Emmie's Organic Garden Using Advanced Lighting Techniques

Today and last night we got all the clones taken and put in their little clone habitats to wait for roots. Total, 17 clones were taken from the 4 plants... a few will be given to a friend and the top 9 will be going to flower on the next round.


This is the 3rd tent in operation now in Emmie's garden, a 2'x4' SunHut and it is now officially busy here. For now, the lighting in that tent has been cut back for the clones, and we are running only two 54 w T5 PurPar bulbs 24/0 to coax them to do something productive. They have been cut, sliced, scored, dipped, chopped and pressed into peat pucks, sprayed and then sealed into their individual domes for the 8-12 days that it usually takes to see roots. Wish us luck... we are off to the races!

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A quick update without pictures tonight only because a significant thing has happened, and I want this date documented in the grow log. Today after being able to get done with my males one of my significant goals for this run has been achieved. I now have pollen for the ladies in the grow room, and one branch on each plant will be fertilized to produce seeds. This will give me AK47/AK47, AK/GC and AK/TD... some interesting crosses to be sure.

I also found a problem in the clone room veg tent with the cheapie masking tape (dollar tree most likely) that I used to seal the cups and affix the labels. The damn stuff has a useful life of about 5 days in this environment and my seals were breaking. The ones that showed obvious moisture evaporation were resprayed and retaped, this time with high quality 3M masking tape. It's not going anywhere. So far, all the clones look healthy and are all still standing upright after 3-4 days in the cups, no roots have yet been observed.

Next, and most importantly, the addition of the second 600w light for 3 hours a day has had dramatic effects. The plants are all leaping with new growth, and the tallest one is starting to get a little out of hand. Water use is off the scale. One would think that I had just switched to a 1000w light. :) Not wanting the lights to have to get ridiculously high later in bloom, the decision was made this morning to flip the switch 3 days early. As of today, the bloom period has started with their first uninterrupted night and now we will wait and see how fast the changeover to full bloom takes after the 12-1 lighting. I suspect that within 3 days we will see a dramatic change over to full on flowering. Hold onto your seats! We will all find out together if there is a noticeable effect!
Great idea taping the 2 cups together making Individual domes :thumb:
Edit : do you have a small hole in them or are they sealed?

wish I could take credit for it Rhet, but I learned this from a video and a conversation with Cannachick and Pokesmot. I have tried many different methods of working with clones, from bubblers to straight soil, but never have I seen a method that is so easy and so foolproof. It is very rare for one not to take with this system, and since it is no touch throughout, rarely will mold take over before roots start leaping out of the peat pucks. Once I feel that they are ready, I simply take the tape seal off and start hardening off the clones right here in the cup, before I transplant them to the solo cup. It is a beautiful and elegant solution to cloning and I doubt I use anything else, even if I someday go large scale with a dispensary operation.

What a great ida Emilya,

Creating their own private dome. You are always full of such creative ideas, I love it :love:

Again, thank you, but credit goes to where credit is due.

Those little cups are so nice for so many things in any type of cultivation! I use mine so much I wash them. I think I've had the same pack for over a year :laughtwo:

I was doing that too, but if you notice there are two different sized cups in my system right now. What you are seeing is that some of the used cups had gotten to the point that it was silly not to just spend another $1.39 for another 50. I love your frugality though gypsy... I am sure we are of like mind in this way in a lot of areas in the grow room.
 
I'm very much looking forward to the flip after GLR. Thanks for the great update.
 
A quick update without pictures tonight only because a significant thing has happened, and I want this date documented in the grow log. Today after being able to get done with my males one of my significant goals for this run has been achieved. I now have pollen for the ladies in the grow room, and one branch on each plant will be fertilized to produce seeds. This will give me AK47/AK47, AK/GC and AK/TD... some interesting crosses to be sure.

I also found a problem in the clone room veg tent with the cheapie masking tape (dollar tree most likely) that I used to seal the cups and affix the labels. The damn stuff has a useful life of about 5 days in this environment and my seals were breaking. The ones that showed obvious moisture evaporation were resprayed and retaped, this time with high quality 3M masking tape. It's not going anywhere. So far, all the clones look healthy and are all still standing upright after 3-4 days in the cups, no roots have yet been observed.

Next, and most importantly, the addition of the second 600w light for 3 hours a day has had dramatic effects. The plants are all leaping with new growth, and the tallest one is starting to get a little out of hand. Water use is off the scale. One would think that I had just switched to a 1000w light. :) Not wanting the lights to have to get ridiculously high later in bloom, the decision was made this morning to flip the switch 3 days early. As of today, the bloom period has started with their first uninterrupted night and now we will wait and see how fast the changeover to full bloom takes after the 12-1 lighting. I suspect that within 3 days we will see a dramatic change over to full on flowering. Hold onto your seats! We will all find out together if there is a noticeable effect!


wish I could take credit for it Rhet, but I learned this from a video and a conversation with Cannachick and Pokesmot. I have tried many different methods of working with clones, from bubblers to straight soil, but never have I seen a method that is so easy and so foolproof. It is very rare for one not to take with this system, and since it is no touch throughout, rarely will mold take over before roots start leaping out of the peat pucks. Once I feel that they are ready, I simply take the tape seal off and start hardening off the clones right here in the cup, before I transplant them to the solo cup. It is a beautiful and elegant solution to cloning and I doubt I use anything else, even if I someday go large scale with a dispensary operation.



