Re: Magnus8's - Coco Coir - Big Bud & Pineapple Express - First Grow Ever! - Grow Jou
Hi All,
Hope this finds everyone doing well this Monday spring day. The sun is shining (when it's not behind clouds) the birds are singing, the dogs are acting crazy (but they always do) and the wife-bot is watching videos of Chicago Fire. All is normal. There's lots going on with my new outdoor summer grow right now, but that's another story. If you're interested in seeing what's going on then just follow the link below to my new summer grow. I'm working on growing 20 plants this summer, outdoors, on my landlady's other property. I was going to grow on the property I live on but there's no place that is secure enough from cars going by or farmhands coming to work with the cows. Either way, it's just not secure enough on my property. Hence growing on my 91 year old landlady's place. I'm going to talk to her about it tomorrow when I take her my rent (yes, one day late by tomorrow; so shoot me), but I don't foresee any problems with her allowing me to grow my weed in her back forty.
But this is my inside grow, the one you've all been following for so damned long. And yes, it's been a long, long haul. What with temperatures not being high enough in the beginning and stunting my plants from the get go to the nutrient overage that happened for so long. Nute burn for frickin' days, I tell you. That nute burn really set me back some. But anyway, everything is going well enough now. I"m not going to have the harvest I dreamed of, but that's so for every beginner, right? I'm proud of my work with the scrog this grow. And I'm very very proud of how much I've learned this past grow. Gawd knows it's going to be hard to get past another nute overload on me, that's for sure. I'm going to see that coming from a bloody mile away.
But I've got some pics for you today, if you want to see them. And I'm sure you do, right? So here goes...
This first pic is of the canopy which has stretched considerably during the past few weeks. I think the stretch is still on, in fact. It hasn't shown any signs of slowing down at all. Is that good? Does more stretch mean more bud? I don't really think so, but a guy can hope, right?
So here's that pic:
This next shot shows the progress of my broken branch that I mended/tended until it lived. You can still see the break in it, but it's healthy enough, getting enough nutes and water and all. The pic below that is a shot of that same branch, but the end of it where the cola is growing:
This shot is of that same branch, but shows the pipe cleaner I used to add support to it for when it grows a bigger cola. I thought that since the break in the branch didn't heal completely solid that it needed some support to counterbalance the weight of the bud. Hey! Look at me! I'm hoping for at least one big cola! Isn't that just a bit too presumptuous? I have to admit that I'm quite disappointed in myself with this grow. I really expected it to turn out better. But they do say that beginners always have smaller yields than experts and I understand that now. Beginners like me just make too many mistakes. And when we haven't necessarily made a "mistake" then we don't have the experience to necessarily know when something is either off or downright wrong. Whatever happens, we have yields that are smaller than other more experienced growers. And that is certainly the case with me this time. This grow is nothing like it could have been, don't you think? Oh well. I'm hoping that my outside grow will redeem myself. I'm also hoping my outside grow will expand my cannabis coffers considerably. (yes, i'm a poet and I did know it) Anyways, onto the pic:
These next 3 pics are of various flowers growing into buds. I was trying to get close shots of the buds as they form so that you could see the white, white pistils. And boy, are those beautiful little hairlike strands ever white, eh? They're really beautiful to look at, that's for sure. I doubt they'll come through in the pics I've got because I don't really have the lens for taking shots like that.
This last shot tells an interesting tale. 1/2 of my Big Bud plant, the one who was considerably stunted due to heat burn and nutes burn, you know, my damaged little girl, well 1/2 of her just didn't grow. One whole side of her, due to the falloff of light from the cheap LED that I bought. It just didn't reach to the edge of the scrog properly and this plant shows the result. I tried to show both the stunted portion as well as the edge of where it actually grew properly to show you how weird it looks, but I"m not sure I got it all into the pic. You can see the extreme difference between the two portions of the plant when you look to the left of the pic and see the long stalk there but then look immediately down and you see the stunted portion of that very same plant. Very weird.
So I hope you've enjoyed the new pics. I"m getting closer and closer every day to harvest. I can just feel it. I can taste it. I can walk around, stumblingly blind and acting like an idiot stoned over it. Well, maybe I don't really get like that when I'm high, but its a thought.
(Eating these amazing egg salad sandwiches. A young friend of 16-years of age, James, raises chickens and sells the eggs for profit. He's also the young friend who approached me about wanting to sell my extra weed for profit. He wants to be my runner, if you can believe it! A longish story that is detailed in more clarification in my Summer Outdoor Grow Journal that is linked at the bottom of my signatures. Anyway, his eggs taste A-MAZ-ING, they really do, and I love them. We picked up a couple dozen from James the other day and the wife-bot decided to make a huge egg salad this afternoon. I'm reaping the rewards, let me tell you.)
So have great days, you all, and enjoy the week ahead. I've got my work cut out for me these next couple of weeks getting ready for my outside grow. I've contracted with James to dig holes for me (because my back cannot take that kind of heavy work) and he'll be here in about 2 weekends from now to do that job. Then I've got to fashion up a trailer to pull behind my blazer so that I can load a water tank on it and water my plants back in the woods behind my landlady's place. Then I've got a ton of stuff yet to buy for the grow, like my bat guano, worm castings, mycorrhizae, etc. I've already picked up my Bone Meal and my Blood Meal, my black earth and some cow manure. Growing outdoors in soil is so very different than growing indoors, that's for sure. Everything done indoors has to be done so exact (I'm thinking nutes here) but outdoors things get a lot more lax and unknown. A handful of this, two handfuls of that and let 'er rip.
Anyway, I digress. So have great nights, and cheerio!
I'd trust your instincts and celebrate Baby! It gets to be so much more fun from this point on. 
You sure 15 is the number you want to start this learning curve with? No one will be upset if that number shrank some. 
