***** Warning! Very high ramblings to follow ***** In pokes thread around here where he talks about variegated plants, some one mentioned Michael Jackson. This inevitably caused me to spend the next 45 minutes youtubing Michael Jackson music videos. A few minutes ago, I cracked open the mason jar with the autoflower curing. I picked up a small hygrometer the other day and had this in the jar. I checked the humidity (64%) and noticed a slight return of the hay smell. Obviously I had to sample one to make sure all is still well. The bud I picked was a smaller lower one. So it was a little airy. It did however grind up beautifully. I may want to do a little better groom next time as there were a few leaf bits in there. Once it was ground up I didn't notice any off smell. It's a NL's blend so it is a little light on aroma. It still has a piney, sweet, fruitiness that is pleasant. I packed it into one of my little bubblers. It lit up well and stayed lit. There's no sparkling or anything crazy like that. It doesn't go all white yet at the end though either. The first drag is pretty good. It is still a little harsh so it does have a slight sting to it. It isn't even close to bad . It is a pretty much 100% indica so it's got a great calming happiness that just makes you feel heavy; but in a really good way. All said and done, it is pretty great weed! I may be a little biased, granted. But I'd smoke it again. And for anyone finding their way here from a search. This was an autoflower. It is heavyweights 2 fast 2 vast. This was grown organically under MH light. Now after enjoying all of that, I made it back to YouTube and found this video: Man In The Mirror - Michael Jackson - Michael Henry & Justin Robinett: https://youtu.be/uedqcSNKsqs It was one of the best musical/emotional feelings I've had in a while. I hope you enjoyed my very high ramblings for the night ***** Very high ramblings: Complete *****
I don't think you're seeing thing, Neem works wonderfully! With the perilite, that's exactly what happened with me, it worked for a week or so and back they came. You really gotta stay on top of these little buggers. Spray every 3 days for 3 weeks then once per week until flowering. All it takes is one litte larve to hatch 4 weeks later and bam, more gnats. If you don't get rid of them completely, it's not the end of the world. You can still pull 95% harvests with gnats as long as they're kept in check. The Jack Here I harvested in December had some Gnats in the soil. Couldn't tell by looking at the buds though. Yeah, early harvest. Man I'm not new to growing herb, but I didn't grow for like 10 years or so. This past summer(2014) was my first grow in all that time. The point I'm trying to make is that I even harvested a little early in the fall and I had grown before. Just not growing for so long made me a newb again in terms of early harvest, lol. Just because I had grown before though didn't really mean much in terms of knowledge. I used to grow with bottled nutes and simple simple, simple. I used to grow in my closet and had an outdoor garden for 3 summers in my early 20's. But this time when I started again it was all about Organics. It was almost as if I was staring from scratch. People think that Organics is the "Lazy" way of cannabis cultivation, lol. Nothing could be farther from the truth. You need to Mix you soil 6-8 weeks before you need it, and first you need to learn all about how quality Organic soil is mixed and how it works. You then need to know what to do for pest problems since throwing some pesticide on Organic plants is not an option. IMHO, you need to know more about the plant and gardening itself to be an effective Organic Gardener. It teaches you how to listen to the plants and what they are telling you. IMO, bottled nutes is the "Lazy" way to garden. All you need to do is measure bottled nutes according to a schedule provided. If you have pest problems, poison the s&%# out of them. You don't even have to know what's in the bottles your pouring out. You only need to follow a schedule on the back of the bottle, lol. Sweet looking herb man. I think the Hay like smell you're getting is the Sugar leaves or Fan leaves, rotting. That's how they smell and why It's important to trim well prior to curing. As long as they're dry it shouldn't be a big problem. For my personal smoke, I don't trim the closest layer of leaves from the buds so that each bud has a sort of cocoon. This helps that buds restrain their trichromes and structure. I just trim each bud right before I smoke it. The flowers seem fresher as well when this is done. That's neat you're using the boveda 62. I've wanted to try some of these but I'd have to order them. Do you like them or are they not really necessary? I prefer my herb a little drier, about 60%. Smokes better in a pipe this way. BTW, Fungus gnats are tricky to get rid of with SIP trays. They love that moisture. I find that they don't like to stick around if the Rh is below 40%. Well, take care man, Plaid
You're absolutely right. I think I was making it worse than it was. I have since opened it a couple more times and I'm not getting that smell again at all. I had played around with a big bag of alfalfa earlier mixing up some more soil and may have just been imagining things. Haha
I think you're absolutely right. Neem kicks ass! In the veggie starts I tried it on, I see maybe a gnat or two flying around still. So it put a serious hurt on them. I wish I could spray in my tent, but the ladies are in flower right now and are starting to show some flowers. I'll just have to suck it up for the next little while. Ahh I gotcha. Didn't mean any disrespect. But there is a whole lot to learn. And I'm sure everyone is making mistakes along the way. I just need to make sure I lesrn from them and not continue to repeat them. While I haven't ever done anything with bottled nutriens. I totally agree. True living organic soil just makes so much more sense to me. Giving the plant everything it would need at any time sounds like the smart way to go. Granted yield may not necessarily be at the same level but you'll end up with a far better product in the end, I believe anyway The little cocoon that yiu referred to is what I was shooting for. I think it's worked out fairly well. The slight hay smell was probably my imagination mire than anything else. I haven't noticed yhat smell at all since the one time. It has a very strong and pleasant piney aroma to it. But it smells tasty I've really liked the boveda packs for storage. I've turned 4 people onto them in real life. It keeps the bud at just the right level of moisture for me. The cool thing is they have different levels as well so you can pick and choose what humidity you want. The 62 is pretty much perfect for me. This is the first time that I have used them curing (it's my first time ever curing haha) so I can't speak to them in thay aspect too much. My next harvest I will have enough to separate the bud into multiple jars and plan on doing a test cute side by side that way. I'll make sure u let you know how that goes.
