Beccabuds Photon Follies: An Ongoing Adventure In Tiny Closet Gardening

The second and third seed have sprouted in the 10-gallon pot and are starting to open their cotyledons. Dug a form-fitting hole for #1 so transplant will be super easy when it's ready. Should have just started it in the big pot. Gave the big pot a gallon of water. No run-off yet, so I'll give it another gallon in the morning. Going to have to be careful about watering; this is my first grow in fabric pots and pots this big. Light is running 18 hours a day at dial setting 5 (~75 watts) and is 14" above the seedlings.

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Don't know what variety they are but I finally have some healthy sprouts!

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Wednesday I transplanted #1 into the big pot. It was a snap with the form fitted hole ready for it. #1 is doing ok but 2 & 3 have misshapen first true leaves. It's worth noting that these were planted directly into the soil, as were the failed Critical XXL and DoSiDos. The soil in #1's 4 inch pot was sterilized in the microwave. That has me wondering if I have pathogens or bugs in the soil that is damaging roots. The Critical XXL definitely had a failed tap root that looked bulbous. So just in case of root aphids today I mixed 4 oz of SNS 203 in a gallon of water and drenched the soil with the garden sprayer. I hope #1 doesn't develop weird leaves now.

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Number 1 is definitely reaching for moon beams, @Smilemeds #2 and #3 are more like mutant ninja seedlings from another planet... they did all start to take off after the SNS203 drench so maybe there was something weird in the soil. Either that or FFOF is just not good soil for seedlings...
I hope Uno is female!

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InTheShed said:
Thank you GBD! What do you think...10 days?

Thanks jj! Could be 10 days from harvest depending on what GDB is thinking.

Just goes to show you that all the silica in the world won't hold up some flowers. :cheesygrinsmiley:

Thanks for the update!
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Buds Buddy said:
Sounds to me like everyone's doing this a little differently. I up-canned from a 1 gal. plastic pot to the 5 gal. SIP Bucket. Filled the res. completely & Top watered with about 40 oz. I probably top fed 3 times the first week. After that they were drinking from the res. At first about 1/2 gal. per day. Within 5-7 days a gal. per day. Now, 2 gal. per day.
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beccabuds said:
Number 1 is definitely reaching for moon beams, @Smilemeds #2 and #3 are more like mutant ninja seedlings from another planet... they did all start to take off after the SNS203 drench so maybe there was something weird in the soil. Either that or FFOF is just not good soil for seedlings...
I hope Uno is female!

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The ebb and flow of every unique grow…Masterly understanding this “ebb and flow,” is clear with statements like
🐢 “mutant ninja seedlings from another planet”🪐

The cost of our loving, healing, art of growing can be high…however the later rewards are always higher…

Sending Uno love and beaming light💡🌈

Peace naturally. ~billy
 
beccabuds said:
Number 1 is definitely reaching for moon beams, @Smilemeds #2 and #3 are more like mutant ninja seedlings from another planet... they did all start to take off after the SNS203 drench so maybe there was something weird in the soil. Either that or FFOF is just not good soil for seedlings...
I hope Uno is female!

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There is no problem with FFOF for seedlings. I've been using it straight from the bag for 5 years with no issues.
Seems almost everyone who does all that seed soaking & baggie crap have problems. Quit playing with your seeds & plant them the way Mother Nature intended & you'll have greater success. I use to do all that crazy stuff too (I'm Guilty). Now I fill a Solo Cup with FFOF. Give the soil a feeding of nutes. Let that sit over night & drop my seed straight in the soil a 1/4" down. Then just leave it be. It wont need any water or feed for about a week. In 2-3 days you will have a seedling. Even my 5 year old seeds pop right away this way. I have about 99% success starting my seeds this way. Try it, You'll like it !
 
Speaking of ebb & flow, Smilemeds, I have just about all the parts needed for a flood table except the space to set it up, lol! I've also thought about using my 4 gallon buckets with a drip system and perlite media. For now, though, this big bag of dirt ought to work!

Fertilizer day has arrived in the tiny closet, although the way #1 has taken off I could probably skip it. Each of the 10-gallon pots, the cannabis and the cactus, will get a cup of Geoflora Veg blended into the top soil and watered in. The cannabis pot gets 15mL of Terpinator in it's gallon of water, which has been purified and pH adjusted to 6.3.

After each pot has gotten a gallon of water to settle the GF Veg into the soil, I'm going to sprinkle Mosquito Bits atop the soil to pre-emptively control Fungus Gnats (8 or 9 are stuck to a sticky trap I put out) and water that in till the pots drain. The Mosquito Bits inoculate the soil with BTi, which is Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis & deadly to Fungus Gnats.

