Radogast's Hi-Brix Basement Grow - New Location - New Soil - New Experiences

[Doc Bud]

I planted a Borderliner clone today (she is greener than the photo - about like the leaf at the top of the screen.)

Last night I watered the older AK47 clone

AK47 is not as green as she appears in the first photo - she is more this color.

Picking up the waterlogged half-gallon pot - the side cracked.

My worker, tasked to keep the plant safe, was half buried in debris by the ensuing flood.

I've decided I don't want to start plants in half-gallon pots - just gallon pots.

The plants in gallon pots are greener and require less frequent watering. It's not a matter of genetics, the AK47 clone in the gallon sized pot is greener than the one above in a half-gallon pots.

I just take better care of my plants when they are in gallon pots, so that's what I will use

I also use gallon pots and make a single transplanting.

 

[Radogast]

A theory on watering with wet and dry cycles


15 days after seed was planted (Amherst Sour Diesel)

]


About 40 days old (Buddha's Gift?)

This is what I think I understand about watering.
Most of this info probably came from my brain interpretting posts by Doc Bud, DrZiggy, and others.


In the top photo this girl is not growing above ground because most of her energy is growing good roots undergroud. There is enough energy from photosynthesizing the light to grow, but she needs to go down into the soil and seek out the nutrients and elements that will be building blocks for growth. She is sending the search parties through the soil to locate good stuff.


In the bottom photo, this girl has located some good stuff in the soil, now she needs more leaves to gather more light energy to power the machinery of fetching those nutrients and elements from the soil and beginning construction of new light harvesting leaves and stems above ground.


If the soil stays moist, she will continue to build above ground until she has used up all the elements and nutrients she has discovered.

If the soil is allowed to dry out, she will be forced to grow more and more roots in search of water - and incidentally locate several new sources of nutrients in the soil. As the roots spread she has access to almost all the elements and nutrition in the soil, more than she needs at this stage.


So if you run wet and dry cycles in veg you create this vast underground infrastructure - the bigger and better the root system, the more access she has to the building materials to grow above ground. She has built a large network of roots to efficiently transport those nutrients. You transplant into the largest pot while still in veg because you want a bigger and bigger network of roots before flower.


On 2/13 I tossed 2 plants into flower that were 11" and 12" tall and 24" wide..
On 2/24 they were both 24" tall and 24" wide.
Because the lights are on a flowering cycle (11 on/13 off) most of that growth is focused on making bud site, some on more leaves.


If I did my wet dry cycles right, they have access to all the nutrients in the soil. They have a strong network of roots to move good stuff in and out of the plant.

In flower, I give the soil all the water it can handle, I give all the foliar spray and nutes that they can use to encourage the girls to produce the best possible crop of buds.



This is my philosphy of watering.
I know you didn't ask for all this, but this post was brought to you free by



Please, please, please nitpick and correct me - I want to get better at helping cannabis grow big buds.

 

[KingstonRabbi]

Thanks Rad.

I did experiment with pineapple kush in 2L bottle, 12/12 from seed. Plant had roots touching all sides about twice as deep as stem was tall by time 2nd leaves started. At 3" tall roots reached bottom 8" down. Just the roots I could see on the sides were at least 6 times mass of top growth, so maybe 10-12 times or more counting roots hidden in soil. I doubt there we many mycos in a 2L pot but they would increase the ratio even more.
By the time HE flowered and I washed the dirt away roots and top growth were about equal mass. That just confirms your view above and why we grow the way we do (to get stoned), to build the roots that will build the plants that will produce the biggest densest stickiest buds (that get us stoned, or cure cancer, it's all good).

 

[Radogast]

Sorry . I know I'm spamming all kinds of posts the last 24 hours
I think I got a contact high touching the AK47 and it's on the racier side


Bubbha's Gift needs to wait about 30 days to go into the flower room.
The leaves in the center mass don't look that good.
I'm considering defoliating everything except the ends of the branches and training them around a little.
What do you think?