The ladies have been doing great. Their flower sites are budding up well. I topped up the sip trays yesterday. I've got a while left on these ladies, but I'm planning on starting a perpetual log a gf ter this one. That way it'll be easier to do more things in tandem and just keep things rolling easier. Probably right around the time these ladies will be dried I should be expanding my grow area.
Lookin good man!! So do u love the sip tray or what? I'm thinking of running a bunch of 1 or 2 gallons rooted clones in a big 3x3 sip tray Inside a 4x4 tent.
They are fantastic! They do make the gnats a little bit more if an issue. But hopefully I'm taking care of that in my next mix with karanja and neem meal. I have been looking for one of the plastic containers that is 3x3 or 4x4 for a couole weeks now. None of the stores around here seem to have any that are square or even a two rectangular ones that would work. I was thinking of just making a large custom sized one thay would fit in the bottom if my tent as well. If I make mine before you find yours I'll be sure to let you know how I did it and how well it does/doesn't work. While I haven't done it yet, I've read a few people not recommending the sip trays until the plant gets a little bigger. Next run I plan on veggin img under a t5 for a little bit before throwing them under the mh to go big and tall for me
So here we are at day 24 of flower for my very first 2 plants. Last night I noticed that the ladies were getting a little yellow to a few more leaves. So I brewed up a little tea. Pretty much equal parts; my very own ewcs, alfalfa meal, crustacean meal, karanja/neem meal, and a small squirt of molasses. I let that bulb for about 8 hrs. I pulled them off of the sip buckets tonight so I could give them the tea. This was the first time that I had pulled them out from underneath the hps lighting. How does everyone think they look? Once their soil stopped dripping any tea they went back under the lights. Payday is just around the corner and I've already got a few things in my amazon cart. I'm going to grab a few more and some bigger smart pots, get several more soil amendments, and a pH meter. There are a lot of things I've got planned to do differently next grow. And I'd like to do a comparison grow for myself. I'm thinking of doing a hid compared to a mars 2. Well that's it for the night. Sleep well everyone
I lost this journal. Got buried in my subscription list lol. Hope all is well buddy? Chef. Head Chefs Indoor and Outdoor Adventures - http://forum.grasscity.com/index.php?/topic/1289059-Headchef%27s-indoor-and-outdoor-adventures
Pleasure to see you back my friend. All's well over here. Just got done smoking a bowl of my very first home grown bud, kicking back relaxing now learning some stuff. The plants are budding up. And I've got an amazon cart of growing goodies just waiting to ship. Life's good Hope things are just as well for you.
Day 25 of flower: Hi, everybody! So, if I'm to go off of the flower time that was given on Herbies for these 00 Norther lights, I am right in the middle of my flower period. It says these should take 50 days. However, if these ones are anything like the little autoflower, I'm not counting on that. Haha Things are still looking pretty great. The tea that I gave them the other day seems to have made them happy. The one thing that had me slightly concerned is the tips of some of the leaves are drying out and curling up again. They did this a little when I was first having some over watering troubles. Once I got that straightened out with the sip trays that went away. The first picture in this post will be of the curling leaf. The veggie garden is doing great. We had a little bit of cold weather but everything seems to be trucking on fine. Got my spot for peas and a spot for corner all tilled up and planted. Should be a tasty year. I'm getting up early in the morning to get my first surfing in of the year. Last year I shaped my own board, and I'm going to take that out again for the first surf. It's becoming a tradition. Smoke a big bowl and enjoy the first waves of the year. This year I get to smoke my first home grown before heading out though.
