AKGramma's Perpetual Grow

[AKgramma]

This morning I got tired of seeing my last three poor OGK clones struggling along with their curved, mottled, and sparse leaves. I decided to cut them at 11 weeks.

The harvest isn't great, but I wanted to share it with anyone who also ends up with an ugly harvest. The two pictures are what I got off off all 3. halfway through trimming, I thought I would share the before and after trimming. After the trim, I am going to bud wash, then hang them up to drip dry, before drying them normally. This is why I left them on the branches. Much easier to handle till time to put the individual buds into the paper bags. BTW, I saved the trim, since it was all sticky, to use in capsules.

First, what they looked like before trim. This is just what came off one plant.

This is what I had trimmed out when I stopped for a break and took pictures. I trimmed off all leaves with 3 fingers, then snipped the sugar leaves to shape the bud. Sativa buds like these tend to be open and airy, and will be fine for joints, or for pressing into larger nugs for bong users.

In spite of the ugly harvest, these WILL be potent enough to satisfy my family, and possibly good enough to make cookies and brownies. I won't have a weight until they are ready to jar.

I never did post the photos after the trim.

Continuing on from the initial trim, I trimmed the buds from the branches, leaving a stem on the ends in case I decide later to re-hydrate and compress several together. It's much easier when you leave handles to work with. Once compressed, I trim off the stems, then jar them.

The individual buds.

The trim and mini buds were put into another bin. I let them dry with the lid cracked open for airing for a few days. I mixed them every so often. But it came to a point where I thought the buds were a bit over-dry, so I mixed the trim and buds together, dropped a couple of Boveda 62's in, did a quick water spritz (just a couple) and covered tightly overnight.

Once the buds and trim "felt" right, I separated the buds out, pressing them in my fingers with smaller buds till I had a size about right for a bong or a pipe, then jarred them. OGK buds are airy and just look better compressed for the cure.

The trim and tiny buds, I jarred separately for use in joints. Yes, I cure those and the leaves, too. One Boveda packet goes in the small jars and two into the Quart size. I use tinted mason jars.

I cure my jarred weed in the back on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator for at least a month. I don't have a lot of harvest, just an assortment of large and small jars, sorted by strain and by product (OGK buds, trim, and leaves, BBL buds, trim and leaves). I hope to have another batch under flower by the time this crop is ready for use.

I follow the same routine for the indicas, but I don't compress the larger buds. They are already firm and large enough to smoke well.

 

[Arctic Bowl]

Looks great AK, have a awesome day

Blessed Buds to you

 

[Arctic Bowl]

Hey AK dropping by to see how things are going for you. Hope all is well in your world our friend.

Blessed Buds

 

[AKgramma]

One of these days I have to upload pics of the unbelievable leaves my plants are producing. The AK48 leaves are thickly pillowed and their nodes very close. The autos' leaves are twice as big as anything I have grown to date.

The mystery plants are, well, mysteries. Mostly lemony, but one with a hint of pine.

The BBL mother is the only one stretching. I pinched her tips and tied her branches down hard in preparation for soil-layering. This is my last BBL clone, and I want to clone using this method, so I don't lose any. Soon she will be so big that I will have to reactivate another unit just for her.

All plants needed their feet trimmed. Those LEDs penetrate right though the plants, and with the auxiliary CFLs, there is growth all the way down the stems! They all got sprayed with neem, too, and leaves with eggs got culled.

The addition of 2 mars 300's to a 9 SQ ft footprint has made a vast difference in the quality of the grow, across all strains!

 

[SweetSue]

Good to hear. Light is the engine that drives the grow. Feels good, doesn't it? I had those stunted autos going and thought it was me, when it turned out to be the light gone bad. LEDS are wonderful, when they work.

I'm hoping you get those pictures posted. I'd like to see all that growth. I'm a big fan of surround lighting too.

 

[AKgramma]

Time for a tour of the grow unit!

Here are the AK48s I was bragging about.

The next two are my soil-layering method of cloning. This is my lat BBL clone, who is now a mother plant. I'm taking a tip from outdoor gardening, when you want to propagate a flowering shrub.

