Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & More!

[Dennise]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Morning Canna.....

 

[MagicJim]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Morning Canna.....

Good morning Dennise, Canna and everyone. Happy day!

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Morning Canna.....

Good Morning Ms. Member of the Month nominee for September! Congratulations on your nomination again!

Actually, Brother, OSU is correct that commercial mushroom growers call their compost "Mushroom Compost", but in general gardening, it involves composting mushrooms with other compostable materials to get a fungally dominated compost instead of a microbially dominated compost. Basically, it's the leftovers after a crop of mushrooms is harvested.

Here's another article, including a recipe:

Great information there Mr. Krip! I didn't get time last night to check into anymore, that really helps. Good info on the salt content in regards to seeds and seedlings. That is a word of caution on how to use it for sure.

Good morning Dennise, Canna and everyone. Happy day!

Good Morning Magic Man! Hope you have a wonderful day. It's sunny here and lovely out.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

My Neem Oil arrived today. Organic, pure cold pressed. It came with zero instructions on how to mix the concentrate, or what to mix in the concentrate for an insect spray. Go figure......if I were dumb and just poured the bottle into a sprayer and emptied the sprayer on all of my plants...well then I would have to order more Neem oil....right? Ha ha

So, I found a recipe for mixing on the net and also ran into a little info on HOW it works. I thought some of you might appreciate it too: (keep in mind this info is from a site that sells it, so of course they will want to promote the benefits of it)

How Does Neem Insecticide Work?

Does neem insecticide work? Some gardeners say it does not. They used some ready made spray with neem oil in it. And they didn't see the results they wanted.

Or maybe they used a proper home made insect spray with quality neem oil (product link) but did not see an immediate effect. They probably did not understand how neem oil affects insects.

Neem oil does work, but the way it works is different from other insecticides...

Neem is not an instant, knock down, kill everything pesticide. Instead it affects insects in many different and subtle ways.

How neem oil messes with the insects' brains and bodies

Neem oil has many complex active ingredients. Rather than being simple poisons, those ingredients are similar to the hormones that insects produce. Insects take up the neem oil ingredients just like natural hormones.

Neem enters the system and blocks the real hormones from working properly. Insects "forget" to eat, to mate, or they stop laying eggs. Some forget that they can fly. If eggs are produced they don't hatch, or the larvae don't moult.

Obviously insects that are too confused to eat or breed will not survive. The population eventually plummets, and they disappear. The cycle is broken.

How precisely it works is difficult for scientists to find out. There are too many different active substances in neem oil and every insect species reacts differently to neem insecticide.

Neem oil does not hurt beneficial insects. Only chewing and sucking insects are affected. It is certainly fascinating.

Like real hormones, neem works at very low concentrations, in the parts per million range. A little neem oil goes a long way.

But this is not something that happens over night. People spray neem oil as an insecticide and expect everything to die instantly, because that's what they are used to from chemical poisons. When that does not happen they conclude neem does not work.

It does work! Give it time to work. It's a much smarter way to deal with insect pests than to just kill everything.

How neem oil deters chewing and sucking insects

There is a nice story that demonstrates how grasshoppers react to neem oil insecticide. It goes something like this:

Someone did an experiment. It involved two jars, two leaves, and two grasshoppers. One leaf was sprayed with a chemical insecticide, and one with neem oil. The two grasshoppers were put in the two jars, with one leaf each.

The first grasshopper ate the leaf and died almost instantly. The grasshopper with the neem oil covered leaf did not touch the leaf and lived. At least for a few days. Eventually it starved to death.

What would you prefer? A poisonous half eaten lettuce, or an organic, untouched lettuce? It's a no brainer, isn't it?

Neem stops insects from eating the plants.

Part of this action is due to to the hormone like action of neem oil that I explained above. Insects "forget" to eat after they've been in contact with even traces of neem oil.

But it is also the presence, the mere hint of a smell of neem oil, that seems to be enough to keep leaf eating insects away. Neem oil can be very powerful as an anti-feedant and insect repellent.

This anti-feedant property is one of the most often advertised and lauded properties of neem oil insecticide. However, the hormonal effects I described above are even stronger.

