But What Do I Know?...

I love your vocabulary! What a great adjective. I haven't heard "brobdingnagian" since high school and not sure if I've ever heard it used in a real-live setting. Yor get rep+ for that.

I wish I knew what I was doing but whatever it is, I think I'll keep doing it.

They're a little older than would be the norm because initially I had no real equipment so it took a while for the seedlings to really get going. I potted them after germination in September, so they're about 4 months actual time. I let them veg for 12 wks so that I could get as many bud sites as possible and at the time I didn't know any better.

It started out as kind of a half-assed project just to see how far I could get. I had nothing but the pot, some aluminum foil and the 20" grow tube. And that was it. There were 3 seedlings originally. Here they are after 3 days. Notice how they are arranged centrally around the pot. And by the end of the first week they're stretching as I had expected, trying to find the light, which is hanging about 8" above it and not very intense.



Shortly after the first week, I had what I thought was a fatal accident. I had placed the pot on a small cardboard box to get it closer to the light and it got wet when I overwatered the pot and the water overflowed the dish. That night the box collapsed, overturning the pot and scattering dirt and my little seedlings. I thought I had cannabis SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and was heartbroken. My agricultural career had just started and I thought was already over.

It turned out okay, though. That morning I found the pot on its side and the seedlings, taproot and all, were laying out in air scattered in the soil. What saved them was the taproot. Those went all the way to the bottom of the pot. I had never seen anything like it, so, very carefully, I rolled them gently back into the pot still clinging to some of the soil. Because I didn't want to disturb the roots more by trying to recenter them, I just set them in to where I could then replace the rest of the soil. Because I couldn't get the taproot vertical again, I laid them horizontally and that brought them to the edge of the pot. It seems to have worked. Here they are at 3 wks, but not much growth there. Those seed hulls didn't fall off for 2 wks and I was afraid they weren't going to but the accident seemed to nudge them along. I had lost one of the seedlings because it had broken when it fell. You can see, though, how close to the pot walls and to each other they are. That had me a little concerned for future growth but what was done, was done.

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At 5 wks, I started to notice my leaves weren't doing so hot. After some research, I determined that it was potassium deficiency. The potting soil had next to none. I had used no other nutes up to that point except for some Miracle Gro plant food spikes. I had placed those 3 days earlier and had good potassium content. Apparently I wasn't watering enough to disperse the food to the small root system a few inches away. So I flushed everything with fresh water, in a larger catch basin this time, hoping to disperse the food better while also alleviating any ph nutrient lock out that may have occurred. Also at this time I started realizing that I was getting to enjoy doing it and starting to feel "attached" to them, so I decided I needed to sacrifice somewhere else and make some improvements to my set up. I still just had the tube light and no reflection on 2 sides, losing a lot of my light. The incandescent in the ceiling wasn't much help. I added my first cfl and reflector and timer and boxed in my light better, but still just using aluminum foil for reflection. I had just topped them and started training them away from each other. Lighting has never been more than 16/8.

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As you can see, just two weeks later the deficiency has cleared and growth is taking off. It didn't occur to me that this is where most folks might flip, but in my past experience when little was known we've always let them get about 3 ft tall (tropical Sativa landrace) first. Now that I know what I know, next time I'll do it a little differently.

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Because Christmas was coming up, I decided to flip them then so that I could easily remember when I'd done it. This is at 9 wks and I'm really starting to feel like a proud papa. But I knew that I would need more light for flowering and had to wait for my check before I could afford it. And all of this on 3 Miracle Gro plant sticks.



Sorry, Ty, for being so long but I needed to get this posted and your post segued right into it. Please forgive me.

Again, thanks for the kind words - they mean a lot to me.

 

Thanks, I appreciate that and thank you for seeing this for what it actually is, just a poor, disabled guy with not a lot of resources trying to make the best of hard times. There are lots of people, I know several, who dream of being able to grow some for themselves but find themselves in a situation like mine. I'm in a legal state and grow stores abound, but when you walk in and start to look at the prices, your head starts to spin, or at least mine does. Then I walk around the store in a daze, looking at all the things I'll never have.

