TerpDeDerp
Active Member
Far off in Eastern Oregon, in a small town only really known for it's prison, I have returned home from trials and tribulations spanning from Southern California to Seattle. Now in Ontario, I have dug in to take up a college degree and now, apparently a cannabis cultivation expertise as well. Fresh on the heels of learning the ins and outs of mushroom cultivation, I thought it would be interesting to look into some of the natural processes that are involved with mycorrhizae and the root zone. Communication between species is a curiosity of mine, and well, that high priced dispensary medicine is status quo and not really that exciting. Back in WA, in my late teens we would come across bud that was far beyond most of what you see today. This grow is my attempt at understanding the medicine that keeps me alive, so I may find more healing in medicine grown by my own hand.
It all started with what I was calling, "late season" buds from Huntington Oregon. The dispensary was not as seedless as it usually was. I was picking up a seed or two here and there. I was getting curious what I might be able to do with them. The last and only time I grew before this was nearly 20 years ago, it was all errors and bad results. I found out about overwatering, miracle-gro, time release bs and more. I ended up with a super tall, anemic sativa barely worth thinking about. Never made it through flower. That was it. I dove into reading and watching what a few friends did with their grows. Over the years I was able to observe nearly every aspect of the industry, with the exception of pesticides and fertilizers. Both of which I am mostly against. It is still my hope that my constant observations will lead me to a more intimate connection with the plants, that way, instead of listening to what a regimen says as a "protocol". In perfect practice of this theory, the plant is never in "need". Training the plant to signal it's needs before altering it's chemistry and growth to counter environmental changes. Being that I am on disability and sedentary much of the time. I have the privilege of sitting with my girls nearly all day.
I suppose I would be here all night typing if I were to go into what I learned from 10/18/18 until now so I will keep it as simple as I can.
Seeds: All came from Dispensary herb. (****from stressed females which generated their own pollen, making them 99.9% female.) 13 of 13 seeds germinated in less than 24hrs. I submerged them under a gallon of RO, 7.5-8pH water @ ~65degrees. I assumed the pressure of the water would speed germination and it certainly did. This photo is literally the morning after putting them in water.
Then I decided to create light, but realized I wasn't God and it took me forever. First iteration was the most effective.
1 x Lights Of America 2ft 2:1 Red/Blue Grow Light
6 x Feit 9w Full Spectrum Grow bulbs
Second iteration of custom lighting was too intense and plants had burns almost like lasers burned the leaves. Was super bright though and would have been a great veg light if the hidden stuff on the back wasn't burning up slowly on the back side, then I guess go crazy right? NO! I really only used paper and plastics to test whether or not the lights were a viable hack. Short answer, yes they are. But VERY UNSAFE. They run quite hot. I ended up with 28 chips,
If you notice, in this pic you can see that I have several plants in 4" pots still. This was where I believe I was able to stunt the vertical growth *intentionally. There were several considerations in play here since I was preparing to make the choice on what soil medium I wanted to use. When cultivating mushrooms we use coir because the nutrient content is virtually non-existent and colonizing mycelium simply utilizes the grain carbohydrates for it's food source. Since the fungus has fully colonized the outside of the grain, the lack of nutrient in coir and its protection of its own food supply, it is able to colonize coir mixes usually 1:1 Jiffy mix/Coir. This may seem like blah blah blah, but there is a serious angle I was preparing for. (January2019)
The girls had found their new/permanent pots. Many reasons led me to use the mesh garbage cans from the dollar store. Mostly because of the how they were open all the way around. I watched an episode CANNACRIBS which featured Honeydew Farms. They spoke of oxygen uptake around the root ball being a big benefit. So, I thought I would try.
Jute burlap lined dollar store trash cans.
[Edit] Nutrients given during vegetative cycle were kept pretty simple. I assumed that the soil mixture would handle the majority of the plants needs. Occasionally I would use some Alaskan fish fertilizer, but not much. I would use my nose a lot. It seems to me that you can smell a good deal of what is going on with the soil if you just take the time to process it. This also showed when the anaerobic activity would start.
