This will be my grow journal of the ways I do my thing. I started in this forum on 'member cheap old basterd club' thread. This is where I described the bona fides of my background. My first post is at http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-medical-marijuana-growing/972868-old-school-grow-advice-member-cheap-old-basterd-club.html?p=18811072 and my ending post is at http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-medical-marijuana-growing/972868-old-school-grow-advice-member-cheap-old-basterd-club.html?p=18822654 There are a couple of posts in between. I don't want to clutter up SG1's thread by continuing my grow reports there. I'm going to start this grow journal and clutter up my own thread. I'll show what I do to provide myself with my medical marijuana.
I just returned home after being gone 5 days and decided to break out some seeds that I have kept in the freezer since the 70's. i got them from a friend who breed them from seeds he purchased from Amsterdam. View attachment 127703 From left to right: Skunk, Like MTV and MM 1 + 2 (male) X MTV (female). The last two were breed to grow outdoors and mature early. The Skunk is some left over Amsterdam seeds. I don't know if these seeds are even viable after being in the freezer the last 40 years. Normally I put my seeds between tissue paper and keep the paper wet. I thought I see if they will sprout in a glass of purified water. I put the water in a clear plastic cup. View attachment 127701 From left to right: Skunk, Like MTV and MM 1 + 2 (male) X MTV (female). I choose 4 good looking seeds from each of the 3 different types. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I have some recent seeds purchased at a dispensary and I will sprout those later.
Awesome stuff Pakalolo - subbed up for sure to see what you get out of these old seeds. This reminds me of a thread i saw a while back, think it was on another forum of a chap who found some 42 year old seeds he had sent his brother from Vietnam - very interesting reading and got some beautiful plants from them - land race strains i think Never know you may have had some monster genetics in your freezer all this time! ATB e2a: found that old thread - on 420 mag hope GC don't mind me posting http://www.420magazine.com/forums/completed-journals/167704-42-year-old-bag-seed-11.html
Welcome to my grow journal BabylonEvader. I'll be doing a lots of different posts on this thread. I hope you enjoy it. If you haven't checked out my posts on 'member cheap old basterd club' you should. It gives a lot of background about me.
I was thinking about experimenting with Bubbleponics (DWC with drip irrigation) but I have totally changed my mind. I'm going organic. When I was a fireman I had my whole backyard organic vegetables with raised beds. So I already have a background doing organic growing. I'm going to start this weekend gathering the supplies I'll need to pull this off. My seeds are no longer floating but I haven't seen them pop yet. It could take up to 2 weeks before I give up on them. If none of these seeds pop I'm moving into bulk mode and try popping 40 or so at a time using paper towels or tissue paper. My current clones have been attacked by spider mites but I've sprayed them twice now. That should take care of the little pests. I sprayed 3 days apart. I'm going to spray them one more time on Saturday then watch them with my magnifying glass.
Today I bought some of the components I need for going organic. Tomorrow I'll buy the last two ingredients and a respirator for when I mix it up. Two of the Skunk seeds I dropped in the water on Sunday are showing signs of popping. The MM x MTV and Like MTV are not showing any signs. I'll probably move them to a base mix tomorrow.
I fished out the 2 Skunk seeds that were popping. They looked like this View attachment 127899 I filled my clear cups 1/2 up with Pro Mix. I always punch a small hole in the bottom before I fill them. I left the cup half empty so that as the seedling stretches I can back fill the cup for support. The 2 cups look like this. View attachment 127900 Even though they have sprouted I won't be satisfied until I see the seedlings emerge from the Pro Mix. I know a lot of growers use the styrofoam cups but I prefer the clear ones. The reason is I can see the roots when they reach the inside of the cup and grow downwards. If you look close you can see the root in the middle of the cup below. View attachment 127898
I mixed up my first organic soil this afternoon. I created the base with 2 cubic feet of Pro Mix, 1/2 cubic foot of grass (the lawn type) compost and 1/2 cubic foot of EWC. To this I added 1/2 cup each of kelp meal, alfalfa meal, crab meal, azomite, organic fertilizer and neem seed meal. When I got done mixing it up in the wheelbarrow it looked like this. View attachment 127912 I'm moving it into the garbage can. The soil was dry so I added 2 gallons of water and mixed it by hand so I could feel how moist it was. It felt nice and fluffy. I looked for rice and/or buckwheat hulls at the feed and farm supply stores but they didn't have any. The local grow shop is going to check with their supplier and see if either are available. When I finely get some I'll add about 1/2 cubic foot to the soil. It's looking like real soil now. View attachment 127913 I'm going to transfer the soil between garbage cans on the weekends to get it better mixed and give it oxygen. View attachment 127914 I must say this was an enjoyable 2 hours preparing this soil.
I moved the popped MM 1 + 2 (male) x MTV (female) into one of my clear cups using the same technique I did with the 2 Skunk seeds. I also ordered a T5 4' 4 tube light for the new cloning/seedling area that looks like this. View attachment 127933 It will hold 4 of those trays. I'm going to build out the area under the 400W MH light for vegetation. I'm going to do this SG style and remove the hood. I bought panda film before I understood SG's methods. So I'm going to hang it instead of mylar. I need to figure out the ventilation system. This is what the area looks like now. The 'mylar' is really some thermal blankets bought from a sporting goods store. I didn't know about mylar in those days. View attachment 127934 My clones were hit by spider mites when I got home last Sunday. So I sprayed them and removed a lot of leaves. There are beginning to recover. Here is what my flower room looks like. I'll be able to finish 8 plants in here. I have a second light that I will hang. 4 plants per light. <div> View attachment 127396 </div>
Sorry to see that SG1 has been removed from GC. His thread was one of the most informative sources and great for the way I grow. It seems a shame to have this happen and all the lost knowledge.
