Hello All:
Hello, how's it growing?
Well, I'm here to share experience, and learn, and I hope you are too!
A bit about my growing experience thus far:
Back in the 80s my family grew a strain from Hawaii, "Maui Wow-ee" it was called. Our first grow was in dirt, in a big homemade wooden box, essentially an oversized childs sandbox. Filled with bags of soil from the local greenhouse--to the mighty depth of probably ten inches.(!) We had one 1000w stationary metal halide, complete with six-ton, loud-as-h*ll magnetic ballast. We fertilized with Miracle-Gro.
I became the House Expert in Growing Weed, studying Rosenthal and High Times Magazines and a few issues of... Sativa Digest? What was the name of that other mag, the one that disappeared? Sinsemilla Something? Anyway, I spent a lot of time with cannabis plants and cannabis books. By the time I was fifteen years old I could have held my own in a conversation about fish emulsion versus dilute human urine for remedying an emergent N deficiency.
In our quest for higher yields, our techniques became more sophisticated. We added light movers, tried a variety of hydroponics systems, added carbon dioxide. After four or five years we had evolved to the point of building our own active aeroponics systems out of PVC, deducing how to do so largely by studying advertisements in High Times.
Our DIY machines performed outstandingly but were an absolute maintenance nightmare--ugh--you just would have had to have been there. It would be fifteen minutes tending the girls and two hours (or all day) fixing the machines that fed them. There were eight or ten independent reservoirs to feed and balance, dozens upon dozens and *dozens* of nutrient nozzles that would clog up or inexplicably fritz out, twenty cheap glass aquarium heaters to quit or shatter, fussy submersible pumps... wires and hoses running everywhere... what a total sh*tfest it really truly was. But yields went up... and the roots were so pearly white... i always wanted to eat them they looked so good.
We harvested based on pistil color, didn't know about phenotypes, used CO2 utterly incorrectly, our 'breeding program' consisted of guesswork, and we didn't cure at all. But, high marks for pest control, cloning, drying, and stealth. One place, we built a false wall in the basement, creating a grow room around 12X15 feet. LOL I still get a kick out of that. LEO would have found it in short order, but the meter-reader didn't! LOL
We moved a grow once, six-foot-tall beauties wrapped in black garbage bags, in green five-gallon pickle buckets, probably fifteen big girls in veg, right out the front door and into the back of a moving van. Fun part was, our next-door neighbor--*right* next door, mind you--was the district attourney for the city. Good times, right?
My own little invention back in the day was LST with fishing-line sinkers attached to wire christmas-tree ornament hangers. The art of it lies in the relationship between the mass of the 'ornament,' the position of the weight with respect to the node, and the position of the weight with respect to distance from the main branch. I used to spend hours training my plants, totally zenned out, and acheived nearly perfect-horizontal branch-growth with multiple budsites growing vertically.
Even by todays standards, Maui was excellent weed. I'd carry a one-hitter around with me and get people high if that's what came about, and was on more than one occasion hotly and 'noidily accused of having spiked the smoke with hard drugs. LOL. Nope, no PCP, folks, just excellent genetics and good old fashioned love! Yah, always a good time watching someone get just *zoinked* for the first time! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL This aincher momma's bag-schwag! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Anyway, I love growing weed.
The earliest I was able to grow again was in 2004. It was a closet grow, The Brothers Grimm Apollo 11, 250w HPS and 75w MH, 2 square feet, DIY DWC monotub. I didn't find the Genius pheno, but I hit my goal of one ounce per plant. Apollo 11 is a cool plant. Clones like a dream. Kinda blew that grow, though, it didn't turn out that well. First time trying DWC, it bested me pretty good.
I was able to grow again in 2008, in a BCNL producer. The producers are pricey, but were perfect for my situation at the time and it was one of the few times in my life that I had the money to drop on something like that, so I went for it. It turned out that I only had time for one grow, so I grew in dirt, in 2-liter soda bottles (rather than use the hydro setup.) It was Super Silver Haze and is probably my favorite buzz of all time, ever. There's just something about it... just have to grow SSH again someday.
