Sup organic blades I figure we should start with a quick history of my experience, and lack thereof. I've done a few grows, in a few places, in a few states. I started growing in an apartment in an illegal state, flowering 2 plants at a time in a wardrobe lst with a cfl light. I was yielding around an ounce off of each plant but it was effectively treating my medical needs. I was getting really bummed about the risks of growing in an illegal state so I decided to move back to my home state of Washington and take that wardrobe with me, but this time with a medical rec. Picked up a 1000w hps to flower with so I could go perpetual. Unfortunately I ended up moving shortly after and only got one set of plants to harvest. Under the hid and with no ac I couldn't keep the heat down and I think as a result both plants hermied. Throughout this time I had used Canna bioterra nutes which is their organic line. I got rid of the wardrobe and hung up the growing shears for another year, as I was only renting short term again. Then 2 years ago moved into my dream home. After almost 2 years of improvements to the house and property, I was ready to start growing again. I built a small vegging box and a 4x4x6ft flowering box for the 1000w hps and ran 4 cheese through, those are getting harvested any day now and you can check that journal if you want it's in my sig. That brings us here. A few months into that grow I was poking around the gc growing section and came upon the basic organic soil mix for beginners thread. Unlike how I normally react, this time when I read through it I thought, I could actually do this, no problem! It seemed almost too good to be true that I would only have to add water, mixing the nutrient solutions and measuring out the water is so annoying, sucking the fun out of something that brings me so much joy. So I went out one day and between a local feed store and Home Depot I was able to find everything for my own homemade organic super soil. My recipe is: 1/3 Sunshine peat moss 1/3 perite 1/3 local horsepoop compost-ewc 1 cup per cf lime, though my water from the tap is 8.0 or higher so we'll see if that's too much for the future. 1 c/cf kelp meal 1/2 c/cf Espoma Tomato Tone 1/2 c/cf alfalfa meal 1/2 c/cf neem meal And 4c/cf rock dust. I used azomite for the first 2 cf, then read that it could chelate aluminum over time and switched to glacial rock dust for the second 2 cf. Then I let it cook for 4 weeks and placed an order for some seeds from my favorite seedbank. I'll put some pics up and more on the current grow progress in the next post but first its off to dab some Space Queen live resin. Happy Friday everyone!
Tasty stuff as always So that takes us to the current grow. I got my seeds from oversees with a rip in the side and a big old boot print on the envelope Luckily all the seeds inside were fine Of the 3 strains I got, I was most excited to see my old friend, critical+, a strain I had grown in the past in that illegal state and enjoyed very much. So I popped in and my freebee, a critical jack herrer auto into paper towels and let them germinate. Then into my cooked mix! And a sprout is spotted! Hooray! Oh, I forgot to mention, for this grow, I upgraded to a 400w mh light in my veg area on some blades' advice. My cfl veg box was way to small at 2 ft high for this light so I started the seedling out in my room, with the light hanging from a rafter, but temps were in the mid 80's with all my windows open, so I build veg box 2.0. A 3x3x4 box takes shape: I don't have pics but turns out my c+ sprouted a twin so I dug it up and put her in her own container. The CJH freebie germinated but never broke the surface once planted. So one day my cat is up here checking the plants with me, and he's sniffing this one leaf on the bigger of the two and he f***ing takes a bite out of the leaf! I was so pissed but then I laughed about it, he's such an awesome cat and he love weed leaves which I usually let him eat so all was forgiven. Before I knew it it was time to transplant them into 1 gallon smart pots. At this time I also had the walls on the box: As the plants are just getting bigger and bigger at an amazing rate I got the ventilation in place, covered the walls in panda film and got the door fitted. (It still isn't on hinges lol) And now one final shot of the girls, they're loving this organic supersoil and growing fast and strong So anyway welcome to my grow, any experience, comments, questions or concerns are very welcome, I'm very excited to have a place to share my love and learn so much about cannabis.
Transplanted into 5 gallon smart pots They grew a bit Then I transplanted them again into 10 gallon smart pots and put them into flowering. I'd let them go another week before transplanting next time. Took some clones a couple days before transplant. Got roots on one of them nice and quick, love the clone bucket for how fast it is! The Critical Jack Herrer Auto is beginning to flower, I'm only giving it 12/12 since thats what my photo plant needs but I expect it to produce decently, it was free anyway. ] Both plants are filling out nicely, no lag after the transplant even though I messed up the roots a bit on one. I forgot to mention I topped the C+ a few days after transplanting to the 5 gallon pot. Thats it for now, Just got the rooted clone into dirt, no pictures of it yet but that's next.
Trying out a self watering ball for my Critical Plus mother plant, was having to top her up every day. Most reviews say the resevior lasts for a week or two so thats cool! Ill probably invest in blumats for the flower room at some point, but this is a good starting point and only $6 each! Plus Im a sucker for hand blown glass. Kinda squishing the plant but worth it I think. Also just germinated a GSC seed. Never tried the original GSC but my favorite strain is pink cookies and I cant find seeds atm so this will hopefully do.
Well hello. Just reading through and checking out your posts....and thoroughly enjoying it...I might add. LOL Nice to see you're in a place now where you don't have to worry about being arrested for growing a plant...but that's a whole other story. Looks like you've definitely got a good understanding of everything and your plants look pretty good overall to me. The only thing I see that is concerning is that in a few of those pictures, the plants looked like they had something going on because the coloring was too yellow/green. This might be from lighting and you may have no problems whatsoever, but I was reading up there where you were using a soil recipe. First off...let me commend you. In my mind, to even go to the trouble of gathering that much stuff on the scale you must have to buy it and then doing all the work and waiting months for it to be usable, says something about you. I've never been that inspired myself. Back when I started, someone recommended Roots Organics Original so I went in that direction. Years later, I don't regret it a bit. We run quite a few plants so our soil bill is pretty high, but because the soil is of such premium grade, I have to do very little in the way of nutes. As a matter of fact, I can grow a plant from seed to harvest on the soil alone and end up with a premium plant/yield and just transplant into fresh soil and a slightly larger container once the plant has used up the nutrients in the soil it's been growing in. If I give nutes at over 1/4 the recommended dose (suggested concentration for a soil grow), it burns my plants. Nutes are not magic beans, which I'm sure you quickly discovered, and light is the element that makes the difference. Better light, better plants, better yields. And the more plants you tend, the more work you have to do. Each plant has to be dealt with individually because watering one before it's time is a no no. None of them ever grow at the same rate and the older they get and more root bound they become, the more work they require. So when mine get tight in the way of roots, I just pop them into a new container of fresh soil a little larger than what they came out of and they're good with nothing more than water from my end, for several weeks. I don't know anything about your soil mix, but if your plants are an overall yellow/green color, that's a fair indication that something's not right...they're deficient normally in nutrients/micronutrients. The rich blue/green color signifies a healthy plant. I've always been told that you judge the overall health of a plant by it's new growth. If it's good, the plant is good. As you move down the plant from the new growth, you are looking back in time in the growth of the plant. Just something I saw. Overall, looks like you've got a setup that will yield you plenty. We also flower with 1000 watt HPS lamps, 4 per flower room, and generally run 2 plants per light. We run a 10 week flower cycle and our yields are between 3.5 and 4 oz...and over a bit sometimes, per plant. But the self watering bulb will probably get you root rot if you're not care. These plants need supreme drainage...almost more perlite than soil base, because they don't like the roots sitting in moisture all the time. They'll be healthiest if you let them dry out to near dead dry each time before watering again. But you've got the key component to get the job done...light. And the fact you're using the HID to veg, makes your possibilities better than my own as far as the veg cycle. We use several T5''s for veg simply because they're cooler. If I had my "druthers' I would be vegging with HID and flowering with HPS with a few LEDs thrown around for extra spectrum. But great job. In time, you'll amaze yourself at how good a grower you become. All it takes is curiosity and the willingness to find the answers to your problems and then do the work to make it happen. Look forward to seeing what you come up with. TWW
Thank you for the kind words TWW. It really did not take much for me to make the soil mix. I was able to find almost everything at a local feed store and the Home Depot down the road. Just had to purchase some rock dust from Amazon, though I could have made the drive to the local stonecutter but honestly I just didnt want to deal with asking for rock dust and getting weird looks lol! I mixed it all up in less than an hour and then while I waited for my seeds to arrrive it cooked up. Honestly I think youd be surprised how easy it is to mix your own soil. Its actually very light if you mix it dry then add water, no heavy lifting. I am a little concerned about the coloring, it does seem a bit yellow in spots. My ewc is based on composted horse manure, and I added the right ammount of each ammendment so not sure why its yellowing. This is my first run with this soil. As for the self watering ball, the organic folks have convinced me that the soil should stay evenly moist for best micro life, plus Im in smart pots which reduce the severity of overwatering. Im only a little worried because I think my mix could have used a bit more aeration, the plant does droop after being watered as you can see in the pic, thats about 12 hours after watering.
Gonna chop the Critical Jack auto over the weekend. The Critical+ is looking a little yellow, but it is 7 weeks into flower at this point. Still the CJH is a lot greener. Buds looking nice though The self watering ball is working out great! So great I put the other one in my GSC mother's pot. They are both loving it! I actually have to fill them up 1-3x per day, still easier than watering them, want blumats though for sure! Should be able to get them once I'm no longer spending so much at the weed store every week.
Literally less than 24 hours after I posted that I found the c+'s saucer full of water. I think what happened is I poked the ball too far down and it all drained out. So I tossed the balls and set up a NoobWannab style swick setup. Also transplanted the next round of c+ into 5 gallon pots. Got just over 2oz from the CJH, which Im happy with considering I transplanted it a couple times and you're not supposed to do that to autos. Unfortunately I did dry a little too long, seems to be affecting my rosin yields. But Ill take dry bud over mold any day.
Got a mars 300 for my clones. I love the purple spectrum! Harvested the c+, got 3.5 oz from her. Did a quick sloppy trim as im just pressing to rosin anyway. Also ordered a 5x5 tent and 2 mars 600s, as its obvious i need to scale up my production, those 3 ozs will not last me the next two months. The plan is eventually to have 4 plants flowering in it, one under each mars 600. For now Im starting with two, and we'll see if I need even more.
Got my new veg tent up and running. 4x4, still running the 400 watt hps, I think itll cover a 3x3 area of the tent pretty good, leaving a foot around the peremiter for my mother plants to hang out. I do have a 600 watt bulb and ballast kicking around if I decide they need more light. Got the second flower tent set up too, have 2 mars 600s in there now and getting 2 more soon. Gonna flower 4 plants in the 5x5 tent, 2 and 2 staggered, one for each light. The two GSC are going in there in a few weeks, at which point ill take the next two clones.
I recently invested in blumats amd i love them ...definitely a time saver.... Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
Love seeing people going organic. Cant wait to start my organic grow and show it off. Doing a great job, I like how you already amped up production, that critical jack auto made my mouth water would love a smoke review!
Maybe look into a gravity drip irrigation system? If you have room for a small reservoir this would be how I would do it. Get couple diff sized emitters so you can dial in their daily needs. You could even set up a little valve and turn it on or off as needed. imo drip irrigation would be your best option for having the most control and less troubleshooting. Stuffs relatively cheap too
This was a few weeks back, I think about 4 weeks into flower. And my new flower tent got its first two inhabitants: Girl Scout Cookies Theyre each under 1 mars hydro 600. I'm in the process of trying to return my other two unused mars 600s and purchasing 2 cob lights from Timber grow lights to replace them for the other two spots in the new tent. Nother update coming soon, this update was due two weeks ago and I never got around to posting it.
Now at 6 weeks in and looking yummy! Added two more C+ to the box so they're getting crowded now. Its nice to finally see the box filled up! And the GSCs are getting big. Liking the mars 600s so far but I ordered a 200w cob fixture from Timber grow lights that I think Ill like a lot more. I took two more clones each of the C+ and GSC and just finished transplanting the last one. I ran out of soil so the last one is only in half a gallon. Doh!
Just chopped this C+ last night. Gonna leave her sister for as much of another week as I can stand and compare the two. The smell is fantastic. Grapey. The GSC are getting frosty
So pretty looking now, way frostier and fatter buds than the c+, definitely a keeper strain. Got my timber lights, 2 200w citizen frames. They are way brighter than the mars 600s, super excited to get growing with them, should be putting the first GSC under one within a few days, just waiting on her to recover from last night's topping. Dried and weighted the C+ I chopped last week, got 104 grams, about 3.7 ozs. I'm pleased pulling around a qp from each plant for now. Gonna chop her sister tonight. Closet full of weed, much better than clothes!