 

[Radogast]

Thanks Rad.

I did experiment with pineapple kush in 2L bottle, 12/12 from seed. Plant had roots touching all sides about twice as deep as stem was tall by time 2nd leaves started. At 3" tall roots reached bottom 8" down. Just the roots I could see on the sides were at least 6 times mass of top growth, so maybe 10-12 times or more counting roots hidden in soil. I doubt there we many mycos in a 2L pot but they would increase the ratio even more.
By the time HE flowered and I washed the dirt away roots and top growth were about equal mass. That just confirms your view above and why we grow the way we do (to get stoned), to build the roots that will build the plants that will produce the biggest densest stickiest buds (that get us stoned, or cure cancer, it's all good).

kudos on doing a quality experiment.

+reps on remembering the results

 

[KingstonRabbi]

Sorry . I know I'm spamming all kinds of posts the last 24 hours
I think I got a contact high touching the AK47 and it's on the racier side


Bubbha's Gift needs to wait about 30 days to go into the flower room.
The leaves in the center mass don't look that good.
I'm considering defoliating everything except the ends of the branches and training them around a little.
What do you think?

Looks like a magnesium problem to me, but then I usually say that. I just gave mine some epsom salts to see if it helps.

I wouldn't remove them unless they are blocking healthier leaves or bud sites you want to develop. They're still producing energy for growth. Maybe a more moderate defol.

Another thought, how are you doing on foliar sprays? Could that be part of the problem?

Edit: now I recall having yellowing a little worse than yours when my plants were mid veg. Getting back on track with feedings.foliars (okay, getting on track because at that point I was clearly offtrack... You know what I mean). Following the instructions more closely fixed it after week or two. Some were worse than others, notably my Blue Mystic.

 

[Radogast]

Looks like a magnesium problem to me, but then I usually say that. I just gave mine some epsom salts to see if it helps.

I wouldn't remove them unless they are blocking healthier leaves or bud sites you want to develop. They're still producing energy for growth. Maybe a more moderate defol.

Another thought, how are you doing on foliar sprays? Could that be part of the problem?

I do Brix Foliar once every 7-9 days. She got about 30 ml last night.

I was suggesting a severe defol because I don't really need it to grow much more, but maybe I can force growth to the branch tips - sort of like in fluxing/mainlining.

 

[Canyon]

If she were mine I would remove those with the dead spots and the ones beginning to yellow. Then remove a few more. That should open it up for more light to the lower bud sights.

Best

 

[SweetSue]

Excellent thoughts on the watering cycles Rad. Not sure if I can give you any more reps, but I'll certainly try. I agree with you 100%. The hardest thing to catch is how far you can let them go in veg and still have a healthy plant with a vigorious rootball. Doc recently mentioned letting it dry out a bit more than you might be comfortable with the first cycle in flower, a new idea I'll be trying in my grow.

I love it when I pull the mass out of the pot after harvest and it doesn't fall apart at all until I start hacking away at it. Every time I can feel Doc smile. Lol!

Question...are the spots on the damaged leaves from foliars? I get them on the plants I don't properly pH, something we don't need to be concerned with using the kit. That picture of the BG looks like mine do when I get too aggressive with Brix.

 

[Doc Bud]

A theory on watering with wet and dry cycles


15 days after seed was planted (Amherst Sour Diesel)

]


About 40 days old (Buddha's Gift?)

This is what I think I understand about watering.
Most of this info probably came from my brain interpretting posts by Doc Bud, DrZiggy, and others.


In the top photo this girl is not growing above ground because most of her energy is growing good roots undergroud. There is enough energy from photosynthesizing the light to grow, but she needs to go down into the soil and seek out the nutrients and elements that will be building blocks for growth. She is sending the search parties through the soil to locate good stuff.


