AKGramma's Perpetual Grow

[AKgramma]

I am going to revert my good hempy pots back to soil pots by drilling bottom holes. I don't think plugging the hempy hole is necessary. It might come in handy to measure moisture. Stick a wooden skewer into the hole. If it comes out damp, you don't water. If it comes out dry, you water.

Anyway, that is what I am going to do. Today my BBLs in hempy are 19" tall and the the one left in soil is 29". I also had to prop up the branches of the 29"er with dowels, because the buds are getting so heavy! I'm waiting for the pistils to all turn amber before I cut next week or two. Last chance for the buds to finish plumping up! Definitely will come back with pics, if you can make out what is what in the crowded flower unit!

Here are a couple of pics as promised. They are in their sleep cycle, so I just used the autoflash setting and chose the best two.

This first one is a height shot of the lady coming up on harvest. To the left is the BBL lady in hempy.

Closeup of the top of one of the supported branches.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I am going to revert my good hempy pots back to soil pots by drilling bottom holes. I don't think plugging the hempy hole is necessary.

I wouldn't think so, either. The only purpose for having a hole in an elevated position like that is to provide a small nutrient/water reservoir below it - which you will effectively have rendered moot when you add holes lower in the container.

I an sorry to read that your foray into (passive) hydroponics did not turn out to be a great experience for you and your plants. But you have done, are doing, and most likely will continue to do well with soil grows. And you probably learned a thing or two.

 

[AKgramma]

I wouldn't think so, either. The only purpose for having a hole in an elevated position like that is to provide a small nutrient/water reservoir below it - which you will effectively have rendered moot when you add holes lower in the container.

I an sorry to read that your foray into (passive) hydroponics did not turn out to be a great experience for you and your plants. But you have done, are doing, and most likely will continue to do well with soil grows. And you probably learned a thing or two.

TS: I DID learn a whole lot by trying a hydro method.


I think the most important lesson I learned is that a lighter medium is better than a heavy medium. I also learned that the deeper the pot, the healthier the plant, and that I have the headroom to use taller containers.

Thank you, Tead, for the help along the way. You are Sue's and my teacher in growing with hempys.

 

[Tead]

I'm a faithful apostle upon the hempy path. I have faith that you'll feel the curiosity twinge and wet your toes sometime in the hempy waters. It's a very tempting pool for many different reasons.
I have to give you a word of thanks as well... you drew outside the lines using crayons I don't usually employ. There's a huge list of variables and I just can't try them all. Happy when others try those out instead of me.

 

[AKgramma]

Today, I harvested the last of the early BBLs I put into hempy containers. After harvesting 4 plants this summer, it looks like the BBLs mature between 9 and 10 weeks. I like to leave them until the white pistils disappear, which occurs at 8 weeks in flower. I also took some lower finished buds on another BBL, who is due for full harvest in mid Sept.

The lowest buds seem to finish a couple of weeks earlier. Taking them now will allow more nourishment to the buds still showing pistils. Some whole branches finish sooner than others, too. What remains are the most vigorous branches with the plumpest buds.

If one has the patience, gradually harvesting the ripest buds gives you more buds at the level you prefer. Like harvesting fruit at an early stage for transport, or waiting till they are fully ripe for local consumption.

I also planted 3 auto fems: Diesel Berry, Polar Express, and Cherry Bomb and three AK48 fems in peat plugs, which always work well for me. All of these I will set directly into their tall trash bins with a 50% perlite to soil/vermiculite soil mix.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm a faithful apostle upon the hempy path.

And you have Osmocote Plus experience... Feel free to revisit the OC+ thread and wade through my long, rambling post and offer your advice. I found a one-pound bottle for a dollar, lol.

I also planted 3 auto fems: Diesel Berry, Polar Express, and Cherry Bomb and three AK48 fems in peat plugs, which always work well for me. All of these I will set directly into their tall trash bins with a 50% perlite to soil/vermiculite soil mix.

Just about every autoflower I see being grown (in a journal) is a potential learning experience for me. What lighting schedule do you plan on following for them? And will it be the same all the way through, or will you modify it at some point (or, possibly, at two points)?

Cherry Bomb, lol. Makes me think of those old power-robbing glasspack mufflers. And The Runaways, of course. Both make me realize... I'm getting old.

 

[AKgramma]

TS: I will put them under 18/6 all the way through. That way, they can share the space with my vegging ladies, which will be the AK48 fems, and any mystery plants that turn up female. This seems to be the most recommended schedule for autos.

 

[AKgramma]

One AK48 Fem sprouted during the night. Looks really strong and vital. They were planted 3 days ago.