I like to put detail because there's too much room for misinterpretation on a forum and you don't want that in a "how to" thread. I had no plans for this but when I saw how well it was doing I realized that this could help others like me as I did with my tincture thread. It was already a success.

I don't mind telling me how to do it better. I'll implement what I can for the remainder of this one and file the rest for future use. If someone tells me that something I've done can't be done, then I'll show a pic. Of course a lot can still happen between here and harvest.

Thanks for your comments and drop by often.

 

Howdy, Fizz. I'm glad you found me over here. I'll definitely check out that thread. It sounds like it's right down my alley. Of course, for my era, I'm doing everything right for what we knew then.

Yeah, I'm a gimp. I've only had a single fusion in my neck so far but there were other discs pressing the cord and a lot of stenosis but only one had entered the cord and was causing some severe damage. They said the others would need it later but the emergency was in the C5-C6. I didn't recover all my sensations and it seems like the damage is permanent. Over the last couple of weeks I started to get some of the same symptoms, loss of sensation, unexpected sensations (burning, hot & cold switched), numbness, weakness - the whole nine yards. I have a vertebrae that feels like it's ready to pop out the back of my neck. I know how that feels because I had one in my lower back causing a complete lumbar reconstruction. I've just started feeling well enough to walk a distance now since my back surgery and it seems that by doing that, I pushed all the other vertebra into uncompromising positions. I need to get to the surgeon asap but no healthcare, so I'm going to get a soft collar to wear while online to help until I can get covered. It sucks now but with a little care and a lot of pot, I'll get thru it. It could be a hell of a lot worse. I'm helping someone right now with the tinctures who is blind, deaf and has a genetic disease that causes rampant brain and spinal tumors. Whenever I talk to her and listen to her "can do" attitude, I just think, "what have I got to complain about?"

Talk at ya later, Fizz. Have a great weekend.

 

Just coming in with another pic using the zoom on my cheap camera, 4x, to try to get a view of the frost growing on the leaves. It's really apparent with the naked eye, like it just came in from a light snow. This pic doesn't show it well, but you can see the leaves starting to pack it on. More substantive post tomorrow.

 

Thanks, Jojo. It's a shame I don't know what I'm doing.

 

Actually, I've always known for a fact that males were good, different but good. You get a very good effect from them, more cerebral, not much body but very pleasant.

Once they start fusing the vertabra and getting them back in line, it starts wearing more on the others that may have issues and it just goes down like dominoes. Now that I know how and why it works like that, I wish that they had just gone ahead and put rods all the way down at the same time. This is the third time where I have come to the point of rapidly losing sensation and every time I have it fixed, there's more permanent damage. Injury to the cord is permanent, at least for now. Surgery just makes it so that you don't get paralyzed. If they would do it all at once, no matter the discomfort, then you wouldn't have the worry about the next surgery. It's turning out to be a yearly event and it sucks. I'm not sure I want to do it anymore...enough of that. It could be worse.

I looked up the author of that quote and it is more of a proverb and can't be credited to any one individual and has been around as long as shoes. No matter that, it holds true for all time.

 

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That's not really the case, though, Fizz. That was the word on the street. Sinsemilla means "without seeds" but dank was still in the future. And it sure made the smoke taste better and even seem better, but that's really just the difference between the air dried and a fresh cure. The Columbian we got was just as good as sinsemilla. The selling point was the lack of seeds which made a bag twice as good.

I was fortunate to have lived in a progressive college town at the time just a short drive from Chicago and we got all the best stuff from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Jamaica, Columbia, and, of course the quality Oaxacan, Michoucan and Acapulco Gold from Mexico. I tell you that those are hard to beat. I have never smoked a sinsemilla then or modern era dank, that was any better than seeded landrace reefer. In my opinion there is nothing better. I've been to Belize and Mexico and Jamaica and smoked it at the source. Nothing better, I say.

