Garden of Lorien: C99 Lemon Kush

Hmmmm... well my one lady still looks fantastic!  Growing nicely, and I can see her second set of true leaves emerging.
 
The other.... no sign yet.  I am thinking it is probably dead.  Thus, I put another Lemon Kush in paper towels to germ.  I just have a gut feeling that the girl who survived is a C99.  Besides, I don't want to use another C99 seed.... this is my first organic grow and I want to dial it in a bit more before I go popping all my C99 seeds.  If I wind up with two Lemon Kush plants, I will be able to deal with that lol.  And if the girl who I think might be dead sprouts up in the next day.... then I'll happily grow 3 plants!
 
 
 
 

 

The new seed popped, so I planted it in the solo last night.  I also took my solos off the SIP for now.  I think the soil is staying too damp for seedlings... may have been what killed the other seed.  Jerry had mentioned (and I am now reading it again in his journal) that the CoM stuff is pretty darn heavy stuff.... I put what I thought was a ton of perlite in there, but it still doesn't seem to be draining all that well.  Will be certain to mix more rice hulls into my cycling mix before the big transplant.  It's all good, but I definitely don't think I can use the SIP as much with seedlings... at least unless I mix in a lot more aeration next time....
 
Also, I gave them a good spraying of water with silica and aloe pulp from my aloe plant..... hopefully the silica and aloe saponins will help the new seed take root!

 

Sweet man!  Thanks for stopping by
 
Gandalf has been one of my favorite characters since I first read the trilogy in elementary school lol  Do you have an image of that poster?  Is it one of the maps from the appendices, or is it an artist's rendering?

 

Oh!  And my new sprout is poking out of the soil now!  She still has her seed cap on, so hopefully her final push through the soil will help it off.  If not, I'll help her out.  I have found previously that if I put a single drop of water on the seed casing every couple of hours, it helps soften it up and the sprout can push it off more easily.  Also, I hit my cycling soil with another AACT... same basic recipe as last time.

 

Yup, read Silmarillion.... tougher read than LoTR, but more epic and historical.... but also very mystical.  Love it.  Never read Unfinished Tales.  Good read, I'm sure?
 
My second lady popped soil this morning completely, and the shall casing had come off!  She looks great, nice and green.  Good stuff, although my first girl is still yellowish.  So this afternoon I gave them both a EWC/Perlite topdress, hopefully that'll get her some good stuff, without being too dense.  Will probably still end up TPing her over the weekend.... Pics soon!

 

Alright.... found a fantastic new beer!  I had been caught up recently with Delirium Tremens.... but I found Sly Fox Incubus Tripel, which I must say is a delicious Belgian White, with almost 2% more alcohol (10.3%) than Tremens, and $3 less ($6 pint where I am).  Highly recommend trying it!
 
My girls are lookin nice!  The new sprout is beautiful and green, and my girl who had been struggling.... she's still a bit yellow on her second set of leaves, but I can now see she's finally putting out her third set of leaves which look good and green so far.  I'm encouraged.  Pics tomorrow!
 
Edit: Also Sly Fox is a domestic beer (Pennsylvania) and Tremens is imported from Belgium, so definitely a smaller carbon footprint with Sly Fox lol

 

 
Thanks bro!  I feel like if I can just get them into their fully-cycled soil, they'll take off like rockets!  But as long as they are in these solo cups, and in un-amended soil that I worry is too dense.... I'm not gonna feel fully comfortable.  Soil should be ready Feb 1, so not much longer to go.  Baby step to Feb 1...... baby step to Feb 1..... baby step to Feb 1! (love What About Bob)
 
Here are my ladies.... you can see that the older girl is definitely more yellowish than last time I posted pics.  But you can also see (sort of.... I'll use my actual camera next time instead of my phone) that she's already putting out her 3rd set of true leaves.... and the new growth seems a bit darker than the old growth.... so I'll give her a bit more time before I do something drastic like TP.  And the young lady, she has a nice vibrant green look, so I'm quite happy with her.  And I'm keeping them off the SIP until they are in smart pots.  I'm still filling up the SIP, however, to keep the humidity at least in the 32-38% range.
 
Everything is clicking along in the Garden of Lorien right now..... 

 

Alright!  So I took them off the SIP a few days ago to let them thoroughly dry out.  I kept misting the top to give the girls enough moisture to get by, but I wanted the middle and lower part of the cups to dry out a good bit so they wouldn't hold so much moisture.  Well last night I decided they had dried out enough and gave them a good watering.... probably 10oz between the two of them.... just water, some molasses to remove the chloramine, and liquid silica.  Well they seemed to love it!  Now they aren't water-logged, they can really take advantage of the intermittent waterings.  You can see how much they have grown in just the last 48 hours (since the last pics I posted)
 

 

TJ- Yeah, I don't know if I will do sips for seedlings from now on... will have to really think about it.  But the SIP, combined with the heaviness of the CoM, that was just too much.  If 33% aeration is the norm, 40-45% is good for SIPs, and when dealing with CoM, it probably needs to be 50-55% aeration, insanely enough.  At least for seedlings in solos.... I would think that SmartPots, which allow much more oxygen penetration, would help with this issue.
 
I have one other theory as well.... I'm using a long, but fairly shallow tray.  I was thinking that it is difficult to keep the water at least 1 inch below the level of my cups (which is what noobwannb recommended.... keeping 1" separation).  If the water was filling up too close to the pots, that could have contributed to the water-logging.
 
Chipped- Welcome!  Thanks for stopping by!  I've had two previous grows actually.... the first I aborted before flipping to flower due to...... security breach lol.  The second grow I had a timer crap out while I was on vacation and my plants pretty much died.  I was able to harvest about an ounce of *decent* but very fluffy, hairy buds.  But I vaporized some of it today, and it got me for sure lifted... just gotta pack the vape 3-4x more.  That said- yes, I am really hoping this is the first grow I get to take all the way through to complete fruition.  
 
And this is my first organic indoor cannabis grow, so that definitely makes me feel like it's square one lol.  I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and we used to amend our garden with just our horse's manure and some of our kitchen/yard waste compost, and grow tons of veggies and herbs.  I didn't think of it then as organic gardening, but it definitely was.
 
I'm going to mix a good bit more rice hulls into my final mix before I transplant after what I've learned about CoM and how dense it is.  And soon I'm going to start adding humic acid to my waterings, so I think/hope that'll really get them going!