Indoor Testing the eazyplug pyramid mini.

[The Iconoclast]

btw this is a Purple Haze in the mini pyramid, not too branchy. Same with the DP Blackberry Kush I have started today because it's also not too busy plus it's a difficult plant to grow and she should look very pretty in her pyramid.

There is a little bit of tip yellowing on a few younger leaves. I'm just playing it by ear at the moment where I'll give her a quick soak in some 500ppm nute then I'll just apply water for a couple of days. It looks like manually watering these small pyramids will be a full time especially as there seems to be a good growth structure. Remember this pot is only 4" inches tall, 3" square at the top and 5" square at the bottom.

 

[The Iconoclast]

It feels to me like these buds are hardly growing, but I compared a shot from one week ago and I couldn't believe the difference. I've not grown the Banana Kush before but I intend to not top this and just try and have the one main stem just to if this makes any different.

Thoughts so far is that it is flowering about 2 weeks early and the stretch is much more relative to the size of the plant that I've seen this must be something to do with the roots releasing some sort of hormones. I'm guess if I were to anthropomorphise the plant that it would be thinking to itself, "I seem to be stuck in some sort of rock crevice and so I had better grow tall and flower early because I'm not in a good spot, although I do seem to be well fed"

It would be interesting to see a bean in a mini pyramid placed on the top of a normal soil filled grow bag.

I can easily see this plant being grown in a lounge room as a decorative lamp, with a 100W puck above it and an appropriate lampshade.

 

[The Iconoclast]

All the leaves are very green despite having a 1:2:2 nute regime, and I realised that there's a lot of leaves and the buds do not look like fattening much and I figured there's more than enough healthy leaves all round the buds sites, more than enough in fact as so off they come. Discovered that the runoff was 3500 but no leaf burn. Now I'm pouring a half litre of fertigator over her every watering to keep the ppm at the res level.

There's not much more I can do now other than experiment with pruning and nute balances next grow, but I have plenty of freebie seeds to test, so, am determined to crack this nut. A couple of before and after shots, you can see from the top down that there's plenty of leaves.

 

[The Iconoclast]

She appears to have stopped putting on any more bulk and the pistils are going orange fast from almost all white five days ago to mostly orange. She also has that look like she might be ready. Took a bunch of leaves off to get better airflow as I was just beginning to get some bud rot on my big plant. She may very well come down at the eight week mark on Sunday.

Meanwhile I have just been jugging a couple of litres of nutes over her regularly. A new Lemon Pie in a mini pyramid is underway, began by soaking the pyramid in plain tap water, then let the plug begin to become a bit dry on the outside.

 

[The Iconoclast]

As I have become besotted with the mini pyramids it looks like that's mostly what I'll be doing so I will just continue my journey of discovery in this thread, you know it makes sense. It's only a few weeks into my next four but already some clear patterns have emerged and I will comment on my observations.

Lemon Pie which is 32 days today and has really taken to this pyramid malarky, with no sudden stretch like the purple haze and very lush foliage she is looking like a champion. With only 3 pairs of branches I still had to do a bit of careful leaf removal for both light and air, only a few and she looks better for it as all the buds are buried.



Amnesia is now 25 days, a week behind Lemon Pie but at the same early flowering stage, growth has been very much as expected compared to the hydro grow I did, I think that was one that got attacked with the mutant ninja crabs. Whatever, she is very spacious with a bit of a bonsai tree look, the branches are exceptionally bendy, I have ordered some plastic LST branch clips. Some of the lower leaves are beginning to go a bit ratty, but all looks good up top.

 

[The Iconoclast]

The new replacement GC popped today, hasn't broken surface yet but there's some root out the bottom of the plug so I got her into her new mini pyramid early, it will be interesting to be able to compare its growth to the earlier one before it was apparent there was something wrong. So there's a new experiment with the plug, it can confirm the problem is the seed because no ferts are used and watering and medium and root development is identical. This time I tried a new technique always trying for minimal work with maximum result, I put the dry bean in a dry starter cube and then hydrated the cube, this held the seed in a more snug position because it swells around the seed and hugs onto it. If she emerges without problems then this will be my new method, it's just easier to drop the bean into a dry plug and position it the right way.

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Instead of plants for the big pyramid, I have decided instead to do a big pyramid using the Jedi Kush. YOLO :¬)

Unlike putting that cube into the mini pyramid which fits with a nice snug seal, the starter plug is very loose inside the large cube. Last time I used it in my hydro I fill up the space with crumbled plug but you can never get it tight, this worried me because the roots can tear. It didn't matter when I used it in my hydro but I will learn from this and take a new approach to the starting this bean.

