AKGramma's Perpetual Grow

TS: When you lay a spindly stem down horizontally, you have to pin it down with u-shaped wires, or you can just lay pebbles on top. That should work with the light weight medium. Be creative. Same as you would do for a spindly tomato plant.

My first grow was in 1 gallon pots. The harvest was respectable, but you KNOW that the bigger the root ball, the bigger the harvest. In a pinch, you can use doubled-up kitchen or lawn bags as pots. The up-side is that they're flexible and you can squeeze them in just about anywhere.

Now that I've moved on to tall kitchen bins, I use the 1 gallon pots upside down to support shelves or pots that I need to raise higher.

Waste not, want not!
 
AKgramma said:
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.
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I have two basic units like this that I keep in reserve for when one of the big lights goes out. Those Mars-Hydro lights are definately worth the price.

AKgramma said:
TS: When you lay a spindly stem down horizontally, you have to pin it down with u-shaped wires, or you can just lay pebbles on top. That should work with the light weight medium. Be creative. Same as you would do for a spindly tomato plant.
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I've done this, with success, very recently. I simply let the stem fall over and positioned it where I wanted it, covered it with a bit of soil, and then anchored it down with large pebbles. Worked like a charm.

TortuedSoul, it's always a delight to come across your posts. Not only are they enjoyable reading, but it reassures me that I'm not the only lequatious one among us. :laughtwo:
 
Tead said:
hmmmm.... wonder if this works in perlite..... I see a test in my future.
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Sure! You'll figure out a way to hold down the stem. A couple of large pebbles will do it, and another pebble used like a pillow, to prop the head up off the medium until it turns up. That should only take 24 hours, as the leaves seek the light.
 
AKgramma said:
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!
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The next day (I THINK that was this morning) I trimmed the buds up and put them in a paper bag for drying. The little bit of trim I had was left out to dry naturally, then added to my leaf and shake container.

I didn't take pics of my hanging harvest because I could see too much of my living room through the pass-through below the kitchen cabinets. Security precautions, not from police, but from any lurkers who might be scoping out an easy target. We tend to get complacent, communicating on a friendly site, but you never know.

I have about a dozen cuttings from flowering shrubs in the grow room. I moved them to the 12/12 unit, because there is so much room in there now, and up-potted the mystery plants I tried to sex (with no luck) and set them among the new bins in veg.

I just about have unit 3 (the closet) cleared out, except for 2 harvested BBls in hempys I'm trying to reveg. I don't think they will do well in the 12/12 tent, so have to keep them in the closet on their own, subdued schedule. This will be my last attempt to reveg, having tried 3 x before. If anything is going to reveg, it's got to be the BBLs. I am not sure I can get Bubblelicious seeds anymore, as Nirvana has changed the strain. Maybe Nirvana had too many complaints about how poorly the seeds popped and how inferior the genetics were on those few that DID survive.

I have my eye on a few Bubblelicious-berry hybrids to replace them with. I will be happy to get the sappy, sticky, sweet-smelling buds from ANY strain.
 
My Auto Fem Diesel Berry popped today! I'm going to wait for the last Auto Fem, the Cherry Bomb, to pop, then I will put them directly into the big girl pots to live out their lives.

This will leave room under my workstation light to pop more seeds!

All three of my units are active, now. I put the mystery plants, along with the harvested BBLs I'm trying to reveg, into the closet, where I just have CFL's. The babies with strain names went into the veg unit with the LED's.

I spend a LOT of time and effort rearranging pots, as space opens up, and needs of the plants change. One unit is 3x3, which is currently the flower unit. When I harvest the last of the BBL's, I have to switch out the units. No use wasting that much space on 3 OGK's. They can go in a smaller unit, and all the vegging can go in the large unit. It is interesting how one extra square foot makes a huge difference, when it is arranged in a square (3x3), rather than a rectangle (2x4, like the shelving unit and closet are).

The last 2 BBLs, in hempys, are 9 1/2 weeks in flower. I have to give them another 5 days, as they did not finish as quickly as those in soil. After harvest, I will add some soil to these hempys, convert them to standard pots, and try to reveg these clones, too. I'm hoping for ONE success out of the four. I am trying to reveg with two in perlite in hempys and 2 in soil/vermiculite/perlite in standard pots. So, we'll see what happens.

I've got a lot of plants to feed today. The water jugs I use for feeding are well marked for either veg or bloom, so I don't mix them up.
 
Auto Fem Diesel Berry got put in her big girl pot today. Her tap root was already out of the peat pellet and seeking new worlds and new civilizations.

The last of the 3 auto seeds, the Cherry bomb, didn't fare so well. The growing tip died and there was a tuft of fungus growing up out of the soil this morning. I'm hoping for a miracle, that it will form another tip, but my common sense says she's done for. Will wait till I see the rest rot before tossing it.

