Grandpas Silver Anniversary Grow

I'm a little disappointed in the scattered flowering times and growth stages mixed together, but there is still months to go, so no need to worry yet. The BSHW is one of my favorites, it is one of the parents of SAGE, you would like it if you like SAGE. I will try and save a taste for you. It is my main breeding stock. This year I'm going to cross it with the GDP and see what comes up.


PW

 

FS it is good to see you again. Glad to have you along for the ride. I try to keep my threads low-key and not attract too much attention. I try to keep it simple and minimalist, just like my growing. I didn't realize you were old enough to know about BSHW, It is one of my all-time favorites. They didn't nickname it "Trip" for no reason.

TJ,

Having a relaxing summer. Keeping busy trying to keep Bambi out of the vegetable garden and trying to reach some sort of control with the grasshoppers. We have had several plants defoliated in less than two days by the hoppers on our outdoor crop. Things are looking good at your place, you will not be disappointed with the time and expense starting your GH.








The stretch is slowing down now and all plants have been sexed and the males removed from the room. We are keeping pollen from two males with nice structure for future breeding. The flowers that reversed and re-flowered are making interesting looking colas as they form. The sativa hybrids have branched out with a lot of tips, the Thai hybrids are showing the large multi-branched cone shapes on the branch ends.


The empty space from the males will be filled with a few plants from my backyard. These plants were planted into 6-10g pots on the tenth of July to keep them small. The smaller pots are starting to need more feed.


Except for the recharge at planting time all of these plants have had nothing but MBT with the watering 2x a months. Now that the flowering is starting the plants received a cup of dry fertilizer meals and two cups of EWC to finish the cycle. The MBT will continue on a two X/month application up to the finish. In two weeks my comfrey syrup will be ready and will be added to the irrigation water once before flowering finishes. Another spray of Spinosad was applied for IPM, no pests are affecting the GH at this time, this round is to insure we haven't overlooked any problems going into the final phase.











Heavy harvests to all


PW

 

Ficky, the house is an old shed with the top and South side removed and replaced with triple-wall polycarbonate glazing. The three other sides are corrugated roofing and not adding any light. The shed used to be on 10' walls and we raised the back side to 12' so now the building is 13 x 30, the front is 10' and the back with a final height of 12'. When we first started growing pure equatorial sativa plants we would have to top off the last 6' to keep them inside at 12'. We have now bred them to finish below 12' and are introducing early flowering pollen to get the finish times more in line with the climate here at 40N and 6500' elevations.


The growing space is not optimal with only the top and south side glazed, but we manage to keep ourselves supplied in spite of the lower lighting. Our swamp cooler is also broken and the partner doesn't want to fix it, so we plug along in 125F temps in the hot weather and keep the room cool by wetting the floor during the heat of the day. So far we have provided for all our needs, even without optimal condition.


The large dark green colas in the 2nd and fourth pictures are the early flowering purple Afgans that flowered early in spring because I had to plant too soon when the light cycle was too low, and they reversed then started flowering again now that the light cycle is favorable to start flowering again. These monster cropped plants look like they will produce arm and leg sized colas when finished.



PW

 

I have my grow spread out over three gardens. One of them is in the barnyard and has four chickens, two Guinea hens and a turkey. Although they ate a lot of grasshoppers, the outbreak was far too large this season for the birds to control the damage. The areas were treated with Nolo bait and regular spraying of Spinosad and control is slowly being achieved with this treatment.


PW

 

All plants are now in the beginning stages of flower development. This week they were sprayed again with Spinosad. We still have a few mites on one of the GDP and it was given extra coverage to try and get control before flowering gets more established.


