JimmieJ's First Grow - Closet - Soil - Bag Seed - CFLs

Update. Things are going well. :thumb:

Group photo, posing in sunlight
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Cici. She's still putting out pistils but slowing down, so it won't be long now.
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Sandy. She's losing leaves like crazy and getting too yellow too fast, so I added worm castings and blood meal to give her a little boost of N. Might not help, but shouldn't hurt. She has a while to go so I don't want all the leaves to fall off yet.
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Colleen. As I had hoped, she snapped out of her funk after the transplant and greened right up again. She still looks a little waterlogged, but the container is still pretty heavy so she'll be beautiful again once she dries out.
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Sally. I did a supercrop on her last week. I think I did it right this time.
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Candi. She is very resilient. She almost went down the toilet but I gave her a chance because I was bored.
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I started training her early. She's unique because the main shoot died when she was in critical condition, and there are three main stems now. She's going to end up in the fridge when she gets too big because I have nowhere to put her till my flowering girls are done and the veg closet has an opening. Fingers crossed that the fridge thing works like I want it to.
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Sasha. Two full weeks in the fridge with no water, light, or air and she looks exactly the same.
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Update. This hobby definitely requires patience.

Cici. It seems like I should be harvesting her by now, but I keep seeing numerous pistils coming out of a single spot, then swelling up, and more new trichomes. All with hardly any leaves left.
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Sandy. The worm castings and blood meal must have helped. After a few days, the leaves stopped falling off and the color stabilized.
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Sally. I topped her just under the supercrop. Next, I want to play around with defoliating and make the branches look the way I want.
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Colleen. Not doing much of anything, and still looks a bit over watered. The moisture meter reads saturated halfway down, and I haven't watered her yet since transplant. I'm sure the soil is not drying out fast enough, so I poked the moisture meter all the way in, in several places, all around the plant to let some air and oxygen in. Then put her near a sunny window with a big fan blowing on her.
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The one in the fridge is still the same after three weeks. Maybe I'll be smoking her in 6 months. Maybe this fridge thing is going to make her a "him."
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The basement clone. This is my current favorite. I'm defoliating to try and keep each branch even, it seems to be working. The middle branch was the runt.
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Not a lot going on so haven't updated in a while.

I'm kind of stuck with Colleen. Maybe I damaged the soil by sterilizing it, or maybe over watered the soil at transplant time, because it just won't dry out and I haven't been watering. She is not drinking or growing. She has looked overwatered for a couple weeks now. Seems like a root problem to me. A while back, Radogast mentioned applying mycorrhizae to the roots at transplant time, so I finally ordered some. I took out as much soil as I could without ruining the roots. Then mixed up the wet bottom soil with the dry top soil, put some perlite down, sprinkled some mycorrhizae on the roots and put the soil back in. Then gave her a little drink. If this doesn't work, too bad. The original mother seemed picky, and so have the clones.

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After all that, the moisture meter shows that it's good and moist. The meter was pointing all the way to the right before I did this. Who knows what will happen. My biggest annoyance will be if she doesn't start to thrive. I have used a lot of electricity keeping her under lights and the fan all this time.
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Do you have a full plant picture of Colleen?

She doesn't look much bigger, but then she had been transplanted in the last month - now twice.

Do you water from the top, or do you do a full soaking in a bucket ?

Here she is. Not looking very happy, but I'm not surprised!
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Since the soil has stayed so wet, I haven't watered her since transplant, other than what I gave her just recently after messing with the soil.

I haven't had a consistent watering technique. When I had fungus gnats, I switched to watering from the bottom, to make sure the top layer of soil stayed too dry to be a host for the gnats to lay eggs. When the flowering girls started looking like they needed some nutes, I put worm castings and blood meal on top, and went back to top watering to wash the amendments down, and that's where I am now. With winter coming, and no threat of bugs getting in the house, I'll probably stick with top watering, unless you have some advice for me there.:thumb:
 
Update on the rest of the girls.

Cici. She is determined to keep throwing out pistils and make the buds a little fatter, but now the older calyxes and sugar leaves are starting to turn brown, so I am about to harvest her. I still can't judge the trichomes, whether they're clear or cloudy. They all look cloudy to me, no matter how young they are. The latest sample I smoked told me that I can harvest now and I'll be happy with the effects.
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Sandy. She's happily doing what I need her to do. :thumb:
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Sally. She hasn't started growing yet after being topped. The soil finally dried out enough for her to wilt a bit, so I gave her a nice drink and she perked up. I'm somewhat expecting issues with her, too. I think I damaged the soil by baking it. If I did, it's probably not too late to add living amendments to get some beneficial stuff happening. I can fall back on MG if need be for this round.
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The basement girl Candi is getting too big for this container. I would toss her in the fridge, but she started showing the exact same issues as Colleen (they are both clones of Cici). The new growth started coming out lime green, so it's probably not a low N problem, because the lower leaves are still dark green. I'm going to experiment getting her stable before I put her in cold storage. I gave her fish emulsion with her last two waterings and she looks like she appreciated it. I still don't know what the deficiency is though.
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Last but not least, the fridge girl Sasha. She is FINALLY starting to show signs of decline. She has been in the fridge with no light or water for well over a month now. I will take her out, give her a drink and keep her under low light for a couple days, then see how she does in the veg closet. I'll have a container ready for her very soon because Cici is about to check out of hers. :thumb:
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Fan woes. One of my small fans died overnight. I'm not surprised because it's been running 24/7 for months on end. The blades were not turning freely and I assumed it just needed oil, so apart she came.

