Emmie's Organic Garden Using Advanced Lighting Techniques

Emergency Update!


I came home this afternoon to screaming in the tent. There was a yellow leaf at the bottom of each of my plants.


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So, I investigated the cause of such raucous complaining.... and found this!

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So, the source of her complaints found, and putting that together with the fact that this little lady Green Crack had been the first to show a 1.5 day wet/dry cycle, I knew it was time to up-pot all of the girls. Those are some amazingly healthy roots in that supersoil at the bottom!


As a result of all of this work today, here is what the room looks like now with all the girls in new 5 gallon buckets:

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13 days of veg left... These are going to be some very big girls by then. :)
 
Robert Celt said:
Very nice roots going on there Em :) and the girls look good too :)
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Thank you very much Robert, they are very proud of themselves. :) I am pretty proud of those roots too, I worked hard on them. :)
JBUptown said:
Good Stuff Emmie, and I appreciate your descriptive prose.

Best Of Buds

JB
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Thank you JB! I do like it when my words are enjoyed and people see my passion and my humor, and I find that making people look forward to my updates is my goal when I do one of these grow logs. I enjoy it when my readers start conversing on my thread because of what they are seeing, and in reaction to my many experiments, and that makes my level of enjoyment and learning go way up too. I enjoy writing, and like the feedback that a forum provides to an interesting writer. They say that to really learn something, you must try to teach it... and that actually proves to be true on the forums. The feedback that I get on a day to day basis, helping people with their grows, showing off my techniques and practices in my tents, is always teaching me something too.
"In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." - Paul McCartney

rhetorrikz said:
Nice thread emilya! Ill tag along with my notepad in hand :)
While reading through you mentioned "pinched to the point of craziness" what is the advantage to pinching vs topping with snips?
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Hi Rhet... thanks!
Pinched to the point of craziness is an Emmie'ism... and not necessarily crazy to the rest of the world. I have only rarely pinched so many buds to be at the top of my plants, but this time I am going full out to see just what can be done... along with my other experiments of course. 18-24 buds apiece on untested plants just seemed a little crazy to me, but I decided to go for it and test my limits. So yes, crazy to me might be normal to someone else... but such is life, no? :)

Topping is taking the snips and chopping into the trunk, below the new leaf set. It is a vicious wound, and takes a while to deal with because you have just chopped into the xylem and all water pressure in the plant instantly goes to zero. That wound has to be healed before anything else can happen. The plant is wounded, and can not even lift up its leaves at this point, and all nutrient pathways close down. Tremendous pressures occur within the xylem, astounding pressures sometimes... to be able to hold up that stalk and lift all the leaves, even those at the tip top, up to the light. This is no minor wound, and it will take several days to even begin to be able to put a clog in place that can handle bringing that water column back up into the stalk and now two main branches.

Pinching is much less severe, and does not shut down the entire plant. Pinching means taking the very top growth tip off, right as it rises above the V below it with the two preflowers in the notches. No xylem water pressure is lost and the cut is quickly repaired... and most significantly, the plant does not skip a beat. Immediately the two lower preflowers take prominence and become the two new growth tips. 1 has just become 2... without the stress of a topping. I do this first at node 5, as the 6th growth tip is rising up, and then immediately do it again as the new growth tips send up a new node. 2 has become 4. By this time the 5th node has risen up trying to take dominance, and they are pinched. 4 has become 8. And then, in an act of total craziness... I did it again... at least on most of them. 8 became a wild and crazy 16-24. I must be insane.

Update is on the way... just took pictures! :)
 
(veg, 9 days till bloom)


Tonight we find the girls settling into their new 5 gallon shoes and widening out by the day after their last pinchings. The up-potting into fresh 3:1 organic soil/compost mix gave them a bit of a start, and I see some mild burning at the tips on the newest fan leaves, but not bad. The transplant was a little stressful and a couple of lower leaves are showing some yellowing, especially on one plant, but it has stopped there and has not progressed any further up the trunk. Along with the burning there was a little bit of overnute clawing for a couple of days, but after that the girls stopped being so squeamish and decided that they liked the new digs. Yesterday and the day before, they started once again lifting all the top growth up to the light, showing me that they were getting over the yanking out and plunging into a new dark place, lifting all about, moving about the house and being turned upside down to gape at their roots... some days it is just hard to be a plant. In another 9 days they will have forgotten all about this abuse, and we will get on with this flowering business with a fresh new attitude.

