Graytail Goes LED - 810W Intelligent-Gro II w/ High Brix

[Graytail]

Sorry, Graytail, just thumbing and running. But had to stop and say, my firend, you grow some truly beautiful plants. No new, jaw-dropping smiley is sufficient.

Still slugging it out with LightAddict I see. C'mon, I've got side bets on you. Remember - body, body, body, then hook. Watch his left. Ding Ding, 15th and final round.

Whew. I'm tired, boss. Did I win? ...

Congratulations on a very well deserved POTY win my friend!

Heheh, how cool is that!? ...

We both won! Although *grumble* you had it easier - you only had to beat BID. ::

What CareStaker said.

Tremendous and exciting win. That's quite something. Very, very many congratulations, Graytail.

I hope you have some fingernails left.

Fingernails are intact, but the guts are gonna take awhile to settle down. Ugh.

AWESOME! A well-deserved win against tough competition.

Tough indeed! Sure ... uh huh ... up against a guy who's won 3 of the past 16 POTM ... uh huh ... *rolleyes*

Congrats Graytail on POTY. What a good 2 months in a row for you. Nice job.

It's surprising how much an old guy like myself can get all full-chested and proud over something like this. I had a rough patch there, and Destroyer appeared just as it was ending. Good girl!

Congrats, Gray! A deserving win for sure!!

Thanks for your support, man!

Chalking up another deserving win....great work as usual. Congratulations!

Awww. But ... shhh ... it's not all that "usual". This one just went really really well!



I'm going to get some pics this afternoon for an update, and should have it posted by tomorrow. Destroyer Cut1 is looking pretty fine herself.

 

[DrZiggy]

Congratulations, GT!! POTY!! Graytail, that my friend, is friggin AWESOME!

 

[scrubby]

THE MAN!!!! Congratulations Graytail!!! Well deserved bro. The Kit strikes again

 

[DrZiggy]

GT..you ARE celebrating presently, right? Its always 4:20 somewhere, especially here!

 

[SmokeyMcFly]

Grats GT, much deserved she was a beauty!

 

[SweetSue]

Incredibly impressed. Not surprised at all. You grow awesome plants Greytail.

Congratulations indeed!

 

[Dennise]

Yea... congrats my friend on a most deserving win.......

 

[Duggan]

Well Gray....hows the nerves now bro? Many congrats to you my friend...you deserve it!Cheers eh....Duggs.

 

[Shawnee]

Sweet Sue, time well spent going through the brix journals...I'm a newbie using brix and my garden is flawless....it runs itself....I am stunned....yesterday I walked in and all my plants said in unison "quit micromanaging us....go away, we'll call you when we need you." What?

Congrats, Gray. What an honor, you should be proud to showcase your skills and represent the army. Superb job.

 

[Graytail]

Thanks everyone!

It's been a nice day!

I am now, and have been, celebrating for most of the day. In fact, the last pipe was the fruits of the winner herself! ... And now some Carnival to brighten things up a bit ... ...


I have an update!

I have six plants in the bloom room now, with Blue Blood and Dest1 due to harvest over the next couple weeks. Nexus is coming on strong, due a week after that, and then it'll be UH1. The two new girls, Carn7 and Dest2 are doing fine - Carn7 looks especially interesting. Brix is still pegged at the top of the range on all the blooming ones, the best I ever had.

I'll start with the gawdawful mess, UH1. If I hadn't already grown and harvested one of these, I'd be a little demoralized. It just doesn't look like a plant that's going to amount to anything, does it? But it will ... IF I can keep it healthy for another 3-4 weeks. Every week is a win, heheh, and I got through another week. She don' look bad.

UH1 - 189 days old - 59 days 12/12 - 47 since pistils - brix 17/19

Blue Blood has been behaving herself after those first few nanners, but boy did she get dusted! I cut a lower stem top to get a closer look and it was completely seeded - I bet there are a hundred in that 2 inch top. The lower ones got the worst of it though. The tops aren't as bad. But I think I'll still have to process almost all of it. I'll save the best tops to sift through and smoke, but the rest will get run through some bags for kief. I took a seed a few days ago and tried to sprout it, but I think it's still too soon. So, at this point Blue Blood is alive strictly to finish her seeds - she's otherwise done.

Blue Blood - 195 days old - 59 days 12/12 - 47 since pistils - brix 19/20

Ah, but here's DestroyerCut1, clone of the award-winning beauty. :: This is a very nice strain/pheno! Pure sativa and look at the habit! Gorgeous! She may be just starting to turn color, not sure yet. If I can, I should grow a 3-4 ouncer sometime. Piece o' cake.