I also cleaned out and set up Unit #1 as an Auto unit. It has 2 Mars 300's and 8 23W CFLs, 4 in the upper corners and 4 down low at dirt level. I cleaned out 3 catchbins and put 2 new kitchen wastebaskets in each, drilled with bottom holes. This pretty much fills up the shelving unit. Next step will be to add the perlite/vermiculite/soil mix and soak the bins in the shower.

The mystery plants (photo, unsexed) I have in 12/12 (waiting to show sex), will be wedged in with the autos as soon as I can bring them back. They will stay in the solo cups till they are rootbound, then gradually potted up, as I find room for them. BY the end of the year, I hope to harvest the OGKs, and then reuse that unit for veg.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the last two BBL ladies, as their due date of Sept 10th comes up. I've already harvested some lower buds that were finished, and if there are any more by then, I'll take those, too.

I like the gradual harvest method, because my poor aching joints can't take hours of trimming, like if I took all of them at once.

My 4 x 8 closet contains a mish-mash of garden cuttings, idle pots, tools, and some soil. Will be time to clean that out soon. This one is all CFLs and will do for a secondary veg unit, should I decide to LST a lady out to 30". The BBLs don't seem to take well to LSTing after a couple of months, because they grow so fast, their stems get brittle when they go alternating leaf pattern. So I haven't been doing a lot of that this time.

 

[AKgramma]

here is Unit #1 all set up for the Autos and Fems. You can't see the left side, because it is tucked behind an adjoining shelving unit used for storage. It all will be covered with white polytarp and then a black blanket when activated.

First, the bins in their catchbins. The lower CFL's are clipped out of the way, while I add soil, etc.

A view of the upper lights, the two MARS 300's, one pair of CFLs in the rt corner, and the secondary fan mounted high. There is another fan mounted on the far left, and another CFL pair in the back corner.

Lots to cram into just 8 sq ft.!

 

[Tead]

Wow... you're squeezing a lot into a baker's rack. Impressive.

 

[AKgramma]

I now have 3 baby AK 48 Fems! I just dropped the peat pots into solo cups with 50% perlite and 50% my soil mix. Here they are, newly potted, sitting next to my PC!

Found Borg Mite webs on my buds this morning, so sprayed liberally with Neem + dish soap. This close to harvest, I can't lose them! Maybe I'll cut this short, wash them tomorrow and take the buds. There are almost no white pistils left, and they are in the 9th week. This is the last BBL clone in soil, and has matured quickly, while it's sister in hempy has another week or two left, with a lot of vigorous white pistils.

 

[Tead]

Neem isn't a surface kill agent. It works by being digested by the bugs. You dose the plant with neem, the bug suck leaf then wander off and die. It screws with there electrical system and causes them to mostly just stop doing anything (mating, eating, moving... whatever).
There may be some minor surface hit from bugs ingesting neem just sprayed on the plants, but that will do very little.
Think of neem as a prophylactic treatment rather than an outbreak treatment.
Of course, the soap is good on the surface. Soap breaks down the hard shells of buggins.
I use Pyrethrin on mites. Nuke the entire grow area and all plant surfaces including medium with a heavy layer. Repeat for 2 days.

 

[AKgramma]

I harvested and bud washed the last BBL growing in soil. The branches are hanging n my kitchen. The scenario is totally inspired by Sweet Sue's pic of her harvest drip-drying from a bamboo stick in the kitchen!

I prepared 4 of the tall bins with 50% perlite-50% soil mix, watered, and ready for the next batch of plants.

A Polar Express Auto Fem sprouted yesterday, so I immediately set the peat pot into a solo cup while I prepared a tall bin for it. I will cut the bottom out of the solo cup and set the whole thing into the bin, and water through the cup until it shows some real growth. Then, I'll gently cut away the cup and allow the auto to do her thing. The reason for this intermediate step is two-fold: 1) to avoid over-watering and 2) to make sure the taproot doesn't hit bottom in the solo cup.

Time to turn on the lights in unit #1!

Still no signs of sex from the mystery photo young plants I put under 12/12. They are starting to fare poorly, turning yellow, dropping leaves. I'm going to have to forgo the early sexing method and just plant them in intermediate-sized pots, or I'll lose them all.

 

[AKroughneck]

Mars lights look like they do good, I've noticed the price drop on all of them, you going with the reflector or Mars 2?


Sent from my iPhone using 420

 

[AKgramma]

Mars lights look like they do good, I've noticed the price drop on all of them, you going with the reflector or Mars 2?


Sent from my iPhone using 420

Neither. I ended up, over time, going with 4 of the Mars 300's from Amazon.com. Their price is unbeatable, and they arrive from California in about 4 days via USP to your door. Shipping is free.