Neem oil as an insect deterrent works well against grasshoppers and leafhoppers, but all other insect pests are controlled mostly through the hormone action.

The subtlety of the hormonal effects, and the fact that they may take days or weeks to manifest, makes people overlook them. Ill informed gardeners seek instant gratification, i.e. lots of dead insects immediately, rather than a balanced environment in the long run.

It's a shame, because the hormonal effect is where the real power of neem oil lies. It's the key to neem oil being an effective insecticide and good for the environment at the same time. It's also important to understand this effect to use neem oil insecticide correctly.

Neem oil works from inside the plant

Many insecticides break down quickly. They wash away with rain, or when irrigating, or the sunlight destroys them. You either have to spray all the time, or you have to spray something that's so stable that it stays around forever. That means the chemical builds up everywhere and eventually poisons everything, including you.

Neem oil breaks down very quickly, too. It is especially susceptible to UV light. But neem oil is also a systemic insecticide. That means you can pour it on the soil (not pure neem oil of course, you use a dilution or extract) and the plants absorb it. They take it up into their tissue, and it works from the inside. A leaf hopper may take a couple of bites, but that's it.

However, this does not work for all insect species. The neem ingredients accumulate in the tissues deeper inside the plant. The phloem, the outermost layer, contains hardly any. A tiny aphid feeds from the phloem, it can not penetrate deep enough to get a dose of neem. But any leaf hoppers, grass hoppers or similar chomping insects will be incapacitated quickly.

People eat neem leaves to cleanse the blood, stimulate the liver, and boost the immune system. So we certainly don't need to worry about a bit of neem inside our lettuce leaves. To me this is a much more attractive option than having poisonous foulicides build up in my garden.

Neem oil suffocates insects

Many gardeners use white oil (plain mineral oil) or even olive oil to combat soft bodied insects like aphids, thrips or whitefly. The oil coats the bugs and they suffocate. Neem oil does that as well. But it's more like a little bonus on top of everything else it does.

It can be a hazard, though. Of course there is no difference between suffocating good or bad bugs. Oil suffocates anything. So this aspect can harm beneficial insects!

Neem oil and beneficial insects

Neem is non toxic for beneficial insects. The main reason is that insects need to ingest the neem oil to be affected, and beneficial insects don't eat your plants. But you can still kill beneficial insects if you smother them with neem oil, so please be careful.

Beneficial insects are most active during the day. The best time to spray neem insecticide is very early in the morning, so the spray can dry before the good insects become active. Also a good time is the late afternoon or evening. Once the spray has dried it does not harm your bees, ladybugs, lacewings, predatory mites and wasps etc.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

And did you know.......
if you order live ladybugs as a critter predator for your plants, you can store them in the refrigerator for up to 5 months? Amazing, seems they go into a hibernation state and once they are taken out of the fridge and warm up they come to life.

How cool is that??

They eat the crap out of aphids and thrips....so next on my order list is Ladybugs. And I have a nice little storage space in the fridge waiting for them.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

The social networking photo contest for 420 Magazine has been extended to the end of the month.

Those of you who didn't have time to submit your own photos, or choose from other members' galleries, have lots of time now.

420 Magazine Social Networking Contest

Please see page 1 of that thread for the rules and regs of the contest. The most common mistake has been not submitting all of the photos in one post. They have to be all in one post to qualify.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Also, if anyone else is having any troubles with direct linking to posts, please submit your issues with it here:

Direct link to post numbers not working

Thanks!

If that link does not take you directly to my post, well....that's the trouble I'm having. The copy/paste of the URL including the post # is not working. It keeps dropping the post # once I submit. Shows up on the paste okay, but once submitted, that post # goes off to cyberspace somewhere.

I am the first post on the thread, so that's what you will see. It's hard to put an example when only one post is there. LOL
BUT, when I mouse over that link above there is no post# shown. And it was there when I pasted.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Both indoor kids got the neem oil treatment, and then I put LA's advice to use and put paper towels on the soil level and soaked them with the SNS 217 to try to break the cycle on the thrips.

