Mixing soil, digging holes and moving big bags just means I do not need to do much of anything else to stay in reasonable shape. I was actually surprised how much muscle mass I picked up mixing soil this spring. There was this huge chunk of concrete I moved when building my greenhouse a few years ago and it was in the way for moving a cart back to where my girls are at. In march was not strong enough to move it but come may I was able to flip it end over end to get it out. My mix is usually about 30-40 lbs per cubic foot mostly dry so those bags are probably 400-500 lbs. Then at max saturation they can hold around 30% of their volume in water so that would add another 250 lbs.
Only issue I foresee with the 500gal is she needs more time to get real root bound. For next years big container I will place my girl in there as soon as I can pull it off. I figure I can cover up the frame (making a new one this winter bigger and better) in plastic and venting some heat from the greenhouse into it. If it is real early will probably also add a couple lights to inhibit flowering. So far I have seen about a 3 week spread (mid Oct to1st week Nov.) on the SWR to finish times so hopefully she takes after the quicker side of genectics. The faster one is also the more colorful one and when I went to sex them via clone she was showing me some color with the cooler temps in the greenhouse. I see that also in the 2 phenos of the ROG, the red being weeks ahead of the green, which is part of the trifecta of genetics. The GS1 could take sometime if she takes after her mom who finished around Dec 10th 2 seasons ago but she also has the same daddy as the SWR so maybe that will speed things up some. Applied the tea this afternoon, 4 jugs in the 500, 1 jug per 100 gallon, and about 1/4 in the smaller containers. Each jug is a little over 2.5 Gallons. The rest of the tea is going to my peppers. She has roughly a 3" x 4" crown right now and the roots are upto the edge of the bag.
Nope they go into a greenhouse, although it forces me to keep them under 7'and be able to squeeze through door. That is the reason they scale up pot size slower then the other ones so I keep them smaller and I do final transplant later in the year. This year took a chance transplanting into 30s but they have not jumped too bad and should be able to clear the hot weather soon. I may actually low enough temps to seed spinach and arugula again as long as it stays below 80 until germination I am fine. I can almost always sell out of spinach at market and mostly limited by how much I have available to cut. Next year probably upping my spinach production to 40-60 lbs a week and it is fetching about $5 a pound (average price across different sized units) and then going to doubling my Aruguala from the current rate 6-8 lbs @ about $7 per lb.
Had a branches break today, wind is acting weird today and is hitting a section of my garden I would normally consider more protected. Normally the wind does not impact between my greenhouse and the hedge (at least not since the greenhouse has been there) but today it is tearing right through there. Which puts it right in line with my sativas which are unsupported.
Massive picture day over many posts. First off this was the break I had earlier in the week. It was the chocolate #5, I was able to line up branch and wrap it with plant tape to hold it together as it heals. I will check it after a week and re wrap it if it seems to tight but at the end of week 2 it can not support itself it will get cut out. Normally i would have just tossed that branch but with her going into the greenhouse she will not have to take the wind and rain so I will take a chance at having it re-heal even though it will be weaker at that point. Did not get a very good picture because my focus was looking for damage and figuring out if it was fixable. This is her today 3 days later looking just fine, so far no wilting on that branch. She is just getting ready to start setting flower and is almost 5 1/2' feet tall.
Her sister, #7, is not as tall as her coming in at about 4 1/2' tall and is about the same point in development. She has had a little more yellowing and leaf drop than her sister but overall fairly minor and not out of the ordinary.
The Grinspoon (Gs1) I am starting to think is a boy it is one of the few plants that was not sexed because it would not trigger even under 10 hours for many weeks. If it is a boy it is not a total loss because I do have use for that pollen, I could use it against the ROGs, the White Widow, the cross of the two or another Grinspoon in the future (data after pictures shows genetic make up of such crosses.) So to MM we may not get the exact magical weed balls we were hoping for at least not in this generation. Gs1 = %50 Grinspoon, %25 Rog, %25 White Widow Crossed with RoG = %62.5 Rog, %25 Grinspoon, %12.5 White Widow This cross would allow me to go down the ROG line going for a a male with a small spike of Sativa the 2nd Gen would give me %81.25 Rog and 3rd Gen would be %90.63. Crossed with White Widow = %62.5White Widow, %25 Grinspoon, %12.5 Rog Going down the WW line would scale same as ROG. This is less useful to me because I have access to same gen choice male WW and I can use that for purity. The only thing that may be interesting is maybe some of the rare F2s of the mix. WWxROG = %50 ROG, %50 WW Crossed with WWxROG = %37.5 WW, %37.5 ROG, %25 Grinspoon This route could get me close to a 3 way spilt if a take a female from that seed lot and hit it wil Gs1 pollen at %37.5 Grinspoon, %31.25 ROG, %31.25 WW WWxROG Bx = %75 WW, %25 ROG Crossed with WWxROG = %50 WW, %25 Grinspoon, %25 ROG If I used the WWxROG BX it would lean more towards WW and most likely produce some dark purple plants. Crossed with a fresh Grinspoon = 75% Grinspoon, %12.5 ROG, %12.5 WW If I went this route I could eventually end up with nearly clean regular Grinspoon seeds which are unavailable from the seeds banks. This is all based on if she is a he and in the long run may be useful but not really anytime in the near future.
