New Grower Lowryder 2 grow, from seed to smoke!

[Alaskan1]

Hey all,
So this is a grow journal of the Joint Doctor's Lowryder 2 seeds, hopefully from seed to harvest to smoke report. Lucky you, because if you want to follow it, I'm already several weeks into the grow, so it will be like a fast forward for you into my grow. I've got pictures I've been taking, but have not found/taken the time to get the pics and details up, so now I'll post them in the next several days. History: I've never grown the herb before, but I'm quite the home gardener, with vegetables, fruits and flowers, so I thought it would be an easy step to grow some weed. Not so I've found. I'll be posting all my errors, corrections, and finally how I began to figure it out.
This is actually my second grow. It started with my interest in gardening. Last year I was scanning the Web, just looking at ordering seeds for vegetables and such, and I found so many sites that dealt in weed seeds. I was paranoid to order, so my friend said he'd order some for me. So we did. He ordered with a credit card, and the package arrived stealth, and I won't explain how that looked for obvious reasons. I found that the history of the Lowryder 2 strain was very interesting. It seems that the Joint Doctor was the first to get an autoflower done well for the consumer, having been given a secret autoflower parent plant that he crossed with other strains. Now there are many, many weed autoflower strains that are crossed with Lowryder. I chose Lowryder 2, as it's got such an interesting history. If you haven't checked it out, do a search on its history. Very interesting.... Anyway, the seeds arrived, and I did my first grow. I won't talk about that grow here, but the smoke was fine. Here I'll explain my current grow, where I planted the remaining 8 seeds from my original order of 10 seeds. Interested?:cough:

 

[GoAuto6]

:bite:

 

[mwsmoker]

:thread:

 

[Alaskan1]

Hey, well it looks like there will be some interest here. Good. Let me tell you a bit about Alaska laws.... Our state constitution provides us with privacy in our homes. What that means to home growers is this: we can grow and possess marijuana legally. I was amazed to find this. We can possess up to 24 plants in our home with no penalty. Yea us! "The Man" shows up, somehow we invite him in for a cup of java (maybe your kid invites him in, cuz I'm sure as hell not going to), and he stumbles upon our grow room when he asks to use the bathroom. He counts, one, two three...up to 24. No worries, he says, cuz it's not a criminal offense until 25. Super cool, huh? Gets a lil' weirder when we find that we can have up to an ounce in our homes, cured, ready to go. Again, no criminal activity. The Man asks you to pass the sugar, and yes, he'd like some cream in his coffee... No worries! Not sure what the offense is if we have green growing plants with several ounces of growing bud... but I'm not going to ask, and I think basically they've decriminalized weed here if you stay under 24 plants and it's obvious it's for your own use. So, what do you think of that? How does that compare to your state's laws?

 

[Alaskan1]

For those of you who are history buffs, this is way more interesting than your ol' history classes in school...or at least as interesting. Here's the history of the lowryder strain: http://www.seedsman.com/origins-of-lowryder

 

[Alaskan1]

Okay, here's my first experience smoking my home grown lowryder 2 from my first grow of 2 plants last year. It was a beautiful Alaskan summer... I was quite excited about finally trying my first cured buds. I went out into the garage, which opens into my back yard, which is a beautiful, large, flower-filled park-like expanse. The sun was shining, and it was about midnight. I know, I know, hard for some of you to imagine, but that's the way it works here. I think most true Alaskans are autoflowers. We trudge along all winter, dragging our tired butts out of bed each day to go to work. We don't see sun until about 10 AM, and it's dark before we leave, as it's pitch dark just about 4PM. But when summer arrives, we become manic. So much energy hits the brain with 20-some hours of sunlight! It never truly gets dark in June and July. I've had friends from the lower 48 come stay, and they can't keep up. We are just go! go! go! Freaking GO! All summer! Anyway, so I smoked a small bowl, just 2 hits, and went on to my deck, and sat and enjoyed. At first, not too much. Hmmmm. It's okay....feel a lil' something happening.... My neighbors have dogs, and I got to thinking that the mailman might not find me with a package he may have to deliver... Then I got to thinking, he'd try the backyard gate, which is stuck, due to a wind storm we'd had earlier in the winter. So perhaps he'd go to the neighbor's gate. There he'd say, well, I'll just jump the fence and deliver the package to the back door of my house. But the neighbor's dogs are aggressive, and they might not like his blue uniform, with the gold stripe running down his pant leg. In fact, it's summer, so maybe he'd have on shorts, not pants. Man! Ouch! So he'd discover the dogs, and have to jump the fence, narrowly escaping the snapping jaws of the slobbering dogs next door.... Then I remembered I'd stepped out onto the deck after a couple hits of Lowryder 2. That's what it's like. Mmmmmm, Lowryder 2. That's why I'm growing out the rest of the seeds. Interested to hear more?:group:I'll be putting up pics over the next several days!