Again, thank you, but credit goes to where credit is due.



I was doing that too, but if you notice there are two different sized cups in my system right now. What you are seeing is that some of the used cups had gotten to the point that it was silly not to just spend another $1.39 for another 50. I love your frugality though gypsy... I am sure we are of like mind in this way in a lot of areas in the grow room.

just this morning i was talking to a co-worker who also grows. he said he had to stop and get bamboo sticks on his way home today. i said why? haven't you been growing sticks for years? :laughtwo: stems make great sticks and string. i do get that stem/sticks are not always long enough. so i grow my own bamboo :bigblush: i have about 2 packs of bamboo sticks that have to be at least 2-3 years old now lol. one pack not even opened. i'm not a hoarder in the true sense of the word, but i absolutely hate waste. everything in my perma-system has a use. old soil, drainage water and fan leaves go to compost. stems become support sticks, string, or go through the blower/mulcher and are converted to mushroom growing medium similar to straw. we all kind of feed each other in my house even though i am the only human lol.

thanks for the compliment Em :green_heart:
 
Tonight, a sort of a double update... one part concentrating on the 12-1 changeover experiment, and the other just to show off the garden.

So, here is the garden. Please excuse the sodium light, we are in bloom. If there is a need to clarify, I will switch to MH light as needed for pictures or will use a flash. We have one always healthy fast growing AK-47, named AK #1 who is setting the vertical pace in the room. The lights already have had to be risen about 6" this week and now that the stretch has clearly started, I am checking every day to see if we need to raise any more. I can reduce the stretch a little bit because of the ability for this oversized Raptor hood to cool the 1260w of light coming out of it, and it usually is not a problem to be 8" to a foot away from the canopy, and it seems to work just like in veg to keep them a little shorter. We will see how well it works this time to keep us from having to bend over the taller plant.

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I have been curious about something that I read about the super soil and growing organically in general, and I wanted to test it out. The claim was that you had no need to adjust pH with dolomite lime and such in the soil. The tap water in this region is adjusted to 7.14 pH. Last week, I filled a 5 gal bucket with it right out of the tap and used it without adjusting.
Sure enough, last night a non-mobile nutrient deficiency was noted on a couple of upper leaves on a couple of the plants. Slight discoloration was noted in other places. The pH was definitely blocking one of the heavy elements and if not corrected, I would soon have a problem to deal with. pH was carefully adjusted to 6.35 tonight and the plants were all given a good watering and an apology.

That is the other thing of note with this report... now that we have been using the second 600w bulb for 3 hours every night, for one complete water cycle, it is clear already that water use is going off the scale. Everything feels like we are running a 1000w light full time. Three hours of well timed, multi source, multi spectrum lighting is already making a noticeable difference in the tent.

Next, let's do a side view of each of the plants at the top so you can begin to see the changeover from veg to flower. As of taking these pictures we are now 3 night periods into flower... 3 complete dark periods without interruption after the switch to 11.5/12.5 lighting schedule. It is not so apparent from the side shots except for the dramatic stretch of the top nodes, but I see clear signs already of a rapid changeover to bloom. We will do top-down shots of the buds next, so you can see the leaves curling in, changing the growing tips into flowers.

AK#1
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AK#2
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Green Crack
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Tangerine Dream
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Lastly, here is a top down shot of some of the growth tips, rapidly making the changeover to flower. With this proper watering tonight, I expect this process to accelerate even further.

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Be well everyone, love and light...
Emmie
 
So.... been following along for a little bit. Pretty babies.
In the top shot down, it kind of looks like a bit of leaf cupping with slightly upturned leaf margins. Might be the very start of an issue. Possibly some temp issue.
I recently tried those little peat pucks. Put clones in them. Sealed them up in a 1gal Ziplock bag for 2 weeks. No joy. I decided to stop using them and go back to clones in perlite. Any thoughts on what may have sunk me?

I like your cups. Been there, done that, tape and all. Here's where I landed on the issue....
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I do a hole in the top and one in the bottom. Initial water with daily mistings. Works great for me.
In the blue cup, the clear (ish) plastic solo cup fits perfectly around the top of the cup and I can pick it up by the clear plastic cup.
As an added bonus, the blue cups and opaque cups come gratis from a local bar. Awesome!
 
Your plants look healthy and happy though in your garden I would expect no less.
Congratulations on being nominated for MoTM :bravo:

^ This. ^

Thanks for all the help you give to the community. Reps to ya.​
 
First, thank you everyone for my nomination to be in the running for MoTM. Just being included in this list of longtime and outstanding contributors to this forum is an incredible honor for someone who burst on the scene as I have, and someday I might even be worthy of winning. For now, just being on this ballot is enough to send me over the moon, so thank you again, and know that this honor has made me feel right at home at 420.com.

Now, back to the experiment that we are following here. We are now 5 days into flower and as expected, I am seeing a very rapid changeover from veg to bloom and I fully expect that within a few more days we will be in full bloom. The transition from the 12-1 to bloom does indeed seem to be an accelerated one. Here are the pictures:

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