The branches were tied down hard the night before, then the next day, cups were buried into the mother pot and filled with soil and watered thoroughly. The stems were defoliated where they would be buried, and scraped a long the bottom side to the cambium with a one-edged razor blade. Then buried in the soil and weighted down with aquarium gravel. But any large pebble will work. I had room for two cups.

Now pic of the mystery plants and one stunted AK 48.

And that is the tour for tonight!

 

[TorturedSoul]

Nice description/pictures of a sure-fire cloning technique! +REPs.

 

[Arctic Bowl]

Very nice AK, pretty cool way to clone for sure!!!

Blessed Buds our friend

 

[AKgramma]

The only way this method can fail is if you don't keep the cups moist. You want to encourage roots to form, not just get nourishment from the mother. You can't overwater them, because they have a decent sized hole in the bottom, which drains into the mother's bin.

 

[AKgramma]

The two autos in the back are hitting the upper auxiliary CFLs. Gonna have to lower them soon or move them to another shelving unit. The Polar Express Auto has fan leaves as big as my hand!

On the other hand, it might be easier to move out the juveniles and let the 3 biggest plants stretch out and up . Yeah. That's the ticket! I can always raise the shelf in the 3 x 3.

Mother BBL and her babies said "Hi" to you all!

 

[AKgramma]

This morning, I relocated the juveniles to the shelving unit and left the 3 large ladies in the 3x3. Had to lower the Autos, as they were already in the lights!

So, Here we go.

The 3x3.

Closeup of a fan leaf of Polar Express Auto Fem at 26 days from seed.

Closeup of Polar Express. The notches on the posts are 1" apart.

Closeup of Diesel Berry

Juvenile "tent" right, with the AK48's and flowering shrub clones.

Juvenile "tent" left with the mystery plants.

And that's my Tour of Two Tents.

 

[Arctic Bowl]

Just "passing" thru

 

[AKgramma]

Just "passing" thru

TY, AB! I been reading what yer doing. Absolutely AWESOME!

I am finally getting some decent-sized growth from the Autos. Never had that much foliage with the BBL's, but the BBLs do put out a good smoke.

Judging from the size of Polar Express' leaves, it's going to get a heck of a lot taller than 80 CM (the height stated on Autoseed's site). I'm working out strategies to give that one the headroom she's going to need, or I may tie her down a bit. so she doesn't hit the LEDs. Her lower fan leaves are 7" in diameter!

Looks like a couple of my mystery plants are Sativas. That means they will be a LOOONG time vegging and a longer time flowering!

 

[AKgramma]

Time for an update on my two Auto fems, both 32 days from seed.

The Diesel Berry did not waste any time on lots of leaves. She went right to flower on day 32. Here are 3 shots I took of her this morning.

And here is the Polar Express, now 14-1/2" tall, with huge leaves. She is going to be a big one!

Seen next to these two is the Mother BBL with her 3 babies. With them being attached to their mother, they are going to take some time to root. But I don't want to risk losing this sticky, gooey, sweet Bubblelicious strain from my grow. All 4 plants are doing well.

I switched this unit to a regular 16/8, as a grower advised, to get the best yield from the autos. Mother BBL will remain in veg indefinitely, as long as I can keep cloning her, and she stays alive.

Th juveniles in the other set-up are nothing to report on. But i do see a couple of sativa mystery plants that could benefit from up-potting and some nutes. Beginning to see some signs of nute deficiencies. Mostly large brown spots. I missed last week's feeding. Not a good thing. The sativas are going to be around for a long time, if experience is any indication.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Nice update. I need to post one in mine, but I've been putting it off waiting to see who gets chosen by SmokeSara to test/review/learn/teach about one of their new panels (in combination with one of their tents). I rather doubt I will be that lucky, but... With one tent, I can shoehorn it in without too much rearranging. With two 4'x4' tents, plus clearance around each for ventilation purposes, I'll have to disassemble the bed or else... When I'm, err, sleeping solo, I sleep on a small stack of 14" wide planks so that my shoulders can hang off each side with my arms hanging just a little lower than my body, on the floor. (Issues from injuries received in 1989.) Not really a big deal, but I'm feeling like I'm in limbo at the moment, lol, so everything is half done - and all undone - and there's no easy way to take pictures of the girls(???) without also showing half of the room. Err... Rambling (better than PGP-signing as a way to ensure that, yes, this post really was authored by me ) again.