Dest1 - 160 days old - 57 days 12/12 - 46 since pistils - brix 19/20

Nexus by Eva Female Seeds - Brazilian sativa x Blue sativa. After all the hooplah over Destroyer and the seeded Blue Blood and the fluffy eyesore Utopia, I tend to overlook Nexus. What a sweet girl she is! She's small and cute and well-mannered, just quietly growing up amongst the drama of her roommates. Awww. Seriously, ain' she sweet? ... cute shiny lil bush ...

Nexus - 173 days old - 49 days 12/12 - 38 since pistils - brix 17/18

Here's that funky Carn7. I've decided that she's a punk. Y'know that upwedge gelled spiky flattop kinda punk do? Heheh, that's what I see when I look at Carn7. Dyed magenta. Yeah? F' the rules, right? Little skinny long stem, shallow crazy lookin' canopy ... ? Fuggit!! Who's askin' anyway?! Punk girl.

Carn7 - 183 days old - 28 days 12/12 - 19 since pistils - brix 14/16

And this is DestroyerCut2. My my, she's a big girl. She's finally finishing her stretch! Mine don't usually stretch much and this one didn't either, but all the other plants are on risers already and she's still a couple inches taller than the rest. Ah well, I have a UFO I can mount over her to keep her top lit.

Dest2 - 160 days old - 12 days 12/12 - 2 since pistils - brix 13/14

Ta Da!!! I got my group of Sierra Natural Science products for my POTM win!! Thank you SO much, SNS! I can finally get rid of my whiteflies. With any luck, they'll be gone in a couple weeks.

Heheh, I'm still kinda snickering and chuckling inside ... POTY ... go figure. Y'all have good taste!!! ::

 

[VonDankenhoek]

i used the sns 311 for my last bud wash. Nice stuff. Excellent to have it as a prize. Also used their rosemary anti mite juice.Worked well for a knockdown. Screwed up my first run of Sugar Punch buds though, my own fault.

Congrats champ.

 

[DrZiggy]

GT, lol, i just saw that these were new pics, i thought they were the pics from a page or 2 ago. Yeah you gotta keep the grandma going
Great plants! You got the following 11 months of POTM entrants right here, right now..

 

[Major PITA]

Another excellent update - always a pleasure to see what's going on in the GT bloom room.

It would be great if you can rid your ladies of those flies. Please don't take this the wrong way. Your plants are nearly always perfect looking except for those damn flies and hair. As sticky as they must be, I have to wonder if any of that stuff gets smoked even after a wash. Get rid of them and I bet your smoke reports ratchet up another level.

 

[scrubby]

Youre one of the best GT no doubt!

 

[Graytail]

I've been watching discussions between LOS proponents and HBers regarding the similarities and differences in the biota populations between the two methods, and I was confused about why no-till is better, so while I waited for an answer I went researching and found this:

"Fallow soil is first and foremost among causes for the demise of mycorrhizae. The fungi are completely dependent on their host plants for sustenance and cannot survive for any extended duration without the presence of living roots. Of course, tilling, though not necessarily
lethal to mycorrhizae by itself, generally leads to a fallow condition which, in turn, eliminates the fungi. Therefore, even no-till practices may not necessarily preserve mycorrhizae either. When annual crops are harvested, the roots soon die and any mycorrhizal fungi die with them unless new living roots are introduced in the form of another crop within several weeks - a relatively rare sequence in the world of production agriculture. One might think that the spores left in the soil would regenerate the mycorrhizal population in new crops planted even after an
absence of living roots and hyphae. However, after repeated cycles that include regular intervals of fallow, the spores eventually expire and
are not sufficiently replaced by the gradually diminishing mycorrhizal populations until
they too have essentially disappeared."


Neither method demands several months of fallow, so that's not the difference ...

I'll keep looking.

Found something else:

"Part of the reason is that the extensive networks of hyphae remain intact from year to year in no-till systems. Particularly with continuous corn, mycorrhizal effectiveness in supplying phosphorus to the plant can be much higher when the soil is not disturbed by tillage. The benefit of an intact mycorrhizal network is seen mainly in the first few weeks of the growing season, when phosphorus is critical."

