So, I figured I would post myself here. I've never joined any forums before for horticulture, because where I am is fairly closed-minded about this "oh so horrible plant".
I started growing some photoperiod clones from a friend of mine, entirely by accident. He had them, didn't want them, I said sure. My mother, sister, 3 cousins, and one uncle, are all MMJ users, and my uncle runs a legal farm in another province.
Background: I'm an avid organic gardener and sustainable living advocate. People are too far into the disposable world mentality for the planet to survive. I farm worms for castings and to reduce my footprint on the planet, I recycle everything I possibly can. Yep. I'm one of "those people". But I won't push it on anyone else. We all do what we do because we have to. I also have a horribly crass sense of humour. Good times. I don't grow to sell. No one knows about it, and that's the way I want it to be. I grow for people who need it as medicine. I have no interest in selling anything.
My first "grow" was HAGGARD. The clones were tiny, had about an inch of roots on them, and had spider mites. I treated these with a lemon oil and neem oil (both organic, pure oils) in warm water with a bit of dish soap, three times, and the mites were gone. I transplanted them from cups to whatever haphazard pots I had, dirt from the garden, worm castings, and stuck them under a desk lamp. The results were as you would guess, atrocious. No reflectors, no nothing. But I kept them going for a long time, practiced some training techniques (LST and topping), and ended up with a respectable 1.5oz between 3 plants. My mother reaped the rewards, and I made sure to use every scrap of plant matter to make tinctures, edibles, salves, the works. The root balls were horrible. Less than the size of my fist. While this grow was finishing, I happened upon some MAJOR deals online (an inline fan/CanFilter carbon dealie for $20, which I cleaned to make sure there was no mold inside it, LED panel for $50, a tent for $50). Basically took my situation from one where it was about as backwards as you could get, to something fairly respectable, in about 2 weeks.
I also did my research on "super soils" and made my own mix, with ProMixBX as the base, worm castings, diatomaceous earth, perlite, bone/blood meal, eggshells (baked to kill bacteria, pulverized to powder), lime, coco coir (forgot to say this one originally), and aged chicken manure. I use this in the bottom half of my 3 gallon cloth pots, topped with ProMix. As it settled, and the plants are grown, so I don't shock them to death, adding more "super soil" as a top dressing. I water with tap water, set out to dechlorinate for a day. I haven't used nutrients other than worm tea in veg, and adding molasses for bloom. I'm trying not to micromanage them. Yes, I know I could get MASSIVE HUGE buds and flowers from a strict regimen of nutrients, but it's unnecessary for me at this time, and I haven't found any TRULY organic nutrients yet.
My uncle sent a package to me, containing 7 MYSTERY seeds from his farm. I know they are one of 3 strains they grew this year. So Dec 1 all 7 popped their cute taproots, and Dec 2 went into cups with just PMBX. They took off, like WEEDS! At 10 days, they had their first real leaves, and I accidentally dropped one cup, the cup cracked, and the bottom half was FULL of roots. So I took the day to transplant them from the cups to their final homes, 3 gallon cloth pots. Half "super soil" half PMBX. I didn't know they were autos, so I didn't know the common practice is to immediately plant them in their final homes, so I might have done something bad, but I didn't know. Regardless, they slumped over a bit, but within 2 days they were right back on track. at 24 days, preflowers appeared on 2, and little clusters of balls on 5... No change in lighting (20/4), so my assumption is that they were autos. I left the lights, and they kept on doing their thing, so my assumption was confirmed. I made the conscious decision to let the males mature and drop some pollen. I like the way the plants look and smell (spicy and herby, like sage, with a strong skunk smell, fatter leaves, and one of the possibilities is Iranian Diesel, which sounds really likely at this point, and was one of their crops this year), so propagating the species (especially for free) would be fine by me. So I let them do their thing, and then culled the males, harvested all the plant matter for juicing and testing some theories (some people say male plants are useless, but I'm going to make infused oils with them and see just how "useless" they are, for myself, because the internet is full of experts that know nothing about everything). Their root balls at 40 days was triple the size of my first grow after their whole life. Those poor first plants.
The ladies were left in the tent under 300w LEDs. They SHOT upwards, one main centre, and some smaller side branching, but all of the nodes are really tightly packed, not like a huge stretch at all, just a lot of growth. The tops were 10 inches from the lights, and the tops started yellowing and clawing downwards. Fan leaves that have 5 nice fat blades on them, now near the top are only growing 3... Nitrogen deficiency? Nope. The rest is dark green and lively. Light stress? Yep. Go ahead and tell me that LED lights aren't strong enough. This panel, pulling about 160w actual electricity, is so strong that it's doing TOO MUCH to the plants.
To level the canopy, I decided to do some LST on them, because I have no timeline, and if they get stunted a few days or a week or even 2, I don't mind. So I bent the tops WAAAAY down, and all the side branches out. Now each plant is 24 inches from dirt top to top of the canopy. Raised the panel up to about 24 inches from the tops of the canopy, and within 24 hours, the top growth that wasn't too far gone is back to being dark green and lively, and are back to putting out more blades per leaf. They're not stretching, just producing SAVAGE amounts of white hairs everywhere. Some buds are forming, with fire-coloured amber hairs shooting out of them. Looks great, smells AMAZING. I kinda want to live in the tent. But the purple light colours would render me blind really quickly.
I've only watered with dechlorinated-tap-water-made-into-worm-tea for the entire time, adding molasses (natural, non sulphured) the last 3 feedings. The plants are now 68 days old, showed gender and preflowers at 23 days, so they're technically 48 days in flower, if the logic serves correctly. So, assuming that the "standard" is 8-11 weeks in flower, in the last half of week 6 now. So, 2-5 more weeks!
