AKGramma's Perpetual Grow

AKgramma said:
It's nearly time for me to up-pot my Arjan's haze #1 juvenile to its final pot. I have to decide among a standard 5 gallon pot, a tall 3 gallon trash bin (14" tall) or a 2 gallon kitty litter jug. I have been pinching her to force more lateral growth. Articles say she can get 4 to 5 feet in a 5 gallon, but that assumes no training.

I also want to clone her, since she is my only specimen of this strain. She is a vigorous plant, so her clones should root rather quickly. Her ancestry is G-13 x Neville's haze, two strains I am unfamiliar with. But the specs sound good, (strong Sativa) and the family might like it.

Everyone else looked happy and healthy today. Tomorrow everyone gets a dose of Nutes and a preventative spray for mites. Which formula I use will depend on finding a colony, which means a Neem treatment, or if clean, an herbal/oil spray formulated for mites.

Male #2 has been put into the breeding unit under 12/12, while the seeded mystery sativas finish up. I was surprised how quickly they declined, once pollinated, a totally different finish than sensimilla. Now that I have had one successful pollination, and am near the end, I know what to look for the next time I make seeds.
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Experience. There's no substitute. I'm in awe of you. I haven't reached the point of being ready to play with genetics yet. May I ask, how long have you been growing?

You reminded me I have a spinosad foliar to perform. :straightface: I'm seriously considering switching the whole grow to Doc's kit just to get away from pests. You winning the battle girl?
 
SweetSue said:
Experience. There's no substitute. I'm in awe of you. I haven't reached the point of being ready to play with genetics yet. May I ask, how long have you been growing?

You reminded me I have a spinosad foliar to perform. :straightface: I'm seriously considering switching the whole grow to Doc's kit just to get away from pests. You winning the battle girl?
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SUE! Glad you stopped by!

I have been growing plants indoors and outdoors since I was a teenager. (about 50 years) I got into the weed hobby on 3/5/2015, with a lot of research and setting up a closet and a shelving unit for the new sprouts. I was gifted my first 10 OGK seeds on 3/21/2015.

I did knock down all visible mites after a solid week or two of spraying alternately with Neem, and oil/herbal spray, and a pyrethum-based spray. I also removed all leaves that had colonies of adults and eggs.

One never gets rid of them, however. All it takes is one live egg, or one pregnant female to keep the enemy camp going.

So one must inspect the grow every day. They seem to like the attention and the handling, and reward you with healthy growth and good yields. :slide:
 
AKgramma said:
SUE! Glad you stopped by!

I have been growing plants indoors and outdoors since I was a teenager. (about 50 years) I got into the weed hobby on 3/5/2015, with a lot of research and setting up a closet and a shelving unit for the new sprouts. I was gifted my first 10 OGK seeds on 3/21/2015.

I did knock down all visible mites after a solid week or two of spraying alternately with Neem, and oil/herbal spray, and a pyrethum-based spray. I also removed all leaves that had colonies of adults and eggs.

One never gets rid of them, however. All it takes is one live egg, or one pregnant female to keep the enemy camp going.

So one must inspect the grow every day. They seem to like the attention and the handling, and reward you with healthy growth and good yields. :slide:
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Once I thought I had them under some semblance of control I did a daily inspection. Any leaf that showed signs of early markings got clipped and carefully removed to the trash can, bundled up and out of the house ASAP! :straightface: it's amazing how sharp the eyes become to signs if mites moving again. I got to where I could spot the very first tracks.

You're being diligent, that's better than I ever pulled off. I keep forgetting I have pests to take care of. Thankfully, my mites never got to where they had webs running.
 
It's too easy, after a major battle with the Borg mites, to get complacent. You think you finally got control and forget to check for a few days, then BAM! You got webs across your lovely buds!

Now I inspect every day, and if I see ANYTHING crawling anywhere on the ladies, I soak them down good with one of my mite concoctions. I found ONE mite tonight and the entire grow in all 3 units got sprayed down!
 
Yesterday, I moved Male #2 into the breeding tent, which gave more room in the large 3 x 3 unit, which is under flower.

I noticed that the ladies were already hugging the CFL lighting that is mounted about a foot under the LED. So I removed the shelf they were standing on and lowered them to the floor, giving them another foot or so before they hit the LEDs.