Higher THC content doesn't guarantee a great stone. Other factors are in play, especially with Sativas.

 

First Phase Progression

This is just going to be a pictorial of the growth progression for the first 9 weeks of life for my plants. You'll be able to see how I got it to a the flowering, 2nd, stage.

I started out with 3 seeds that I was sure would be females because they came from a herm. They all popped real quick and I was worried that I wouldn't get a pot in time to take advantage. Well, I got the pot together and planted the germinated seeds in a triangular pattern equidistant from each other. The only light I had at the time was the fluorescent grow tube and the incandescent in the ceiling.



At 1 week they're starting to stretch a bit but appear strong.



At week two my pot fell off it's perch and tossed my seedlings around and I thought they were lost. I rolled them back into the pot as gently as I could. The taproot was long and still embedded in some soil for 2 of them but the 3rd one got broken off. I really didn't expect them to recover. When I placed them back into the pot I had to lay them horizontally and cover with soil and that placed the seedlings close to the wall of the pot and each other. This is at 3 weeks, about a week after the accident. They seemed to be okay and at this point I started to train them to grow away from each other using some sticks I found and dental floss. Also at this point I had gotten my first reflector and had a 2700K cfl in it. It was also at this time that I put some foil up on 2 walls to help reflect more light onto the plants since it seemed they were going to live a while longer, like me.



By week 5 I was seeing signs of potassium deficiency. Well, I didn't know that at the time but I knew something was wrong by the look of the leaves so I looked it up. Up to now I was just using whatever was in the soil which had a low potassium but adequate phosphorus and nitrogen and other trace elements. A week earlier I had bought some MiracleGro food spikes that were 6-12-6 and placed them in the soil per instructions, except I only used half as much because the girls were so small and I didn't want to burn them out. So they had been in the soil for a week when these symptoms caught my attention as being bad. I had only been watering a small amount every few days, so probably the nutrients weren't leaching enough into the soil to reach the roots. In addition, I thought maybe there might have been a nutrient lockout from ph imbalance. So, I flushed the soil real well so that the flow would straighten up any ph issues and get the nutrients from the food sticks better disbursed throughout the soil.



Lo and behold, it worked. These young plants were becoming near and dear to my heart and I was feeling very paternal towards them and wanting to better their existence. I knew I would need more light but I didn't have any money available for another week, so I set up my empty computer box to act as a shell to keep as much light in as possible. I put aluminum foil on the two sides where there weren't any walls previously and the box would keep the heat more concentrated into the grow area as well as provide a higher platform on which to place working items so I wouldn't hurt myself bending too much.


By week 7 things are really looking good. No more browning leaves and everything nice and green and growing despite the lack of any major light source. I always had the light available within 2-3 inches of the plants, so that must have helped.



By week 8 I realize that I need to make more of an effort to train the plants to grow away from each other if I wanted any light to penetrate enough and start to look for bigger sticks to use. I had split off some pieces from a slat I found around the dumpster but the plants were outgrowing them.



By week 9 I was starting to get explosive growth, at least for my conditions. I have a restaurant supply store near me and I found some chopsticks that were about 18 inches long and as thick as a dowel rod and a buck per pair. I had pruned them after the third set of leaves and did it in a way that one would give me a fork, 2 main branches, and the other would give me a quad and I'm going to see which gives the best yield or if there's any difference. So here you can see the system of dental floss, chopsticks and regular sticks I used for lst. I couldn't pull them out much because of limited boundaries, but by slow increments I was able to arrange the growth for maximum light penetration. The plants have now grown above the height of the box.