In the bottom photo, this girl has located some good stuff in the soil, now she needs more leaves to gather more light energy to power the machinery of fetching those nutrients and elements from the soil and beginning construction of new light harvesting leaves and stems above ground.


If the soil stays moist, she will continue to build above ground until she has used up all the elements and nutrients she has discovered.

If the soil is allowed to dry out, she will be forced to grow more and more roots in search of water - and incidentally locate several new sources of nutrients in the soil. As the roots spread she has access to almost all the elements and nutrition in the soil, more than she needs at this stage.


So if you run wet and dry cycles in veg you create this vast underground infrastructure - the bigger and better the root system, the more access she has to the building materials to grow above ground. She has built a large network of roots to efficiently transport those nutrients. You transplant into the largest pot while still in veg because you want a bigger and bigger network of roots before flower.


On 2/13 I tossed 2 plants into flower that were 11" and 12" tall and 24" wide..
On 2/24 they were both 24" tall and 24" wide.
Because the lights are on a flowering cycle (11 on/13 off) most of that growth is focused on making bud site, some on more leaves.


If I did my wet dry cycles right, they have access to all the nutrients in the soil. They have a strong network of roots to move good stuff in and out of the plant.

In flower, I give the soil all the water it can handle, I give all the foliar spray and nutes that they can use to encourage the girls to produce the best possible crop of buds.



This is my philosphy of watering.
I know you didn't ask for all this, but this post was brought to you free by



Please, please, please nitpick and correct me - I want to get better at helping cannabis grow big buds.

I think that's a pretty good description! Just keep in mind that the most furious, fastest and directed time of root growth is the first 2 weeks of bloom AFTER the bloom hormones are activated.....so like day 6 through day 20 after inducing flower with the photoperiod. Roots grow like crazy then and with a good root system from veg, an entire 7 gallon container will be filled with roots by week 3 of bloom.

You're doing it right!

 

[TheRedDragon]

I think that's a pretty good description! Just keep in mind that the most furious, fastest and directed time of root growth is the first 2 weeks of bloom AFTER the bloom hormones are activated.....so like day 6 through day 20 after inducing flower with the photoperiod. Roots grow like crazy then and with a good root system from veg, an entire 7 gallon container will be filled with roots by week 3 of bloom.

You're doing it right!

Doc, how would the cat drench come into play if you are still growing your root ball? will the cat stunt root growth if you give it too early into flower. I only ask because you could have buds showing within 20 days after inducing. should we wait a bit longer to let the roots develop before giving the cat?
thanks Doc
sorry for the hijack Rad

 

[Radogast]

Doc, how would the cat drench come into play if you are still growing your root ball? will the cat stunt root growth if you give it too early into flower. I only ask because you could have buds showing within 20 days after inducing. should we wait a bit longer to let the roots develop before giving the cat?
thanks Doc
sorry for the hijack Rad

I have 2 girls within a week of needing a cat drench. That's hardly a Hijack, RedDragon. That's thinking for me

 

[MrGreene]

All this soil work was a big job. Some workers showed up to help.

Did Dutty and Dutty Too send them over to help?

 

[Radogast]

About 10 days ago, I was ranting about my Flairosol atomizer failing after 8 uses.



Last foliar spray, a little cheapo atomizer failed on use #1. This didn't trigger any rants in me. My expectations were low - and met.

To be fair, the atomizer had probably been used for something else - I found it half filled with water



Busted Flairosol and busted cheapo atomizer head - replaced with a handy spare.

 

[Doc Bud]

Doc, how would the cat drench come into play if you are still growing your root ball? will the cat stunt root growth if you give it too early into flower. I only ask because you could have buds showing within 20 days after inducing. should we wait a bit longer to let the roots develop before giving the cat?
thanks Doc
sorry for the hijack Rad

If you Cat Drench too early, it changes bud structure and decreases yield. It won't hurt the roots unless you OD on it, but it will stunt growth.

 

[Tead]

Say.... did you think for one moment that you could drop this photo around the forums without the accompanying story?!?!