The AK 48's and the Polar Express are done stretching, but Mama BBL, now with plenty of room, is stretching, and showing off all her flower clusters. I think she will catch up in height to the other 3, in spite of having been LST'd and tied down heavily this past year. She is free of all her restraints and is free to grow as she will.

The headspace in this unit is 60", the largest and tallest of the three units. All four plants totally fill the space up!

This is the first time I have let them get so big before switching, and I'm glad I did. They range in age from 3 months to 8 months of age. Surprisingly, they are all nearly the same height, with the BBL mama much wider than the other 3, and the oldest of the batch.

Harvest is going to be an experience! But I don't expect them to mature earlier than March. They took a long time to flower in earnest.

In the unit I use for breeding, Male #2 is putting out pods, which appeared overnight. The mystery sativas in seed are still alive, filling out their pollinated buds, and the leaves are almost all yellow. The buds are still green, so they have a ways to go. I expect to leave them till they dry on the plants and begin to split, like they would do outside.

Not much to report in the veg tent, except that one clone dried up and a flowering shrub I purchased as a slip finally died, too. So two solo cups retired. I'm still trying to decide how big of pot to put the mystery clones into, esp the one I want to train and grow out as a mother. I have enough clones of BBL to keep the strain going, and 8 BBL clones in cups and zip bags while they root.

A lot of strains with a lot going on. I think I have the rotation figured out, so we aren't over crowded.
 
Another experiment, inspired by Oldgrower64: plant 2 plants in a square 5 gallon pot (recycled kitty litter bin). His colas are ENORMOUS, but he is using a fancy soil mix that requires no nutes. One step at a time.

Since I don't have a kitty litter bin that big, I'll use one of my new 5-gallon pots. it has a lower profile than my utility pails, and the transplants will be clones, so they wont have a taproot. I only have room for one 5 gal pot in the veg closet. It's pretty full of young and revegging plants right now.

Thinking that someday I might upgrade to 5 gallon pots, I purchased 6 heavy-duty turntables that support plants. This will allow me to rotate the pot to tend all sides and to allow more even light exposure.
 
The seeded ladies are nearing the end their life. All the leaves are crispy, but the calyxes are still green. I absolutely want to make sure the seeds are mature before harvesting them.

Any advice on this? I know at least a couple of you who follow my journal breed your cannabis.
 
AKgramma said:
Another experiment, inspired by Oldgrower64: plant 2 plants in a square 5 gallon pot (recycled kitty litter bin). His colas are ENORMOUS, but he is using a fancy soil mix that requires no nutes. One step at a time.

Since I don't have a kitty litter bin that big, I'll use one of my new 5-gallon pots. it has a lower profile than my utility pails, and the transplants will be clones, so they wont have a taproot. I only have room for one 5 gal pot in the veg closet. It's pretty full of young and revegging plants right now.

Thinking that someday I might upgrade to 5 gallon pots, I purchased 6 heavy-duty turntables that support plants. This will allow me to rotate the pot to tend all sides and to allow more even light exposure.
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I just completed this up-pot. There was enough room in the 5 gallon pot to set a couple of smaller pots with younger plants onto the soil. This will do now, to save real estate.

The 5 gallon now contains two healthy Bubblelicious clones, the strain I am trying to maintain via cloning. Their mother, of course, decided to flower, after a year in veg, so this double planting will replace her as mother, until she/they, too, decide to flower, in spite of the light schedule!

The closet looks like a mish-mash of plants of varying ages, which it is, but it is not well organized or picture-perfect. I had to go where there was sufficient light for the little ones, among the juveniles that are close to up-potting. I have one Mystery Sativa clone that MUST be up-potted soon. She is almost as tall as those in the 3 gallon trash bins. I'm going to give up on one bare-branch attempt at reveg, and give her the space.

The main flower unit is massively full of leaves and flowers! It looks like a jungle, even tho there are only 4 mature ladies in there. I ran my fingers through their branches to remove any dried leaves, and did a cursory inspection for signs of the Borg Mites. I'm doing as little defoliation as possible, since I have auxiliary CFL,s around the sides and down low to feed the flowers. This seems to work well for me, and I believe my harvest weight would be less if I trimmed all the lower buds out. But, I could be wrong.

