Indoor Iconoclastic plastic fantastic perpetual Shallow Water Culture

[The Iconoclast]

Greetings. I discovered some more bud rot while drying so that was very fraught. Threw a lot out wasn't going to take any chances. It is to be expected with these two NYCdiesel and NorthernLights both being not just stocky with very thick stems but also impossible to bend, they are just asking for bud rot, will not be growing these again. They are all done now and I was pretty surprised to find I still had 8 zips left of quite resiny bud, but not have a lot of bag appeal. It looks more like old school home grown, but it is chock a block full of resin and it does the job, but this is way too much stress for me. So I'm happy I got both those seedsman seeds in one pot. The NYCdiesel has no diesel smell at all, in fact quite the opposite, almost a sickly honey sweet smell and taste, the Northern Lights, has an interesting taste that reminds me of an old school Skunk #2

However my other pot with two seedsman beans, a Purple Haze and Big Bug x NL, is basically just the Big BudxNL as the PH, is just a single stem. This turned out to be a good decision on my part based on the rapid growth pattern of the BigBud and it could not be a more different genotype, it is very willowy with little nugget buds all over it very thin leave and even thinner stems, the buds are compact and absolutely covered in resin, the sugar leaves are completely while along their edges, some nice colours too. Plus she was fast, no messing about, like the other two, get those buds out and ripen them up. This could end up being a permanent addition due to the speeds and ease of maintenance and resilience to humid weather. Hard to photograph due to the contras but I'll see what I can capture.

My other Seedsman bean, the Amnesia, is even more willowy and thin than the BigBudxNL, so I'm happy about that. She is growing so fast it's hard to comprehend. I might have to get the Big Bud out early to make room. Went in today to chop out some lower branches, based on what I have just learned with the BigBudxNL.

Finally I have planted two of my oldest beans, a couple of freebie White Widows, from Dope-Seeds, I've grown one before and she also has the simple nuggety buds I prefer. Been looking for an opportunity to get one of these in again. I germed two because I was sure one probably wouldn't sprout, but also it was a day later when the second one came up. I planted the first one to come up on the middle of the pot, as I didn't plan for the second so it's not in the best position, I will not try and grow both beans equally.

 

[DCLXVI]

Very nice pictures! They all look great. I really like pic 22-5, the upwards forest shot looking up the stems. Neat.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Very nice pictures! They all look great. I really like pic 22-5, the upwards forest shot looking up the stems. Neat.

Thanks DC, glad you spotted that, I like to try and give an honest representation of what I deem to be useful information. I used to want to avoid this type of structure, now I prefer it.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Howdy weedsters, my grand plan of 3 plants 5 weeks apart is officially shot due to plants not playing by my rules. However I have a big stash of weed now so I'm more ready to experiment. Accidentally harvested the Big-BudXNortherLights at 11 (thought it was 12!) weeks as they really looked done but more than that Amnesia needed the room, she is fast and loose, supposed to be a very heavy hitter so I want to give her a good shot at it.

Because she has a similar Sativa like structure as the BiGBud, I went in early and pruned a lot of stuff off that I'd normally leave, and after a week I'm pretty happy about this, it also means I don't have to do much defoliating. I had another go at super cropping in the end the branch recovered from my butchery

So far I have 8 zips of BigBud very resiny and very sativa like stone, the taste is a nice and subtle spice, very agreeable, super easy to look after too. I left a couple of ounces on the plant for another week because I decided to let the Purple Haze have more time, and she has bulked up quite a lot, so I'll leave her for one more week, this is last week later shots of PH are this week. Decided to hang the second BigBud harvest without trimming

The White Widows both sprouted in the end, I was almost going to take the small one out then her roots got a bit moved, in the process of removing her I changed my mind and replanted her deeper and they both seem to have bedded in. They do look a bit small but I've sort of forgotten what they are supposed to look like at this age. While I have a pile of weed to spare, I'll be doing a lot more pruning on everything to see how that works out for me.

I think I may have been a bit harsh on the earlier NYCdiesel and Northern Lights, as now that I'm into the good stuff it's a tasty smoke with decent trichomes.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Bit late on the update, it's been chaos in the cupboard. Right so we've already established that my plan of a harvest every 5 weeks is out the window... but it gets worse... OK so last week I see a bunch of black spots on the white plastic floor I've laid down. Oh noes, it's bugs. Goddammit, the large ones looked like tiny beetles, they seemed to be coming from the pots, although there's nothing in the leaves.