In 2011 I grew out some Nirvana AK-48 outdoors, guerilla-style. Dug some foot-deep 2X2 holes, filled the holes with composted manure and miracle-gro soil mix, and some perlite. Grew them indoors until they were around 18", planted them outside in June. No hardening-off phase, no fuggling with their indoor lighting schedule to get them ready--just stuck 'em in the ground one day. Grew them for the express purpose of making hash, and yep that worked just fine! I don't think they were finished when I had to pull them due to first frost. I never did *anything* for those girls and they did very well without my help. No mold, no bug damage, hit about six feet tall, full sun. I was happy with my first shot at growing outdoors and happy with how the AK48 performed. Tried to transplant and reveg one of them indoors, but she didn't make it... don't want to talk about it.
In 2014 it was Kali Mist in soil, in small pots, under a 400w HPS. It was just a quick one-off closet grow, purely for the enjoyment of it, figuring that I'd better pop those expensive beans before they expired. (I bought the beans during a vacation in Colorado from a breeder. It was a surreal experience, buying marijuana seeds, face-to-face with the breeder. I half-expected a SWAT team to pour out of every wall of his office while I was sitting there! ...just surreal...)
The Kali Mist did very well with a minimum of fuss, even with the spider mite infestation. Yah, Just say no. To mites.
Well, that's my pedigree.
Setting up my next grow right now, and I'm going to give it my all this time around. Going with AK48 again and plan to grow her indoors and out. Trying out some equipment and techniques which are totally new to me and may do a journal. Lord knows I owe the world a contribution... and might have a question or two along the way... so... we'll see.
Thanks to everyone who has ever taken the time to share their knowledge and experience! It really does help!
Thanks for reading, Keep Calm and Grow Super Silver Haze.
(Really. That sh*t's the bomb. Go order some seeds right now.)
LOL
Peace
Hello, how's it growing?
Well, I'm here to share experience, and learn, and I hope you are too!
A bit about my growing experience thus far:
Back in the 80s my family grew a strain from Hawaii, "Maui Wow-ee" it was called. Our first grow was in dirt, in a big homemade wooden box, essentially an oversized childs sandbox. Filled with bags of soil from the local greenhouse--to the mighty depth of probably ten inches.(!) We had one 1000w stationary metal halide, complete with six-ton, loud-as-h*ll magnetic ballast. We fertilized with Miracle-Gro.
I became the House Expert in Growing Weed, studying Rosenthal and High Times Magazines and a few issues of... Sativa Digest? What was the name of that other mag, the one that disappeared? Sinsemilla Something? Anyway, I spent a lot of time with cannabis plants and cannabis books. By the time I was fifteen years old I could have held my own in a conversation about fish emulsion versus dilute human urine for remedying an emergent N deficiency.
In our quest for higher yields, our techniques became more sophisticated. We added light movers, tried a variety of hydroponics systems, added carbon dioxide. After four or five years we had evolved to the point of building our own active aeroponics systems out of PVC, deducing how to do so largely by studying advertisements in High Times.
Our DIY machines performed outstandingly but were an absolute maintenance nightmare--ugh--you just would have had to have been there. It would be fifteen minutes tending the girls and two hours (or all day) fixing the machines that fed them. There were eight or ten independent reservoirs to feed and balance, dozens upon dozens and *dozens* of nutrient nozzles that would clog up or inexplicably fritz out, twenty cheap glass aquarium heaters to quit or shatter, fussy submersible pumps... wires and hoses running everywhere... what a total sh*tfest it really truly was. But yields went up... and the roots were so pearly white... i always wanted to eat them they looked so good.