 

[Alaskan1]

The grow tent, etc.

Okay, I promised pictures; here's a start. I'm having a couple martini, so excuse anything stupid you read.

I started with the grow tent. It's about 4 and 1/2 feet length and width, and 6 and 1/2 feet tall. Surprisingly roomy inside. Didn't cost much. I'm not going to go dig for a receipt, but it seems like it was under $200. I liked the size, and chose it above the competitors because it had windows (easy reach-in from all sides), several ports at the top and sides, with drawstrings, both inside and outside, for ventilation hoses and such. It also had the same ports down low for bringing in electrical wires. Plus, it had two large velcro vents with screens, down low, to allow bottom-to-top ventilation, and the screens to keep out dust and insects and such. From the pic, you can see the lights, the fan, and some warming mats for seedlings.

Next, the lights. I didn't know what I was doing. Just looked on line and got something that sounded good. Again, don't remember price, but I got them on a good sale; seems to me they were about 80 bucks each on sale. They seem to work well, although most growers on this site go for bigger lights. I bought 3 90W UFO LED lights, tri-band. The reviews looked awesome, and I've not been disappointed. Great for the home grower, in my opinion.

You see the pic of soil here. It's used by the local greenhouses for all of the plants they sell. It has enough food for about 2 weeks. I didn't understand that point, and I'll tell you about that later.

For containers I used black plastic planters, purchased at the local store. Some are one-gallon, and some are 5 gallon. I've learned something about container sizes since I've started, but I'll tell ya later.

So, on March 2nd, 2013, I planted one seed each, in 5-gallon pots. I placed them on the heating mat inside of the tent, and waited.... A week later, only one had germinated and popped its head out of the soil. The others never sprouted. Oh, also, I watered with distilled water. Never checked the PH. I'll tell you about that stupid mistake later!

Here's what I should have done: filled the containers with the soil pictured, but dug a cup out of the middle, and replaced it with seed-starting mixture. Then, planted the seed in the middle of that. So that may have been the problem. Or it may be that the seed mats couldn't heat up 5 gallons of soil, and the soil was perhaps a bit chilly. Either way, a healthy seed should have sprouted. My seeds are over a year old, and were just sitting in a drawer, so serves me right. Oh! And I should have checked my frickin' PH!

Since I was trying to grow a crop with both male and female so I could produce seeds, I planted my remaining seeds the next weekend. I was in a panic that I wouldn't have both males and females...Guess I'll tell you about that in my next post. I'll start showing some good plant pics, and show you my troubles, and how I fixed them. Oh, also, I'll show you "The Freak!":jaw:

So what do you think, All? Is there much interest in continuing the grow journal? I'm having fun, but give me some feedback, ya? Now where did I sit down my martini?

 

[The Squid]

I say if you're having fun and you got more beans, then keep going dude! You got all that setup, use it! And send me a damn martini too, Grey Goose, moderately dirty, shaken with five olives. :tunes:

 

[Alaskan1]

I say if you're having fun and you got more beans, then keep going dude! You got all that setup, use it! And send me a damn martini too, Grey Goose, moderately dirty, shaken with five olives. :tunes:

I'm a Skyy man myself. It's distilled in such a way as to guarantee no hangover. No lie. As for martini, I'm a Tangueray gin man myself. Like you, moderately dirty, shaken, extra olives. Where DID I set my feakin' martini!?

 

[dex]

Count me in Al got your pm buddie, good luck with your grow