Rabbit's Big Leap - High Brix With Doc's Kit

Recycling Day

Mixing up a new batch of Doc's kit soil for a 2nd run. Still don't know what I'll be growing next, but I'm very close to closing this one out. Dance Worlds are closer to harvest than I thought, so down they come this weekend if not sooner. That leaves Hash Bomb all alone for 2-3 more weeks, and then an empty tent.
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I have 3 clone strains outside, but those will sit out for a while. Next indoor grow will be all from seed.

The candidates are:
* 30+ F1 Hash Bomb seeds and a few HB hybrids collected from my 1st grow. (haven't confirmed if viable yet.)
* 9 Pineapple Kush regulars I bought for 1st grow but didn't grow. (1 I did plant was male.)
* 4 K-Train seeds I bought for this grow, start 1 but culled it after it started struggling. That could be due to OG heritage and higher nute needs.
* 5 free seeds from last order including:
- Lavender (sativa), Papaya (indica), Skunk-Diesel, and 2 I can't remember.
* Or the 3 seed strains I ran last time, but I have plenty of herb and oil from all those.
* And a wild card, Dark Devil Auto that I plan to order so I can grow and bloom something outside.

I'm leaning toward the free seeds and DDA. I'm eager to try growing out the HB seeds, but not sure I want the commitment of something that will turn into a pheno hunt right now. I've got at least a month to decide.
 
KingstonRabbi said:
Still struggling to separate all the oil from the water. I think I used too much water in pressure cooker and compounded that by trying to boil out oil in another bath. I also tried using alcohol to extract oil from plant matter. That was a mistake. With all the olive oil in it the alcohol wouldn't strain through filters like I expected, so that's 2 messes to clean up.

I did find some large mesh tea bags that I used with my potato ricer to squeeze out most of remaining oil. Just a matter of cleaning up the messes I made with this first attempt. Learned what not to do, so that's worth something.

Next time I'm using more olive oil and skipping the pressure cooker.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried with a pressure cooker yet. I like the results I'm getting on the stovetop too much. I won't have the quality control I want with a pressure cooker, so the ease doesn't attract me as much as I thought it would. To be honest, I get mesermerized by the cooking oil. :battingeyelashes: :Love:

I'm excited that you're considering a DDA, and outdoors to boot! :yahoo: One by one we pull you in. Lol!
 
I wrestled long and hard to justify buying more seeds. Then I remembered I promised myself when I ordered the seeds for last grow that I'd be back to celebrate by buying something more exotic and less practical. I behaved then and stuck to medical strains, passing over... well you know the routine as well as I do. So I ordered my DDAs and then went really crazy and got a Sour D too. Then I wrestled long and hard to get the transaction to go through. Nobody's fault, just a series of unfortunate events. Tonight it went through and celebratory seeds are on the way, including a free Skunk #1 Auto. I have to laugh about that because in my first grow journal (the Perpetual Juice Bar) that was the first strain voted off the island. Great smell but the nastiest juice ever! I don't have to juice it this time, so I'm glad to have it back.
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Lol! Made me laugh right out loud to consider some cosmic force saying "let him try this one again!"
 
And then the was one... sort of

Dance World #2 and #4 are coming down. I trimmed the fan leaves but didn't chop yet. I need to clean up the kitchen before I start another batch of fresh harvest oil. So they sit on my back patio to be cut down and washed tonight, half of each for FHO batch tomorrow and other half to dry for CCO batch for direct comparison of methods. I don't have a CCO batch I can compare directly to the BCS FHO batch, but my gut feeling is that the FHO (made at 100 gr herb to 100 ml oil) is roughly same strength as Bio Bombs made with CCO titrated to 50 mg/capsule, but with fuller terpenes expression to high. 50 mg is what we calculated the potency should be for the FHO capsules.
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The other thing I've been waiting to check. Both plants were transplanted from 1 gal to 4 gal after I found them flowering. Roots did reach edge of pot just barely, but enough to hold the 4 gal dirt ball together solidly. I don't think my patented Bunny Mix soil will compete with Doc's kit anytime soon, but I like what I see.
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No pic of the lonely Hash Bomb left in the tent. 2 more weeks and then I can tear it all down for a while. This summer will be about growing autos outside, plus the mystery seedling out there with my clone mothers. I'm going to try to resist starting anything indoors again until September. Give myself time to finish a few other projects first.
:Namaste:
 