The auto Fem Polar Express has grown 3 pairs of true leaves since she sprouted on the 1st. I like how enthusiastic these autos are!

I have one thriving Bubblelicious clone doing well in veg. If I take good care of her, I might be able to repopulate the strain with further clones. I really like the BBL for her sticky, candy-sweet buds.

I am pretty certain that all my mystery juveniles are Indica-Sativa hybrid, judging from the width of their leaves. They all have been topped and put into veg. I'm just going to have to cull the males later.

Speaking of males.... the BBL pollen I had collected earlier this year failed to pollinate the branches I applied it to (on two different ladies).

If I have time today, I may do a partial harvest on one of my last BBLs in flower. The lower buds are done, but the upper buds are still in pistil stage.
 
My last two BBLs in flower are at 11 weeks, but, when I pulled them out to harvest them, they only needed a good clean up. So I trimmed the dying and dead fan leaves, and decided, from the amount of still-white pistils, that they had at least a week or two to go. These two are in the last hempys in perlite, and are already 2 weeks behind the others already harvested.

The trimmed leaves were so sticky, I saved them for future use.

The more I look at my sickly-loking OGKs, the more I want to put them out of their misery. I know they need about 100 days to finish, but their leaves look like hell, and they are getting th proper nutes and all. But these are several generations down on the clone tree, and never had any real vigour. I WILL admit, however, that they grew larger in the helpy/perlite than the 100% soil mix. Yet, the strain has always been finicky for me, except for the first generation from seed.

Some of my mystery hybrids are doing well, others not so well. Time will tell which need to be culled.

The AK 48 seeds and those Autos that were gifted to me are also doing well, save one that is beginning to fade. (an AK 48). Because all of them have been treated the same way, I figure it's the genetics of the particular seed.

I am planning to up-pot my last BBL clone to a 5 gallon pot and try to grow her out as a mother plant. But instead of taking cuttings, I'm going to layer her, by staking down her branches into beginner pots till they root. This is going to require more space, which means rearranging and reassigning growing areas. AGAIN! * sigh *

EDIT: It doesn't look like my attempts at revegging in the hempys is working. The stems are shriveling up, and the veg I left on them after harvest has died. My last hope on continuing the BBLs is the one clone, or else I will have to buy more seeds.
 
Arctic Bowl said:
Hey AK dropping by to check in on you and see how things are going in your world. We're trying to get ready for that white stuff that is coming, you know, yard clean up and fun stuff like that. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Blessed Buds
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Here, too! My grandson mowed the lawn, and we decided to re-evaluate in 2 weeks. We like to give it a final cut just before the termination dust arrives. Nothing on the Chugach mountains yet, but we ARE expecting more rain as the temp goes down. IN fact, it started last night and is still going. Nothing heavy, just a steady light rain. Last month, I got tired of looking at weeds instead of lawn, so we did a heavy application of weed N feed, and it worked beautifully. No more dandy-lions, just lots of green grass! :cheertwo:
 
AKgramma said:
Nothing on the Chugach mountains yet
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IIRC, someone once told me that those mountains can get 600 inches of snow per year :jawdropper: .
 
TorturedSoul said:
IIRC, someone once told me that those mountains can get 600 inches of snow per year :jawdropper: .
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The last two winters we had hardly enough snow to even shovel. A broom is all we needed. Now there were a couple winters before that where we got snowed in, and my grandsons had to come over and dig me out and shovel the roof!

The mountains are very close to us, and they catch most of the weather coming in from the East. We get what's left over.
 
I hope my ladies like fermented molasses! I had left a half-gallon of mixed nutes, from last week, which always includes a TB or two of molasses. The grow room smells like a stillery! Pew! I diluted that further by topping off with plain water. It looked and smelled pretty strong!

Now, a gallon of mixed up nutes goes a long way, because I only use about 1/2 to a cup of the mixture in each pot, depending on size, then water well to distribute and dilute it more.

I up-potted my last BBL clone into one of the tall 3 gallon bins I had set up, rather than directly into a new 5 gallon. Might as well use what I had ready, first. She is planted off-center so I can bend her over to soil-layer her branches. Her hole got a good dose of MYKOS, and I am going to top-dress her with worm castings after she has recovered from transplant and a dose of nutes. I also trimmed off her damaged leaves to prevent disease.

Pics later, when I get her going well again. She's a tad ragged right now.
 
AKgramma said:
This is going to require more space, which means rearranging and reassigning growing areas. AGAIN! * sigh *
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:laughtwo: I know the feeling girl. I've been trying for my entire two years here to find a system that works smoothly for me and doesn't require a complete reset. Just yesterday I decided I was ready to give up the idea of a perpetual after this cycle. I keep running off on some travels, and I'll probably keep doing that, so face it already and go back to seed-to-harvest runs.