The White Widow x ROG #6 was one of my last additions and she has reached just over4'. She has some minor yellowing in the center of the plant but is of no concern right now. She will move into the greenhouse with the Sativas because she as at no risk of getting to tall. The back cross to male of the same Strain really shows her ROG influence with the red stems on the leaves and I expect her to become a colorful plant as the season progresses. She is about 5 1/2' above crown and probably needs atleast 3-4 weeks more of veg to get the most out of a 100 gallon. I really like the way she heals up after shaping her, her stalk above crown stays fairly symmetrical and does not bulge where topped which is a major plus to prevent splitting when she get large. She would be a candidate for reveg if I can figure out a way to do so.
The Master Purple is at around 6 1/4' tall and slowed in flower development compared to the red ROG. Her stalk is less of what I like to see compared to the previous plant, she tends to bulge at the nodes when cut back which once they get larger form crevices as opposed to a smooth surface. Other then that her base is pretty sturdy and has fairly balanced growth out of the 6 main branches. Even though she looks similar to some of the ROG stuff, she does not have any of the genetics in her line.
The red pheno ROG, #6, has stayed compact at just under 5' and is covered in 100s of angry baby hedge hogs. She is currently is ahead of the rest of my girls in flower development with the CBD, White Widow and M. Purple right behind her. Then the green ROG towers over her sister at 7 1/4'. She is slower to develop but will most likely produces much larger buds then her sister although that may not translate to a larger yield given that her smaller sister will have many times more smaller finger sized flowers.
The White Widow is my tallest girl at 7 1/2' even with her being in one of the smallest pots.Grasshoppers really like to chew on her but they have yet to any massive amount of damage. The White Lavender is approaching 6' which is surprising considering that she often has been sitting in some of the worst real estate in the garden often over shadowed by the girls around her. Her inter node spacing has suffered from this and expect her to be one of my lower yielding plants for this reason. I have grown lavender in the past and liked it and happened to have this seed as a freebie so decided to see what she does. If I like the outcome I may go ahead and order some more or maybe just order some soma #10 (lavender) and make my own. She may also move over to the greenhouse.
The CBD has slowed down lately she has nice stacks but has not really decided to fill in much yet. She was ahead of the others in development early on then kinda stalled some. She is almost 5' tall and is starting to yellow inside some but I am waiting until she shows me a little more fuzz before I give her a weak shot of nitro. My Strawberry Cough is pushing 7' but is also my least happy girl. She was having leaves yellow dry and drop fairly quickly for awhile. I have upped her Mag and it has slowed leaf loss and I am hesitant to do much more for now. The reason being that there is 6 other containers with identical mix and top dressings and none of them showed this problem so I doubt is and issue in the nutrient levels present in the soil and something more to do with there absorption. It started a few days after the copper soap and at the time she was in the center of all the girls catching their over spray.
So here is the smallest SWR, #17, she is the other last minute add and has managed to get up to about 5'. She will go in the greenhouse also. Then next up is SWR #1, she had some nice stacks when I chopped her back and was kinda expecting her dwarf her to the others but she has really grown back well and is approaching 7'. She is another plant with a very nice smooth stalk and probably could grow much, much larger given the chance and would be a potential reveg as long as everything was fine on the back end. She was the first to germ out of the SWR batch of seeds and is probably the strongest one although it is hard to compare her to her other sister in the 500 gallon. She will be, well a clone of her will be making fem seeds later on.
So the last one, then some more rantings in next post, the SWR #5. Her height gains are much harder to measure and even hard to take a pic of and more importantly should looked at in terms of sqft of light. The inner structure is about 6 x 6 so 36 sqft or about 4 sqm and how well that area is filled and efficiently uses light will dictate yield. The White Widow in the immensely smaller 20 gallon pot may produce one cola that is larger then the SWR but instead the SWR should have numerous medium sized ones absorbing a greater amount of light. The sides add alot to the sqft effectively doubling it some sides adding more then others.She would have greatly benefited from an earlier planting and maybe needs another 6 to 8 weeks to really get the most from 500 gal.
I have already been thinking about next year and what I want to do. I am not really going to increase my area but move it over slightly to capture better light. I will also decrease my outside plant count to one large 500+ and then 4 100s and then possibly a 20 or 30 here and there. The remainder of my plants will be smaller greenhouse plants which will start outside and migrating in at the appropriate conditions. In this batch I will try to run most my long flower sativas at 50%-75% of the population, last year for example it was hard to justify spending $200 a month to heat the greenhouse for one girl for 3 months, if there is 4-6 of them then the equation is much more reasonable. I have personally found that some of the long term strains help with migraines and neuropathy. The major issue being they often take 4-6 months of flower so they are not grown commercially, I am in a rec state and it can not be found due to long flower times making it unprofitable, so it requires one to grow there own and often for many times lower yield vs time required to grow it. So I have decided in the future to give this area higher attention with maybe %50 of my girls being long term sativas and %25 my short term girls going into a greenhouse with the remaining %25 going to strictly outdoor girls. We aint there yet so things may change as time passes.
Any guesses why I refer to her as the red pheno. I know I just posted pictures of her but spent the time to get good pictures showing her color and even in the last day it has become more pronounced. With the sudden drop in high temps from 90s to 70s and nights low 50s she is really starting to express her color. There is the potential for some of the same traits in the SWRs and WWxROG. .