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Emilya Green
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Welcome @HashGirl, glad to have you! Those are the two flagship soils from Fox Farm, Fox Farm Ocean Forest and Fox Farm Happy Frog.
420 Magazine's Official Girl Scout Cookies Comparative Grow By Emilya
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- #22
Emilya Green
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Glad to have you along for the adventure @DonkeyDick! Thanks on the tank... that is a Coral Beauty Angelfish... right now the most aggressive fish in the tank. There are also a male and female Damsel, a couple of obligatory Clowns and an Emerald Crab, along with a large cleanup crew of snails and hermits.Yay, Em! Nice kick off.
Nice fish too.
Let’s grow!
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- #23
Emilya Green
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Glad that grabbed you! I had a nice tank at the other place but had no choice but to shut it down and sell off my livestock for the big move. This time I have a better plan, a slightly smaller tank and going at it slowly to make sure I get it right. The second build is always better they say. Baby steps. The water is clear and the Damsels are nesting... things are looking good.
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Emilya Green
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Tonight, after a cooler than expected night and day here in Missouri, I don't see the activity in the seeds that I would have liked to see, and still have two floaters in the bowl. I will check in the morning, but won't have time to plant them before work. If I see the seeds have cracked open I will transfer them to a thrice rinsed paper towel on a plate until I return from work in the afternoon... I don't want to drown them.
Most likely we are going to move to solo cups tomorrow afternoon.
The activated soil was given a good stir this evening and looks even better than it did last night.
Tomorrow I will detail the building of the solo cups.
Sweet dreams everyone!
Most likely we are going to move to solo cups tomorrow afternoon.
The activated soil was given a good stir this evening and looks even better than it did last night.
Tomorrow I will detail the building of the solo cups.
Sweet dreams everyone!
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- #26
Emilya Green
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You are right on time! Welcome!Late to the party as usual.
That's awesome! Had a gal I dated back in high school with a dad with a massive salt water tank with sea horses and a tiny squid with all other sorts of swimming creatures as well. One of the coolest things I always dreamed of having one day! I might get a couple tiny bass again one day to create another habitat like I've had in the past, but some how have it dosing my nutrients as a supplement in the water supply.Glad that grabbed you! I had a nice tank at the other place but had no choice but to shut it down and sell off my livestock for the big move. This time I have a better plan, a slightly smaller tank and going at it slowly to make sure I get it right. The second build is always better they say. Baby steps. The water is clear and the Damsels are nesting... things are looking good.
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Emilya Green
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When you start running a lot of invertebrates and coral, daily dosing of the tank to keep alkaline and calcium levels up and maintaining trace elements is critical. For the right price, there are automatic dosing units that can be attached to your system nowadays that make this fairly effortless. Keeping an aquarium is a lot like keeping a grow room... you become a daily slave to the hobby and unless expensive automation is set up... the idea of a vacation is but a dream. Unlike a grow room, a tank can be a 50 year experiment.. corals will outlive us if given a chance and many fish can live for 20 years or more.
I'll trust your word on that and leave it all for when I become a millionaire lmao! But you never know I've never spent money on the lottery in my life before so I could get lucky!
This guy had his tank all set up upstairs and had it all automatically doing all the science downstairs. I think me and this gal dated for 3 years and all his creatures thrived without a problem so I'm thinking he had a fish hobby lol ill stick to the adrenaline filled hobbys and my garden of course to heal me after getting damaged up lol
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Emilya Green
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This morning still showed me 2 floaters and I got one to fall by shaking the water. None of the seeds have cracked yet, so I didn't move them. I get off work at noon today and will get them out of the water when I get home. I still need to bake a couple of gallons of Happy Frog in my oven before using it straight out of the bag that has been sitting in my storage area for at least 6 months, and then I will be ready to start planting. After a couple of hours of prep work today, I should be ready to start building their first cups and putting the seeds into some soil for germination.
AdaminCO
Well-Known Member
Follow this grow @PennJAccording to the tracking information, I will have a FedEx package at my door this afternoon, so I am going to get this journal started now, so that I have a place to post the picture of the package as it arrives.
Here is the traditional start of a journal picture of the finished product that I will refer to later when we get near harvest, to see if my buds look like this bud... a good indicator of when it is time for harvest.
This appears to be a very "meaty" end product, so part of the planning for this 12 plant mega grow is going to be in having enough tomato cage type supports later on for each of the plants. This will be the largest single strain production run I have attempted thus far in my long indoor growing career, and I am ready for the challenge.
My 6'x6' veg room has been emptied so as to be able to handle the massive influx of life about to hit it with the second 6x6 veg room soon to be empty to be able to handle the overflow when we get to 1 gallon containers. The bloom room will be clear in about 2 months and will also be able to serve as a late stage veg room as we uppot into the final containers to get ready for bloom.