About 2 months in, when I was still considering keeping these as mothers. Before I understood Phenos and picking a mother that was worth keeping. The growth was decent but I was beginning to wonder when I was going to need to supplement trace minerals. I looked up an encyclopedic type reference showing various deficiencies, when I read the missing mineral I immediately thought of the contents of vitamins. Back again to the issue of having money, I decided to pull out some multi-vitamins and take a look at their contents. There isn't much in a mens 50+ multi that a plant cannot use, and nothing that (at least I) knew of to be toxic. For that matter, I also assumed that some of those nutrients might be more readily available than those that have to be reduced by microbes or other processes. Results are inconclusive. It seems that there is a certain amount of ( I mean tiny ) yellow tip on some leaves. Some of this only an indicator that that particular pheno could not handle as much nutrient as the others could.
Mixed medium Soil.
~40%Happy Frog
~30%CocoCoir
~15%Perlite
~5% Worm Castings
~1/4-1/2cup blood meal
The soil mix was inspired by a med grower in WA. I liked how it felt in my hand. Because I have a low budget to deal with, some got transplanted before others. I started to screw around with a slightly different soil mix but thought this time I would add a little spice to the mix. In my closet I had a bag of compost from growing mushrooms. I mixed that in and didn't think anything of it. That's when I found my friends! I panicked, OH NOOOOOO, last time I had mites it was a disaster. I was off to the store to find the most organic "what I expected to not work" spray I could spend a fortune on. I bought a bottle of Neem after watching a few videos. Then I have a bunch of keyboard warriors on FB say a bunch of trite nonsense about CHS and the claims that it is in fact an actual condition. Whatever, ok. Well if Neem is a worry to you, don't use it. However, there is a symbiosis plants have with the neem tree. The argument turned me away from using products to "assault" ANYTHING that "lives" with my plants.
A couple of weeks later, I was still a bit vexed by the little bugs in my garden that I was again looking down at the soil. Holy Hell!!! It looked like the mites had developed technology and were galloping across the soil in exosuits at crazy speeds, waving these crazy add-on arms. So, I grabbed one with a piece of tape and put it on a microscope slide. This was a completely different mite. I can't remember the mite name, but I found that it was the predatory species that eats Oribatida.
With an exceptional force of critters working on the overall function of the soil I figured at this point I was pretty well on track to achieving my original goal. Which was to develop a technique to farm literally all aspects of living organism in my garden. At the moment the only video I had available was one from my phone so I am going to wait for a new day to get the camera mounted to the microscope to record a proper video of my water reservoir.
Thought the tent was going to be ok this way. So I changed it another 600 billion times.
One month til 4/20, taken 3/20
(Ran out of pic spots) pt2 up soon.
It all started with what I was calling, "late season" buds from Huntington Oregon. The dispensary was not as seedless as it usually was. I was picking up a seed or two here and there. I was getting curious what I might be able to do with them. The last and only time I grew before this was nearly 20 years ago, it was all errors and bad results. I found out about overwatering, miracle-gro, time release bs and more. I ended up with a super tall, anemic sativa barely worth thinking about. Never made it through flower. That was it. I dove into reading and watching what a few friends did with their grows. Over the years I was able to observe nearly every aspect of the industry, with the exception of pesticides and fertilizers. Both of which I am mostly against. It is still my hope that my constant observations will lead me to a more intimate connection with the plants, that way, instead of listening to what a regimen says as a "protocol". In perfect practice of this theory, the plant is never in "need". Training the plant to signal it's needs before altering it's chemistry and growth to counter environmental changes. Being that I am on disability and sedentary much of the time. I have the privilege of sitting with my girls nearly all day.
I suppose I would be here all night typing if I were to go into what I learned from 10/18/18 until now so I will keep it as simple as I can.
Seeds: All came from Dispensary herb. (****from stressed females which generated their own pollen, making them 99.9% female.) 13 of 13 seeds germinated in less than 24hrs. I submerged them under a gallon of RO, 7.5-8pH water @ ~65degrees. I assumed the pressure of the water would speed germination and it certainly did. This photo is literally the morning after putting them in water.
Then I decided to create light, but realized I wasn't God and it took me forever. First iteration was the most effective.