I put the small plug inside the large cube and soaked them together to see how they swelled. I then cut some slices of small starter plug with a sharp knife and careful wetted them but tried to keep them together, like trying to slice a crumbly aged cheddar cheese. Now instead of trying to jam these pieces in, I instead lifted the small plug out and press a slice on two adjacent side of the plug and then pressed it firmly back into the big cube. There's enough friction to keep the slabs in place and now instead of being loose it snug and happy. So probably about 2 weeks from now this big cube will go atop the big pyramid.

So I have some time to set something up, gonna put the big pyramid on a cake rack sitting in a shallow tub but I'm still figuring this out in order to make it work with the minimum of work. This will be too big to take to the bathroom for a quick hose down so I'll want to try and create some sort of drain into a bucket system. When I work it out, I promise that readers of this thread will be the first to know.

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Man is the measure of all things, it has been translated from ancient Greek but that doesn't really make any sense, more accurate would be Man is the measurer of all things. I mean it's what we do, gravity waves to an accuracy of a thousandth the width of a single proton over a distance of 4kms, gravity probe B, the anomalous magnetic dipole moment. and many others.

Today I did some rough wicking measurements while preparing the mini pyramid for the new replacement GC, I weighed up 600g of water put it in a small saucepan that just fit the mini pyramid so it was only sitting in about an inch of water. It quickly sunk and took about 40 minutes until the plughole got wet at the hour mark it had wicked all the way to the top, at this stage I let it go a bit longer and finished it by turning it upside down. when ready I pushed the plug in and she is now sitting in the shade

Back to the Jedi Kush, if you look closely you will see the L shaped addition to the small plug. I didn't use the hole because it's not centred now, so I used a wooden toothpick to mash the plug around the hole and fill it in and make a new hole then bury it

Here's a shot of the big cube on the big pyramid for size comparisons.

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[The Iconoclast]

@kfigerm Excellent, I hope this can be a thread where everyone feels free to post their results. As you can see from the beginning of this thread I was expecting nothing very special. I can see this would be like hempy on steroids. I did find on my first go that the ppm shot up to over 3000 because I wasn't really allowing much run off, although it didn't harm anything. But now I just keep a bucket with 1100 ppm and the plant over it till a lot drains through. I"m going to want the same effect on the big one so if it's successful then I'll rig up something where I can just pour over the pyramid and let it drain directly into a bucket. I'll keep updating my techniques in this thread, and I'm sure that if other people start these that they will have their own techniques to try.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Found an air fryer basket that is perfect for the big pyramid, plus a kitty litter tray, which is a usefully too small so I can easily position the pyramid at a slight slope if want to water it from different sides to keep the nutrient gradient nice and even
.

Instead of some elaborate drainage set up I can now see that If I make a hole in the middle of the tray, and place it over a bucket instead of the piece of hydro stand in the photo, then I will easily be able to just pour nutrient over the pyramid by hand which is my preferred method.

EDIT: I tried to push a wire through the side in a straight line and it emerged near the top, second go emerged near the bottom so there are elaborate passageways through the pyramid! But it's better to do it externally because I can put more pressure on the top. This should avoid me bumping the cube and damaging any roots before it's grown through securely. I will remove this eventually.

 

[The Iconoclast]

My Auto Stilton pair are not equal in stature so that sort of throws a bit of sand into the whole idea of growing a pair, of plants that is. It's still illuminating to see two beans grow with different vigour from a supposedly settled stock and knowing it cannot be the grow media or some other root disturbance. At first it appeared to be about a day behind but it seems to be overall smaller. So although it won't be a proper side by side, I'll probably not top the smaller one so that is the plan at his stage.

The Mutant Gorilla Cookies



And the replacement Gorilla Cookies in the corner, I had to do extensive pruning and defoliation but she still looks to want to spread out, she could no be more opposite to the mutant.

 

[The Iconoclast]

In the Terp Treez Blue Nerdz auto I found a bean that was both consistent, reliable and one that I liked a lot, and is spectacular to look as as a bonus. So I was happy to grow a few. The 10" Pyramid produced 6 oz of incredibly crusty buds with an utterly unique texture, the Hydro produced a bit more at about 7.8 oz, buds appear darker and looser structure on the outside but very crusty, the buds are so dark they are almost black but chopping them up it goes almost white with all the trichomes. Both buds were different but equally good.

The 4 inch pyramid is different again, but still crusty, and they all have the same delicious berry/fruit taste with just a hint of diesel, a very pleasant smoke and it is sufficiently strong for my demanding brain cells.

The big pyramids create a very normal looking structure that you'd see in soil, neither of the two big ones were topped. I'll have to post the pictures in lots....