#1 is showing phenomenal, explosive growth now, but has some weird leaf deformations just like 2 & 3.

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Buds Buddy said:
There is no problem with FFOF for seedlings. I've been using it straight from the bag for 5 years with no issues.
Seems almost everyone who does all that seed soaking & baggie crap have problems. Quit playing with your seeds & plant them the way Mother Nature intended & you'll have greater success. I use to do all that crazy stuff too (I'm Guilty). Now I fill a Solo Cup with FFOF. Give the soil a feeding of nutes. Let that sit over night & drop my seed straight in the soil a 1/4" down. Then just leave it be. It wont need any water or feed for about a week. In 2-3 days you will have a seedling. Even my 5 year old seeds pop right away this way. I have about 99% success starting my seeds this way. Try it, You'll like it !
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I have germinated seeds both ways, @Buds Buddy and had success both ways. One advantage of the paper towel method is you can screen out seeds that fail to germinate. There does appear to be something going on in this FFOF. One bag smelled funky and I get the yellow mushrooms growing in it. The Critical XXL failed to develop properly, the DoSiDos seed cracked open and died, and 2 & 3 are stunted. I microwave sterilized the soil #1 was potted in and it did fine. They all perked up with the dose of SNS203. A cup of GF Veg was mixed into the soil a week prior to planting the failed Critical XXL.
 
beccabuds said:
I have germinated seeds both ways, @Buds Buddy and had success both ways. One advantage of the paper towel method is you can screen out seeds that fail to germinate. There does appear to be something going on in this FFOF. One bag smelled funky and I get the yellow mushrooms growing in it. The Critical XXL failed to develop properly, the DoSiDos seed cracked open and died, and 2 & 3 are stunted. I microwave sterilized the soil #1 was potted in and it did fine. They all perked up with the dose of SNS203. A cup of GF Veg was mixed into the soil a week prior to planting the failed Critical XXL.
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Yeah, maybe you got a bad bag of soil. Mushrooms growing in it would mean some kind of Fungus I'd think.
I'll just ask you this. When you use the soak method doesn't it take 2-3 days to crack the seed ? Then you plant the seed & wait another 2-3 days for it to break ground ? To me, you just wasted 2-3 days messing with soaking that's not really needed. The seed straight in soil pops in 2-3 days; so you save the 2-3 days wasted on soaking a seed. Of course this is just my observation & opinion & nothing more. It's just that I see so many growers having issues when they soak their seeds. I truly believe a seed does not like to be messed with once it's cracked open & it causes the issues most growers have. I had a lot of failures with the baggie method. I have about 1 in 100 straight in the soil. That leaves me to believe the seed doesn't want to be messed with once it's cracked.
 
Yes, I'm pretty certain something in the soil was responsible.
This isn't the first bad soil I've had. A few years ago I got a bag of Miracle Gro at Home Depot and it was so full of Fungus Gnats I ended up throwing it out...
Anyway, the SNS203 seemed to help. I'm glad they are doing better and I'm finally getting some growth.
 
beccabuds said:
Yes, I'm pretty certain something in the soil was responsible.
This isn't the first bad soil I've had. A few years ago I got a bag of Miracle Gro at Home Depot and it was so full of Fungus Gnats I ended up throwing it out...
Anyway, the SNS203 seemed to help. I'm glad they are doing better and I'm finally getting some growth.
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We must have gotten Miracle Grow from the same lot. Same thing happened to me. Bought at Home Depot too.
 
They leave it outdoors stacked on pallets where it's exposed to the weather and bags get punctured accidently. Then it sits there, potentially for months, after the bugs get in...

Today I removed plants 2 & 3 from the 10-gallon pot and put them in 4" pots in the cacti garden where they can bonzai to their hearts content. Uno was topped at the 5th node a few days ago in anticipation of the beginning of low stress training (LST). That began today with the installation of 4 garden stakes to tie off to, and a bit more trimming to make watering easier. Uno also got a gallon of purified water with 5mL of Terpinator and 1.5mL of pH Up. The solution measured 0.218mS ec (153ppm) at pH 6.3.

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Uno has gotten huge while 2 & 3 are finally more or less done being funky!

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Plants 2 & 3 removed & repotted, Uno's LST begins with the removal of the first 2 nodes, removal of the feeder leaves for nodes 3 & 5, and training the 3rd node branches. Training for the 4th & 5th node branches will begin in a few days when they get longer. The plant will continue to get 18 hours of light per day. Watch it turn out to be male, lol!