Oh no my friend... we'll be needing some words.

 

[KingstonRabbi]

Say.... did you think for one moment that you could drop this photo around the forums without the accompanying story?!?!

Oh no my friend... we'll be needing some words.

Ditto!

Don't get it out if you're not gonna share.

 

[Radogast]

Say.... did you think for one moment that you could drop this photo around the forums without the accompanying story?!?!

Oh no my friend... we'll be needing some words.

It's a simpe story and a picture is worth a thousand words.

On May 7, 1979 I bought my first ounce of weed. Before that I had been 'gifted' or 'shared.' Mostly I shared with friends and roomates, but by in '78 I got a job that made ends meet and by '79 I had a promotion and a salary large enough to buy a car and furniture.

I was working Friday-Sunday 6am-6PM in a computer datacenter north of San Jose tending many of the same machines pictured in the original Dr. Strangelove movie. So on the first day of my weekend, Monday around noon, I dropped by Norm's house. Norm did a good business out of his living room. His #1 rule was no in-and-out purchases. You came over, maybe you brought a friend, he smoked you up, you made a purchase, and hung around until you had stayed long enough to be visiting with friends. Most of the time there would be 4-6 people in the middle of making purchases and shooting the breeze. Some good conversation. Maybe some lame TV (Mass marker VCRs and video games were yet to come.) Norm and I sometimes played chess.

Until the day in the photo I had been the friend, but I had $50-60 for an ounce of weed. He had some Mexican for $45 and Columbian for $60. I went home, put on Santana's Moonflower (a double album) and rolled my first joints. I rolled 5 joints. My first time rolling. Marijuana posession in Ca was an infraction - like a speeding ticket. Your average speeding ticket cost $60. A ticket for marijuana cost $50 and they confiscated your weed. Unless you were smoking in front of a cop, or got pulled over for having long hair in a republican suburb, you were never going to get a ticket.

So after I rolled my 5 joints, I lit one up, and continued rolling. I got to thinking about how a business would often have a dollar bill posted near the cash register "My First Dollar." Obviously, if weed ever became a legal business, one would want to post "My First Joint" near the cash register - so I decided to save one of my first joints. Is it my first joint? Maybe. It is one of the first 5 joints I rolled out of the first ounce I purchased.

At my work in the datacenter, my main job was cleaning and tending an IBM 3800 laser printing subsystem. It had a frickin laser in 1978. According to memory, it was 10' long x 6' high x 3' deep. It was like a minuture newspaper printing press you see in Film Noir - a continuous sheet of paper came out of a box on the right, and foled into a stack of paper on the left at to 2 pages per second. This was 30x to 100x faster than our previous printers. There were spinning mirrors and a foil covered electrostatic drum the size of an auto tire spinning at about 30 mph - Ok at actually was only going about 1mph, but that means all the parts were moving paper at 1000 inches per minutes. With paper dust, toner dust, scratches,etc the machine needed about the same amount of attention as a toddler. This printing monsterwas priced at about 4x the houses in the neighborhood and 10X the price of the newest Ford Mustang Turbo v-8 convertible.

Just to connect that piece of outmoded technology to the joint pictured, (you thought I was rambling - I know you did , ) the plastic tube used for storage was a section of a tube used for shipping a 12" long fuser wire for an IBM 3800 printer, which was used melt the toner onto the paper after it had been pressed against the spinning drum moving at 32" per second. The Fuser wire needed to be replaced about once ever 8,000 boxes of paper - so about once a month. The homemade joint display case was originally fitted with 2 red plastic caps at the ends, but I lost those over the years


I'm not burning this joint. I'm saving it for when marijuana it totally legal


Have some street skunk if you must

 

[grimmreefer]

I just cried a little...

 

[Tead]

Beautiful.
For me, it was paper tape, cards, and toggle switches on minis.
I worked with a fax machine that sounds alot like your printer. Messy. Massive.