This will be a fully organic grow. I plan on going with 24 hours soaked seeds directly to solo cups, specially built for this purpose. From there we will move to 1 gallon containers and then to 7 gallon containers for the final size we will go to bloom in. The soil will be Purple Cow supersoil in the bottom third of every container, with a layer of aged cow manure at the very bottom. Next will be a thin layer of @DYNOMYCO and worm castings and then a mixture of FFOF and FFHF with some additional raw amendments to build up the rest of the container, with a small amount of Happy Frog at the very top of the solo cups to give the seeds a good start without having to deal with a lot of hot soil at first. This hot soil is going to be pretreated this evening with Soil Activator and kept moist until use so that it can cook a little bit longer as we get ready for it. In later container builds I will also employ the use of raw nutrient spikes as well as the layering techniques, as taught by The Rev in his book, TLO, True Living Organics.
I plan on vegging for 2 months and then moving to bloom. I will be using Uncle Ben's topping method so as to produce some short plants capable of holding a lot of weight, and easily corralled by a tomato cage. Along with the excellent soil, I will be using @GeoFlora Nutrients as recommended all through the grow. My water is simply tap water pumped into a 2000L (55gal) barrel with a tablespoon of ascorbic acid added to eliminate the chlorine products and a mosquito dunk added with each new barrel full of water to proactively treat for fungus gnats and other larvae stage pests. My grow rooms are not humidity controlled, and as we move into summertime here in the USA Midwest, they will invariably be too hot, but we will keep the air moving and will do the best we can to maintain. Lighting needs will be taken care of by two more of our sponsors, @Mars Hydro with their SP-3000 and @NextLight with their MEGA commercial quality light. Beginning near budset, I will also start supplementing with another sponsored product, @Terpinator to supply that extra boost that the massive buds will want.
I have been a little lax lately in keeping my journals updated regularly, but due to the commitment made to get involved in this comparative grow, I will be spending a lot of time on this project and will keep it well documented... its not like there won't be something to do every day on this massive project.
So here we go! With any luck I can get home in time to take a picture of the package arriving!
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Emilya Green
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Emilya Green
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All the seeds have sunk in the bowl of RO water as of this afternoon. Many of the seeds are starting to show some life down there under the water and I am getting ready to plant them tonight. I am baking (sterilizing) my Happy Frog as I write these words. A little while ago I pulled out my old trusty 30w soldering iron and melted 4 holes in the bottom and 4 holes in the sides at the bottom, in each of the 12 new solo cups, for drainage... previously used cups will not do for this grow, no matter how clean I might be able to make them.
My apprentice is on his way over now. I will be showing him how to layer a cup for organic growing and how to properly plant a seed. Later this evening, I will upload my pictures and a description of everything we are doing this evening.
While I wait, I am going to go stir my soil mix to help it keep activating. We will only be using 1/3 cup for each plant at this stage... but just wait till we move to 1 gallon containers... it will surely be well activated by then.
My apprentice is on his way over now. I will be showing him how to layer a cup for organic growing and how to properly plant a seed. Later this evening, I will upload my pictures and a description of everything we are doing this evening.
While I wait, I am going to go stir my soil mix to help it keep activating. We will only be using 1/3 cup for each plant at this stage... but just wait till we move to 1 gallon containers... it will surely be well activated by then.
looks like I'm right on time.
This will be a fun and educational journey to watch, good luck!
This will be a fun and educational journey to watch, good luck!
Websissy
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Cool ideas with your soil amendments and layering. Looking forward to seeing your grow! Can you use the fish tank water for your plants? 
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Emilya Green
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Thank you for joining me @Furcifer; it sure is nice to have you here! I will try my best to make it fun and I usually learn a couple of new things on each grow... I hope it turns out to be interesting!
Thank you, but I credit the books I have read for providing the ideas. The Rev in his TLO book first showed me how to use layering to provide a diversity to my roots, and why that is important. I just sort of wing it these days following those ideas of layering and spiking, seeing what works and what doesn't, and sometimes it just depends on what I happen to have on hand. In a full organic grow that was not being bolstered by a product like @GeoFlora Nutrients, multiple layers of raw nutrients, and vertical spikes of nutrient mixes that The Rev talks about would be so much more necessary, so a lot of the added amendments are being left out in this very heavily fortified grow. As I amended the soil, it was mainly to add macronutrients that should be in abundance and to add special texturing and added nutrient and water retention abilities to the soil by using the Vulx. I suspect it will be a little amazing how fast and strong these plants grow in that mix.Cool ideas with your soil amendments and layering. Looking forward to seeing your grow! Can you use the fish tank water for your plants?