And another:

"No-till by itself doesn’t do everything needed to maintain mycorrhizae in the soil. “In no-till, many growers believe they are perpetuating the mycorrhizae fungus by not performing tillage,” says Larry Simpson, director of education and training for Mycorrhizal Applications in Grants Pass, Ore. “But harvesting a crop often precipitates the death of the plant. “With the top growth gone, the stubble and roots soon die, eliminating the food source for the fungi. Most crop roots don’t go dormant after harvest, so even inthe case of no-till, you can lose the mycorrhizae.” An increasing number of no-tillers are trying cover crops to keep roots growing in the fall and winter, Simpson acknowledges. But the interval immediately after harvest to seed the cover crop to sustain mycorrhizae is quite short. “In just 2 to 3 weeks, the roots of the harvested crop remaining in the soil often begin to die before their mycorrhizae can spread to the cover crop,” Simpson says. “If you can get new seeds germinating before the roots of the old crop die, then the fungi have a chance to colonize from the existing roots. “With sufficient mycorrhizal colonization, plants become enormously more efficient at deriving moisture and nutrients from the soil."




"How many seasons can they survive in the soil when their 'host' is not present?
Impossible to say how long the spores can survive as it depends on how aggressive the saprophytic organisms such as molds, fungi and other grazers are in the soil, as they will eat the spores. This is why you cannot use compost or potting soil as a delivery modality. The hyphae of the mycorrhizal fungi will decompose within 5 to 7 days of the host plant terminating. Bottomline, it won’t take long before they are gone under most soil conditions.
How quickly and across what spatiation can they multiply?
Once a plant is made mycorrhizal, the fungi will spread rapidly throughout the roots system of the host plant. This is why we can see a rapid response from mycorrhizal inoculation from a germinating crop such as corn, wheat, etc.
Will re-innoculation be necessary?
Re-inoculation is not needed if you are growing a long lived perennial crop such as alfalfa or a woody crop such a fruit trees. However that’s contingent upon the use fertilizers that may contraindicate the fungal plant relationship. For example, acid based phosphorus and high analysis fertilizers can cause plants to dissociate from the mycorrhizal fungi. With a short season annual crop, best yield results can be achieved if you inoculate the seed each season.
Michael Martin Melendrez"


I'm still not finding the advantage of no-till on myco populations. Perhaps the no-till method has a smaller pause between cannabis crops and therefore avoid long periods of fallow. We let our soil sit for a month before reinocculating it when we transplant a new one into the soil. But I don't find anything about the length of the hyphae being critical - nothing about the new roots adopting the old network. My understanding it that hyphae require live roots to survive. They will attach wherever they come into contact. I was expecting to find something definitively stating that new roots can take direct advantage of existing hyphae networks, but not yet - still hunting.


"VA mycorrhizal infection develops from either spores, root fragments, or hyphal networks in close proximity to host plant roots. Fungal spores, in general, are spherical reproductive structures which remain dormant during periods of unfavorable conditions. Spores of VA mycorrhizae contain many nuclei (250 µm diameter spores can contain as many as 2000 nuclei (Bécard and Pfeffer 1993 in Smith and Read 1997), and large amounts of stored lipids and carbohydrates. The purpose of this storage capacity is still unknown, since spores do not form extensive networks of hyphae unless the hyphae contact and infect a host root.

Spores germinate in soil or in agar, and form a first hyphal tube called a germ tube. Some spores can produce multiple germ tubes at once, or produce successive germ tubes when the original is removed (Harley 1983). If it encounters a host root, and recognizes the root as such (through mechanisms not yet fully understood), the germ tube can form an appressorium and enter the root. Spores are just one of the possible infective VA mycorrhizal propagules. Infected root segments that have been dried and stored for as long as 6 months can infect new roots as well (Hayman 1983, Smith and Read 1997). When these root segments are placed in moist soil in close proximity to growing plant roots, new hyphae emerge from the inside of the old hyphal tubes in root segments. In some cases, old root segments may result in faster infection of plants than the addition of mycorrhizal spores, since root segments appear to produce new hyphae more quickly than spores can germinate (Hayman 1983). As described above, a third source of mycorhrizal infection is runner hyphae from plants with active mycorrhizal infection.Single Glomus spore, taken from M. Brundrett