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Starting at the back, left Green Crack, right - AK-47 pheno #1
in the front, left - Tangerine Dream, right - AK -47 pheno #2

The 12-1 experiment has gone well. All of the plants are clearly starting to show pistils, but no one is actually trying to go into flowering. The plants understand the light cycle and are always anticipating the dawn well before the lights come on each day. It is remarkable to see how happy they look in the first 10 minutes of light, compared to how grumpy they look at their midnight, when I rudely wake them up for an hour. I will take a picture one of these days so you can see what I mean by "grumpy" ... it is almost funny it is so dramatic.

The boys had their extra hour taken away last week and immediately they started to get on with flowering. They are getting right with the program in the little love tent, and soon I will have a mess of pollen to play with, store away and selectively pollinate individual branches of each of my girls. As soon as I get a nice load of pollen from these boys, the entire mess will be wet down and sent into the supersoil bucket to quickly get eaten up and send all of their goodness back into the system for the next plants to use. It won't be long for these boys, and if this goes right, they will finish up just as we go to flower in the big tent.

Here are the boys, doing what they do:
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Here for the good stuff. Subbed! I like the experiments you are performing with the moon light and light schedule. Great looking plants as well.
 
I promised pictures of grumpy plants.

Why are my plants grumpy?

Because I wake them up at midnight each night (their time) for an hour. The lighting method is called 12-1... 12 hours on, wake up at midnight for an hour, and then back to sleep... for a total of 13 hours of light a day. They stay in veg, the money that used to go to my electricity provider stays in my bank account.

The plants seem to love this light timing. The are vegging quite well and turning into the little monsters that I knew they were capable of becoming. They are all maturing quite nicely and are ready to spring into flower as soon as I stop waking them up. The males have proven what people say about 12-1 and I am sure the females are going to do exactly the same... the switch to full out flowering and the massive throwing out of pistils (and male flowers) takes about 3 days total. With this method, there is no week to 10 days waiting for the switch to happen, or no desire to jump start flowering with a period of darkness. When I flip the switch, these ladies are going to get right down to business.

The experiment with 12-1 was completely successful and has convinced me that this is the ultimate way to grow weeds indoors. I do not foresee a time that I move away from this method now that I have seen it in action. I am excited to see how my lighting experiment goes in flower now too and I really believe that I am on to something good here.

So here are some shots of grumpy plants. Compare these droopy leaves and mad looks to the shot above, taken about 18 hours earlier. It makes me laugh every time I see this, and girls are very annoyed every time I walk in the tent and say as happily as I can muster, "wake up girls! rise and shine!"


Grumpy Room
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Grumpy Tangerine Dream'ing
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Grumpy AK-47
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The most remarkable thing about these plants, and proof to me that they are intelligent beings, is that about 20 minutes before their virtual dawn, they will anticipate the coming light, and every leaf will raise up to greet the sun. They will appear to be just as happy at that moment, as they look sad and angry right now.

Be well everyone,
Em, talking to her plants.
 
Em-
Is your "midnite" the middle of the plants' dark period? I try not to assume...
 
Major PITA said:
Em-
Is your "midnite" the middle of the plants' dark period? I try not to assume...
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Their midnight is not my midnight, but yes, their midnight is smack dab in the middle of their virtual night. 12-1 is:

12 hours on
5.5 hours off
1 hour on
5.5 hours off
=========
24 hours
 
oldergrower said:
Wow I can not believe it took me this long to find this.
Grabbing a chair and going to enjoy the show, that is if you don't mind the company.
I must say I like the fact you are willing to experiment and try new ways of looking at things.
OG
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Thanks OG, don't mind the company at all! Sometimes all it takes is being a little crazy to see things in new ways. Many would say that I fit that bill. :)

Enjoy the show, it is going to get even more interesting as I start changing the bloom lights. :)
 
Today I find myself 1 week away from flipping to bloom mode, and since the KC Chiefs were not going to be on today, this was the day picked to work on my next engineering trick... adding a second light to my Raptor AC hood, without damaging it.

