Emmie's Vegan Fertilizer, Pineapple Chunk 2020 Celebration: Experimental Soil Grow

[Emilya Green]

Garden Camera Shot... 3 hours before the end of their day

 

[Emilya Green]

By the way... no adverse effect can be seen due to the adding of the BE and SC yesterday... I will make a final evaluation tomorrow on watering day whether to stay there or up the levels to the minimum recommended... and at the current state of things at GLN not having things all in sync, I am not sure I can be persuaded into going any higher than 1g/g maximum on either of these right now.

 

[Emilya Green]

Full Bloom, Day 35
Here we are, at the 5 week point! This week and next, I should be hitting these plants with everything they can take, and I believe it is just exactly that going on here today. Today is an even numbered day of the month, so it was watering day, and this morning I let everything ride at exactly the same rates as last time knowing that it is taking me about 3 watering cycles to see the full effects of a change. The current rate of application is: MC=5g, SC and BE were given at .5g/gal.
All signs of a continuing lockout are gone. The leaves are starting to get a good lift to them again and the color seems to have stabilized just a bit dark of the mark that I was shooting for, and I think it indicates that I could go down to 4.5g of MC without any harm to the grow, and as we get into week 7, I may do just that as the nutrient needs begin to drop off. All looks terrific and the buds continue to build, with many more of them taking on the classic 5th week conical look during this interval. I have decided not to do the backbuilding cuts on this run, since I want to see this pineapple chunk chunk up all by itself. Taking hold of any of the buds, even those 2' from the light and deep into the canopy, reveals rock hard buds all over the room.
I ran out of time for some good camera work this morning with the bad weather moving in, and all I have to offer at the moment is a current garden camera shot.

 

[Mark Gordan Smith]

Five times.....5 sodding times I've started a post in this thread and then scrapped it.
How can a grow failure like me dare to speak out?
I read a vision of a female dragster racing driver screaming off the light singing Kate Bush's Running up that Hill!

I bought a small house today...way up in the gentle hills.
Outdoor, natural light, the girls will sleep when me and the birdies do.

Although I was reared within a family of right evil London bastards I'm far too soft hearted to grow so fiercely.
2-cents worth, I'll most likely regret it later.

Welcome to try number 6.

 

[DrCannaCanadian]

Full Bloom, Day 33

Being an even numbered calendar day, it is watering day. Have had all of my timid parts replaced at an early age for those that love experiments and pushing the limits, I am pleased to report that the experiment must go on! No one here expects me to do things the way everyone else is doing, because that is not how I roll. I would be doing this Megacrop experiment a disservice if I didn't add a fresh eye and a new way of looking at this thing with my personal experiments.

I don't even own a working pH meter at the moment... my bulb went bad a long time ago. I am slightly curious what the pH of this mix ends up at when mixed with my tap water, but I am convinced by the scientific data that as long as I am within 6.5-5.5 pH, all is good. I know that unless something demonic happens in my tent, my soil is going to stay stable at whatever pH it may happen to be 7 years into its active life, and it also is not a concern in this grow.

What I did do is overload the nutes, rushing to get my power plants up to the "maximum" recommended MegaCrop level. Giving 6g/gal was satisfying, and for a while it looked like the plants were loving it.... and I didn't notice the dark deep green creeping in before it was too late.

There are several bad things you can do and we have seen a couple of them in this grow. Early on I gave BE, heavy on PK, before the P could be used. It built up, and I locked out K. Then I rushed up to the 6g/gal level, and even without supplements a new problem crept in. Again it presented as a K deficiency, but this time the cause was not excess P, it was excess Calcium, which has been loaded in as 7% of the MC base product, that was causing the problem, and again it first locked out K.

So for the last 3 watering cycles I have reduced the base MC, first to 5.5 and then to 5, and things have slowly stabilized. The K deficiency damage has not progressed. The upper growth remains robust, and slowly the color of the plants has come back down to where we are told to aim for... the MegaCrop green. After 3 cycles of reduced nutes, things have stabilized and my plants look great, with a few battle scars indicating problems encountered and solved.

