High all and welcome to my "switching gears" thread. I rebuilt my grow and expanded a little, so the things are different from what I've been doing before. For starters there is more room Tight closet squeeze has been frustrating me for a while, so I'm super happy with improvements. It is an unfinished process yet, so I apologize for a background mess and "Pampers" boxes (storage), but I figured I better start a journal now, and fine-tune the journal and pics in a process. For those who are new to mi casa I grow marijuana for a few last years, started with the FoxFarm OceanForrest soil and bottled nutrients, but got tired of calibrating my pH pen I am the person who would endlessly look for an easiest way to achieve the desired goal (my Mom called it lazy lol), so I did some research on how to avoid using pH pens altogether and discovered that it might be possible with organic indoor grows. All the gardening I've pretty much ever done outdoors was using organic practices. I just for some reason wasn't sure that it can be successfully done indoors After reading many Organic threads here on GC I made a switch to organic indoor cultivating of weed and now I can't imagine any other way So welcome to the ride and I hope it is enjoyable for you as much as it is for me! Some specs: Vegging room - 2,2 ft x 5 ft x 6 ft. T5 lighting, 2x2 8 bulb panel. Flower room - 3 ft x 9 ft x 6,5 ft. 600W HID, digital dimable ballast. MH HiLux enchanced spectrum bulbs for vegging and HPS HiLux bulbs for flowering. I'll be adding boring stuff along the way, now on with the pictures of what I have currently going. The babies are GHS Super Lemon Haze and Bubblefuck. Both are started from seed on or around December 24th. Beans soaked for a day in plain rain water, dropeed right into 33/33/33 mix of EWC of a good quality (I have my own worm bin), peat moss and rice hulls. I started 4 seeds, 2 of each kind, and one of each popped and started growing. They have been transplanted from solo cups into 1 gal pots about a week ago, I used my own mix full strength and they seem to be happy with it. SLH seems to be just a tad touchier than Bubblefuck. Super Lemon Haze, feminized. Bubblefuck, regular seed. Then in a veg room we have a batch of experimental SBR70's by S_a_H seeds - http://www.rcmcollective.ca/breeders/sah-seed-co.php. I grew some of them out before and was quite happy with the results, but not completely happy, they each yielded about 11 g. of dry herb, 75 days from seed to harvest. I though I might do better. This time I germinated 7 of them right in 10 gal smart pot (wanted to avoid the transplant which seems to be stunting them no matter how gentle, and 1 week really matters when it comes to autos). I also wanted to try out bagged organic soil available to me locally. Looked good on a bag, and soil was of a wonderful color and structure, and even had a couple of dozen of worms in it after sitting in my yard for some time. Unfortunately, babes ran out of juice about 2,5 weeks in and started complaining. I top-dressed with some EWCs, my own soil and put the pot on the perlite bed for an even moisture. They seem to be improving (1 boy got culled in the meantime), but I'm sure I won't be using that soil without pre-composting and infusing some real life into it. Here are the auto babies. Then we have whole bunch of clones and this is the veg room altogether. I'll share all the cloning methods I use along the way, for now I wanted to post the pic of the small experiment I started a couple of days ago. I have a really hard time curbing my curiosity, and seed-germinating and cloning are usually the worst stages for me in that regard, I always end up poking and pulling and whatnot So this time around I put almost all my clones in opaque (Chinese takeout lol) containers, and watched the roots grow for a few days. The roots grew on all sides, although the sides directly exposed to light had less of the structure expansion. I taped the side of the container with the duct tape, and today I took the tape off (previously covered surface is within the orange square). I don't know about you, but I'll be putting all my clear containers inside the dark ones from now on. I love seeing the progress, but it looks like the light does hinder the desire of roots to go toward it. Now on with the flower room. In the back of it I have a 20 gal smart pot filled with organic self-mixed soil, sitting on a perlite pan (cement mixing pan). I grew one mj plant in it already, and now it's waiting for another lucky candidate (I'm leaning toward SLH). I cut the former girl's stem and a circle of rootball out and buried a 1 gal pot in the middle to mould and prep the space for a new plant. It should make transplant easier and ensure the no-till experiment I'm conducting here is 100% no-till lol The old stalk with the roots should've been thrown in my compost, but it was full of baby worms and I just left it there to give them a chance to escape. Crumbled mulch (weed leaves) with my hands to help decomposition along, heavily misted and covered it with the Rubbermade lid, mostly for the worms to be comfortable coming uptop to feed. I have a whole bunch of them in that pot, which is excellent since the aeration there is mostly rice hulls and they decompose and compact. Worms will aerate it sufficiently, I hope. View attachment 2014-01-16 No-till set up.jpg I put a volunteer tomatoes on top of it to take advantage of the HID light Next post is going to be dedicated to the rest of the flowering room residents. They are still not flowering, going on 18/6 light schedule under 600W MH. I have a feeling this ^^^ is gonna take a whole page already Sucks to be falling behind.
Great start! Subb'd in and eagerly awaiting more. About to try my own first ever grown in organics. Been gardening for years, so hopefully I won't be too out of my league. Might be just a little more emotionally invested in these than I am about marigolds though.