This is a basic model with no on-off switch and no adjustment between veg and flower. Each unit measures approx 8" x 11 " and draws 130-ish Watts at the outlet. I installed 2 in each unit and supplemented each unit with 8 - 12 daylight and soft white (yellow) 23W cfls, to add more wavelengths. I use more of the soft white in the flower unit and more daylights in the veg unit.

Highly recommended for your first LED unit, if you are on a budget with a small grow.

 

[AKgramma]

I pulled my mystery plants from the 12/12 tent and repotted them to juvenile-sized containers. After 5 weeks since popping, their roots had hit the bottom of the solo cups, and wound themselves around the bottom, looking for a way out! I expect they will start growing well under veg, since I was generous with the MYKOS on their roots when I transplanted them. Now that I'm using some soil in the mix, I will be able to foster microorganisms in the potting mix.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Go, mystery plants, go! I've heard/read that "mycorrhizae are magic," lol. Are you using the Xtreme Gardening brand?

I pulled my mystery plants from the 12/12 tent and repotted them to juvenile-sized containers. After 5 weeks since popping, their roots had hit the bottom of the solo cups, and wound themselves around the bottom, looking for a way out!

I think I'm going back to 2-liter Mountain Dew bottles for my current two miserable little seedlings. I'll be able to see the roots when they reach the sides/bottom of the containers, and the green seems to provide some protection against light, so I won't feel obligated to paint them.

Those seedlings were mistreated, I am ashamed to admit. I soaked them a little too long (the morning after I put them in the cups, I had to go stay at Mom's for a while due to some issues she was having). I'm lucky that I thought to fill the cups up, because it meant that they weren't dry when I returned. No, only starved for oxygen, probably. Then I stuck them in cups of Fox Farm's Happy Frog with additional perlite in a place that wasn't quite too hot - but was almost completely dark. Just stuck them there temporarily, long enough for them to break ground. Then I had to go back to Mom's. So they spent, IDK, about a week without any light to speak of.

Got a curly (and weak) stemmed Jack Herer and a LONG stemmed Kali Mist. The latter seems like it could almost support itself. I'm guessing that the Jack Herer (non-feminized seed) will be a male due to the conditions it has suffered under. I hope otherwise, as I do not currently have the ability to take care of a male (and I'd hate to just destroy one, because that pollen would be valuable to me in the future). The Kali Mist is feminized, and I wasn't too thrilled about that initially - but I am cheered by the fact that I have not read reports of hermaphrodism in the strain, lol, so maybe it will remain female in spite of its neglect. Actually... If I was "at leisure," so to speak, I could see the merit in sticking a male Jack Herer and female Kali Mist together in a grow room and happily awaiting hundreds if not thousands of seeds. They're both "the real deal" (the JH is Sensi Seeds' and the KM is Serious Seeds', not knockoffs by other breeders who've bought and grown the seed), both known to be excellent strains, and with the KM being 90% sativa and the JH being 50%... Yeah, under other circumstances I wouldn't refuse an entire Ziploc stuffed full of seeds of that particular cross. Especially if I had some way of stabilizing/back-crossing to my heart's content down through several generations.

But I'm still, against the odds, hoping the JH is a female. Anyway...

If I had more seeds, I would have pitched these two, consigned them to cannabis heaven. I've had them under 18 hours of light for several days and they just sat there. I figured it was the heat. And the heat IS a factor, but... I somehow managed to forget that even though they hadn't grown a millimeter, water evaporates when it's hot (~TS~, you idiot!). I picked up one of the cups last night right before "bedtime" and, yep... So I gave them both a drink, just enough to see a little draining from the holes in the bottom of the cups. If the soil was as dry as I fear it was, it would not have absorbed enough - but I did manage to noticeably increase the cups' weight.

I just looked at them. THEY'RE BIGGER! I'm pretty sure that last night I was (figuratively) ready to cry because they still didn't have any true leaves. Now one of them has two beautiful little three-fingered leaves, maybe ¾" long, and the other also has a pair (which are half the size). Where did they come from, lol? I'm wondering if I managed to get the cups' labeling backwards, because the "KM" one has the larger, fatter-looking leaves. It was a pretty hectic time, so flip a coin. I suppose I'll be able to tell if/when they grow larger.

They're not out of the woods, yet. The one with the too-long stem... By too long, I mean like 6" or 7" with the top looking like it should be on a three-day old seedling. So I am going to try repotting it into a 2-liter bottle so that only a couple of inches stick out (there might be more - the bottle will only be so deep, lol). I might as well do the other one, too. It's almost of normal height - but it curled and fell over from the extended darkness after its birth, and there might be a short "shriveled" place on the stem at what was ground level before I moved soil over it a while back in hopes it'd root there (it didn't). OH, I hope that lankiness in the other one isn't a clear sign of being a male. I really need seeds, but I don't want to get them that way, at this time.

