I have had good results with autos outdoors! I like to start mine indoors in 5gal pails with the bottom 2/3 of the pail drilled out. This allows me to avoid the transplant shock that can be detrimental to autos. Once they are ready for outside I bury about 3/4- 7/8 of the bucket in a good homemade soil! Usually the roots have expanded well outside the bucket by harvest! I get better yields this way compared to my cramped grow cabinet! Peace & Love PyspherE
Sounds like you have it down! Sure wish I had outdoor space and privacy to do some outside growing. Maybe in the near future. Sent from my BNTV250 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
21-11-2014 Loaded up the MFLB, me, and fresh bateries and burned off to see "Exodus: Gods and Kings" at the ol' Cinemark. Not gonna post any spoilers, but the bit with the crocks was cool as shit. Don't have any other frame of reference except the Ten Commandments film with Heston etc. This was much better! Where in what I'm thinking of as the "Original," I always felt that the films' “mise-en-scène†was particularly noticeable. It seemed as if like I was watching a play most of the time. Plus all that silly romance crap/love triangle they added to make it commercial was really out of place. This was far better as far as the performances went, and no real scenery chewing going on. Some excellent mayhem in places! I was wondering when someone would take a stab at a remake of the Ten Commandments. This was a very good try.
12-12-2014 I'm hoping that the remaining KC #1 shows some pistils today. Pretty sure it's female, so I'm going to carry on as if I were sure for the moment. Plan today is to put a fresh bucket of nutes under her. Getting to be time to fire up the veg tent once again, and get one of the clones in there pretty soon, either the KC #1 or the PC. Also like the idea of parking a fast little auto in the veg tent, so I'll get that going as well. Gotta fabricate a couple more DWC buckets first, and I might need some more 1/4" tubing, so that mans a trip to a store.
12-12-2014 Found a couple pistils on the KC #1! Woo Hoo! So she has fresh transition nutes, and is gtg as far as I'm concerned. Be some defoliation down the road probably. Verified that the Pineapple Chunk clones are properly rooted. Started spraying one of the KC's and one of the PC's. I'll hold off a bit before I put either of the remaining two clones in DWC. Still loving the idea of fast auto in the veg tent, and I'll sort one out this weekend. Can't decide which to strain to run yet. The Pineapple Chunk has sprung up to 23" so far. <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span> Going to be nice to have a more or less regular harvest. <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span> <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
12-12-2014 /2 Had a 4 pack of World of Seeds Northern Lights x Big Bud Autos, and decided that would be the one I stuck in the veg tent. The criteria was that it isn't going to get too tall, and wasn't one of those bushy phenos. Anyway, put one into a block and got wet, so it'll hit the DWC as soon as I see a couple of leaf sets.
12-14-2014 Did a bit of tidying up of the clones this morning. They're looking pretty good. I do want to get the untreated two into the veg tent, but it's just too soon yet, I think. The smaller ones were kept that way deliberately so I could hold off a couple of weeks before I move them into the veg tent. The bigger ones are being treated with CS for fem pollen. The Pineapple Chunk is showing excelent pistils and had throttled down the stretching. I'm seeing decent internode spacing where the central cola is developing. I did get a couple of really big ass gaps from the stretch, but it looks fine now. The photos illustrate what I'm talking about. You can see in the first pic that the nodes were decent enough, then a couple of huge spaces there in the middle, then back to conventional spacing. Second pic shows the tightened up top, and finally a close up showing some pistils. Here's the PC and the KC #1 full shots:
12-15-2014 My new MH bulb dropped this afternoon, and I installed it straightaway. What a difference! I've heard from several growers that MH is the shit for getting nice buds, and I guess I can see it. The spectrum differences are quite different, and because the MH is 4200K it's a much "whiter" light than the 2000K HPS. The MH is 36,000 lumen versus 56,000 for the HPS, uses more voltage but less amperage. Not sure if it's running any cooler. Still the same watts sq. ft. While 20,000 lumen less, the MH seems to almost overwhelm the LED. Anyhow, 4200K is closer to "Daylight" than the 2000K. I'm very curious to see how the plants do under it.