We harvested based on pistil color, didn't know about phenotypes, used CO2 utterly incorrectly, our 'breeding program' consisted of guesswork, and we didn't cure at all. But, high marks for pest control, cloning, drying, and stealth. One place, we built a false wall in the basement, creating a grow room around 12X15 feet. LOL I still get a kick out of that. LEO would have found it in short order, but the meter-reader didn't! LOL
We moved a grow once, six-foot-tall beauties wrapped in black garbage bags, in green five-gallon pickle buckets, probably fifteen big girls in veg, right out the front door and into the back of a moving van. Fun part was, our next-door neighbor--*right* next door, mind you--was the district attourney for the city. Good times, right?
My own little invention back in the day was LST with fishing-line sinkers attached to wire christmas-tree ornament hangers. The art of it lies in the relationship between the mass of the 'ornament,' the position of the weight with respect to the node, and the position of the weight with respect to distance from the main branch. I used to spend hours training my plants, totally zenned out, and acheived nearly perfect-horizontal branch-growth with multiple budsites growing vertically.
Even by todays standards, Maui was excellent weed. I'd carry a one-hitter around with me and get people high if that's what came about, and was on more than one occasion hotly and 'noidily accused of having spiked the smoke with hard drugs. LOL. Nope, no PCP, folks, just excellent genetics and good old fashioned love! Yah, always a good time watching someone get just *zoinked* for the first time! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL This aincher momma's bag-schwag! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Anyway, I love growing weed.
The earliest I was able to grow again was in 2004. It was a closet grow, The Brothers Grimm Apollo 11, 250w HPS and 75w MH, 2 square feet, DIY DWC monotub. I didn't find the Genius pheno, but I hit my goal of one ounce per plant. Apollo 11 is a cool plant. Clones like a dream. Kinda blew that grow, though, it didn't turn out that well. First time trying DWC, it bested me pretty good.
I was able to grow again in 2008, in a BCNL producer. The producers are pricey, but were perfect for my situation at the time and it was one of the few times in my life that I had the money to drop on something like that, so I went for it. It turned out that I only had time for one grow, so I grew in dirt, in 2-liter soda bottles (rather than use the hydro setup.) It was Super Silver Haze and is probably my favorite buzz of all time, ever. There's just something about it... just have to grow SSH again someday.
In 2011 I grew out some Nirvana AK-48 outdoors, guerilla-style. Dug some foot-deep 2X2 holes, filled the holes with composted manure and miracle-gro soil mix, and some perlite. Grew them indoors until they were around 18", planted them outside in June. No hardening-off phase, no fuggling with their indoor lighting schedule to get them ready--just stuck 'em in the ground one day. Grew them for the express purpose of making hash, and yep that worked just fine! I don't think they were finished when I had to pull them due to first frost. I never did *anything* for those girls and they did very well without my help. No mold, no bug damage, hit about six feet tall, full sun. I was happy with my first shot at growing outdoors and happy with how the AK48 performed. Tried to transplant and reveg one of them indoors, but she didn't make it... don't want to talk about it.
In 2014 it was Kali Mist in soil, in small pots, under a 400w HPS. It was just a quick one-off closet grow, purely for the enjoyment of it, figuring that I'd better pop those expensive beans before they expired. (I bought the beans during a vacation in Colorado from a breeder. It was a surreal experience, buying marijuana seeds, face-to-face with the breeder. I half-expected a SWAT team to pour out of every wall of his office while I was sitting there! ...just surreal...)
The Kali Mist did very well with a minimum of fuss, even with the spider mite infestation. Yah, Just say no. To mites.
Well, that's my pedigree.
Setting up my next grow right now, and I'm going to give it my all this time around. Going with AK48 again and plan to grow her indoors and out. Trying out some equipment and techniques which are totally new to me and may do a journal. Lord knows I owe the world a contribution... and might have a question or two along the way... so... we'll see.
Thanks to everyone who has ever taken the time to share their knowledge and experience! It really does help!
Thanks for reading, Keep Calm and Grow Super Silver Haze.
(Really. That sh*t's the bomb. Go order some seeds right now.)
LOL
Peace
cheers