Your plants look healthy, and I am glad of that.

Am I seeing correctly - that those auto-flowering plants started producing flowers before going to "staggered" nodes? I was not aware of that behavior.

My two growing plants have yet to start producing staggered nodes, they're still right across from each other. I do not recall exactly how old they are, but this seems strange to me. It's not (AfaIK) due to their size. Yes, they are small as I have not really been encouraging them to greatness (lol) - but I've seen the classic sign of maturity in much smaller plants that I never bothered to re-pot from the usual red plastic Solo cups. So it has me scratching my head a bit. I haven't been able to find any preflowers either. That might be because, well, my vision is pretty appalling these days. But, again... scratching my head.

I have also seen a 20/4 light schedule suggested as being recommended for auto-flowers, although I do NOT have the experience to offer - or even have, at this point - an opinion of which is most likely to provide a greater yield at harvest time (with all other factors being equal). But I have seen the results of experiments that showed a 20/4 schedule giving a slightly greater yield than 18/6 (and that giving a greater - but the difference was not so slight - yield than the next two or three other tested light schedules) when growing phototropic plants. I'm running 18/6 right now, but am not welded to it. I've thought about dropping a couple hours off the light - they're more or less sativa dominant, so I wouldn't expect them to transition to the flowering phase at 14/8 - or even less, with "spiking" the darkness with a little light (ala "gas-light routine"), but as I am still uncertain that they are both females, I have been trying to do what I could to minimize even potential stresses. Playing around with the light has already resulted in some crunchiness here and there :rolleyes3 . Besides, I'll soon have seedlings, and they might get parked near the same light, so... 18/6 for now.

Yes, some leaves can get quite large. I've seen indica leaves that'd serve as dinner plates. And many (, many) years ago, I saw a sativa which had 13-fingered leaves (they might have even been 15-fingered, it has been so long that the memory is fuzzy), and even though the fingers were thin, they were long (and there were a lot of them, lol). So long that for about a year after that, whenever I was in the woods - which was often - and saw some random plant with long skinny leaves, I'd plow through briers, "irritant" plants, and even mud bogs to get a closer look. I was... younger then (you can take that as a statement that I was dumber, more agile, or... vastly more optimistic, I suppose).

I forget what size pots you have your auto-flowering plants in. Would you care to remind me? I am thinking I will either use a five-gallon bucket (or cat litter pail - I was told that they have a five gallon capacity), a two-gallon bucket, or an old 12" diameter clay pot (which I do not know the capacity of). I'm really not expecting much from it; it's looking like I'll be using the "brand B" organic (and "fortified with nutrients") garden soil with not enough perlite, and I might just say, "Screw it," and throw in some Osmocote Plus pellets and some Epsom salt if I can find it (why not a galvanized nail and a little of this and a little of that from these bags of organic(?) supplements that were gifted to me that I cannot make out the smudged writing on, too, lol?) and then just give it water from the time I stick it in the pot until I'm ready to harvest. So... pot size might not really matter all that much, IDK. My knowledge of auto-flowering strains - and of growing them - could fit on the head of a pin and still leave plenty of room for the proverbial angels to dance on it....

 

[SweetSue]

TS, the basic rules for autos are simple:

1. Plant them into the pot you intend to harvest them in. Autos have a different root structure initially than photos and you can stall them with transplanting. I get around this by transplanting before the tap root has reached the bottom of the solo cup, but that takes some experience to get right.

2. 20/4 lighting is the best for yeild. I got that advice from cajuncelt, a professional cultivator in Colorado, and Atrain, who now works on the staff at another site dedicated to Autoflowering plants.