Had a close look with the 10x lens on my phone and they look a lot less friendly first thing I did was inspect the plant and they are not on the plant at all. I took stock of the impending disaster and I took the plant into the bath, at which point I was ready to bin the entire plant. But she was just about to start putting on weight, I thought if I could get two more weeks out of this it might be worth it.

So I have trimmed out some more branches and gave her a thorough soaking plus I used the shower hose to direct some very hot water down into the roots. I came close to pulling the whole plant out of the pot but it was too difficult. In the end I got her cleaned up. A few hours later there were hundreds of the critters on the white plastic. The weave you see in the photos is only about 3mm or less. Fortunately they do not move very fast nor do they have a good grip on plastic so I was able to vacuum them up, and I've been doing that a few times a day ever since, it's been just over a week now and I have won the battle.

You hear people fret about cutting of a few leaves or some other bit of stress might 'slow the plant down'. Well this Amnesia was absolutely mutilated almost plus had almost boiling water on her roots. Turns out she did not miss a single beat, the heads have filled out to an extraordinary extent considering. She is very piney smelling, and she has a nice fluffy resiny heads similar to the Purple Gorilla. If I can get another weeks of growth out of her I'll be happy.

I still got bud rot in the Purple Haze, so it looks like I won't be growing that one again either, but the BigBud X NL had no problem

And finally the White Widow is coming along nicely.

 

[DCLXVI]

Hmm, mixed bag of update.... Well..... quite the save! Those bugs do look like the nasty type of critter. Ever able to pin down what they are?

 

[The Iconoclast]

@DCLXVI, yeah, I'd like to find out. They appear to be eating the roots, I thought could they be ticks at one point but not quite round enough tf, they do appear to be harmless at the moment. I have no idea what they are I'll see if I can post an enlargement. Yeah, I'm pretty astounded at what does appear to be a save and I've also surprised myself on how resilient the the roots can be because when I pulled the top pot up there were only a few roots coming out the bottom I could see they were attacked.

Oh yeah, other weird shit happened, I woke up at 3am to an acrid smoke, turns out the VapeXhale did not switch off, I'm guessing and melted the top no fire, just the thin smoke. Could have been very much worse. Replaced with a Volcano which is awesome but not as tasty as the Vapexhale, so I'm happy that they offered to replace it. They think it's a circuit board problem. Yeah so that's my week, attack of the mutant bugs later I almost die peacefully in my sleep.

If anyone recognises this critter...

 

[The Iconoclast]

Howdy folks, and folkettes. Overdue for an update. Yeah this little pest problem necessitated me taking a bit of a break. Harvested everything and got a shit ton of quality weed, so much so that I decided to pull the White Widow RIP, and take a break. I was vacuuming bugs off the floor every day and stressing out a little bit. However I did end up proving my point about the built in redundancy in a Shallow Water Culture, seeing as there is a large pot of roots and then the roots in the shallow pool outside the main pot.

The bugs were roots only so none of the buds were affected by them and I can tell you when I pulled the Amnesia, I was astounded to see that the external roots which is usually a massive rootball were pretty well non existent. And yet I had no idea looking at the plant because it looked completely normal. bit of a potpourri made with real pot

 

[The Iconoclast]

I started off with another Lemon Pie, this time I pulled her over very early and decided to trim off shoots earlier rather than later I have ended up with a smaller plant, I definitely won't be getting the 13zips of the last one, hopefully looking like 5 or maybe more, hard to say, it's a heavy bud. She's only just past 10 weeks and I'll be chopping in a week, as opposed to nearly 14 weeks for the previous Lemon Pie.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Started my 2nd Purple Gorilla three weeks ago, and as per the first one, she is growing at a phenomenal rate but more to the point easy to bend, so I haven't really tried to do anything yet. No need to defoliate as there's plenty of room in the leggy branches. The first Gorilla, I topped at the forth node with 4 pairs of branches. This one I topped at the 5th node and removed the first node branches, so still 4 sets of branches, but a slightly different effect. I thought this might stop the final pair from growing too fast and making it difficult for me.

I have also started another amnesia in a pot, I've had no success in dirt before. I just used an organic seedling mix and chucked a bit of tomato mix in the bottom. I was intending to plant her out but I think I'll see if I have better luck indoors.