We now know that the MC is being ground up, and without all of the big white balls, by volume MC now has to be denser and we have to be getting more calcium in our mixes than ever before. You may find that the 6g you were giving is now too strong with the new mix... I did.

For the moment anyway, it looks to me like 5g/g is just right for my garden... my 5 gallon containers, my soil with @Vulx and my strong light. I suspect that this will change, and toward the end of bloom I may reduce it some more, based on the green. I am not however willing to give up what I can add to the grow with the supplements. Someone has to do it and I am going to keep pushing these plants as hard as they let me. We know that GLN is reformulating the BE and SC and it is my guess that they are now too strong to be used in the concentrations recommended, along with the newest MC.

Knowing that right now at this point in the grow, the plants can use massive amounts of extra P and K, I resumed the SC and the BE with this watering, but only at 1/2 gram per gallon. Let's see how the plants handle this.

I will keep experimenting so that you don't have to. Go slow, and every time you want to increase the concentrations of the GLN products in your garden, remind yourself that those innocent looking powders are very powerful.

Awesome! Get some more great pics for POTM!!!

And thanks so much for all the detail in journal - it's greatly appreciated

 

[Emilya Green]

Shortly before Valentine's day in 2010 I began my journey. I took control of the family cannabis farm and began journaling about my experience. I didn't start here until about a year later, but those who remember me on that other forum back in those days remember a very bold and brash young woman starting out her first grow, and with lots of questions.
Before I started this I had a long talk with my father and my grandfather about what I was proposing to do. I wanted this journey to be mine, and I wanted them to let me go with what they had taught me from a very early age, and figure this out start to finish on my own, with hints now and then along the way. I fully documented this journey in my very numerous grow journals throughout the years and for a while duplicated my work on several different boards as I continued to grow and gather information. Some years later, I started writing exclusively at 420 Magazine and that has continued to this day.
I come at this thing from a whole new perspective. Many of my beliefs and theories come from the old school... my dad and gramps did hang out with some of the best known growers in the world, and some of that knowledge has fallen down to me. I however needed to find my own way. I am on a quest to find the easiest, cheapest and most reproducible method of growing pot, so that seniors and the disabled can best grow their own meds, and then I am going to build an industry around that idea. You are seeing that journey here and this week marks a full decade of intense and dedicated daily research into this plant, complete with documentation and pictures. Doing this consistently for so long feels like an accomplishment to me, but yet the journey continues toward my end goal. I also find that there will never be a lack of misinformation to quell or new research to be done, and I enjoy both of these aspects of this "hobby". Today it is MegaCrop... tomorrow, who knows? I have enjoyed this 10 last years, arguments and all. I hope you have too.
Blessings everyone!
Dr. M

 

[Zooie]

Shortly before Valentine's day in 2010 I began my journey. I took control of the family cannabis farm and began journaling about my experience. I didn't start here until about a year later, but those who remember me on that other forum back in those days remember a very bold and brash young woman starting out her first grow, and with lots of questions.
Before I started this I had a long talk with my father and my grandfather about what I was proposing to do. I wanted this journey to be mine, and I wanted them to let me go with what they had taught me from a very early age, and figure this out start to finish on my own, with hints now and then along the way. I fully documented this journey in my very numerous grow journals throughout the years and for a while duplicated my work on several different boards as I continued to grow and gather information. Some years later, I started writing exclusively at 420 Magazine and that has continued to this day.
I come at this thing from a whole new perspective. Many of my beliefs and theories come from the old school... my dad and gramps did hang out with some of the best known growers in the world, and some of that knowledge has fallen down to me. I however needed to find my own way. I am on a quest to find the easiest, cheapest and most reproducible method of growing pot, so that seniors and the disabled can best grow their own meds, and then I am going to build an industry around that idea. You are seeing that journey here and this week marks a full decade of intense and dedicated daily research into this plant, complete with documentation and pictures. Doing this consistently for so long feels like an accomplishment to me, but yet the journey continues toward my end goal. I also find that there will never be a lack of misinformation to quell or new research to be done, and I enjoy both aspects of this "hobby". Today it is MegaCrop... tomorrow, who knows? I have enjoyed this 10 last years, arguments and all. I hope you have too.
Blessings everyone!
Dr. M

