Hello blades and welcome to my world! I've been growing now for almost a year and a half. Huge thanks to all involved with ITG's beginner organic soil mix thread. Took me a year to read through the entire thing. My goal for this thread is give back to the community that taught me most of what I know. Setup: Soil (based on ITG mix)- Peat moss Worm castings Perlite, rice hulls, recently switched to buckwheat hulls Oyster shell meal Kelp, neem, karanja, alfalfa, crab meals I mixed up two separate batches of the soil for my first two rounds. Since then I've re-ammended after each round and kept rotating those two batches. Veg room- 2 x 4ft 8 bulb T5s Flower room- 3 x 600w hps 2 x 750 cfm can fans Phresh filter SIP bed (thanks to Noobwannb design) 4 x oscillating fans Disclaimer: all plants grown legally under Colorado state medical cannabis law
Strains- Currently in veg room- 4 x Super Tange (see pic) From seed by Mile High Seed Company 3 x Sleestack x Skunk Freebie seeds from previous order This is my first time growing out both of these strains Currently in flower room- 2 x the Ox from rare dankness seed. First time I've grown these out 1 x God Bud from Jordan of the isles. First time growing this one too Durango OG #2 and #3. These r two phenos I got from seed grown out last round. I always like to grow strains out twice before deciding which cut to keep. This is a La Plata Labs strain. I'll throw up some pics of the dgog #3 from last round Spilly Creek Kush #2. Here's the story on this one...before I started growing my own, the greenest green in Boulder was my goto spot. After years and years of buying from there I have a nice little collection of bag seed from there. I cracked 3 seeds from their cold creek kush and kept two phenos, #1 and #2. I know some might be asking why rename the strain then. The way I see it is I can't be sure wether the plant I got the bag seed from was herm that self pollinated or if it was pollinated by a diff strain. "Spilly" came from a good buddy of mine that died when I harvested this the first time so it's in his honor. I post some pics of the flower room tonight or tomorrow
I forgot to mention all 7 plants in veg were topped yesterday. The seeds were cracked on Oct 11th. Here's some pics of the spilly creek kush #2 and durango OG #3 from previous rounds SCK #2 DGOG #3
Usually if you find just a couple of seeds per ounce it's the plants last ditch effort to self pollenate and I personally highly prize those seeds as they are always female.. I (rescued) 2 strains from just a couple of seeds found in the last jar when the clones didn't take.. My Blue Berry and Chernobyl both tend to put out just a few seeds and it's usually if I've let the plant run a bit long.. It's when you have a whole shitload of seeds it's a hermi mess and you really don't want to grow those seeds/plants.. BNW
BNW - thanks for checking my thread out! I agree with what you said. When I talked to the workers there they also said mostly likely the beans were from selfed plants. Even more evidence is I'm 5 for 6 on getting fems from their bag seed. I've been pleasantly surprised to not have an herm issues with any of them when I've grown them out and they quality is just as good as and breeder produced strains I've ran
Alright a here's some pics of the flower room. They are on day 4 right now. Starting closest and going towards the wall- ox 2, dgog 2, dgog 3, sck 2 On the left ox 1 and right is gb 2 Here's my lights and the SIP bed setup. I'm running 10 gal smartpots
And a couple other long term side projects 65 gal static worm bin. Filled with aged horse manure, buckwheat hulls, and all the meals I would normally re-amend my soil with, and some glacial rock dust. Threw in a shovelful of my usual worm castings which I get from a local farm. Started this bin on sept 19. And my leaf bin I just started...
Jerry - thanks for stopping by. I want to say a big thank you to ya, you're a great mentor for the site. Can't tell you how many times I just searched the forum for all posts by u and LD. You're a wealth of knowledge! You're directly responsible for my leaf bin and the two comfrey plants I started outside recently
Re: comfrey - see if you can get a few more root cuttings or even clone the tops next summer to give yourself a half dozen to 8 comfrey plants and that should give you pretty much as much as you can use; especially if you take the time and plant them into well prepared holes loaded up with compost and whatever else you've got lying around. Comfrey can get huge if you take the time to dig deep holes and load them up with good stuff first. Mine usually get almost 4' across and 3' to 4' tall - just massive amounts of biomass. I have been using a lot of my comfrey to rejuvenate my indoor potting soil. I'm still using (leaf mold and homemade compost based) soil that is probably 5 years old now. I've been layering huge totes with 3"-4" of soil, then 3"-4" of comfrey, and on and on until the totes are full. I'll let them set in the root cellar for a couple months (wetted thoroughly) at which point the comfrey breaks down fully, putting everything back in that has gotten used up over the years. The totes also end up turning into big worm bins too - I'll find large groups of worms swarming where the comfrey is rotting. I've been using this method at home for a few years now and am finding that the plants really love the end result and it doesn't cost me a dime on soil amendments. Gardening shouldn't cost anything anyhow - or much at least. J
I actually did start the root cuttings that came as free bonus w my order of comfrey. I figured let them start inside for the winter before moving outside. The two I planted outside already, were the two-year old plants you can order from Coe. I filled big holes w aged horse manure before planting them. How long does it usually take for u too see root cuttings break soil? I've only had one so far
How long has it been? If they don't come up (which I doubt that they wouldn't) then next summer just take cuttings from the main stalks. J
I'd be patient then. I've seen 8+ weeks to show above ground. It's almost impossible for the root cuttings not to grow, tho - unless they were to rot in mud. Other than that, they will grow. J
During my learning process I read a lot of people concerned about chloramine in water so I thought I'd share what I learned. I read many people use vitamin c to convert chloramine to chlorine that will evaporate off. I was turned off by that idea since most vit c powder I found online was synthetically produced. I also read that any organic material would react with chloramine to convert to chlorine. I figured rapid rooters r just peat moss so wondered if one would be good enough to do the trick. I ordered some chlorine/chloramine test strips from a fish tank website. My water report said 2 ppm of chloramine. This matched up with my first test. I figure I'll do the test again and show results each day so everyone can see for themselves rather then spill all the results right away. So 30 gal bucket freshly filled from the tap. Total chlorine - free chlorine = chloramine To me the strip looks like 1-2 ppl TCl and 0 ppm FCl so ya pretty much matches up with the water report about 2 ppm chloramine out of the tap. Now I've got one rapid rooter in the water bin. My pump is always running cycling the water in the bin. I'll do another test tomorrow night and post the results.
Ok so a little under 24 hrs and I've done the 2nd test of the water. Here's the strip before dipping so you can see what zero looks like. And here's the wet strip after dipping. Looks like zeroes to me. So the take away- one rapid rooter was enough organic material to convert 30 gals of water with about 2ppm of chloramine to chlorine, which evaporated off in about a day to 0 ppm of chloramine and chlorine. I actually first started doing this test at the beginning of my last flower round. I left the same rapid rooter in the bin for the entire round and it was still working at the end of 10 weeks. Things I don't know from the experiment: -how long until the same rapid rooter stops working? -how the volume of water affects this? Would a much larger water bin require more than one rapid rooter to achieve the effect in a day? -how fast the chloramine converts to chlorine? And how fast does the chlorine evaporate off? I always waited a day to test again. Maybe the water would be at zeroes earlier than a day Hopefully someone finds this useful!
Watered a corn SST into all the plants tonight. This is only the 2nd SST I've done. I tried to focus on the basics at first and now I'm slowly branching into more advanced stuff. Plus now I kinda have a baseline for growth in my rooms without teas so hopefully I can better tell if they are making a difference. Flower room updated pics