My Organic Adventure

Ugh......

Through negligence I somehow let fungus gnats take hold.

In my impatience, I used up all my neem AND karanja cake up last week in a new soil mix, don't have DE on hand nor any fly traps/papers. Time for trip to town.

I found the problem though, and I'm still laughing at my error. I relied on my brother to maintain the garden for one week (5 days), as I assumed he was competent, or could at least identify a problem when presented with one.....

Oh well, lesson learned. Now I get to start testing various oils as soil drenches I suppose, until my neem gets in.

 

What species did you use and where did you get it?

Edit; was it from here?

http://www.biconet.com/biocontrol/nemasSFeltiae.html

Would usage of neem cake/neem oil interfere with them?

 

I ended up ordering more neem cake, some food grade DE and Gnatrol. I'm picking up some Stein. Feltiae from my local nursery, so hopefully I have my bases covered by next weekend.

Only noticed 2 adults, but there is likely more in the soil maturing.

 

I'm not too worried about it all, this was mainly a test to see what relying on natural processes would do for me. So far I'm impressed, other than a few issues along the way they've done fairly well.

The two I flowered on 4/5 and the two I flowered 4/13 should be much better determinants of theirs and my own potential. Unfortunately, they are still in the FFOF soil, simply topdressed with organic matter and trained with LST, though I was incredibly lazy while doing so.

I took about 30 cuttings from two plants, then decided on testing a theory on the Deathstar. This strain seems to have quite a bit of vigor and also tends to grow unruly; ie lots of side branching.

So I decided on attempting to redirect the plant's energy by doing some massive defoliation below the 'tops'; leaving the upper 8 inches or so untouched but removing everything below that.

Should be interesting, or at least different.

 

Thank you, on both accounts.

 

Nice to see you SP and papa, glad you both decided to stop by.

Hopefully this next round of girls will show off what I've been learning, as far as the soil building

I had an update planned for tonight but I took too long trying to mess with the camera to type it all out nice and neat.

Anybody have an idea for solving the darkness of my pics when I adjust the white balance manually? It'll adjust to the proper color scheme, it's just rather dark, even with plenty of lighting. (flower and veg)

Would this be easily corrected in photoshop and/or could it be just the display on the camera being gimp? Haven't uploaded the pics to my computer yet, sorry for the lazy way of asking. If it helps, it's a Fujifilm S5100.

Anywhoo, time for bed. Got some indoor patch work tomorrow; still raining every day.

Would it be a good idea to seed clover, even without straw or some kind of mulch to cover it from the birds, if it's going to rain consistently for a few days?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kI21wR8g8
 
Wow I'm a lazy bastard. It's been 4 months since my last update...lol.
 
Here's a brief run down of what I've achieved in that time-frame; I'll gladly explain anything in detail, though I figure I'll need a couple posts to get everything caught up to current events.
 
My last group of girls in the weak soil mix finished back in May through June, and were lacking in yield though provided quite pleasant smoke. These are the same strains from before, Sour Hindu and Deathstar.
 
I'll go over my growing process when I get some time tomorrow, for now it's a pic dump with the intent on catching up visually. Sorry for the poor quality on some.  I did put them in order though.
 
Edit; Okay finally got a bit of time to dick around with writing this thing.
 
First pic is of the initial use of my SIP tray humidity dome. I just filled the bottom tray with 2" or so of perlite and pour of water in it as needed, never going above the halfway mark on my water level indicator. (a 2" nursery pot stuffed in a corner) I still use it to this day though I have a big boy version I made myself using a clear Rubbermaid container, saran wrap, perlite and a terrarium fogger that I get to use when the temp gets under control.
 
The second is my first go at a ROLS esque grow with my first soil mix. The 3rd and 4th pics are of the Deathstar and Sour Hindu when I had my incomplete soil mix (plain jane FFOF topdressed 2-3" thick with amendments and humus sources (store and homemade vermi). From the 3rd to the 10th pic, these are all from that round of soil.
 
The 11th through 14th pics are of my last crop from my 'actual' soil mix, made using a variety of humus sources and amendments, including rock dust, mixed throughout the soil and allowed to cycle properly.
 
The 15th - 17th pics (the blurred shitty quality ones) are more perspective on that same crop a bit later I believe.
 
The three after those show a bit closer view of the freshly trimmed and cut down plants from this last run.
 