1 x Lights Of America 2ft 2:1 Red/Blue Grow Light
6 x Feit 9w Full Spectrum Grow bulbs
Second iteration of custom lighting was too intense and plants had burns almost like lasers burned the leaves. Was super bright though and would have been a great veg light if the hidden stuff on the back wasn't burning up slowly on the back side, then I guess go crazy right? NO! I really only used paper and plastics to test whether or not the lights were a viable hack. Short answer, yes they are. But VERY UNSAFE. They run quite hot. I ended up with 28 chips,
If you notice, in this pic you can see that I have several plants in 4" pots still. This was where I believe I was able to stunt the vertical growth *intentionally. There were several considerations in play here since I was preparing to make the choice on what soil medium I wanted to use. When cultivating mushrooms we use coir because the nutrient content is virtually non-existent and colonizing mycelium simply utilizes the grain carbohydrates for it's food source. Since the fungus has fully colonized the outside of the grain, the lack of nutrient in coir and its protection of its own food supply, it is able to colonize coir mixes usually 1:1 Jiffy mix/Coir. This may seem like blah blah blah, but there is a serious angle I was preparing for. (January2019)
The girls had found their new/permanent pots. Many reasons led me to use the mesh garbage cans from the dollar store. Mostly because of the how they were open all the way around. I watched an episode CANNACRIBS which featured Honeydew Farms. They spoke of oxygen uptake around the root ball being a big benefit. So, I thought I would try.
Jute burlap lined dollar store trash cans.
[Edit] Nutrients given during vegetative cycle were kept pretty simple. I assumed that the soil mixture would handle the majority of the plants needs. Occasionally I would use some Alaskan fish fertilizer, but not much. I would use my nose a lot. It seems to me that you can smell a good deal of what is going on with the soil if you just take the time to process it. This also showed when the anaerobic activity would start.
About 2 months in, when I was still considering keeping these as mothers. Before I understood Phenos and picking a mother that was worth keeping. The growth was decent but I was beginning to wonder when I was going to need to supplement trace minerals. I looked up an encyclopedic type reference showing various deficiencies, when I read the missing mineral I immediately thought of the contents of vitamins. Back again to the issue of having money, I decided to pull out some multi-vitamins and take a look at their contents. There isn't much in a mens 50+ multi that a plant cannot use, and nothing that (at least I) knew of to be toxic. For that matter, I also assumed that some of those nutrients might be more readily available than those that have to be reduced by microbes or other processes. Results are inconclusive. It seems that there is a certain amount of ( I mean tiny ) yellow tip on some leaves. Some of this only an indicator that that particular pheno could not handle as much nutrient as the others could.
Mixed medium Soil.
~40%Happy Frog
~30%CocoCoir
~15%Perlite
~5% Worm Castings
~1/4-1/2cup blood meal
The soil mix was inspired by a med grower in WA. I liked how it felt in my hand. Because I have a low budget to deal with, some got transplanted before others. I started to screw around with a slightly different soil mix but thought this time I would add a little spice to the mix. In my closet I had a bag of compost from growing mushrooms. I mixed that in and didn't think anything of it. That's when I found my friends! I panicked, OH NOOOOOO, last time I had mites it was a disaster. I was off to the store to find the most organic "what I expected to not work" spray I could spend a fortune on. I bought a bottle of Neem after watching a few videos. Then I have a bunch of keyboard warriors on FB say a bunch of trite nonsense about CHS and the claims that it is in fact an actual condition. Whatever, ok. Well if Neem is a worry to you, don't use it. However, there is a symbiosis plants have with the neem tree. The argument turned me away from using products to "assault" ANYTHING that "lives" with my plants.
A couple of weeks later, I was still a bit vexed by the little bugs in my garden that I was again looking down at the soil. Holy Hell!!! It looked like the mites had developed technology and were galloping across the soil in exosuits at crazy speeds, waving these crazy add-on arms. So, I grabbed one with a piece of tape and put it on a microscope slide. This was a completely different mite. I can't remember the mite name, but I found that it was the predatory species that eats Oribatida.
With an exceptional force of critters working on the overall function of the soil I figured at this point I was pretty well on track to achieving my original goal. Which was to develop a technique to farm literally all aspects of living organism in my garden. At the moment the only video I had available was one from my phone so I am going to wait for a new day to get the camera mounted to the microscope to record a proper video of my water reservoir.
Thought the tent was going to be ok this way. So I changed it another 600 billion times.
One month til 4/20, taken 3/20
(Ran out of pic spots) pt2 up soon.