What does MTV and MM mean? I've seen you on Cheap old Bastards. I'll follow along for a while. Organic doesn't really interest me for indoor growing. I do DWC and love it and get way better results with it indoors. But outdoors organic is the way to go. And who knows, I may try it indoors again someday, when I am satisfied with an organic mix I've made from my chickens litter and other additives like shredded alfalfa and limestone and neem meal and lots of perlite. What happened to SG1? Any idea? I was enjoying his thread.
Back in the 70's one of my old grow buddies did some breeding from seeds he ordered from Amsterdam. In those days no one was looking for seeds in the mail. In fact there was no restrictions on seeds. We lived in the PNW and were interested in developing a strain that would grow well in the Cascade foothills. So these designations (MM 1 + 2, MTV) were my grow buddy's way of tracking different breeds of seeds that he created. So the significance of the naming has been lost to me. All I know is that he stated the characteristics where early mature, good quality and small buds for them. I thought about going bubbleponics myself (DWC with drip) but I worried about losing power. I live out of the city and I lose power for days at a time ( 3 - 6 days) so I was worried that a power outage would kill my DWC plants. From SG's thread I was directed to Jerry's thread. I read through SG's thread and just today finished Jerry's no nutrient thread. So with the information from both threads I decided to go with organic. I'm familiar with organic growing from my vegetable garden days. I didn't need to be convinced that it would work. I just needed to come up to speed with the techniques. I have used bottled nutrients for years and always had to throw out my ProMix when the growing was done. This was always a pain to dispose of. With organic I don't have that problem anymore. I've got some ProMix left and I'm going to do another soil mix this weekend along with the one I did last weekend. Once I'm through with the ProMix I'm going to go with peat moss, rice/buckwheat hulls and humus for my base. Then no more perlite to worry about. I don't know why SG was banned but I saw someone indicate that he was too open about his 'activities'. I sent him a PM but he probably won't get it and I don't have anyway to contact him except through the forum.
Besides my medicine I'm also going to have a 600 square foot vegetable garden in the summer. I live in the woods and there are many deer foraging through my yard. This last summer I put up a solar powered electric fence to see if I could keep them out of the garden. I saw the deer eating around and near the garden but the electric fence keep them from munching in my garden. So I had a company near here deliver 15 yards (actually it was more than that) of their premier compost. It's made by blowing warmed air on a pile of shredded yard wastes. This is then mixed with aged cow manure. As you can see it is very dark soil. View attachment 128011 You can also see the well in the foreground. This was a well that wasn't being used and this summer I found it had about 450 gallons of water. I placed a pump and used it to water the garden all summer. I've put the pump away for the winter but I'll bring it back out next summer. No little sprouts showing up from my seeds. Crossing my fingers.
I got 6 free clones but wasn't ready for them so I threw up a 1000W MH light. I did move 2 into the flower room. One is Trainwreck and the other Dankey Doodle. These did have spider mites on them. I sprayed them with Mighty Wash and placed them in the flower room. That was about 5 weeks ago. I have feed them FloraNova products so this isn't organic. I'm going to mix up another 2 cubic feet of soil today and tomorrow I'm going to transfer the first soil mix to another garbage can. Here's a picture of one of the tops of Trainwreck. View attachment 128043
Created my first soil mix from scratch (no Pro Mix) Base soil: 50% was peat moss 15% compost 15% EWC 20% rice hulls Amendments 6 cups glacier rock dust 1 cup each: kelp meal, crab meal, neem seed meal, organic fertilizer, alfalfa meal and azomite moisten with kelp/alfalfa tea View attachment 128070
I bought some 10 gallon pots for flowering my girls. I was going to do 8 plants but with the 10 gallon pots I'm reducing it by 2 to 6 plants. My hope is to move to no till gardening. I also started to LST my baby clones. I went a bought some paper clips to use for holding them down. Still no seeds sprouting out of the soil. I think they cracked okay but maybe too old to sprout. I'm going to take about 10 - 15 seeds out of each of the 70's batch and see if I can get them to sprout between some wet paper towels.
Today it only rained a little bit so I built up 2 compost piles out by the garden space. I layered some old wet straw, horse manure (with straw and sawdust), shredded Maple leaves and some alfalfa pellets. One of the piles looks like this: View attachment 128148 I placed a tarp over the top of the pile and will check on it in December. I will mainly use this for my vegetable garden but I'm going to put some aside for mixing up soil for the little ladies. I also have a neighbor who has a pet rabbit. I dropped off a 5 gallon pail with a lid. She is going to put all that rabbit poop into the pail and call me when it's half full. I'm going to fill the rest of the pail with kitchen scraps and throw in small amounts of kelp, alfalfa, neem, etc. I'll let this compost a little and finally feed it to my worms.
Don't you turn your pile and keep it at the correct moisture content? If you turn the inside to the outside and the outside to the inside once every 10 days it will be finished compost in a month.
Jerry suggested that I turn it inside out every 72 hours, "I would personally turn the heap twice a week for the first few weeks to keep the outside of the pile composting evenly with the inside, and then after a few weeks you can just turn it every few weeks or even less. It's more important to turn it often in the beginning." So that is what I'm going to do.