There are still a number of mysteries concerning the physiology of mycorrhizal infection, but the ecology of mycorrhizal infection is even less well understood. Hyphae form a continuous path for transfer of nutrients, carbon, and water to the host plant. Since they are considerably thinner than most plant roots, hyphae of many species of VA mycorrhizae form extensive branching networks that reach areas of soil otherwise unavailable to their plant hosts. In effect, mycorrhizae increase the surface area of roots of the host plants. In return, VA mycorrhizae take between 10 and 30% of the net primary production of host plants (St. John and Coleman 1983 in Allen 1991). It is estimated that mycorrhizae cost 10% more to maintain than the equivalent area of roots, but in terrestrial systems, VA mycorrhizal infection tends to increase nutrient uptake and growth of infected plants (Allen 1991). The benefits of VA mycorrhizae are substantial, and in addition to increased water and nutrient uptake include disease resistance, drought resistance, and greater binding of soil particles into large aggregates and to roots (Nadian et al. 1996 in Smith and Read 1997, Sylvia in Norris et al. 1994). These benefits help explain why so many terrestrial plants are infected by VA mycorrhizae. The remainder of this site deals with VA mycorrhizal infection in aquatic plants, an area where little is known about the ecology and even the physiology of mycorrhizal infection, but for a fascinating book detailing the ecology of mycorrhizae in terrestrial plants, look at Allen's The Ecology of Mycorrhizae (1991).
"

 

[Graytail]

I probably looked at 50 pages of search results so far and didn't come up with a definitive answer, but eventually I'll find out.

Does the new root inherit the long intact hyphae network when it encounters an undisturbed one? You'd think the articles would flatly state that, but they usually refer to fallow and death from tilling. I seems more to do with how long you leave your soil unused. No-till would naturally be a quicker turnaround, therefore saving existing biota symbioses.

But do new roots inherit the old hyphae networks? If so, how? And how is one long intact filament better than hundreds of broken up ones? That's surprisingly hard to find out.

 

[Graytail]

I have one small experience with no-till. I up-potted my Grapefruit2 into the old SLH pot - cut out a hole and popped it directly into the old undisturbed soil. I didn't see any positive difference in that one case - nothing remarkably different. DrZiggy is stacking his, but are you doing it to any no-till pots Zigs?


More good stuff ... :

"Most terrestrial plants form symbiotic associations between their roots and mycorrhizal fungi, of which AM fungi are the most common

(1). AM fungi obtain all their C (Carbon) from their host plant and supply the host with various benefits,
such as improvements in nutrient acquisition from the soil

(2). AM fungi can account for up to 20% of plant photosynthate

(3) and therefore represent a substantial pathway for C flow to the soil and a key link in the terrestrial C cycle

(4). However, the proportion of C entering the soil via AM fungi that is simply respired back
to the atmosphere is not known. Despite the importance of mycorrhizae in community functioning

(5,6), the biology of AM fungi, especially their external (extraradical) phase in soil, remains obscure. The rate at which the ERM turns over has never been measured, despite its central importance to understanding the role of
mycorrhizal fungi in the soil C cycle. It has been hypothesized that AM fungal hyphae turn over in days rather than weeks

(7), because observations have shown that over half of a population of fungal hyphae in soil, some of which may have been mycorrhizal, survived for less than one week.

This research shows that a large proportion of extraradical mycorrhizal hyphae, with the possible exception of runner hyphae, turn over in 5 to 6 days. This finding was made feasible by an application of AMS that allowed the microanalysis of hyphal samples containing as little as 10g of C, with only a small maximal depletion in
14C content as compared to current ambient. AMS has been used previously, where sample size was not a
constraint, to measure 14C natural abundance in fungal sporocarps to determine the mycorrhizal status of fungi and in fine roots to determine the age of fine-root. We suggest that the level of analytical precision
achievable by AMS will prove extremely useful in answering many other ecological questions, especially where limited sample weight is a constraint. This, along with other stable isotope approaches such as stable-
isotope probing, provides exciting opportunities in functional ecological research."

 

[SweetSue]

Wow Greytail. First you take my breath away with your update and then you sweep me off my feet with all that incredible knowledge sharing. Thank you, my friend.

 

[SweetSue]

I probably looked at 50 pages of search results so far and didn't come up with a definitive answer, but eventually I'll find out.

Does the new root inherit the long intact hyphae network when it encounters an undisturbed one? You'd think the articles would flatly state that, but they usually refer to fallow and death from tilling. I seems more to do with how long you leave your soil unused. No-till would naturally be a quicker turnaround, therefore saving existing biota symbioses.

But do new roots inherit the old hyphae networks? If so, how? And how is one long intact filament better than hundreds of broken up ones? That's surprisingly hard to find out.

My own plan is to harvest, top dress and plant in one day. No need to take any time off. That means that when my seed sprouts it's doing so right into myco looking for a new host. At least that's how I understand it.

 

[PotChimp]

Have you read "Teaming With Microbes", Graytail? I'm thinking they migrate themselves to where they need to be (or catch a ride with the nearest microcritter that uses flagella to get to where it's going). Earthworms carry them from place to place too.