3. Don't switch to bloom nutes too soon. Autos start booming at 2-3 weeks in many cases, but you want to continue treating it like a vegging plant for a few more weeks before beginning any bloom nutes.

That's really all there is to it, with the understanding that they'll grow under any light and any light schedule.

 

[SweetSue]

That's one interesting cloning method. How long are you figuring on it taking for them to root?

 

[TorturedSoul]

1. Plant them into the pot you intend to harvest them in. Autos have a different root structure initially than photos and you can stall them with transplanting.

Oh? I new about the advice to start them in the container/medium that you plan to harvest them from. But I had just been assuming that it was because of the usual delay a plant evidences after it has been allowed to become root-bound and then was transplanted into a larger pot. I have seen that with regular (phototropic) strains. With those, of course, it's not a big deal since the gardener can just add a few days to a week to the plants' vegetative cycle. It may affect yield, but probably not significantly so. With an auto-flowering strain, though, the length of the plant's life is a (more or less) fixed thing... and I thought that was it more than anything else. Like, IDK, the time it would take to recover from the stress event would be time that the plant wouldn't be growing. And, if it happened early, as many repots often do, it'd be like making a mistake at the beginning of a drag race - a little lost time at the beginning of the ¼-mile generally equates to a whole lot of lost time at the finish line. Or in this case, a significant hit to one's yield.

Hmm. This bears thinking about. I had already planned on not repotting but, well, it's still a chance to learn something.

2. 20/4 lighting is the best for yeild.

That was what my (admittedly limited) research seemed to point to. I will probably be growing it under 18/6 for the first month or so, then switching to 12/12. Unless I rig something up under little lights (thanks again, lol!). But I might end up throwing those into the tent along with the Amare Technologies SE350+UVB IF I can arrange things to my satisfaction in such a way that I feel I can still get a good read/test of the LED panel (IOW, I'd like to use the fluorescents to cover some of the space that the LED will not, but I do not want them to influence the plants in the panel's 3'x3' footprint). Oh, and if I can afford the extra electricity :rolleyes3 . If I hit the lottery err... I mean get to use another LED panel, then I will have plenty of light and space, but might not be able to use the fluorescents until mid- or late-Spring. Or I might donate them to my buddy (you know who ) if he manages not to lose his camper, is able to keep his generator running, and IF that is okay with you? It's not every day I find someone - especially someone poor like me instead of just "a little" poor, lol - who'll drop everything on go on The Great Adventure with only hope and optimism that we'll have enough fuel to make it back, hee hee hee.

I know that reducing the light-hours will significantly and adversely affect the yield (of the auto-flowering plant), which is why I'm only planning to grow the one at this time. Next time, I'll plant one of those first so that it can be mostly finished by the time I'm ready to switch to 12/12.

3. Don't switch to bloom nutes too soon. Autos start booming at 2-3 weeks in many cases, but you want to continue treating it like a vegging plant for a few more weeks before beginning any bloom nutes.

By that I assume you mean don't overload it with phosphorous and potassium, and continue giving it nitrogen? That would be my intention (through the end of the stretch, anyway). The soil has nutrients in it, but I think it is not an extreme amount. I might not add the Osmocote Plus after all. I'd like to, because it's the one nutrient that I have that is reasonably fresh ( :rolleyes3 ) . But... We'll see. Hey, speaking of nutrients: I seem to have smudged the writing on some of them, and I cannot seem to remember what you told me (for some reason ) . Do you think if I sent you some pictures, you might be able to help me puzzle them out? I seem to remember it being mostly (all?) organic - and as I mentioned, the candidate soil is also organic - so if I can figure out what is what I could try an all-organic mixture for that plant. And for more than that one in a future grow. My roots are in feeding the plants directly instead of feeding the soil and its microscopic critters, so it could be an adventure. It could also be a disaster, I suppose, but... Since it is not my entire grow - or even the bulk of it - it might actually be a fun learning experience. IDK. My mind is not... since the wreck I was involved in back in the late '80s, I have the occasional period where decisions are... difficult. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be; if you asked me what I wanted for lunch, and even presented me with only two choices, I am no longer likely to stand there muttering... trying to work out such a hard decision... until I finally either start flowing tears or (more likely) throw a tantrum, storm out, and end up going hungry because I was unable to decide whether I wanted the ham sandwich or baloney (yeah, stuff like that used to happen once in a while back in the '90s). But making decisions that are of moderate importance still give me difficulties from time to time. I think... it seems to happen now mainly when the depression is more... overwhelming. But the two things do not always coincide. So I might end up just throwing in soil, burying the seed, and mixing three-year old nutrients for it. Who knows? I don't.