I only found 3 this morning. They are so damn tiny. Look like a speck of dirt, but they move fast. LOL

 

[Alchemist420]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Good afternoon Canna, looks like you are on the right path to taking care of those little bugs

 

[CCOiler]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

My Neem Oil arrived today. Organic, pure cold pressed. It came with zero instructions on how to mix the concentrate, or what to mix in the concentrate for an insect spray. Go figure......if I were dumb and just poured the bottle into a sprayer and emptied the sprayer on all of my plants...well then I would have to order more Neem oil....right? Ha ha

So, I found a recipe for mixing on the net and also ran into a little info on HOW it works. I thought some of you might appreciate it too: (keep in mind this info is from a site that sells it, so of course they will want to promote the benefits of it)

Thanks Sista, that's blog worthy

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Good afternoon Canna, looks like you are on the right path to taking care of those little bugs

I'm so glad I caught them early. It pays to be OCD.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Thanks Sista, that's blog worthy

You're so welcome brother dear. Here's the recipe I have for the mix too, if you need it:

Neem Oil Amounts For Insect Spray

For 1 liter or 1 quart of a 0.5 % dilution of neem plant spray you need:

5 ml (1 tsp) neem oil (use pure, cold pressed oil)
1-2 ml (1/3 tsp) insecticidal soap or other detergent
1 liter (1 quart) warm water

Just multiply these amounts if you want to make a bigger batch.

If you want to make a more concentrated batch multiply both the amount of neem oil and the amount of soap used.

 

[Radogast]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

The neem oil recipe is very close to what I have used - my process was .

pour 1 pt warm water into the sprayer
pour 1 pt warm water and 5ml neem oil in glass pitcher
add squirts of Dr. Bronner's liquid soap and stir until the mixture turns from droplets of oil to small soap bubbles. (emulsify)
add to water already in the sprayer, shake, and use.

Use up all the neem oil mixture right away. A 2% Neem oil spray exposed to any light loses it's potency within a few hours.


- - - -

As for mushrooms, I would not do it. The different mushroom's hyphae will compete for dominance in the soil. All you really want in your soil is Glomus intraradices hyphae for it's excellent ability to form mycorrhizal relationships with plants. A good strain of Glomus Intraradices will become dominant eventually (in soil.) Why make it compete with those other mushrooms for dominance?

I had this conversation with an amendments and organic pesticide salesman once, congratulating him on selling a single strain instead of the 'cocktails' other people sell. I said I know that log moshroom farmers want a single strain innoculant for best yield so it seemed to me soil would be the same. He got a big smile and said - yeah, pretty much noone gets that, they all want the cocktails. Then he launched into the history of the specific Glomus Intraradices strain that was isolated by his grandfather for his farm and how for decades his dad had been mixing the soil beside the road next to non-organic neighbor's farms with the fertile soil of their farm to encourage extra resiliency in the strain. I lost his business card, so I never bought from him, but I loved the story.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Thanks Radogast! I never did get out and pick any mushrooms, so I will cancel that idea. Good info.

Well, I was up before the birds even thought about moving....so I dropped some beans in water. I'll be back later with the strain names and info on them. These will be for the winter indoor grow.

I made it outside to watch the sunrise, it was brrrrr cold out there. Should have put something besides flip flops on.

I took a couple of quick plant shots while I was there.

This is Lola the graft girl, part of her budding up:

And one of the other plants doing the same. The white stuff you see is the DE powder/spray, which seems to be working for me quite well so far.

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

And the choices are:

OO Seeds - Sweet Critical (fem)

Strain: Sweet Critical
Breeder: 00 Seeds
Location: indoor, outdoor
Type: mostly indica
Flowering: ~50 days
Only female seeds.

Sweet Critical is a new blend of cannabis genetics from the OO Seeds Bank. A potent yet sweet variety of Critical has been combined with a Swiss origin genetic to bring you one of the most aromatic blends in a fast flowering time.
This seed has it all, strength, potency, fast flowering and excellent yield. Sweet Critical yields up to 400 gr m2 of flavoursome bud with a THC content of over 20%, and you can expect all of this in under 55 days. If you’re an indoor or outdoor grower this Swiss Critical blend is highly recommended. Indoor this seed will develop into a discreet plant reaching no more than 100 cm and outdoor can soar up to 2.5 meters.