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Here you can see how weird #2 is. #3 is just as funky. Multiple grow tips but never topped, distorted leaves, stunted growth. Maybe age damaged genes in the seeds? Who knows. They are doing better but digging them up and repotting them was a big shock. Lights for the cacti tent are at 14Hrs/day so there may be a gender reveal in store soon. They were getting 18 hour days in the closet.​
 
I ordered 25 bamboo stakes that I can easily cut to length to make some horizontal cross braces to tie the branches to, although just the long yellow twist ties over to the vertical stakes is getting the LST job done. Planning on using 5" twist ties to attach the horizontal cross members to the vertical stakes or cable ties if necessary.

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The bamboo cross braces will work much better than this goofy setup.


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Those are some huge feeder leaves.​
 
It looks like my suspicions were correct. I can see the early beginnings of male flowers on Uno. I thought it might be male because it grew so fast and started reaching for the sky where it can spread pollen farther... that sure ain't gonna happen.
Oh, well. I have 2 more plants in the other tent and there's a good chance one or both of them is female. I'll just chalk this up to a good lesson in low stress training. I think I'll set the light in the other tent back to 12 hour days and see if I can sex the 2 small plants, then transplant the female (assuming I get one) back to the 10-gallon pot, reset it to veg mode with 20 hour daze and start training it. By then the bamboo will have arrived and neener's nanners identified with certainty.

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The nascent neener nanner planter... formerly known as #1.

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Always have a back-up plan, lol! That's 2 in front and 3 in the back.​
 
Uno's gender is uncertain so I am just going to carry on and hope I'm wrong about it being male. Yesterday was the scheduled fertilization day but other stuff got in the way, so today I blended a cup of Geoflora Veg into the top soil of the 10-gallon cloth pot, then watered it in with a gallon of water. The gallon of purified water had 5mL of Terpinator and 1.5mL of pH Up added, and measured .26mS ec at pH 6.4. Did a bit of thinning and adjusted the tie downs. 28 growing tips and counting...

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The bamboo stakes arrived today and as I'd hoped, my PVC pipe cutting tool worked perfectly to cut custom sized cross members. Installed them with nylon cable ties to the green stakes and twist ties loosely secure the branches. Much better...

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Yesterday I gave the plant a gallon of purified water treated with 10ml of Terpinator, 7.5ml of CalMag and 2ml of pH Up. The solution measured .98mS ec at pH 6.3. Gender still indeterminate, still running 18 hr days. Photos taken today.

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I'll need a hedge trimmer soon...


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A look under the hood. Vroom, vroom! :Rasta:

Happy Halloween, everyone!​
 
Today Uno got a cup of Geoflora Veg and a gallon of purified water with 10mL of Terpinator, 1.5mL of pH Up and a half teaspoon of Root Magic Mycorrhizae. Solution measured 0.41mS ec at pH 6.4 prior to adding the myco. Tilled in the Geoflora and used the garden sprayer to water it in with said gallon. Didn't see any run-off so mixed and applied another gallon of the same, some of which went to plants 2 & 3 in the other tent, and all the cacti. Plants 2 & 3 also each got a half teaspoon of Geoflora. Did some judicious trimming to let more light down into the canopy. All 4 braced branches have grown all the way over to the green plant stakes now and the plant has become a dense bush. The lights are set to dial position 5 (75 watts) and the lamp is 12 inches above the canopy. The plants are 6 weeks old today. I'm planning on flipping the light to 12 hour days in two weeks with the first application of Geoflora Bloom. Need to get some more Bloom on order as I'm down to about a cup left after the Triple Header grow.

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Uno has too many grow tips to count now.

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#2 and #3 are kicking it in the tent with the Peruvian Torches and San Pedro's. They were both inadvertently "droughted" and seriously wilted from lack of water. Got to be more careful of that. The Cacti were un-phased by the dry spell, naturally.​
 
Nice grow! I can only flower one girl at a time. Really good to see the cacti! I live in a hi desert environment and would love a nice big stand of San Pedros in my backyard. I'll be popping in if ya don't mind.
Stay stoneder.
 
Thanks, @Fredwak and welcome! I've had as many as 6 females in square 4 gallon pots in my little closet and get yields of around 10 ounces. I'm kind of experimenting with the 10 gallon cloth pots to see if I can beat that record with fewer plants and a simpler support regimen. So far I'm amazed by the growth rate.
 
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