It's a mix of recycled soil and up to 1/3 rabbit manure including hay and paper fibers from litter box, so urine too. Plus some aged garden amendments ('bio-solids" with sand and bark). Not at all a precise mix or even the same among different pots. The rabbit manure has good texture at first but compacts a little with each drench and breakdown in soil, so needs other amendments for drainage.
 
I used it in my green house this year as an extra and it looks good I'll post a photo of it if it is finished
Some of the tomatoes don't like it
 
Sole Survivor update

Hash Bomb with her uneven canopy that just keeps getting more uneven. Yes, I could have fixed that with supercropping, still could to an extent, but part of my goal was to let these plants grow naturally, not to maximize yield. This plant had been vegging in 4 gal pot longer than others. Her soil is mix of Tagro and recycled potting soil without much if any rabbit manure. (I started the bunny mix after she was potted up.) She was pruned back twice, grew larger than others, and has shown signs of slightly exhausted soil throughout flower. That said, the soil has held up pretty well with only a couple organic drenches. She had one of the better stretches of this line, and prior to my run with Doc's kit I would have been very happy with this plant in any prior grow.

When I started a year ago I tried growing my first seedlings in pure Tagro that had done wonders for my garden. Those plants nearly died, and I bought into the weak soil with bottled nutes strategy to control nute levels almost like hydroponics. Now I see that as probably the biggest single mistake I've made. For me it was a mistake. I understand that others can manage their grows better that way, producing some magnificent plants. But organic soil is what makes sense to me whether it's Doc's kit or scraping together what I have on hand. Making mistakes is part of any learning curve. I don't regret them. But I'm very happy to be past those mistakes and where I am now, ready to make a whole lot of much better mistakes. :)
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Outside the mystery seedling keeps growing, 7th leaf pair and 16" tall. I forgot that outdoor plants have longer internodes. The clones I moved outside do too now, it's just they are bushier and it doesn't show as much. In the background is the mini greenhouse where it all started just over a year ago. That's all from memory lane tonight. :Namaste:
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Kingston Goes Purple

Got my new cell phone case in the mail.
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Oh, wait! It's seeds! First 2 DDAs are in soil as of yesterday. Going to grow in 5 gal in the kit soil that's just about ready futside for rest of summer. That's almost 90 days until equinox. I hope that's enough. I have a Sour Diesel Auto and Skunk #1 Auto to join them soon. No journal for these, but I'll be adding to the DDA thread.
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And some back tracking. On the solstice I planted 1 K-Train seed. Now that I know how heavy it feeds I should do better with this one. It will be good candidate for reviving my aerial hexoflux style. No journal planned for this one either, but then I didn't plan on planting it now either. Still hasn't popped up so may be moot point.
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Last item is lonely Hash Bomb ready for harvest. No pics today, but I will update later this week and then close this journal out.
:Namaste:
 
New seeds are always fun! These are for your outdoot adventures right? I am excited to see how they grow outdoors. I've always wanted to try outdoors but it's too much for me to handle. Just going to stick to my 2 tents and watch someone else (you) do it instead :). Are you going to start a different journal for them?
 
No grow journals for me for a while. I will be posting to the DDA thread. I'm growing autos because that's they only way I can flower a plant outside. Too much light in the city. It's a shame I can't put one of the purple DDAs in front for neighbors to enjoy. They really do make attractive landscape plants when grown naturally.
 