Please send positive energy through the æther! All I have right now is hope, and in the past when I've tried to build things out of hope... well, it's a wonder that I have any hope .

 

[AKgramma]

TS:

Two-liter tinted pop bottles are great for nursing abused seedlings back to health, or growing seedlings out. But you can't leave them much longer than a month. You'll need to get some big girl pots/bins ready for them soon. As for the long, lanky stem, yes you can bury that sucker deep. It will form roots along the sides. Cut the soda bottle as high as you can, right at the "shoulder". Give it lotsa room. OR, if you have a rectangular, smallish container, you can actually lay it down into the soil, with just the leaves propped up off the soil. By tomorrow, they will be facing up. I've done this a number of times with my seedlings.

I feel yah about not wanting to toss any babies, because you don't have a back supply of seeds. I also nurture every single seed, not wanting to waste any, unless they finally rot instead of sprouting. And sometimes your slowest runts turn out to be the best producers.

You cannot abuse or neglect your plants any more than I have. They are sturdy weeds; most, if not all, will recover.

If you have to be away for any length of time, just water them good, and put them in clear plastic bags, in subdued light or shade. Then they won't dry out.

Oh, and the brand is OMRI in a black foil package with MYKOS in big letters across the bag.

 

[AKgramma]

Pics of the reactivate Unit #1. The overview consists of two levels of stacked bins to raise the juveniles closer to the LEDs. I ran out of bins, so subbed a stool on the right.

Closeup of my first Auto: Polar Express Auto Fem, just one day old. Her taproot was already sticking below the peat plug, She's in a hurry, I think! Also dosed with MYKOS to encourage microbe growth.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Two-liter tinted pop bottles are great for nursing abused seedlings back to health, or growing seedlings out. But you can't leave them much longer than a month.

I've kept "mini-mothers" in them for considerably longer than that, lol. But it was a hassle and required frequent pruning (both top and bottom).

You'll need to get some big girl pots/bins ready for them soon.

I've got a two-gallon bucket or two, can get a five-gallon bucket off Mom (hate to - she uses them to catch water off her downspouts and I think the sun over time makes them brittle). And I found my (new, never used) air pump and a couple 12" air stones the other day. (But my new, never used aquarium powerhead seems to have gone walkabout? ) So I could, in theory go empty a big Rubbermaid-type tote and throw one of them into it. But I'm sort of hoping to save the "air" equipment for a single-plant grow next Spring, because it's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of a nine square foot (or more) SCROG screen completely full of 12" buds (and I miss it).

As for the long, lanky stem, yes you can bury that sucker deep. It will form roots along the sides.

I've had success in the past - but I've had a couple rotted failures, too. Medium was probably too wet for too long, though. We shall see.

OR, if you have a rectangular, smallish container

I have a couple square-topped one-gallon pot or two, made out of the thinnest plastic imaginable. But the two-liter bottle is, I think, an inch or two taller.

you can actually lay it down into the soil, with just the leaves propped up off the soil. By tomorrow, they will be facing up. I've done this a number of times with my seedlings.

Curled the stem, you mean? I've never done that with cannabis plants. If I lost a tomato plant... <SHRUGS>

I suppose it'd work. You never saw issues with the stem trying to straighten? I tend to run a pretty light soil or soilless mixture when I use them.

I feel yah about not wanting to toss any babies, because you don't have a back supply of seeds.

Yes. I've wasted more this year than I have since... Well, when I used to "clean" seedy lids of Mexican on rock double-albums ~30 years ago.

I also nurture every single seed, not wanting to waste any, unless they finally rot instead of sprouting. And sometimes your slowest runts turn out to be the best producers.

Sometimes... those seedlings that shoot up in height are about to become males. I hate to stress it more than I already have. But at this point, it's six to five and pick 'em. It'll be a little tall for as sparse the growth is even if I drop it into the bottom of a two-liter bottle, so it really ought to be repotted.

You cannot abuse or neglect your plants any more than I have.

I had a couple of plants in small foam cups full of (IIRC) about 80% perlite and 20% vermiculite sitting on top of the medicine cabinet in my bathroom for over a year. They got fed... Hmm... IDK, once a month if they were lucky, and I bet they got more moisture from my taking showers than from me watering them, lol.

They are sturdy weeds; most, if not all, will recover.

Well, sure, to an extent. Just about everything affects the final results in one way - and to one degree - or another, though. Assuming that it survives the heat (IDK...), I'm more concerned about one of them going shim (or the JH turning out to be a male) than I am about whether or not they'll survive their childhood experience. I really don't want to have to deal with a male plant right now; but, at the same time, I'd hate to lose the genetic potential. So I'm probably stressing as much as the seedlings are.

No worries!