I'm so happy you finally have a little more room. I can't imagine the beauties you'll crank outta there.
Lemme hit it dang...always hoggin the joint 024.. Lady Pink...yo! I'm on the porch with my bowl packed. Something I named Sweetbud, taste like a dirty apple would taste, but a lot more sweet. Maybe a dirty pinklady...lol Shit's looking fabulous, so glad your back. One of the top female growers here, and I was missing you lotsssss. I swear I started collecting those, haven't used them yet, but was thinking about putting clones in um. Better space I think, than the solo. Damn your on it, and I'm following closely. y
Thanks TJ! Make yourself comfy, I'll try to be entertaining Besides all the fine weed I have to share, take this for example *pass* Thanks ChefZiggy and welcome! If you plunge into organics, you won't regret, especially if you've been gardening for a long time. It just feels right. You have to start small though and watch, and evolve your thinking a little, but nothing too drastic, just shifting from a consumer thinking to a contributor thinking. Not hard at all. Well, marigolds are also very valuable because they populate you land like crazy and deter pests, and pretty and uplifting, and if you don't pull them out before winter their roots will decompose and while doing that deter many bad nematodes in your soil. I have a baggie of marigold seeds saved from last year, gonna spread it all over the strategic areas come spring You know are always welcome Paka! I wish we lived in a walking distance of each other. We'd have a killer of a garden combined between us two. I know, right I'm borderline ecstatic honestly. I'll try not to let them go too far now, and 3 hearty flowering plants are seems to be the comfortable maximum. I guess we'll see. You (and your product lol) are always welcome in mi casa 420 Thanks for the vote of confidence brother, I'll try to stay on par
Hey babe Glad you found it right away, and thank you for the kind words! I'm gonna be picking up slowly I think, but I'm gonna be picking it up nonetheless Just real life and all gets in a way, but I will try my hardest. I am not an online person per se (age, probably ) so GC is pretty much only online community I'm participating in so far. No twitter, no fb, you know what I mean, so be patient with me Good to see ya pooch! No such thing as Dirty Pink Lady
Oh yeah, those are nearly perfect, just make sure you poke enough holes in them. They crack too, so I use my sharpest scissors with the finest points (the best manicure ones lol). I think the "opaque" thing is also beneficial unless you put them in dark cups right after transplant. And even more - I hate wasting stuff and love re-purposing it. So there
Yup that's what I was thinking. My lady was washing one out before tossing it in the trash, and I was like wait! Now I have like 10, but I take cuts in 4/6 so it'll work perfect. I was trying to figure out where to buy those..you know without the $10 worth of food in um. Lol Looking at your clones in the cups they look real comfortable. How long you gonna let um stay before you xplant um. y
Wait till you collect them in a natural way lol. Solo cups work just fine too, and couple of clear ones will give you the pic of what's going on in a meantime, if you clone them all together, planting majority in solos. I recycle here, so nothing really goes in a trash, it's all divided between my compost, worm bin, recycled plastic/foil/metal/glass/paper. I hardly have anything to put out on a curb anymore. Feels good I am going by the 1 gal of soil/1 ft of growth, still, so I really don't know when I'm going to be xplanting them. The ones with bigger root system will get it first (if I see any solid value in them at that point ). Ballparking I'd say about 10 days more seeing how they grow atm.
Don't be a lurker MJ. Welcome and feel comfortable, I listen to and respect all opinions, controversial and not, if they are based on experience. Besides I like what you post all over GC although I don't see you much. I promise to be soft when I comment
Alright, so onto more about the flowering room. In front of that 20 gal pot I have 3 ready to flower plants. One of them is IceRiverGenetics (G45) Red Neck Haze. I germinated 2 of them as well about October 1st 2013, one didn't make it and the other one looked like this Then about a month later I transplanted it to the 2-bucket-style SIP (7 gal buckets), and she looked like this. Then she took off, 10 days after placement into the SIP. And then she grew and grew and kind of grew more unhappy. I was thinking all along she is sensitive, but it seems from the moment she hit the walls in that bucket she decided the life is not so wonderful. I know by now that G45's strains require ample medium to grow the roots, because they truly grow them roots lol. I just was hoping that my occasional top-dressing could take care of that. Long story short, she declined big time, I stripped all the ugly leaves everyplace (they were pissing me off), and top-dressed her heavily with "Bud and Bloom Booster" organic fert from Dr.Earth, mulched with my EWC and she responded very aptly I've been treating her SIP-bucket like a simple pot since then, not filling the lower one with the water, but I fired it back up tonight, let's see what happens.Here is the recent pic.
fellow Canadian of Ukrianian heritage. Sweet lyrics even if he is not, doesn't matter really. I love this song. http://youtu.be/tR-qQcNT_fY
So I've been and listening to utube (I think you noticed lol and thank god for that channel), so here are some more tunes. It was indeed sweet time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9gKyRmic20&list=RDyG07WSu7Q9w&feature=share&index=18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUKBuAkr4Lg&list=RDyG07WSu7Q9w&feature=share&index=17
Just swingin' by the new digs pinklady. Looks mighty fine in there, as usual, wouldn't expect anything less. +sub