Bless you also @Emilya for all you do

 

[Old Salt]

Congratulations Emilya! It's been quite the journey.

 

[Dutchiedog]

Shortly before Valentine's day in 2010 I began my journey. I took control of the family cannabis farm and began journaling about my experience. I didn't start here until about a year later, but those who remember me on that other forum back in those days remember a very bold and brash young woman starting out her first grow, and with lots of questions.
Before I started this I had a long talk with my father and my grandfather about what I was proposing to do. I wanted this journey to be mine, and I wanted them to let me go with what they had taught me from a very early age, and figure this out start to finish on my own, with hints now and then along the way. I fully documented this journey in my very numerous grow journals throughout the years and for a while duplicated my work on several different boards as I continued to grow and gather information. Some years later, I started writing exclusively at 420 Magazine and that has continued to this day.
I come at this thing from a whole new perspective. Many of my beliefs and theories come from the old school... my dad and gramps did hang out with some of the best known growers in the world, and some of that knowledge has fallen down to me. I however needed to find my own way. I am on a quest to find the easiest, cheapest and most reproducible method of growing pot, so that seniors and the disabled can best grow their own meds, and then I am going to build an industry around that idea. You are seeing that journey here and this week marks a full decade of intense and dedicated daily research into this plant, complete with documentation and pictures. Doing this consistently for so long feels like an accomplishment to me, but yet the journey continues toward my end goal. I also find that there will never be a lack of misinformation to quell or new research to be done, and I enjoy both aspects of this "hobby". Today it is MegaCrop... tomorrow, who knows? I have enjoyed this 10 last years, arguments and all. I hope you have too.
Blessings everyone!
Dr. M

Wow and a humble thank you, been a secret back yard grower for years and have just crossed the threshold to indoor growing. I hope you wont mind if I tag along and soak up all I can.

 

[oldsmokey]

I look forward to the contributions you have yet to make to the 420 community!!

 

[Emilya Green]

Full Bloom, Day 36
I got up early today to spend some extra time with the girls so as to be able to fully analyze where we are at. With 3 watering cycles of reduced rates of MC we are seeing tremendous improvement in these plants. 6 grams per gallon was definitely too much, and actually 5 is still a bit strong, going strictly by the color of the leaves. When we get to final bloom in about a week, I am probably going to reduce even more to 4.5g/g, while I increase the BE and SC.
Massive kudos to @bluter for trying to pull together a Megacrop informational thread, but after the recent name calling and refusal to even entertain my thoughts as to the information being posted on that thread, I am no longer going to attempt to weigh in with a crowd who just likes to argue.
First, salt. Yes, many of our raw nutrients come in the form of salt... so most of our nutrient programs, even Megacrop are partially salt based in that regard. This though, my dear argumentalists, is not what I have been talking about all these years when talking about salt based nutes. I was of course talking about the common way of binding them into an inert form that can be mixed with other minerals into a stable delivery system, using chelation. The old style of chelation used a common salt, EDTA to bind these chemicals. The new way of doing this is using one of several amino acids to bind the elements together, and get them into the plant inside of that package. EDTA binding is a salt based nutrient, and amino chelation is not. One builds up debris in the soil, and one does not. One breaks apart in the soil leaving excess nutes and salt debris, one does not. You guys arguing over what you think that I said are not making yourselves look any smarter. It is almost like some of you who should be the most knowledgeable do not understand what chelation means, and it certainly looks like you don't understand the difference in uptake between the two systems.
Second, pH. I misspoke when I knew I was talking to argumentalists, by making the statement that amino chelates don't care about pH. They do. Although I still have yet to find again the original paper that stated bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients from 8.0-5.0, there are several papers out there that make it clear that between 7.5-5.0 pH, most of the nutrients are bioavailable to the plant. If one is willing to do their research, you can find bioavailability charts for every nutrient that we track using the 4 main types of chelation, showing that there is good solid response across a wide swath of pH levels in amino chelates, and only above 9 and below 5, the bioavailability of some of the nutes begins to dramatically drop off. Megacrop is still new enough that there are only 2 or 3 good studies out there documenting it's use and you don't need me to bring those studies here to "prove the science." Look it up yourselves, I will wait. Try searching for "bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients compared to pH" and you will be able to find several references of pH ranges between 7.5-5 being perfectly ok, and ZERO warnings to keep within a certain range, as we do with EDTA bindings.
GLN recommends being well within the well known hydro and soil pH ranges that we have followed for years, for best absorption, and indeed, for BEST absorption, the closer you are to the internal pH of the plant, 6.1pH, the better. But... and this is a big but...
As long as you are between 8-5, absorption is pretty darn good with aminochelated nutrients. PH within normal boundaries, DOES NOT MATTER, much.