Onto my QWISO experiment; I started with way too much material and not enough solvent anyways.
 
I froze my material and solvent for 48 hours before using. I had on hand 91% Isopropyl alcohol, unbleached coffee filters, 2 large mason jars (I would use smaller ones if I had any), a large bowl for straining into, 2 pyrex trays and a steel colander to help strain quickly. I have an electric griddle and a seed pad for applying heat if I desire an oil.
 
I added frozen material (small flowers and sugar trim; no fan leaves) to jar, then added my ISO. Swirled for 10-15 seconds and strained into the large bowl using the colander. Then I filtered it through a coffee filter in 2 separate jars. I found I had to constantly replace the filters with the amount I was working with, to keep a decent flow rate.I then filtered the oil solution again to ensure no particles remained (at least big enough for a 25 micron filter to retain) and then placed into my pyrex trays. I covered with cheesecloth and set on the griddle using low heat with a fan exchanging the air above it. (This is where I messed up btw; if you desire a faster evap time use a fan and seed pad. The griddle got too hot and imo burned off the terpenes, since I forgot it was on and left it that way overnight.) The day or so after I scraped it up and pressed it onto parchment using heat, to flatten the oil out. It ended up somewhat waxy but very pliable. Kind of like a very thin piece of Laffy Taffy, though not as "tough". When pulled on by a metal or glass dabber it stretches a bit then separates. Full melt though I did mess up with cheesecloth and let in some particles before it was fully evapd.
 
This is and will be my only run using Isopropyl alcohol, as I believe there is a chance for some very unhealthy chemicals to be suspended in the oil solution. From now on it's only going to be with ethanol (190 proof Everclear).
 
My advice to others searching for an efficient way to produce high quality oil without spending an exorbitant amount of money is to sift using dry ice and extraction bag first, then apply food grade ethanol (I use 190 proof Everclear now) and strain the solution. Allow that to dry and you have really pure keif. Add heat to produce an oil instead of a solid.
 
The last pic in this post is of my flower room a week or so ago...

 

All I have the time for tonight is to say I finally got 2 of my no till pots going.
 
Things should start evolving quite nicely when I get my environment stable and worm bin up to speed. Then it's just on me to produce a regular routine.
 
Edit; Okay to get everybody caught up on my on-goings, the first "organic" run I've ever done came in around 1 1/2 oz per plant, maybe 2. This was in an unprepared soil with too large of plants in the pots.
 
This recent harvest, which I staggered out into a semi perpetual over a month (and still going), came in at 4 oz per plant even though I lost a week of lighting due to hardware failure during a critical development period (week 6-7; only had 1 1k light running for 20 decent sized plants...), this was better than I expected.
 
The quality is not comparable to anything I have smoked or seen around my area in recent history and I have received nothing but praise from the patients I work with. I'm particularly happy with this crop as I see it as a decent benchmark to measure against for future reference, even with my ignorance and lack of a recorded, set routine.
 
The first couple pics show off some upcoming girls, while the third and fourth shows a blurry view of a couple I took down a while back.
 
The 5th - 7th pics are of Deathstar, the 8th is of Sour Hindu. Still working on taking good macro shots, so bear with me here while I learn.
 
The next one is of my little "command center", where I house all my amendments, next to my 250g worm bin (lol).
 
The 10th photo is of the three brands of Kelp Meal I mixed into my brewer, which is shown in the next pic.
 
From there it's just a show of my vegging girls, of which I have White Widow (I think it's from DP; it was a freebie), Green Crack, Chemdawg, Sleeskunk (freebie), Deathstar, Sour Hindu, and Critical Skunk (from Shantibaba). Still waiting to crack my Medicine Man seeds; I need to clear some space and finish selecting from the CS before I start more. From there I'm going to be looking for some sativas, ala NL5 x Haze and possibly Mango Haze, SSH or SLH. Something like that.
 
The last two pics are of the no tills I have going...more to come later tonight.
 

 

Okay, going for the record with 3 updates in 2 weeks here....
 
 
Got some more green pics to share, an early node shot and one matureish one for tonight.
 
Might have found my keeper Critical Skunk; smell test and overall response to my environment seems to be outstanding in comparison to the rest save one other that I have yet to flower out.
 

 
 
And ofc my latest project, my 4' x 2' x 16" worm bin, courtesy of the link Chunk provided. http://seattletilth.org/learn/resources-1/compost/WormBinPlans.pdf/view