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Female Seeds - Blueberry Cheesecake

Strain: Blueberry Cheesecake
Breeder: Female Seeds
Location: indoor, outdoor
Type: indica/sativa
Flowering: ~60 days
Only female seeds.

Our Blue Cheese (Cheese x Blueberry multiple hybrid) is selected from an extremely strong smelly mother (which you will be able to smell straight through the bag!).
The strain has been stabilised on this special pheno which has a really amazing Blueberry Cheesecake smell. The plants are very resinous, giving healthy vigorous plants with a light blue shine, the end result is a very stoned effect whilst the body is in balance.
Plants can triple in volume and/or height after being put on 12/12.

Flowering time: 60 days.
Height: 80 - 100 cm.
Seed to harvest: 75 days.
Yield: High quality, high yield harvest.
Taste / Smell: Extremely strong creosote aroma followed by an unusual cheesecake smell.
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Nirvana Seeds - White Widow (3 seeds germing)
(regular)

Strain: White Widow
Breeder: Nirvana
Location: indoor
Type: indica/sativa
Flowering: ~70 days
Normal or female seeds

In the mid-1990s, a legend was born. Almost overnight, White Widow appeared on the menu of just about every coffeeshop in the Netherlands. This masterpiece went on to become a yardstick against which all other “White” strains are held up. Our White Widow grows tall, with delicate arms. Her buds are moderately compact in order to contain the copious amounts of resin she produces. Tending toward the Sativa side, White Widow produces a buzz that is powerful yet energizing and very social.

Yield: 300 - 400 grams/m² (SoG)
Effect: High and Stoney
Grow height: Medium
Flowering Indoor: 9 / 11 weeks

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Delicious Seeds- Caramelo (fem)

Strain: Caramelo
Breeder: Delicious Seeds
Location: indoor, outdoor
Type: mostly sativa
Flowering: ~63 days
Only female seeds.

Delicious Seeds - Caramelo
From this crossbreed proceeding from one of the most spectacular of all individual indica phenotypes and lavender sativa emerges this beautiful purple lady with dense clusters of flowers coated with resin that emanate lavender and fruity flavours.

Let yourself be seduced by the great productivity of this queen and fill your life with the passion of fruit.

Genetics: 30% indica / 70% sativa
THC: 19-20%
Production: 400-450 g/m2 indoor, 500 g/plant outdoor
Harvest time: 60-65 days indoor, early September outdoor
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And one more time, I will try the Purple Paralysis. I did not have any luck at all with the first 4 beans of these. They would not germ. Wish me luck.

Cream of the Crop- Purple Paralysis (fem)

Strain: Purple Paralysis
Breeder: Cream of the Crop
Location: indoor, outdoor
Type: mostly sativa
Flowering: ~68 days
Only female seeds.

Genetics: Lavender X Power Plant
Genotype: Mainly Sativa
Yield: Approx 450g/m2 indoor & 650g/m2 outdoor
Flowering time: Approx 65-70 days
Mould/Pest resistance: High
THC: 22%

Cream of the Crop Seeds - Purple Paralysis
This little shockers Power Plant genes will have a debilitating effect on even the most veteran of smokers! Enormous yields of deep amethyst purple/blue buds cause a soaring, energetic high due to the massive T.H.C content. She exudes a spicy, hashy scent, with hints of sweet lavender and is also known as "Jellyfish bud" due to her amazing colouration and immobilizing effects...

....THIS GIRLS A REAL STUNNER!!!!


We'll see who is a stunner and who is average. LOL

 

[Alchemist420]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Nice selection of new beans there Cannafan

 

[Dennise]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Nice beans you got there lady....

 

[Dennise]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Oh crap... I almost forgot the beans I put in the tin......

 

[Lady Cannafan]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Oh crap... I almost forgot the beans I put in the tin......

You'll have 3" long taproots!

I just love starting new beans.

 

[Canna Montana]

Re: Cannafan's Perpetual Grow - Where Everything Changes - Autos - Photos - Seeds & M

Hi there Cf! I like the selection of seeds you have there! Blueberry cheesecake sounds delicious! We had a purple paralysis try to sprout, but then died. I hope yours flourishes so I can see want ours would have been like.