At week 10 I flipped them from 16/8 to 12/12 and had to completely rearrange my setup. Phase two will document the grow from 10 weeks to the present and beyond. This is where it gets interesting and exciting to me because I'm in completely new territory for me. I've grown through veg but never managed to watch a plant bud out. I'm sure you won't be as fascinated as I am but I hope that I can transmit some of the awe I'm feeling through the page and into your being. So, until then....Ciao, baby.

 

Well, I noticed something today that I wasn't supposed to be seeing according to many people. It has to do with the low wattage halogen bulbs that I'm using. Many people claim that none of the light is usable for the plants due to a lack of red or blue wavelengths. My bulbs are 72W, 3000K, all-spectrum halogen soft white. I have 2, one of which I initially interchanged with a cfl every other day. The cfl I used to get light to the lower levels of the plants.

When I first used the halogen in place of the cfl, I couldn't really tell any real difference in the growth. But on those days it seemed that the frost would grow on the buds as I was watching. On the days when I switched to cfl, I got no change. The other day I decided to leave that halogen in place longer because it seemed that bud development slowed to a halt when I took it away. The buds were still very white except where the green sugar leaves were starting to show. Well, I am happy to report that my buds are responding very well to the halogens. Each day the frost gets frostier and the buds are starting to fill out and starting to turn yellow and red. Today has been especially productive with real, overall color coming into all the buds, so I'm leaving the halogen in place and on payday I'll get another socket and hang the cfl low to finish off the last two weeks.

I'm down to 10/14 now which could also be causing the bud development and I'm leaving it there for the last month, end of February. I'm harvesting then, no matter what. I don't have a microscope to view the bud trics, so I'll have to go by the coloring of the buds. I've nurtured a bunch of little popcorn buds that I'm going to pull off at intervals to smoke in order to track. It's already good.

That's it. More later.

 

Here's some pics from today. I had some of each of the main buds but I don't hold the camera real steady if I can't brace it, so I only have a few. They're a lot prettier in person.











I'm starting to germinate a few seeds that I have and that should be pretty high quality. Unfortunately, they aren't sexed so I'll be rolling the dice as to whether I get females or not. The current grow came from hermed females so I knew they'd be good to go even if it did herm. I'm going to have to look in to when to sex them so I don't waste my space......Later.

 

Rock-A-Bye, Baby.....

I'm pregnant!....No, that's not quite right. Wait.....I'm gonna be a Daddy! Have a cigar (bubble gum). No, not that, either. I placed a few seeds in a germination tank (tupperware and a very wet towel) and a few have popped already - 8 so far, I think. I have about 15 soaking.

My current hobby project will end at the end of this month, February, and I would like to have replacements ready to go. But I've only got a four hundred square apartment and the only place available is my walk in closet. Can't do it in there because I don't want to screw up the photoperiod. I'm not using the 20" grow tube right now so I thought that I would get some plants ready by mounting it under a coffee table. That was too much like work and it could be seen from the door.

Then I remembered the big computer box I was using earlier as a containment and reflector module. It wasn't doing me any good after my plants got higher so I took it down and traded it for white trash bags. It's about 10 inches deep and 2' x 2' approximately and the tube fixture fits in diagonally, just right.



The box is just deep enough to hold the light and jiffy pots below that. The light will be close enough that the seedlings won't have to stretch as far to reach it. And I decided I needed to get as much light as I could for the most favorable results, so I lined all 4 inner sides with aluminum foil. I had just enough foil to cover it but I better not need to cover some food until next week. I placed a white trashbag in the bottom. In order to keep critters out of the seams and other dark areas of the box, I sealed up any open seam that could allow them to get in. I'm sorry but I forgot to take pictures through the process, mainly because I was busy doing, instead. You'll just have to use your imagination. Here's the finished product. By thiis time tomorrow night I'll have a tray of jiffy pots lined up under the light, waiting for illumination to begin their destined mission for mankind --- well, maybe not "all mankind", but definitely for me.



I want to try to sex them if possible if I can figure out how and not screw them up, so I guess I'll title the next phases "The Joy of Sex" and "The Agony of De Seed.