There was something else I wanted to discuss with you. But I'll get to that tomorrow (lol).

I still can't get over you not "sanitizing" your place when your landlord had to get in there recently. I can picture it, ha ha, but I can't get over it . Maybe it's a good thing you're not my neighbor. I have a feeling we'd need a third neighbor between us who'd be willing to say, "Hey, wait a minute! <SLAP> <SLAP> Snap out of it."

 

[TorturedSoul]

That's one interesting cloning method. How long are you figuring on it taking for them to root?

What I'm wondering is if there will be clear signs that they have rooted. Since they are still attached to the mother plant, I would expect them to continue to be healthy, and to continue growing the entire time. My fear would be that I would assume they are rooted - and cut them loose - too soon.

With the air layering method, one can always wait until the roots show themselves (if a clear under-wrap is used along with an outer wrap that keeps light off but which can be opened without disturbing things). But that method is somewhat more complicated.

Definitely keep us updated on this, AKgramma. I do not recall ever following a journal where it was used. And my only personal experience was in long ago outdoor grows where it was an accidental (and unnoticed until after the fact) thing.

Coincidentally, I was just reading about a plant I received a cutting for recently that I was going to grow here until I learned it's toxic to pets, and the recommendation for over-wintering was to root a branch using the method that you're using because it's said to have a higher chance of success (obviously, that should be at or near 100% unless it is disturbed too soon - or at least I assume so?). I... managed to root a cutting in a foam cup of perlite . It'll be going to Mom's house as soon as I can remember where I put a little "houseplant pot" I have, and then I'll worry about finding a larger container in the Spring if she hasn't killed it through... ah... severe water rationing.

 

[AKgramma]

Lots to answer here, and I don't know how the multi-quote thingy works.

TS, my trash bins are 3 gallons. I have used the flat storage bins, but they do take up a lot of floor space. But I have the headroom for 14" bins plus about 36" of plant at maturity. I found the trash bins much easier to handle, too, cause they have built-in grips and two will fit in a 3 gallon storage bin for runoff. Makes cleanup really easy.

My Diesel berry auto went to flower before it exhibited the mature alternate growth pattern. This one is in a HURRY!

Sue and TS: I expect some roots in about 6 weeks to 2 months. The branches are anchored to clear solo cups, which are 3/4 buried in their Mother's soil. I will see roots through the cups. I decided to bury the cups in the mother's pot so I could move her around. One COULD use external pots for a much large plant, but then you have to put the whole gang on a turntable or a large tray to do maintenance on all her sides.

As for lights, my light bill is getting too high, so I put the juveniles on gaslight and the big girls on 16/8. Now both units are open to the room, so they get more light from each other's "tent" after hours. Its the only way I have to keep the temps down and to lower my light bill. Oh and 2 fans in each unit plus one box fan blowing air into the room from the house and a double window fan for exhaust.

Everyone got a dose of mixed nutes, then a thorough watering today, to disperse the nutes to the bottom. I expect the new growth on the juveniles not to spot again. I determined from the pattern of the spots that it was a phosphorus deficiency. I think half of them need repotting so they can stretch out and get the nutes they need. Will have to do that in the next day or two, as I find time.

I hope I covered all your questions. Thank you for the nice discussion on my journal. I am THRILLED that you all are interested in my use of soil layering to clone. I just lose 90% of my clones, with the traditional methods, and I can't afford to lose ANY BBLs.