A friend gifted this hood to me last year along with about $3,000 of other stuff, to reward me for my relentless online quest to help newbie growers sort out the problems that they encounter in their gardens. Many of you do not realize that I do this same thing that you see me doing here on this board, on two other popular growing forums, but my friend noticed... and he made sure that I knew that my dedication was appreciated. Keeping your karma good is so important in this hobby, and I work hard on maintaining a good relationship with the universe, and so many wonderful things have happened to me as a result.

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So, after thinking about it for months, I had a plan, and today after several false starts, I got the job accomplished. I created a bracket to mount my second light on, that I could attach to the output flange of my hood, in order to securely support the light in its position, just an inch away from the other light. I then ran the cord out that same duct, and carefully duct taped it all in position and clamped it off. The air pressure is not tremendous over there on that output side of the hood, and the plan seems to be working flawlessly... there are no extra air leaks, hot air is still being vented outside of the tent, and both lights are now being directed downward, where the light is needed.

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The electricity was wired, timers set and the lights were tested together this afternoon during the plant's midnight hour of grumpy fun. Today they got to be grumpy with 1200w of light coming at them, and they did seem to take notice, perking up a bit more than usual for their midnight wake/n/veg hour.

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This second light however will only come on from now on, for 3 hours before during and after their virtual NOON to simulate the intensity, heat and brightness of that time of day in nature. It is my belief that only 3 hours a day of this very intense light, will give many of the advantages of running full time 1000w light, and I am going to get them used to this idea starting now. For the next week their primary light is the 600w MH (since we are still in veg) and the 3 hour light is a 600w HPS. When we switch to bloom, those lights will be reversed too, making the HPS the primary light. We will also immediately go down to an 11.5/12.5 lighting schedule, decreasing by 15 minutes each week, letting them know clearly that flowering has begun.

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Having fun in the garden,
Sense Emilya
 
Your garden is a beauty, as I knew it would be, I look forward to following along. What are the papers covering the soil on your pots early on, and their purpose?
 
BeaverIslander said:
Your garden is a beauty, as I knew it would be, I look forward to following along. What are the papers covering the soil on your pots early on, and their purpose?
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Thank you BI, and I wondered when someone would ask! :)
Those are dryer sheets... a preventative against gnats and those annoying little white and black flies. These sheets frustrate the little pests who would like to land on the soil to lay eggs and it breaks their life cycle. I learned this trick from an old Hawaiian grower and have found that it works quite well against the typical pests that ride along in some of these hardware store soils that I still insist on using as my base for the organic soils that I build that are much more robust.
 
Emilya said:
Thank you BI, and I wondered when someone would ask! :)
Those are dryer sheets... a preventative against gnats and those annoying little white and black flies. These sheets frustrate the little pests who would like to land on the soil to lay eggs and it breaks their life cycle. I learned this trick from an old Hawaiian grower and have found that it works quite well against the typical pests that ride along in some of these hardware store soils that I still insist on using as my base for the organic soils that I build that are much more robust.
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All righty then, another trick for my bag!

(P.S. I ordered a BlueLab pH meter)
 
oldergrower said:
Wow I can not believe it took me this long to find this.
Grabbing a chair and going to enjoy the show, that is if you don't mind the company.
I must say I like the fact you are willing to experiment and try new ways of looking at things.
OG
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Me too, seen you around the yard but first time noticing your journal. Glad i finally did :yahoo:
 
Hi Emilya

Just checking into your grow and playing catch up. Love how clean and nice things are. The benefits of a clean grow room can never be over-appreciated.
Your 12-1 lighting technique is called Gas Lamp R.... (something starting with R... I forget). I use it sometimes. It allows me to the lights off during most of the hottest part of the day.
Love the mesh pot covers.
 
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