The question is more smaller buds vs fewer larger buds. Some of my strains do not form colas, but have clumps of flowers in each node down the branches. So, IMO, quantity is my goal, as I'm experiencing with the BBL clones.
 
My electric bill for November is over $200! I was able to consolidate and turn off about 200 Watts in the breeding unit, since the seeded ladies are nearing the end, and the Male (#2) who has a diesel background is still fairly young. it's the only place right now I can save electricity.
 
AKgramma said:
My electric bill for November is over $200! I was able to consolidate and turn off about 200 Watts in the breeding unit, since the seeded ladies are nearing the end, and the Male (#2) who has a diesel background is still fairly young. it's the only place right now I can save electricity.
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Sounds like you've been busy AK, we feel your pain on the electric. We just popped 6 beans, 5 are up and one being stubborn but we're hopeful :-). New iPad made it so we can now type again lol.

Blessed Buds our friend and be well :passitleft:
 
Thanks, AB! I appreciate your sympathy! :passitleft: You and I share many of the same issues, but, of course, your area is a whole lot colder than mine. MJ didn't become legal till I was already relocated here, and I would never have started the hobby on my own.

I did some research in the seed and harvest forum and learned that I need to let the seed pods dry and split on the stem before harvesting them. In short, let the two ladies die a natural death.

With some creative rearranging, I think I can get another 5 gallon pot into veg with a double planting of, 2 more BBL's, or two Sticky Missy clones.

In the breeding unit I can plant the diesel male and one Sticky Missy clone (as a breeding pair) into one pot. The female clone is large enough, altho a tad smaller than I like, to put under 12/12.
 
Re: the Mystery Sativas: Well, my idea to put a male and female into one pot was derailed, when the male decided to accelerate his pod-making. There is no way the Sticky Missy clone is going to be ready in a couple days. So, I trimmed the leaves out from around his spikes, and tied down his branches over a couple of paper plates.

This male dropped all his leaves up to the point where the spikes have formed, so I don't see much hope in revegging him after I collect his pollen. I will try, however, because I want this one to come back, as he has some diesel ancestry (according to his scent).

The first male, however, is revegging just fine. There was enough growth below the pods to come back from the harvest. And that male is revegging quickly. A week or less under 18/6 and he is already putting out new shoots.

Re: Ladies in flower: Other than keeping them fed and mite-free, it's just waiting for the flowers to mature into buds. I try to keep them clean of dying and dead leaves, and an occasional trim out of weak branches that aren't good enough for cloning.

Clones and plants from seeds in the veg closet look green and mite-free. I am pinching the mystery clones back aggressively, because the mystery mothers were very tall, reaching right up to the lights, which were 48" above the enclosure floor. Of course, the drawback to pinching them out, is smaller leaves and smaller buds, but more of them. Since my family cant use big colas in their bongs or joints, I am satisfied with the smaller flower clusters.

The 15 Jock Horror Fem and 15 Autoberry seeds are begging to be sprouted, but I simply do not have room for them. I will have to do some research on the best way to store them till I'm ready for them. Maybe sometime in Spring or early Summer, I will pop a few of each.

By then, I'll have a bunch of mystery sativa seeds to share. ;-)
 
Going back to the second strain I decided to grow, Bubblelicious from Nirvana Seeds. Since I have managed to keep the strain going vis cloning, here is my assessment of the strain. I Also posted this in Seeds and Clones forum. So some of this info is a repeat of what I have in this journal.


Re: Bubblegum vs Bubblelicious

I grew Nirvana Seeds Bubblelicious (Indica) and I was very pleased with the ease of growth, sweet scent, and pure sticky goodness of its resin from seed. The family loved the smoke!

I saw that Nirvana Seeds developed a FEM version, which is good, cause I only got one really good, strong female out of 10 seeds, and less than half of the order turned out female, and I lost 4 due to failure to thrive or sprout.

I found BBL difficult to clone, however. You need to take larger clones so they don't rot in the cloner.