A few of the outdoor plants are doing well in spite of the insect damage. All plants have been transplanted into their final pots or planted into the ground. A couple of the <span class="skimwords-potential">outdoor plants</span> have outgrown the height of the structure and should have been topped to keep them from outgrowing the GH







You can see the difference in the yellowing between the sativa hybrids and the indica hybrids now that the nights are getting cooler. The indicas are in the same soil, but have not started to yellow yet. The plants that originate near the equator start the senescence before the more hardy indica cultivars. All plants were given a topdressing of fertilizer meals only ten days ago, so I know the yellowing is the natural senescence starting on the equatorial sativa plants and not a fertilizer deficiency.










heavy harvests to all


PW

 

I am sorry for the delay in posting updates. We have been victims of the legalization
efforts here in Colorado. When recreational growing was passed it
also gave farmers the right to get permits to grow hemp. Unknown to
us, a nursery only 800 yards away from our greenhouse received a
permit for an acre of hemp and has resulted in the pollination of our
greenhouse with ruderallis pollen. This resulted in thousands of
auto seeds produced by our hybrids. The seeds will be collected and
destroyed to keep from polluting the local gene pool. I will leave
the autos to the children growing in their parents homes. Ruderallis
genetics has no place in my breeding efforts. I will make half of
the harvest into concentrated oils for a friend who is battling stage
four brain cancer. The rest will be screened and carded, old school
style for joints. We are lucky we don't put all our eggs in one
basket and have other plants in a second location that are not
pollinated.

This week we started a staggered harvest and have begun taking the solid tips from the
branches. The pollination has stopped the late season Thai plants from filling out in flower and will result in a low harvest for such large plants as the seeds ripen. The outdoor plants in the other location should easily make up for the loss. One of them looks like a 3-4 pounder, the late planted runts will finish at 8-10 oz in this location. The top cola, even with early topping is more than 24 inches long and will produce a half pound cola on the dominant branch. I guess I am one of those morons who still top. I have a hard time believing the topping stunted my plant when it finishes out at 11-12 feet.

I have just returned from a six day rafting trip in Dinosaur Natl Monument on the Green River while waiting for the colas to ripen up for harvest. This trip takes care of the need to cut early and try some samples. We will be cutting every 4-5 days until finished.














Heavy harvests to all


PW

 

This will be a tremendous problem for canna growers. A lot of the commercial growers are in this agricultural area and are reporting problems. I am hoping the profits are not enough to make it economically viable and they will replace with conventional crops. If they grow hemp again we will have to stop growing in this location. Sealing up a greenhouse from pollen would be a very expensive proposition, and would most likely cause cooling problems for all but the most modern greenhouses.


There are commercial grows near me with over 200 plants outdoors. They are spraying a chemical to prevent pollination, but I have sampled the b uds and it has a chemical taste and it does not achieve complete control from pollination. I wouldn't smoke it again on a bet. Luckily we are not cash croppers and still have all of the harvest from last year and can tolerate a years grow loss, until a new crop is produced. Each of our harvests produces 3-5# for each grower in one season. If the neighbor continues to grow the hemp, we will have to change our cultural practices and practice early harvest with light dep, something that I would like to avoid at all costs, because of the problems associated with keeping the light cycle steady and uniform without automatic curtain retractors.


The other solution is to grow a late season crop after the pollen has been released and become non-viable from rain or exposure, by growing large transplants in late summer for fall planting, and use heat and light to finish the crop. I think there will be a lot of concentrates available this year in CO from the seeded harvests.


PW

 

All of the greenhouse plants that were left were harvested this week and after many hours of pruning have finished pruning the outdoor crop. Ambient temps are reaching less than 20F outdoors, so the GH would start to freeze soon when temps reach 15F or lower. The GH will hold temps about 15 degrees above the outdoor temps, so it is time to harvest. The large Thai in the barnyard garden grew large enough to supply three growers over a # of dried flowers each, so the pollination at the GH garden is not such a big deal now that we have harvested this plant. Although it is only anecdotal evidence, the plants finished 2-3 weeks earlier this year than the same varieties from last year, presumably this was the result of the malted barley teas used twice a month. Nothing else was used for this grow except water and the MBT for the entire grow. The average cost for the both gardens together was about $2/oz ($30/#) for the harvested flowers.



I hope everyone is enjoying the fruits of their labor this summer, sit back and relax for a month or two, in anticipation of the next growing season.






Bountiful harvests to all


PW