MegaCrop has been fun to learn but it is not rocket science and it doesn't take graphs and calculators to figure out how to use it. All you have to do is watch your plants, know their needs and not get carried away with the nutrient line. These are powerful tools that will easily allow you to exceed the capability of our weeds to absorb what we are putting in there. Calcium and Nitrogen are the biggies that GLN has loaded into this stuff, and as long as you use the nitrogen response (the green leaves) to gauge the correct level of MC, the mix will have loaded the needed amounts of calcium in there too. If you go over with one, you have gone over with the other. Going over with Ca can cause lots of problems, mostly lockouts, and these are being misdiagnosed over and over again on these threads. People are simply using too much MC and ramping up to those levels too fast.

I blame most of the confusion on home grower exuberance and the GLN feeding calculator that seems to indicate that every grow and every plant is going to need 6g/g of MC before the end, and due to peer pressure, the sooner the better. This is a mistake, and one that I am glad that I have caught and documented here.

Less is more... especially with the powerful MC products. Hopefully they have stabilized their product at this ver 2.5 level, but we can't count that yet. The key to using this stuff is to know your plants and to react correctly to the problems that are presented to you. What looks like a magnesium deficiency, probably isn't one when using MC. Same goes for Potassium and Iron deficiencies... they can all be caused by too much MC.

So here we go. My plants are beautiful! They are well exceeding any hopes I had for Megacrop. Part of this outrageous success is the @Vulx mixed in the soil. Part of it is my skill as a gardener of weeds. A good part of it is MegaCrop. Even at 5g/g in mid flower, my plants are doing exceedingly well. Trichome production is off the chart. Bud development is outstanding and each of the buds are rock solid, very sticky and fragrant, already! The plants are using 1/2 gallon of water every day, in 5 gallon containers, and they are still trying to use even more. There is no fading or die off going on with these plants, nor do I expect one, right up to the end. Even after a couple of momentary hiccups that were immediately solved, this is turning out to be an outstanding grow! The proof of this follows. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

 

[Zooie]

