the second tote.

Here are this weeks pics:

 

   

 

Cindy 99 Day 42 Of Flowering

It’s day 42 of 12/12 for my Cindy 99. Not much has changed. Buds are fattening up and harvest is about 10 days away. Nutrient uptake has slowed way down and at this point I am only adding water to the totes. Right now nutes are at 400 ppm and pH is about 6.

The nutes will gradually get lowered as I continue adding only water to the res. There really is no need to do a full flush like in soil. The nutrient levels in aeroponics are much lower to begin with and besides that the plants are taking up very little but water now.

This is a true aeroponic grow in the sense that the roots are almost totally hanging in the air. I had expected them to grow like crazy and fill the bottom of the res, but that has not happened.

Cindy has been difficult to clone and she doesn’t seem to have a very large, vigorous root system like I expected. This is particularly true for the more sativa leaning phenos which are the best smoke and have that evil pineapple smell. Here are a few pics of this weeks growth:

Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow Day 52 Harvest Time

It’s day 52 of 12/12 and time to harvest. Plants were cut and trimmed of most leaves and are now hanging to dry.

I like Cinderella because she’s pretty easy to trim, there’s not a lot of leaf to start with and her resin is more oily than sticky, gooey which makes the process even easier.

I don’t expect any great yields this time around. I wouldn’t call Cindy a great yielder but the buds are dense and the smoke is excellent. The yields seem to be related to clone size and she has been hard to clone so some plants were too large for my RainForest and some were quite a bit further behind. If I could find some that clone easier and raise a uniform batch then I think my yields would be higher. As it is I am only expecting 7 or 8 ounces from 10 plants.

Here.s the girls hanging to dry. Will post yields once they are dried and cleaned up.

Cinderella Harvest Update

This batch of C 99 has been cleaned and dried and harvest is over. Yield was disappointing at just over 6 ounces or 178 grams. My best of 10 plants yielded 33 grams and my worst only 6.8 grams.That is quite a difference in production.

This is due to the difficulty getting Cinderella to clone easily. My space for cloning/veg is very limited and these girls are putting a bottleneck in my system. The first to root are good yielders but the ones that take longer and are smaller do not yield well.

Plant #7 was my best yielder from my 12/12 seed grow at 37 grams, but was the lowest yielder from clones because it was the last to root and even at harvest the root systems were undersized. Because of the difficulty rooting Cinderella I had several large clones and a bunch of smaller ones. Also I did not fill all the grids in the totes and that hurt my yield as well.

Because of her quick turn over and awesome smoke I will continue to work with her. Unfortunately the most potent plants are the slowest rooters. I am hoping to find some that root more readily in the seed I made. Also I may wind up making some crosses using C99. I would like to get faster rooting and larger bud size without losing the earliness and smoke quality.

Right now getting good C99 seed is impossible, its sold out everywhere I look, but maybe there are some gems in the small amount of seed I produced. I hope so because I would like to keep this Cinderella strain pure.

Cinderella 99 Aeroponic Grow #2

I have decided to revive this thread because of the results I am now getting. When you see the pictures you will understand why. I am also growing some African Sativas at the same time and I have been posting info about Cindy there but it feels like it is detracting from that grow so my results will go here instead.

First some pics:

This picture was taken last week and here is a group shot:

These four ladies were raised in my Rainforest until they were about 10 to 12″ tall with about 8 to ten nodes. They almost look like a different plant. Cinderella obviously needs a longer veg time to get high plant yields.

I just cut the plant in the top photo at 40 days. I think aeroponic growing is faster. I had been advised to cut at 52 days but this plant is definitely ready.

So here is a pic just before cutting her and a couple of  pics of her cola hanging and it definitely has some weight to it!

I will post yields once its dry and trimmed. I have 3 more to harvest ,but not all were put into flower at the same time.

Cut #7 was my highest yielder from my 12/12 seed grow. She produced 37 grams, about double any of the others. But in my last aero grow the plants were small and never really reached anywhere near their potential, in fact, because she is a slow rooter she was behind all the way and my lowest yielder at just 9 grams. To think I almost culled her!

More Bad Ass Cindy 99

Well another week has gone by. Still waiting for my #7 girl to finish drying and get a weight. There are 3 more waiting in the wings and getting very close to harvest.

One is another#7 cut that was accidentally topped so she’s behind her sister a bit. One is cut #3 which is a very sativa leaning pheno. It and #4 were the most devastating high of the bunch.

Then there is a Cindy/Jackberry cross I made. Can’t say much about her yet. I used old Jackberry pollen and was hoping for a bunch of seeds. Only got one and she turned out to be a girl. She started out with a bit of blueberry smell but that seems to have merged with Cindy’s overall fruity smell.

Honestly, at this point, if I didn’t know she was a cross I would think she’s a straight C99. The only real difference I have seen is that she clones a bit easier. I guess the final proof will be in the smoking.

Cindy/Jackberry on the left and my second #7 cut on the right.

Cindy/Jackberry barely showing on the left and my second #7 cut on the right.

Here is cut#3 hiding in the corner

 

Close up of cut #3

Jackberry by Cindy 99 cross

#7 again

#7 again

Jackberry by Cindy 99 cross looking good

Another pic of #7

These are all looking ready to come down and will be harvested this week most likely. Back soon with some harvest shots and hopefully some yields.

Harvest Time For Cinderella 99

I cut the other three Cinderellas at 45 days give or take a couple. These plants were not all set in on the same day but over the course of a week and dummy me, I forgot to write the dates down. But all were set by the first few days of Feb and they were cut March 17 so none are older than 45 days.

I have some yield results for the #7 cut I harvested earlier. It produced 46 grams. I am not talking about 46 grams with stems or leaves either, this is 46 grams of pure bud. Not too bad but I must admit I was hoping for a bit more. You can get spoiled after growing a strain like Jack Herer where 1/4 pound colas are the norm  but I was hoping for over 2 ounces from that plant. I am guessing the others will yield a bit over an ounce apiece.

My second #7 cut is on the left . Cindy/Jackberry middle. Cut #3 on the right. Anyway here are some pics:

I was impressed by the Cindy/Jackberry cross. The cola, although smaller, was really dense. It has a nice fruity small and very good trichome production. It will be interesting to see how she smokes.

Final Yields Cinderella 99 Aeroponics Grow 3

So here are my final yields for this third aeroponic grow:

#7 is the clear heavy yielder at 46 and 26.5 grams each

Cindy/Jackberry produced 20.6 grams

#3 produced a measly 17.4 grams but it is the best smoke.

So final yield for these 4 plants was 110.5 grams or just under 4 ounces(3.95 grams).

I have 12 slots in each tote so it is reasonable to expect 12 ounces each if I only grow cut #7. That would give me potentially 36 ounces or 1 gram per watt if I use three full totes.

I think it is possible to do a little better than 1 gram per watt with this strain. They are fast growers and the turnover is less than 50 days in flower. The biggest challenge to this is these plants are very hard to clone. This is my bottleneck. What they make up for in the flower room is negated by the long rooting and veg time.

I may be doing something wrong but I don’t think so. I have checked water temperatures, reduced lighting, tried with and without rooting hormone and so on. They do seem to root a bit faster in rapid rooters but even dipped in rooting hormone they take at least 2 weeks to develop white bumps on the stems and another couple for actual roots. And this is inside a RainForest that provides a constant fine mist. Maybe I will try the old fashioned low tech way grandma did it and just stick them in a dark glass jar.