12-15-2014 /2 Forgot to mention that the Northern Lights/ Big Bud auto already has the taproot well along, and should be out of the grow block tomorrow. Happy about that. She'll get a few days under the T5 then become the auto parked in the veg tent. I suppose toward the end I'll try and give her a couple of weeks in the flower tent. Speaking of the flower tent, in just a few hours the plants look perkier. Not that they were drooping or anything. Might be my imagination or a trick of the light change, but it really does look as if there's a bit more up angle on the leaves. Another bonus is that the MH seems to be running slightly cooler than the HPS. This is one of those little fun bits that makes growing interesting. No ill effects so far on the clones being treated with the colloidal silver. <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
12-16-2014 The NL/BB is out of the block and under the T5. Will be moved into the veg tent once I see a couple leaf sets. The PC seemes to have stopped the stretching and is seriously working on getting into the flowering mode. The KC seems to be a little slower on the uptake, but is coming along with flowering starts. Really loving the MH bulb so far! I wonder how I'll feel after a week or so of use on the girls. As I mentioned, it's a very white light to the naked eye. However, 8000K would be closer to daylight. They do have higher K value MH bulbs available, and they're reasonable. If I like the results of the current MH bulb, I may order a 6500K or 8000K to try out next spring. I should have a few plants on the hook by middle of March, and I'll have a stash in place in case I fuck some plants up with too high a spectrum. I believe a 6500K would be killer! So the pic on the left is just standalone MH light. The other is both MH and LED. No corrections made, & no flash - These are straight shots: Stay tuned!
Went to see "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" or whatever it's called. Not bad! Just happy as hell that Peter Jackson doesn't have any more Tolkin movie rights. Six was enough.
12-17-2014 I had a bit of a kerfuffle yesterday about colloidal silver. Back in April, I ordered a 32 oz bottle of 500ppm from a place called UltraSilver (www.ultrasilver.com). After I received it, I stuck it in the closet with all my other bottles of plant related stuff until I needed it. As I've mentioned in the past, the intent was to dilute it to 50 ppm for making fem pollen. Now I ordered this stuff because I had previously ordered a bottle of 50 ppm product from a place in Colorado to treat the plants. I did test that with a TDS meter, and it was spot on @ 50ppm, and did work. Seemed to need quite a bit of it at the time I first used it, so that's what motivated the big bottle purchase. That Silver Mountain CS was crystal clear. Now prior to that, I did order a DIY generator that had the more difficult to find .9999 silver wire electrodes. The little kit I ordered came with a plug-in power supply and a little circuit rig that took care of polarity and whatnot, and even a laser pen to check for quality. The only thing was that the longer you ran it, the darker the colloidal solution became, and you had to clean the electrodes a lot. I didn't know WTF to think, and it didn't test out with the TDS meter to much higher than 12ppm, so I didn't bother using it, thinking it was crap, and just ordered lab stuff. So yesterday I was close to out of that original product I used two grows ago to make the F35/BB beans, so I broke out the bottle of 500ppm CS from UltraSilver. I freaked out because that stuff looked like really dark maple syrup in color! Somewhere along the line my memory of events got mixed up. I thought I had actually diluted some of this stuff previously, and believed it might have gone bad or oxidized or some shit like that. Seems that I never opened that big bottle when it was delivered, so I never knew what it originally looked like. Shit for brains. So I contacted the guy who makes the stuff. He says it's always dark brown like that, and it's the ionic CS that comes clear like that 8oz bottle I bought elsewhere. He says it doesn't oxidize, and is supposed to be brown; and best of all has an indefinite shelf life (Good). Also, TDS meters don't work on real CS. Well, that just means that I have a lot of concentrated CS for future use! Also means that the stuff I made with my little DIY generator was probably good all day for what I want to use it for, and I'll test that next time I get a fem clone I don't care about, and I'm not treating any other plants, so I don't get confused and fuck things up. Also, the guy from UltraSilver (Phil Keidaish) understood the agricultural uses of CS, and is tossing me a sample of Poly Colloidal Trace Minerals which he thinks might help. I'm supposed to add a drop or two to my 50 ppm mix, and let him know. So it's all good, apparently, and I think ionic CS is probably just as useful as DIY or non-ionic CS for feminizing pollen. So much data out there to read on the subject. Colloidal Silver and other colloidal metals are fascinating stuff. So as I haven't actually used my 500ppm CS diluted to 50pm for flipping gender, so I take it back where I said I know it works. I'm pretty sure it's going to work. The stuff from Silver Mountain Minerals worked well too.