Full Bloom, Day 36
I got up early today to spend some extra time with the girls so as to be able to fully analyze where we are at. With 3 watering cycles of reduced rates of MC we are seeing tremendous improvement in these plants. 6 grams per gallon was definitely too much, and actually 5 is still a bit strong, going strictly by the color of the leaves. When we get to final bloom in about a week, I am probably going to reduce even more to 4.5g/g, while I increase the BE and SC.
Massive kudos to @bluter for trying to pull together a Megacrop informational thread, but after the recent name calling and refusal to even entertain my thoughts as to the information being posted on that thread, I am no longer going to attempt to weigh in with a crowd who just likes to argue.
First, salt. Yes, many of our raw nutrients come in the form of salt... so most of our nutrient programs, even Megacrop are partially salt based in that regard. This though, my dear argumentalists, is not what I have been talking about all these years when talking about salt based nutes. I was of course talking about the common way of binding them into an inert form that can be mixed with other minerals into a stable delivery system, using chelation. The old style of chelation used a common salt, EDTA to bind these chemicals. The new way of doing this is using one of several amino acids to bind the elements together, and get them into the plant inside of that package. EDTA binding is a salt based nutrient, and amino chelation is not. One builds up debris in the soil, and one does not. One breaks apart in the soil leaving excess nutes and salt debris, one does not. You guys arguing over what you think that I said are not making yourselves look any smarter. It is almost like some of you who should be the most knowledgeable do not understand what chelation means, and it certainly looks like you don't understand the difference in uptake between the two systems.
Second, pH. I misspoke when I knew I was talking to argumentalists, by making the statement that amino chelates don't care about pH. They do. Although I still have yet to find again the original paper that stated bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients from 8.0-5.0, there are several papers out there that make it clear that between 7.5-5.0 pH, most of the nutrients are bioavailable to the plant. If one is willing to do their research, you can find bioavailability charts for every nutrient that we track using the 4 main types of chelation, showing that there is good solid response across a wide swath of pH levels in amino chelates, and only above 9 and below 5, the bioavailability of some of the nutes begins to dramatically drop off. Megacrop is still new enough that there are only 2 or 3 good studies out there documenting it's use and you don't need me to bring those studies here to "prove the science." Look it up yourselves, I will wait. Try searching for "bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients compared to pH" and you will be able to find several references of pH ranges between 7.5-5 being perfectly ok, and ZERO warnings to keep within a certain range, as we do with EDTA bindings.
GLN recommends being well within the well known hydro and soil pH ranges that we have followed for years, for best absorption, and indeed, for BEST absorption, the closer you are to the internal pH of the plant, 6.1pH, the better. But... and this is a big but...
As long as you are between 8-5, absorption is pretty darn good with aminochelated nutrients. PH within normal boundaries, DOES NOT MATTER, much.

MegaCrop has been fun to learn but it is not rocket science and it doesn't take graphs and calculators to figure out how to use it. All you have to do is watch your plants, know their needs and not get carried away with the nutrient line. These are powerful tools that will easily allow you to exceed the capability of our weeds to absorb what we are putting in there. Calcium and Nitrogen are the biggies that GLN has loaded into this stuff, and as long as you use the nitrogen response (the green leaves) to gauge the correct level of MC, the mix will have loaded the needed amounts of calcium in there too. If you go over with one, you have gone over with the other. Going over with Ca can cause lots of problems, mostly lockouts, and these are being misdiagnosed over and over again on these threads. People are simply using too much MC and ramping up to those levels too fast.

I blame most of the confusion on home grower exuberance and the GLN feeding calculator that seems to indicate that every grow and every plant is going to need 6g/g of MC before the end, and due to peer pressure, the sooner the better. This is a mistake, and one that I am glad that I have caught and documented here.

Less is more... especially with the powerful MC products. Hopefully they have stabilized their product at this ver 2.5 level, but we can't count that yet. The key to using this stuff is to know your plants and to react correctly to the problems that are presented to you. What looks like a magnesium deficiency, probably isn't one when using MC. Same goes for Potassium and Iron deficiencies... they can all be caused by too much MC.

So here we go. My plants are beautiful! They are well exceeding any hopes I had for Megacrop. Part of this outrageous success is the @Vulx mixed in the soil. Part of it is my skill as a gardener of weeds. A good part of it is MegaCrop. Even at 5g/g in mid flower, my plants are doing exceedingly well. Trichome production is off the chart. Bud development is outstanding and each of the buds are rock solid, very sticky and fragrant, already! The plants are using 1/2 gallon of water every day, in 5 gallon containers, and they are still trying to use even more. There is no fading or die off going on with these plants, nor do I expect one, right up to the end. Even after a couple of momentary hiccups that were immediately solved, this is turning out to be an outstanding grow! The proof of this follows. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

[/QUOTE

I just love the pictures @Emilya, great job.