KingstonRabbi said:
No grow journals for me for a while. I will be posting to the DDA thread. I'm growing autos because that's they only way I can flower a plant outside. Too much light in the city. It's a shame I can't put one of the purple DDAs in front for neighbors to enjoy. They really do make attractive landscape plants when grown naturally.
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Throw some pics on my thread then if you take any this summer. I'd love to just see what they look like every few weeks.
 
The Final Cut

Okay, not that final, but the end of this journal.

Harvest planned for last week stretch through the weekend and holiday as I had 'other things to do'. Finally cut Hash Bomb down last night. I should have watered her one more time because she was already partially dried. I pulled 250 'fresh' grams of flowers, wild guess is that if I had harvested when planned she would have been about 400 gr wet, maybe more considering volume of chopped herb needed 500 ml to cover and still absorbed a lot of that. Note to self: FHO requires FRESH herb! This is going to be another extended process to get all the oil back out of herb. Definitely going to need a water bath.

Like the others in the 'bunny mix' soil she had stronger scent than even the kit soil plants (actually, I didn't grow Hash Bomb in kit soil, But if I had this would still be a little stronger smell.) The down side of the bunny mix is that the buds didn't get as dense, and the others still had too much N at harvest (except the BCS in the smaller pot managed to use up most nutes and finished with harder buds, still not like Doc's). So Doc is in no danger from my little experiment, yet...

I've been reading Jeff Lowenfels books Teaming with Microbes and Teaming with Nutrients. Microbes is a must read for any gardener! It makes the difference clear between feeding the plant and feeding the soil. No, not feeding the microbes in the soil, feeding the soil as a living, breathing, eating, drinking, pooping ecosystem! Very easy to understand and apply to any garden. Nutrients is more technical but gets into the chemistry of nute uptake that take Doc's soil up a level from other LOS. I love being able to play with soil using my own free ingredients on hand, and maybe I could apply the nute science to tweak my mix to do what Doc's does.
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Maybe I could rival Doc's soil, but for the time and money the kit is the way to go. I have 2nd run kit soil cooked and ready, and 2 DDA seedlings in 5 gallons each (born 6/29 and 6/30). K-Train I planted on solstice is a no show, and Sour D auto looks like it may have been eaten. I'll start the Skunk auto and that will be it until fall and I set the tent back up.
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My off-brand Lego super-heroes are taking a summer sabbatical, so I invested in a new crew to watch over the back yard. At the top are a couple of Rocket Scientists, Dave and Hal. Hal's an IT specialist that likes to take control. With him on board what could go wrong?!
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Just in case something does go wrong, two new super-heroes so off-brand they don't even have names! How cool is that?
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Sharkey and Bones on the lookout for enemy ships. We take security very seriously!
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And the maintenance crew, a couple fire fighters and construction guys that apparently are both supervisors since neither does any work. I also got two special ops guys. Don't know if they are really good at camoflage or out on recon. Hopefully the bugs won't know either.
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And a look at the clones, 2 HBs growing tall a natural, starting to branch out. When it's time I'll take a few new clones for the tent and see if I can flower these outside before the rains come this year. Same for 1 BCS and 1 Medical Mass.
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And that is the end. Thanks for following. See you all on your own journals or in the medical threads.
:Namaste:
 
Thanks for the fun ride Rabbit! See you around homie! Great Journal!
 
Thank you KR. :hugs: It was a delightful journey. Loved the inclusion of the Lego team. Hahaha! You should see my daughter's collection. She can stand in the store and manipulate those little bags with mini figs and identify who's inside. Gets it right 100% of the time. She's amassed quite a population. :battingeyelashes:

A warm and loving "Welcome little ones" to the new DDAs. We'll be seeing more of you on the community thread.

Are you ready to no longer have a grow journal? I find I feel lost without that primary address. I felt like a wandering waif when I was shut down. I have a lot more threads to run to now, but still..... that journal is my home.
 
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