Like you, I'm getting weary of having to shift everything. Again. *sigh*
 
AKgramma said:
I hope my ladies like fermented molasses! I had left a half-gallon of mixed nutes, from last week, which always includes a TB or two of molasses. The grow room smells like a stillery! Pew!
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Lol. The thing about "organics" (it's all organic, IMHO, because it all contains carbon, just some nutrients didn't have to be eaten, predigested, and shat out by microbial life before the plant can use it - but I didn't (re)define the terminology :rolleyes3 ) is that they tend to smell organic.

SweetSue said:
Like you, I'm getting weary of having to shift everything. Again. *sigh*
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I just "shifted" out of a closet, out of the wreck of the building it was in, and all the way back across town to my house. Waited until about 4am this morning because this LED panel won't exactly fit in my pocket (weighs 31 pounds or thereabouts). Got to the site and thought, "I sure wish I'd been smart enough to bring the box!" So there I was, with it in a (thin, oh so very thin) black trash bag, walking home in the middle of the night, hoping a LEO didn't pull up and ask me what was in the sack as I was walking down the road.

I finally ended up pulling some signs out of a convenience store dumpster (they're big signs) that are white(ish) on the back. Those, taped together, are my walls. But they're flimsy as can be, and as I discovered when I turned the light on, light passes right through them (from either direction, :thedoubletake: ). I put my name in for the Mars-Hydro tent/LED package that one lucky reviewer will get at the end of the month, but I don't have much hope because it looks like it might be a popularity contest; other people can post your name with an @ in front of it, like @TorturedSoul, and so far the only person who has posted my name... is me. I could sure use a little tent, lol. But maybe it was not meant to be, IDK. Anyway, if anyone wants to try for it, the thread is here:
Mars Hydro is looking for product reviewer
...or if you'd like to recommend someone else ;) .
 
Good morning TS, check your PM box.
 
I just did. After I recovered (lol), I replied. You should change your nickname to So(very)SpecialSue ;) .
 
SweetSue said:
:laughtwo: I know the feeling girl. I've been trying for my entire two years here to find a system that works smoothly for me and doesn't require a complete reset. Just yesterday I decided I was ready to give up the idea of a perpetual after this cycle. I keep running off on some travels, and I'll probably keep doing that, so face it already and go back to seed-to-harvest runs.

Like you, I'm getting weary of having to shift everything. Again. *sigh*
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I don't think I will ever settle on any particular method any time soon. I like the perpetual grow, so I have a small, but steady supply, and can harvest gradually. I keep wanting to try different things, which means always rearranging.

If I ever up-pot the mother plant to a 5 gallon pot, I'll have to make room for the giant indoor plant she will become. I just up-potted her to one of the 3 gallon trash receptacles I had ready to go. But already, I know that a third up-pot is going to be a major undertaking with all the roots and soil from the 3 gallon. Since I just put her in the 3 gallon, it's going to be a few months before I have to deal with it.
 
Soil... <SHUDDERS>

Lol ;) .
 
TorturedSoul said:
Lol. The thing about "organics" (it's all organic, IMHO, because it all contains carbon, just some nutrients didn't have to be eaten, predigested, and shat out by microbial life before the plant can use it - but I didn't (re)define the terminology :rolleyes3 ) is that they tend to smell organic.



I just "shifted" out of a closet, out of the wreck of the building it was in, and all the way back across town to my house. Waited until about 4am this morning because this LED panel won't exactly fit in my pocket (weighs 31 pounds or thereabouts). Got to the site and thought, "I sure wish I'd been smart enough to bring the box!" So there I was, with it in a (thin, oh so very thin) black trash bag, walking home in the middle of the night, hoping a LEO didn't pull up and ask me what was in the sack as I was walking down the road.

I finally ended up pulling some signs out of a convenience store dumpster (they're big signs) that are white(ish) on the back. Those, taped together, are my walls. But they're flimsy as can be, and as I discovered when I turned the light on, light passes right through them (from either direction, :thedoubletake: ). I put my name in for the Mars-Hydro tent/LED package that one lucky reviewer will get at the end of the month, but I don't have much hope because it looks like it might be a popularity contest; other people can post your name with an @ in front of it, like @TorturedSoul, and so far the only person who has posted my name... is me. I could sure use a little tent, lol. But maybe it was not meant to be, IDK. Anyway, if anyone wants to try for it, the thread is here:
Mars Hydro is looking for product reviewer
...or if you'd like to recommend someone else ;) .
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TS: You can hang tarps around anything that will support them. I use white tarps covered with black plastic or sheets, since I can't seem to find Panda Tarp here, to cover my shelving units. Since I can't afford the tent plus over $100 in shipping, I use wire shelving units. You can double up on those to give you more of a square structure to hang the tarps from.

I think, in the end, I've put as much out moneywise as I would have from the tent (without shipping costs), but I can reconfigure the shelving to suit the size of the plants, without wasted space. They aren't pretty, but only a few people ever see the grow room.
 
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