I've been reading a lot of great stuff on ssts lately; corn teas in particular. So I hit up the store and grabbed some organic bagged popcorn and some bulk bin popcorn. I tried sprouting both of those. I soaked the kernels over night in water that had sat out. I drained them then put a damp paper towel over them. I kept them damp for a few days with no sprouts on either. I was a little frustrated but grabbed some better organic multi color popcorn kernels. I did the exact same procedure as the other two. Soaked, drained, kept damp. And within 24 hrs of draining I've got plenty of sprouts. I need to let them sprout for a a couple more days. Then I'll buzz them up in the blender, strain out the solid particles, and water the ladies. I'll be sure to do a before and after shot of the ladies to see what kind of difference I see.
32nd Day of 12/12 I know I was supposed to have a little before and after of the corn sst I made up. But the ladies just didn't drink enough from their sips for me to water them more. So i had to leave it in the fridge for a couple days. I'm not sure if this will have a negative impact in the benefits of the sst, but I don't think it will have reduced it by too much either way. Making the tea was straight forward. I just dumped the sprouted corn kernels into my blender, poured in some declorinated water. Buzzed that mix for a while and strained. I poured a little water through the grain left overs till the runoff was clear. I then diluted that with some water and watered the ladies. I just gave gem the tea a few minutes ago. They looked great when I opened up the tent. The buds are filling out and the sugar leafs are staring to get some glisten to them. The aroma is starting to pick up as well. I'm getting a nice flora, s very slight citrus note. Should be some good things coming soon
How's everyone doing? Things are looking good over here. I just got done playing with the worm bin. I just sprinkled on some kelp, crustacean, and neem/karanja meal and then covered everything with a damp layer of paper bag strips. Can't wait to add these to my soil mix The ladies are looking lovely. I tried to take a shot at the same angle as the picture I took before the sst. I'm going to try and do that for the next few days to show its affects. I also snapped a couple shots from over top of the canopy. I haven't taken any from this angle so I figured why not.
Looking bomb BROTHER!! I have started using coconut water for my source of SST-like goodness.. the girls seem to love it!! Plenty of castings and poop with innoculants as well to enable the process. All of this IS soooo New to me! Good to know I can add you to the list of places to keep a close eye on organics wise. I am in organic knowledge sponge mode hahaha
Thanks bro. The 2f2v is curing up beautifully. I'm pretty sure I pulled her a little early, but the smoke is pretty smooth. I just got done smoking a j with it, and I'm feeling pretty fabulous. It's got a pretty mild aroma, but that's mostly due to the fact that it's mostly NL's. My wife's enjoyed it, she has a few pain issues right now and she said it definitely has helped with that. My only problem with it, is the fact that it's almost gone. Haha. I'm already looking forward to my next grow. I'm getting a few more things that I should have had on this grow. My soil is still cooking for it right now. And it is a lot better than this mix. We live and we learn. Haha
It's now been a couple days since I gave the ladies their first SST. I've tried to take a couple pictures at, more or less, the same angle. I've posted up the before and tonight shots of the ladies. The first one is the before and the second picture is from about 8 mins ago. I'm thinking I'll start bubbling up an act in the morning and feed that to the soil the following day. The worm bin still seems to be trucking on. Not really sure what all the signs are for a happy worm bin. I feed them table scraps, left over teas, and plenty of bags haha. I try to keep it reasonably moist. Not much water at all. Every once in a while I'll dig in a little bit and see plenty of worms going to town. There's no weird smells or anything so I'm just gonna let them do their thing. That's about all I've got for tonight.
Day 36 of 12/12: how's everyone's evening/day/night going? Everything over her seems to be doing pretty good. I just pulled the ladies out so that I could feed the soil a tea. This was essentially the same mix as last time. except this time I used BAS's method for making a rehydrated kelp pure and refrigerating it instead of just adding it into the tea. The fan leaves have slowly getting a little more yellow, which makes sense considering how close I should be getting to harvest. I'm thinking maybe 2-3 weeks more. 2 weeks would put me at 7 weeks and obviously 3 more weeks would put me at 8 weeks. The breeder has 50 days so some where right around there should be good. Some of the pistols are just starting to change colors at their tips. So it seems like everything is looking pretty good. Edit: one thing I forgot to mention is how fabulous the aroma is. It is getting pretty strong and delicious. When I picked them up for the sip tray I pretty much had my face buried in them and it was fantastic I've found a great lab up here in portland that does terpine and canabinoid profiles for a reasonable price so I plan on getting both of these ladies tested. I'm pretty excited about that. Science is always cool!