Those clones (2nd & 3rd generation) that HAVE survived are not as resiny, and almost no scent. Their leaves are smaller and they are not as vigorous as the 1st generation from seed. I don't have any smoke report for the 3rd generation, but the 1st and 2nd generation smoke was good for an Indica.

The year-old mother clone that I have pinched back many times, decided to flower on her own under 18/6, so I switched her this month. She has flower clusters at every node all the way down the branches, at least 200 of them on 20+ stems. It was from her that I managed to get 6 viable clones, but lost many more than that.

As for training, you need to train them early, s their stems get woody very quickly and tend to split when tied down late in veg.

I have not had much luck pollenating the BBL ladies with BBL pollen I collected. I may try them one more time with what I have left. However, the pollen may be no good, since I collected it in baggies, and had a moisture issue. One learns from his/her mistakes. :-(

So, the question remains, how do the other Bubblegum strains compare to this one?
 
We are going to stop back at the dispensary near us and check out the seeds they have in stock. We're not anywhere near ready to try out the breeding thing yet but if we do get to this point we will be pestering you on details lol. I think it's so cool to do but still chicken shit to try it. If any of our next plants look nice we would like to try to pull a few clones ( haven't ever done this either) so may have some questions on what we need and how to do it.

Blessed Buds our friend and be well :passitleft:
 
Arctic Bowl said:
We are going to stop back at the dispensary near us and check out the seeds they have in stock. We're not anywhere near ready to try out the breeding thing yet but if we do get to this point we will be pestering you on details lol. I think it's so cool to do but still chicken shit to try it. If any of our next plants look nice we would like to try to pull a few clones ( haven't ever done this either) so may have some questions on what we need and how to do it.

Blessed Buds our friend and be well :passitleft:
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Oh, definitely! Let's collaborate! :high-five:
 
Spitz said:
Hope you have room for 1 more.. only 50+ pages to catch up on
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Welcome aboard, Spitz! I can use all the input I can get! I'll follow your journal, too and see what you are up to. :welcome:
 
Did some serious maintenance on the ladies in flower. I took each one out of the "tent", picked off all dead and dying leaves, plus some unneeded fan leaves, and those that looked suspiciously like dormant mite colonies. Then gave each a through spraying of neem. I run my hands up the branches to expose all the undersides of the leaves and spray to runoff, as indicated on the instructions. Even the buds.

I am not impressed with the progress of the AK-48's. They are growing out like Christmas trees and dropping all the inner leaves. I guess what counts is the end result. The Auto Polar Express is doing the same thing, altho I am positive it is not an auto, since I had to flip it to 12/12 after a couple months of waiting for preflowers. It has none of the rush to finish like the Diesel Berry Auto did. I hope it is worth it. Like the AK-48s, its flower clusters are small, no hope for any colas, and the quantity is not what I expected. :hmmmm: Maybe the quality will make up for it.

My Mother Bubblelicious, in great contrast, is now nearly as wide as the shelving unit, say 34" x 24" x 24" tall, and promises to give me at least 200 bud clusters. I am going to nurture her clones with lots of TLC! Bringing this clone to harvest is a much different experience than the original mother, due to being tied down and cloned off of for a year. She has been used and abused, and is rewarding me with the biggest bush I have grown indoors, in 3 gallon bins.

Yeah, I know her dimensions seem small against those of some of our master growers, but she is something special in my perpetual grow. :Love:

Nothing much happening in the breeding unit, and the pods from male #2 haven't dropped their pollen yet. Patience.... patience ..... I am going to get lots of mystery Sativa seeds to play with and to share. This batch will have very narrow leaves, and phenotypes ranging from tall and lanky to short and bushy. I think this batch of mystery seeds are as close to pure Sativa as I've had, but too much to hope that they ARE 100% Sativa. And the mothers cloned very quickly, with little loss. I might like raising Sativas again. :Hookah:

Nothing to write home about in the vegging closet. The youngsters are happy, and I have an assortment of AK-48 from seed and clones, Bubblelicious clones, an Arjan's Haze from seed, which I just up-potted into a 2.5 gallon bin, the revegging Male #1 (a super pollen producer), and a couple of Mystery Sativa clones.

So no room to pop the new seeds I purchased. I've put them in the refrigerator to preserve their freshness.
 
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