12-20-2014 Nothing much new. Basically just plant maintenance today. I'll put the new NL/BB auto in the veg tent tomorrow or Monday. She has a couple of good leaf sets and good roots, so off she goes. The Kaliman Cheese #1 is flowering, but not nearly as quickly as the Pineapple Chunk, which is one stretchy girl! I do wish she'd dial it down a bit more. However, she's flowering really nicely now. So I'm really getting into the art of making fem pollen, and the materials used in the process. I ordered some substances from here and there and mixed up my own little feminizing mist product. I've marked off a small branch on the big-ass PC with a few flower starts and began treating it. I'll do that for two weeks. If it flips, and I have little doubt that it will not, I'm going to try and find a half dozen growers to try it out. I know I can market it for much less than the price of all the other similar products out there, and it's all lab grade. So if anyone who grows seriously and wants to try it out, PM me and when I've got it perfected, I'll shoot you a sample if you're in the first dozen or so. No promises until I decide to go into Beta testing. <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
12-22-2014 Beginning to look a lot like Festivus around here! It's as good a name for disguising celebrating the winter solstice as any other, IMO. Such nice closet pagans! As we gather our loved ones around the table this evening to enjoy our Festivus meatloaf dinner, and bask in the warm, brushed aluminum glow of the Festivus Pole, let us remember the real spirit of Festivus is to not take things too seriously, including our rituals. Happy Festivus, everyone! A donation has been made in all your names to The Human Fund – “Money for People†Cleaned up the veg tent and installed the Northern Lights / Big Bud Auto in there. Started dialing down the photoperiod for the clones I'm treating, so that meant moving the spares out of the armoire. So among those two, the Pineapple chunk clone was very stunted, and I figured it was root bound. Sure enough, I forget to break up the bottom of the grow block a little when I started it, and the roots never pushed through. That happens sometimes when I clone in those GroDan blocks. I thought I had checked that. Anyhow, I don't mind it being small. The Kaliman Cheese #1 clone is only about 8†tall, so I'm thinking it's a bit root bound too. I needed to run out for ¼†tubing, and I'm fixin' to fabricate a DWC bucket for her and get her in the tent as soon as I finish this up. That's three in the veg tent, and I'll get a pic when I finish up tonight so we can see how fast they take off. Light is as max height and 18/6. Meanwhile, the clones don't seem to mind being treated with my new feminizing mist mix. I'm going to rearrange the treated clones in their solo cups too. Besides treating those clones, I did pick and marked a low branch with a couple of bud sites on the big PC and started treating that as well, just out of curiosity about timing. I'm hoping I'll have free time later to trim some of the fan leaves in the big tent and clean up the lower stems. That PC fucker is still stretching like crazy, and I expect I'll end up bending that center stalk over to keep it off the cool tube. I want to go to the MH bulb, but I'm worried that'll make it stretch even more. Really not sure who to even ask about that. It needs to quit working on height and start working more on bud. The big KC #1 is a hot mess. I'm not trying that LST technique again. So except for wishing for a 9' grow tent, all is well. I did seriously consider trying to put those two small clones in one DWC bucket with a 10†basket, but came to my senses. Probably six other things I intended to mention, but it's been so busy today, and they're not important. Just as an unrelated aside, I mentioned previously I picked up one of those WD MyCloud NAS storage devices. Took me a while to get it properly set up and everything xfered. Really love it! I was using other things to access my files remotely, but this thing blows them all away. Highly recommended.
12-23-2014 Here's some shots of the big tent PC on the left side. Pretty messy in there atm, and I'm going to try and get in there today and do some trimming. Pineapple Chunk: Kaliman Cheese #1: Also, a couple of the newly resurrected veg tent. Clockwise from back: NL/BB, KC #1, and PC.
That PC is getting lanky! That's sorta normal for some from what I've seen for that strain! Give it a good super crop and the branching/bushiness should improve! I would do it sooner rather than later! Give at much recovery time earlier so that the mai. Stalk can heal and still produce those huge P.Chunks! That's just my thoughts! Peace & Love PyspherR
12-27-2014 Changed up a little on the routine. Switched over to the basic Lucas Formula with my usual supplements, Also, since all the roots are more than long enough on the two big girls, I'm just letting them run until there's about a gallon left, and just swapping the tops out for a fresh bucket of nutes. Still a PITA, but easier than trying to top up buckets in a crowded tent with a sequoia parked on top, They're easy to get out since it's not a scrog, and it's bada bing, bada boom once they're out. The new NL/BB has roots in the DWC, and is taking off. Going to rehang the LED panel back on the hangers to get it closer, to see if I can keep the stretching down. Not sure about the Pineapple Chunk clone making it, She has roots, but I think she was so bound up for so long, she's not going anywhere. I'll repot her one more time and cross my fingers. Since I was handling the big girls, I always like to see what my hands smell like afterwards. The PC is curiously low-key yet, but the KC #1 is smelling very exotic already. I think she's going to be even more heavenly smelling than the Aurora Indica from last grow. I still have a bit of that left, and it's been aging. My gawd, I hate to even think of smoking it. I like to just pull the bag out and take a big ol' nose hit of the aroma. NEVER smelled weed with that aroma profile before. I can't even begin to describe it in terms of 'like this or that.' .
12-28-2014 Was doing my morning check of the girls. Seeing some nice frostiness starting to appear! Not too shabby for only 7-10 days of earnest flowering. The KC #1 is ahead of the PC at this point. Cannot wait to see what these look like in a month! I'll get better pics later - I was in a hurry taking these. Barneys' Farm Pineapple Chunk: Kaliman Cheese #1: