Hazy daze of summer

Summertime, and the crop is haze hybrids. Can I figure a way to make sativas work in my indoor cabinet? can I be patient enough to let them go 11-12 weeks?

Environment: see last thread in my sig. T5 seedlings/"veg", HPS 600W flowering in a 2' x 4' x 8' high DIY cabinet).
Media: Supersoil, my soil 4 (recycled soil 2 with some twists)
Pots/transplant plan: germinate in custom size 1/2 smart pots, then place the little smarties into 2 gal smarties with a hotter mix at flowering, "Russy" style (may transplant one as an experiment and to see the roots). Flip to 12/12 really fast, around 5-6" high
Strains: various haze hybrids or other sativa doms I've collected, some as freebies

4x Chocolope\treg\t dna genetics\tO.G. Chocolate Thai x Cannalope Haze = D-Line
1x Utopia\tfem\t barney's\t \tC5 Haze cut (original)...Brazil sativa; afghani, mexican, n. indian
1x Royal Haze fem\tdinafem\t \thaze x skunk x nl
1 x S.A.G.E. fem\t \tth seeds\t "sativa afghani genetic equilibrium"
1 x Mekong High\tfem\tdutchpassion \tvietnamese/lao strains

 

Well Possuum, in a way you don't have to wait, cause you can feed me all the suggestions that rise up in that fertile brain of yours and watch as I attempt to make 'em work! some of them, anyway. Just for planning purposes and while mulling over a tie-down, LST intensive approach, here's another curve ball: I actually have more height available in my cab than I do width, especially when I can't help myself and I start more fem'd and gassed beans than the space will support, other than in a SOG-style grow. IOW I can't go wide and bushy on this grow. I want tiny little christmas trees! each with a few grams of killer haze... Not sure how/whether that will happen, other than with little-to-no vegging or topping.

Here's the scorecard after the top of the first inning: for a little pee pee on the fence I stuck two of the chocolopes in an unbleached paper towel packet and then in a zip loc with an organic banana, and let it all sit at room temp for nine days. More method discussion in post #2777 of Possuum's sticky thread.

I then did a 12 hour soak of all the beans in H2O2 solution and planted them directly in 1/2 size smart pots filled with recycled super soil to which I added nothing. They all popped up within 48 hours, but one Chocolope never shed its shell and I didn't operate. Here are the plants in a pic I posted as #342 in Downgirl's thread
You can see the one Chocolope that didn't make it, third from the left (or right) in the back row.

 

Thanks Poss...not so much science going on here, but a lot of mad stoner plant love !

So far, I'll give these seedlings and their lil smarties and recycled soil the thumbs up on rocking the house the first 20 days of their lives. To get the thread caught up to real time, here they are in three waves as of this afternoon:

The young starlets, Mekong High and Royal Haze. Mekong High came out with the first true leaves going necrotic quickly, but the new growth and stalk are strong. MH is the tallest, at 6".


The Chocolopes are looking very consistent and are median in early growth, around 4" high.


The runts at this stage are SAGE, Utopia Haze and Super Lemon Haze. And they all look just fine:


I plan to flip when the Chocolopes hit 6"...which I expect will be in 24 to 72 hours. They are all under 24/0 T5 right now. Part of my theory on this grow is to keep max light I can safely throw on them at all times, hoping to push to a finish time I can manage....

 

Thanks, Possuum and DG. DG glad you liked the ruler. Here in Cannalacky we people got passed in numbers by the pigs back in the '90s. So we do take our pig seriously. We've had at least one failed attempt at a massive vermiculture farm fueld by pigshit. The worms couldn't keep up. A snobby aristocratic virginian dissed us back in 1795 for eating so much pig that we sounded like them when talk. I myself was probably fed barbecue for baby food. It's practically a sacrament. I appreciate it deeply, I really do, but I gave it up for vegies a years ago and now just have the ruler by which to remember all that swine flesh.

I'm opening up the soil suggestion box to all you organic growers, researchers and wannabes. I am about to take a bit of a walk on the wild side, following a technique that Russy has deployed so beautifully: instead of transplanting my seedlings when I flip them to 12/12 in the next couple days, I am just going to stick their little 1/2 size smartie into a size 2 smartie, como esto:



What I'm noodling on is the soil mix to use in the second ring, which I expect to be the final ring on this grow. Let's call it the "ring of fire" in honor of Johnny Cash who is on my pandora right now. My hope is that the roots grow out into the Ring of Fire, do their exchange thing vigorously, and produce a bit of powerful haze when I eventually catch a fire with the buds.

The base soil used in the small pots, which I started the seeds directly in, was a recycled, one grow mix of a fairly simple super soil:

•\tBase
o\t2 parts high quality peat moss
o\t2 part permatill expanded slate
o\t2 part ewc, local high quality
o\t1 part powdered dolomite lime
•\tAmendment mix (total 1 part)
o\t8 c Bone meal
o\t1 c Blood meal
o\t1 c Azomite
o\t4 c Kelp meal
o\tcup Epsom salts
o\tcup Elemental sulfur
there is also a little residual promix BH and perlite in there from my first grow.

My thought is to make the next ring something like this:

• 3 parts the above base soil
• 1 part EWC
• 1 part alfalfa meal

But you all know how it is. You keep thinking there is that special extra something that if only you added it the world would be perfect. Of course the USA runs largely on this myth and some day the bubble really will burst. Maybe it has. Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out for a day or so to see if any of you think I should get some composted manure of some sort or any other nute or soil amendment to add in the Ring of Fire? I haven't yet found anything helpful on haze nutrient needs; everything is "add more of this or that bottle", which tells me nada about the plants' real needs.

Also fwiw I've posted thumbs of the two warts from my eight seedlings so far, in case anyone is curious about the performance of the base soil with seedlings. Necrosis of first leaf of Mekong High (followed by vigorous growth). Chlorosis on third leaf of S.A.G.E., don't know yet whether it's spreading or anomalous.

thanks as always for any organic advice. I went back to the org section stickies, which I rarely do (rarely even get out of the user CP these days) and found Corto posting some fabulous soil info back in 2009. And of course I've come to rely on the research all you blades are doing. So please toss some suggestions in my soil box if you think I'd be missing out by just using an EWC/alfalfa rich second ring.

 

Ok, I shoulda knowed it. That last wall of text + pic + stoner science would draw nada in the way of suggestions for heating up my next layer of soil. Except perhaps some eye rolling and eye glazing, mercifully kept out of the thread.

So I've gone ahead and put together a recipe--with the idea of keeping it simple. especially knowing I can supplement awith teas or other liquids anytime in the next presumably long series of weeks watching the sativas bloom. and knowing that I basically want to grow dwarves. all of which should probably lead me to just use more of the base soil with some fresh ewc and call it a day.

But some inner drive to find some local org ferts drove me out and around town this morning. Found nothing I liked at the pretty good local farm supply store. So went to the gro shop and sure enough the cute stoner clerk girl succeeded in selling me on some compost product. It's McEnroe Farms Compost, labeled a mix of composted horse and cow manure with plant material, no doubt wood chips and the like. It's pretty wet (sold by weight, duh) and so feels heavy, but smells ok.

So here's my recipe for the repot: for each #2 smartie,

• two spadefuls of base soil 4.0. Plus
• one spadeful made up of
• --3 trowels of EWC,
• --2 trowels of McEnroe Compost, and
• --1 trowel of alfalfa meal.

 

..and you blades still have a chance to warn me off any of the above, or tell me to avoid the McEnroe Farms product. Cause I spent this evening freaking a bit over water and then calming myself with Possuum/Deacon inspired comfort food. and putting repotting off another day.

So water wise: I have not been checking pH of anything for, dunno, months. My first grow, I tested everything. I have two water sources here at the indoor grow, an RO filtered public water supply that used to be pretty predictably pH = 6.25 (great). And a rainbarrel that varied but around 5.8.

Tonight before starting to repot I decided to check the pH of the proposed soil mix in a slurry before repotting them. And first that meant checking the water. Well, RO came out at 5.6. Rainbarrel at 5.4. So I have been watering for months with acid water. Hmm.

I went off to eat, vape, cogitate.

I adjusted a bucket of rainwater with pH up to 6.9. Will let it sit and use on the seedlings when I repot them tomorrow, and also switch my blumats reservoirs over to adjusted water for awhile to see how that goes. I was premature in thinking I could just ignore the whole pH thing. Sure the soil will do a lot to buffer and accommodate pH variation, but there have to be boundary conditions for pH just like all other environmental conditions. When you get near the boundaries I think you are stressing the plant, for better or worse. It seems to me like drinking a lot of pH 5.4 water would at least stress a plant, and might account for the some of the little leaf flaws I see in the seedlings. It also might sort out differently among different strains.

All in all another great lesson to learn before it's too late...don't assume my water source pH stays stable....yet another way in which LIFTA isn't the same as "fuck it."

 

that's interesting stuff. Possuum...great search strategy too..I nominate you for head of R&D in this section of the City...the link article, whatever all those formulae mean, predicts natural rainfall will be pH 5.6? Thing is, I recal'd and remeasured a few times over the last few days and my rain barrel water is more like 4.8

I do have a cover on it--but it has a screened inlet so I guess you could have carbonic acid from atmospheric exposure building up. Even more a factor for me is probably the carbon in all that plant material in the gutters and the bottom of the barrel. And wierdly my RO water also has been a lot more acidic. it's a closed system fed by public water. I think I'm gonna start a more intensive mini-water study, especially if I see some really happy plants here the next few days.

I wonder if there's a simple filter, like a big tea bag, I could lay across the inlet to the rain barrel to keep out the particulates AND help raise or at least stabilize pH? what would I put in that filter/tea bag? soda ash? limestone?

I'll keep monitoring and adjusting for awhile and see how the plants like it. Early returns look good, coming right up after the pause that refreshes

 

DG, I'm pretty sure there are a couple of mentions in Russy's thread, in fact I think I might have asked about it myself back when I ran into a problem planting outdoors in may...I ended up trying a double pot, but the plant in question was a dude, so I dunno how it would have worked.

So far so good with these youngsters. I put em in their new pots, tried a few different configurations/combinations, watered em with the newly pH adjusted water, put them in the freshly cleaned flower chamber, added the blumats, started the data logger and just let it run for a couple of days.





(l-r: Royal Haze, Mekong High, Chocolope3n, SAGE, Utopia, SLH, Choc4n, Choc1 (hidden behind Choc4))

I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoy putting on great music, catching a righteous buzz, and staring at beautiful little cannabis plants, so full of promise...before, you know, the gnats and all show up

 

I'm gonna try to get on a more regular update schedule with this grow, with a composite shot of the canopy more or less weekly, and occasional updates between the weekly group pics.

This past week has been the first time I had my flower chamber running in a month or so, and the first time I've seen it in operation in the middle of a southern summer. It seems to be settling in. I do not use a single all-around environmental controller--that would be nice--instead I have kludged together a series of switches, variable controllers and valves, so it's tweak and monitor, tweak and monitor. Here's the result from the last 24 hours. I am happy and the little plants seem to be happy as well.

Temp mean 24, range (21 – 28); RH mean 60 (49-71). CO2 good

 

thanks Poss. In what form do you recommend the P addition? I am just starting to sketch out a plan for ferts and supps over the next 8 weeks or so, so am all ears. I have N. Atlantic kelp meal, but I was just trying the other day to find that link you've posted several times to an edu site (was it Oregon state?) that had a nice comprehensive list of org sources for macronutes. I failed, so would appreciate getting it again...after which I will try to put it some place I can find it again. ha

 

muchas gracias, amigo. I still haven't gotten back to the thread "phosphorus question" (so much to read! I'm just on p 22 of Chunk's thread, now at 50 pp). But on the basis of your info, which is absolutely top shelf thanks to your passion for organic growing and your excellent research skills, I went ahead and ordered some fish bone meal. I already have some composted manure for this run. I have decided, at least for now, to stay away from cow bones as well as batshit, or for that matter, any poultry shit/guanos other than that some day I may try some composted chicken manure since that shit is practically taking over this part of the country.

The fish products choices are themselves fascinating--another whole series of threads, but I feel I'm into the good stuff when it's LD, Chunk, G45, you and Stankie laying out your findings. There is a big fish processing industry in Cannalacky, but afaik it's all about fish oils--especially menhaden. I'll have to do some checking on whether the pressed cake or other stuff from that process is worthwhile. Fortunately between Clemson, NC State, and VPI we have some good ag research folks around. Sure wish they were working on cannabis instead of, say, tobacco

 

So on to my thoughts about a feeding plan for the next 7-8 weeks or more of flowering for these sativas. My first grow was truly "water only" and proved to me that even with a simple old super soil recipe, one could get great herb with no supplements. The bud from that grow is still among my favorite go-to herb, particularly the Blue Thunder (and for special occasions, Strawberry Diesel).

The next two runs I added a simple top dressing of EWC and kelp meal (and for my outside plants, alfalfa meal) after veg (for outside plants, after a few weeks transplanted outside). I didn't try to study results side by side. The inside plants did well--better yielding, and The Flav (gro2) is currently my single favorite daytime strain. Also my densest nugs to date. The inside plants from gro3 (Deadhead OG, PPP, Cheese) all produced fluffier bud than I expected and than I ideally like. But there are too many variables to conclude that's due to the feeding. Plant size and yield were best with The FLav.

Edit: the main other variable being that I left them for a couple weeks and succeeded in killing one outright and deeply wounding the others...I keep managing to repress that memory so I'm editing this to force myself to remember that fuckup.

My conclusion so far is that I should continue keeping it simple--hard to do with all the fascinating, cutting edge ideas and experiments around here. Also the haze hybrids present the problem of REALLY not wanting to over N the plants, since I'm not sure I can handle the space requirements even with small veg period. But long and short of it, unless someone here talks me out of it, I plan to

•\tTop dress with fish bone meal, then layer ewc on top of that. As soon as my fish bone meal comes in, probably mid-week 2 of 12/12.
•\tMake one simple tea with kelp and alfalfa, possibly some greensand, to apply soon after the top dressing.

Then sit and watch and see if I can read the plants' needs. For now I'll reserve FPE, bokashi, and any BIM approaches to the recycling of my next batch of soil.