Regarding the fishwater, it depends on what type of fishtank you have, but no, the seawater in my aquariums is not suitable for land critters or plants. A working reef aquarium is a little living piece of the ocean and all the living bacteria in the sand and on the rocks, along with the macro algae purposely grown to process waste, and the CO2 entering the water from the top surface, the living ecosystem cleans itself over time so that there is little to no accumulation of fertilizer in the pristine water flowing in the system. Except for the salt and the high pH, this water would be safe for consumption, and when anything gets the slightest bit out of whack, I change out some of the water with clean RO water to get back to the baseline and each day I am adding 1/2 gallon or so of more clean water lost to evaporation.
Now if it were a typical freshwater aquarium, that would be a totally different story. Depending on how you remove the chlorine, that water, when you change it out, could be used in the garden to great effect. Nothing is processed in a freshwater tank by the "system", so the ammonia and detritus builds and builds, until you remove it.
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Emilya Green
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Tonight, two of the seeds have thrown out tails and the majority of the rest are still working on it. By tomorrow morning I am betting that I will be planting most of them, but tonight we documented the process we will be using by using these first two as an example.
First, I sterilized some Happy Frog from a fresh newly opened bag that has been stored up in my grow area by baking it in a 250 degree oven for an hour in a 5gal cloth bag.
Then, the first quarter inch of each cup was filled with just a small handful of composted steer manure, just to give the roots that make it down there a treat.
On top of that we put some supersoil to complete the bottom third of the cup and I have chosen to give the Purple Cow brand a try again, having used it the very first time when filling the final containers for another grow. They seem to like it, so every container in this grow will have its bottom third filled in this way. This will end up putting ever larger pockets of supersoil vertically all throughout the final container, letting the roots that go into those areas specialize in what they find there.
The next layer is our special activated soil mix with Vulx. This middle area is where the bulk of the mass of the rootball will develop, so making sure there is good stuff in this layer is a must. I didn't add worm castings in several layers in this solo cup build, but I will in all subsequent containers as we uppot.
Then before getting to the sterilized Happy Frog for the top third, I added 1tsp of @DYNOMYCO and 1tsp of @GeoFlora Nutrients in a thin layer for the new roots to find as they start spreading downward. The still slightly warm Happy Frog was added right up to the top of the cup and a 1/2 inch deep furrow was made in the center of the surface. The two seeds were carefully picked up with tweezers and placed into the hole, pointy end down, root up... and soil was carefully scraped over it to fill up the hole.
Then, not finding my mister, I brought out the chemistry set and measured out 2 of these cups... or 100ml of purified drinking water and slowly and carefully used it to wet down the entire surface, with a bit more concentration on a circle of about an inch and a half around where the seed was buried. I will continue to wet that area only now, twice a day until the plant pops up to the surface. Here you can also see how I melted the holes in the cups... 4 holes on the bottom and 4 on each side.
First, I sterilized some Happy Frog from a fresh newly opened bag that has been stored up in my grow area by baking it in a 250 degree oven for an hour in a 5gal cloth bag.
Then, the first quarter inch of each cup was filled with just a small handful of composted steer manure, just to give the roots that make it down there a treat.
On top of that we put some supersoil to complete the bottom third of the cup and I have chosen to give the Purple Cow brand a try again, having used it the very first time when filling the final containers for another grow. They seem to like it, so every container in this grow will have its bottom third filled in this way. This will end up putting ever larger pockets of supersoil vertically all throughout the final container, letting the roots that go into those areas specialize in what they find there.
The next layer is our special activated soil mix with Vulx. This middle area is where the bulk of the mass of the rootball will develop, so making sure there is good stuff in this layer is a must. I didn't add worm castings in several layers in this solo cup build, but I will in all subsequent containers as we uppot.
Then before getting to the sterilized Happy Frog for the top third, I added 1tsp of @DYNOMYCO and 1tsp of @GeoFlora Nutrients in a thin layer for the new roots to find as they start spreading downward. The still slightly warm Happy Frog was added right up to the top of the cup and a 1/2 inch deep furrow was made in the center of the surface. The two seeds were carefully picked up with tweezers and placed into the hole, pointy end down, root up... and soil was carefully scraped over it to fill up the hole.
Then, not finding my mister, I brought out the chemistry set and measured out 2 of these cups... or 100ml of purified drinking water and slowly and carefully used it to wet down the entire surface, with a bit more concentration on a circle of about an inch and a half around where the seed was buried. I will continue to wet that area only now, twice a day until the plant pops up to the surface. Here you can also see how I melted the holes in the cups... 4 holes on the bottom and 4 on each side.
Why sterilize it? Wouldn't some of the beneficials in their soils be good?