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Cleaned off all the old grease, added new motor oil and put it back together. It ran, but very slowly. I took it apart again, and swapped the end pieces. They look identical, and my theory was that they wear out in one spot, and swapping them to the opposite end would put the shaft against some fresh surface. Bingo. Fired right up at full speed, and now it doesn't make the "old fan" noise it has been making for a long time.
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Back in business
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I hope this helps someone, I know many of us use these fans, and it's possible to revive them! :thumb:
 
Cici got the final chop. Just over 60g wet. It should come out to at least 15g dry. Add that to the first partial harvest and Cici will be treating me to over an oz. Not bad for a CFL grow, and quite a bit more than her mother. Imagine what she would've produced if I knew what I was doing and had proper lights. :thumb:
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I got tired of harvesting so left the popcorn bits. I'll get to it later, should be worth at least a few joints.:tokin:
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Fan woes. One of my small fans died overnight. I'm not surprised because it's been running 24/7 for months on end. The blades were not turning freely and I assumed it just needed oil, so apart she came.

Cleaned off all the old grease, added new motor oil and put it back together. It ran, but very slowly. I took it apart again, and swapped the end pieces. They look identical, and my theory was that they wear out in one spot, and swapping them to the opposite end would put the shaft against some fresh surface. Bingo. Fired right up at full speed, and now it doesn't make the "old fan" noise it has been making for a long time.
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I hope this helps someone, I know many of us use these fans, and it's possible to revive them! :thumb:


Congratulations on Cici harvest !

Very nice idea with the fan. I may give that a try. I wonder if the same technique will work with my bench grinder :hmmmm:
 
Thanks Rad!

I have a bench grinder, but haven't used it enough to put any wear on the motor. No idea what the motors in them are like. Could be the kind with the brushes that wear down and are serviceable. I bought a bargain brand miter saw that actually came with replacement brushes. I bet they had to do that to get the heavy users through the warranty. Mine certainly won't need replacing any time soon.
 
The end of Cici. Her gifts will keep giving after she's gone. :thumb:

I picked the popcorn. A few joints indeed.
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I like looking under the hood after they finish. This was a really compact growing plant
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I can see the roots, but she wasn't root bound. These containers are the right size for my lights.
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She was another learning experience. On to her clone that just got transplanted.
 
I was going to pop Candi in the fridge but she's too nice to not grow right away, so I transplanted her into Cici's old container and soil.

The soil from Cici was still moist, so I broke it up, added worm castings and yum-yum as amendments and transplanted. I only gave her a regular sized drink. I was getting the soil soaked on my prior transplants, and it won't dry out fast enough when I do that.


This time I used old screen material to keep the soil from spilling out. Last time I used newspaper, and it was a pain to pick out all the pieces, plus with the screen it should breathe better.
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Nice roots
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I sprinkled mycorrhizae on them before planting
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This is right before I almost gave up on her.
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Today after transplant
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The three main branches make it so I don't need to top or supercrop her.
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Now I have to figure out how to get her more light. Not the worst problem to have I guess. :thumb:
 
Update on the fridge experiment. It took 6 weeks for this plant to go from healthy, growing and thriving, to this. That is amazing to me. I took her out, gave her a big drink of the water that was in the fridge, and put her in a room with daylight, but nothing bright and no air movement. Tomorrow I will see if she "woke up" and take a pic. If this plant revives and starts growing again, I will be really happy that I can do this. I remember wanting to try this on a female when it worked on the male, but a spare female was a distant hope at that point. Now I tried it, and I get to find out very soon what will happen, now that she's out. If it works and she goes into flower healthy, I don't see this causing hermie problems, but it's way too soon for that. Just having fun and documenting it.:thumb:

Next goal, if this works, is to put a healthy, flowering-ready plant in the fridge and see what happens. A long way off.
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DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR LEAVES!

I had a bag of leaves in the freezer from various trimmings, I made cannabutter out of them and it worked.

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Last night I put some in mashed potatoes, and the taste really isn't bad. It just needs to go into something that doesn't already have butter in it. Saltines were a good choice.

Leaves most definitely have THC, and butter & heat extracts it very well. It took around 2 hours for the effects but lasted much longer than smoking.
 
Update. Good thing I'm not trying to grow all my own food or I'd be starving to death. :thedoubletake:

Some progress finally.

Sandy. She's getting very close now.
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Sally. After I topped her, she stopped growing. She finally came around. I started removing the new branch growth where I don't want any buds. I'm hoping to get rid of any popcorn buds before they start. Just a thought at this point but I'm learning.
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Got a little rough trying to bend the branches and broke one. Hopefully this zip tie mends her. Looks fine to me.
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Colleen. She seemed waterlogged and wasn't growing or drinking. She finally started growing again too, and I am pruning her like Sally. I want to top her, and I mean chop off the entire top half, but that might be too much stress after all I put her through so I'll let her recover first, and take it slow.
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Candi. She is still my favorite. I almost kicked her to the curb, but gave her a chance, and she is doing great. The three main stems make me want to top my plants early to get more control over the growth. The difference between Candi and Colleen is remarkable and they are from the same mother. If I thought she had a good enough root system, I'd put her into flower but I'll be patient because I don't know, and don't know if roots will continue to develop after flowering is started.
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That's all.
:lot-o-toke:
 
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