So, here I am!
I started growing some photoperiod clones from a friend of mine, entirely by accident. He had them, didn't want them, I said sure. My mother, sister, 3 cousins, and one uncle, are all MMJ users, and my uncle runs a legal farm in another province.
Background: I'm an avid organic gardener and sustainable living advocate. People are too far into the disposable world mentality for the planet to survive. I farm worms for castings and to reduce my footprint on the planet, I recycle everything I possibly can. Yep. I'm one of "those people". But I won't push it on anyone else. We all do what we do because we have to. I also have a horribly crass sense of humour. Good times. I don't grow to sell. No one knows about it, and that's the way I want it to be. I grow for people who need it as medicine. I have no interest in selling anything.
My first "grow" was HAGGARD. The clones were tiny, had about an inch of roots on them, and had spider mites. I treated these with a lemon oil and neem oil (both organic, pure oils) in warm water with a bit of dish soap, three times, and the mites were gone. I transplanted them from cups to whatever haphazard pots I had, dirt from the garden, worm castings, and stuck them under a desk lamp. The results were as you would guess, atrocious. No reflectors, no nothing. But I kept them going for a long time, practiced some training techniques (LST and topping), and ended up with a respectable 1.5oz between 3 plants. My mother reaped the rewards, and I made sure to use every scrap of plant matter to make tinctures, edibles, salves, the works. The root balls were horrible. Less than the size of my fist. While this grow was finishing, I happened upon some MAJOR deals online (an inline fan/CanFilter carbon dealie for $20, which I cleaned to make sure there was no mold inside it, LED panel for $50, a tent for $50). Basically took my situation from one where it was about as backwards as you could get, to something fairly respectable, in about 2 weeks.
I also did my research on "super soils" and made my own mix, with ProMixBX as the base, worm castings, diatomaceous earth, perlite, bone/blood meal, eggshells (baked to kill bacteria, pulverized to powder), lime, coco coir (forgot to say this one originally), and aged chicken manure. I use this in the bottom half of my 3 gallon cloth pots, topped with ProMix. As it settled, and the plants are grown, so I don't shock them to death, adding more "super soil" as a top dressing. I water with tap water, set out to dechlorinate for a day. I haven't used nutrients other than worm tea in veg, and adding molasses for bloom. I'm trying not to micromanage them. Yes, I know I could get MASSIVE HUGE buds and flowers from a strict regimen of nutrients, but it's unnecessary for me at this time, and I haven't found any TRULY organic nutrients yet.
My uncle sent a package to me, containing 7 MYSTERY seeds from his farm. I know they are one of 3 strains they grew this year. So Dec 1 all 7 popped their cute taproots, and Dec 2 went into cups with just PMBX. They took off, like WEEDS! At 10 days, they had their first real leaves, and I accidentally dropped one cup, the cup cracked, and the bottom half was FULL of roots. So I took the day to transplant them from the cups to their final homes, 3 gallon cloth pots. Half "super soil" half PMBX. I didn't know they were autos, so I didn't know the common practice is to immediately plant them in their final homes, so I might have done something bad, but I didn't know. Regardless, they slumped over a bit, but within 2 days they were right back on track. at 24 days, preflowers appeared on 2, and little clusters of balls on 5... No change in lighting (20/4), so my assumption is that they were autos. I left the lights, and they kept on doing their thing, so my assumption was confirmed. I made the conscious decision to let the males mature and drop some pollen. I like the way the plants look and smell (spicy and herby, like sage, with a strong skunk smell, fatter leaves, and one of the possibilities is Iranian Diesel, which sounds really likely at this point, and was one of their crops this year), so propagating the species (especially for free) would be fine by me. So I let them do their thing, and then culled the males, harvested all the plant matter for juicing and testing some theories (some people say male plants are useless, but I'm going to make infused oils with them and see just how "useless" they are, for myself, because the internet is full of experts that know nothing about everything). Their root balls at 40 days was triple the size of my first grow after their whole life. Those poor first plants.
The ladies were left in the tent under 300w LEDs. They SHOT upwards, one main centre, and some smaller side branching, but all of the nodes are really tightly packed, not like a huge stretch at all, just a lot of growth. The tops were 10 inches from the lights, and the tops started yellowing and clawing downwards. Fan leaves that have 5 nice fat blades on them, now near the top are only growing 3... Nitrogen deficiency? Nope. The rest is dark green and lively. Light stress? Yep. Go ahead and tell me that LED lights aren't strong enough. This panel, pulling about 160w actual electricity, is so strong that it's doing TOO MUCH to the plants.To level the canopy, I decided to do some LST on them, because I have no timeline, and if they get stunted a few days or a week or even 2, I don't mind. So I bent the tops WAAAAY down, and all the side branches out. Now each plant is 24 inches from dirt top to top of the canopy. Raised the panel up to about 24 inches from the tops of the canopy, and within 24 hours, the top growth that wasn't too far gone is back to being dark green and lively, and are back to putting out more blades per leaf. They're not stretching, just producing SAVAGE amounts of white hairs everywhere. Some buds are forming, with fire-coloured amber hairs shooting out of them. Looks great, smells AMAZING. I kinda want to live in the tent. But the purple light colours would render me blind really quickly.
I've only watered with dechlorinated-tap-water-made-into-worm-tea for the entire time, adding molasses (natural, non sulphured) the last 3 feedings. The plants are now 68 days old, showed gender and preflowers at 23 days, so they're technically 48 days in flower, if the logic serves correctly. So, assuming that the "standard" is 8-11 weeks in flower, in the last half of week 6 now. So, 2-5 more weeks!So, here I am!
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