 

[bluter]

i completely understand your position and am saddened you feel this way, do not blame you one bit.
i am sorry for any part i may have played.

you are always welcome to jump back in any time. things evolve.

 

[Fudo Myoo]

Shortly before Valentine's day in 2010 I began my journey. I took control of the family cannabis farm and began journaling about my experience. I didn't start here until about a year later, but those who remember me on that other forum back in those days remember a very bold and brash young woman starting out her first grow, and with lots of questions.
Before I started this I had a long talk with my father and my grandfather about what I was proposing to do. I wanted this journey to be mine, and I wanted them to let me go with what they had taught me from a very early age, and figure this out start to finish on my own, with hints now and then along the way. I fully documented this journey in my very numerous grow journals throughout the years and for a while duplicated my work on several different boards as I continued to grow and gather information. Some years later, I started writing exclusively at 420 Magazine and that has continued to this day.
I come at this thing from a whole new perspective. Many of my beliefs and theories come from the old school... my dad and gramps did hang out with some of the best known growers in the world, and some of that knowledge has fallen down to me. I however needed to find my own way. I am on a quest to find the easiest, cheapest and most reproducible method of growing pot, so that seniors and the disabled can best grow their own meds, and then I am going to build an industry around that idea. You are seeing that journey here and this week marks a full decade of intense and dedicated daily research into this plant, complete with documentation and pictures. Doing this consistently for so long feels like an accomplishment to me, but yet the journey continues toward my end goal. I also find that there will never be a lack of misinformation to quell or new research to be done, and I enjoy both aspects of this "hobby". Today it is MegaCrop... tomorrow, who knows? I have enjoyed this 10 last years, arguments and all. I hope you have too.
Blessings everyone!
Dr. M

Something about diy...friend of mine built a diy aeroponics rig for 6 plants for a test. I have a time lapse video of it I’m trying to post. It’s pretty impressive. We’re tradesmen. I built my lights, filters etc... I want it all to have my signature on it.

 

[Dutchiedog]

Ya, know...
If my wife ever finds out I come here just to look at the pictures of the sexy girls....

 

[Emilya Green]

Ya, know...
If my wife ever finds out I come here just to look at the pictures of the sexy girls....

Good thing that I have only ever posted one picture online of Ms. J. and I. It wasn't really a glamor shot after 14 hours of flight, but if you caught it years ago, it was sort of sexy seeing us at the Bulawayo Airport. I can understand the allure.

 

[Mark Gordan Smith]

Was it really that long ago....

 

[Emilya Green]

Was it really that long ago....

yep... when I started this thing I actually believed that my current age of 41, was old. It turns out that dementia is still a ways away and I think I have gotten fiester as the years have slid by. Imagine when I am @Old Salt's age!!

 

[Fudo Myoo]

yep... when I started this thing I actually believed that my current age of 41, was old. It turns out that dementia is still a ways away and I think I have gotten fiester as the years have slid by. Imagine when I am @Old Salt's age!!

41 is still young, that’s what I tell my wife. She’s 41. Younger than me anyway.

 

[Old Salt]

yep... when I started this thing I actually believed that my current age of 41, was old. It turns out that dementia is still a ways away and I think I have gotten fiester as the years have slid by. Imagine when I am @Old Salt's age!!

On my fortieth birthday my daughter asked me how it felt to be old. Twenty years later, it was my turn for some payback. I cooked her birthday meal, grinding or mashing everything for her so she wouldn't have to chew. I served an ice-cream cake for dessert, with the caption "Happy Birthday, how does it feel to be 14610 days old?