My thoughts. I've been using Jorge Cervantes guide to Indoor Marijuana Horticulture. I'm a sophomore at this growing thing but I've had great successes and little total loss. My plan when I started was I would give myself a few years of my own experiences before I can say I know what I am talking about when I say I can grow weed, clone from mothers, from seed, keep mothers alive for years etc. But as you go, you learn. The biggest thing I've learned is to keep everything as simple as possible. Make small moves or changes as you go.
I have a strain that is very good, I don't know what it is, I got it from a guy that got it from a guy that works at a MMJ grow house. Cool I thought...I should have been thinking red flag. This strain grows so fast and tall and I have to keep it on 24hr in veg because at 18/6 it starts to flower. The stuff has a high THC content. I know this from my best girl ever shes been smoking since childhood everyday. So she is my barometer on that. She is a pot snob you might say. If she says its good then you know its good.
I don't smoke it makes me paranoid and sometimes I think I'm dying, am I breathing, is my water intake right, do I have a kidney issue, why am I sweating, did you hear that, don't leave me alone, where did my babe go, shit where is the remote for the tv I need to stop thinking, what are these weird plasma colors going across my eyes, is my heart beating...on and on and on. I only eat it in very low doses for pain and relaxation. There is a threshold I can handle beyond that...I'm dying again.
Anyway this stuff is good but it comes with problems. The biggest of which seems to be that it likes to hermie which may be the reason they were discarded or that the guy got a hold of it in the first place. This was among the first strains I had ever grown. I had gnat problems and thrip problems but didn't know it until the third harvest. So I thought I had light leaks, nutrient deficiencies, nutrient burn, over watering, under watering, ph issues, but I use Happy frog soil. I've done many different grows now, each time changing just one thing at a time trying to find the natural balance of this strain. My last harvest I decided to do three sets of blooming. Since they grow so fast I thought perhaps leaving them in veg too long might be a reason they want to hermie so much. When I say hermie I mean actual male flowers showing under a female flower. I also have the problem of bananas and I can't seem to get a perfect sensimilla harvest.
Anyway, so last time I had three groups, one directly after transplanting, group II the next three weeks after that and then one more three weeks after that. At the end of harvest the first group had bananas but no seeds, but they were about 6 inches tall with basically one good bud on the top.
The second group had bananas and no seeds and had enough for about a month of use maybe a little over an ounce though we didn't weigh it. They were about 2 feet. Its futile to weigh it here, as soon as its ten days dry its getting smoked. Two small quiche dishes were full.
The third group had bananas and a few under developed seeds but we have enough for four months. They were about 4.5 feet tall, compared to 6 feet tall when we first tried this strain a couple years ago. Just when I thought we had some success the mother dried up and died.
Ugh was too busy to notice.
So this time were using all the seeds we got from the earlier harvests and hoping for a bunch of females. My girl says that even with the seeds she has to deal with this stuff is better than anything else she has smoked and its worth the hassle. Meanwhile I don't know if I've proved anything so I added a 400w MH to the 1000w in the grow room to expand the spectrum. My reasoning is that with a wider spectrum the plant may not want to burst so fast into bloom, slowing down the hormonal changes, that is causing the hermie and banana thing. It might make it worse but I'll see.
We have a large amount of seeds so no more M mothers for now. We call it "M" since the strain was labeled M by me two years ago as part of the alphabet labeling system I used when we first started. You have to label if you are cloning for sex. "M" was the mother that died...still makes me sick after all the work I put into it. I want to see if these seeds are feminized. If so I won't be cloning M anytime soon
We also have some new seeds from a friend of a strain that my girl likes, we'll be cloning for sex on those, its called Shock-T, not as good as M but will do comfortably. I found a seed in my shoe after helping a friend harvest, don't know the strain so I called it Toe-Cheese,
it did not pop though. We also had some Stinky Diesel seed
from 2009 that didn't pop. We have a Mystery seed
that popped but is growing very slowly. M and Shock-T popped right up and is growing fast
I am 100% at cloning using a rapid rooter with a dome. I line the bottom tray with basic pebble rock then add the rooter tray on it, a 23w 6500K CFL and a thirty year old heating pad under the whole dome/tray. I've used cloning gel, rooting powders, willow water, and straight from the tap water all 100%. Then transplant to Happy Frog soil.
I've still gotta get the room ready, painting the floor white, I built an actual door to replace the tent like flap that used magnets to close (sounds good and worked but the tape holding the magnets rips and falls off), gotta check for light leaks, and find a new screen filter for the intake. My room is made out of panda film. Growing sometimes feels like a job when you have failures or something is not to your expectation but then it is also peaceful and grounding. It will be a while before I change soils or start mixing my own soil or try anything that adds too many new variables. I like my successes, I have a pot cellar from some early strains, and I understand and learn from my failures. Basically growing is an instinct and the more I listen to that the better I get. With the help of some 420 Magazine friends when I am scratching my head.
Sorry to run on I guess I am a chatty Cathy lol
This LOS thing becomes a passion. 
changed lights from 18/6 to 19/5 fir heart. 
I've given a Heisy tea to them twice I think. So far so good. I think I'll try a third round even.
- I've also been thinking about the whole wouldn't just vermicompost and aeration work? since - that is after all what LOS eventually turns into... especially if you have worms in your pot! - my only worry is that it would become too sludgelike, and something I've seen other LOS growers do is mix in little bits of degradeable aeration with their castings before dressing. Thats what I hope to eventually do, when I get away from this freaking perlite I'm using lol... god why do I have so much??
they really don't compare to the Mars II model I have. (I also bought 2 100x3's!! I'm very disappointed that they can't be used for my veg with good results! But it is what it is, no more vegging under them, at least they're great side-flowering-light, so not a total waste... don't be too upset...! but seriously, if you do a side by side, like put a couple plants under a 100x3 and a couple under fluorescents for veg.... I'm 100% positive the fluorescents will have significantly better results...)
