Welcome to my new grow journal. Just in case the possibility eventuates, I'll say it now, that this may end up as a perpetual journal.
Outdoor balcony growing while attempting to keep it stealthy:
The balcony is my grow location and it is one where space is limited and stealth is a priority to keep my grows under the radar of neighbours and from unwanted attention. To keep my plants below the sightlines of neighbours I have to limit the height of my plants to about 2.5 feet because anything higher would potentially be on view.
Medium:
I am growing in LOS (living organic soil). It is soil that I reuse and reamend between grows or reamend as required during the grows.
The soil recipe that I started with was based on what I could source locally to match or approximate Subcool's Super Soil recipe, I had added fresh worm castings to it that soon had worms living in the soil, even with the harsh hot wet/dry cycles of the pots some worms always still survived post-harvest. Since last year's grow, I have added some ingredients from Clackamas Coot/Jim Bennet's soil recipe, like crustacean meal and malted barley. As well as more worm castings from my home worm farm and some home compost mixed in. I bought a 3 layer worm farm unit a couple of years ago as it's easy to feed them chopped up banana skin, fruit/veg waste and in return you get great worm castings and worm wee that the plants seem to like in their watering.
Emilya recently made a post that alerted me to Geoflora dry organic nutrients which are not locally available but they are one of our
sponsors, they also sound very interesting.I am also intrigued too, by the results that the folk who use Mega Crop are getting, but for the time being I'll be sticking with my LOS as it tends to get better with age and also it is fulfilling to observe and learn and make 'tweaks' and additions and monitor the plant's responses, if it can be 'dialed in' well, then it should produce as nature intended.
Pots:
Currently either 30L (8 gallon) or 50L (13 gallon) plastic pots. I have drilled holes in them to convert them into homemade air pots and lined them with landscape fabric. If I was starting again I would go for fabric pots, although there may be benefits from the sturdiness of plastic pots for easier securing of training wire.
I don't do it, but having the potted plants sitting in 2nd outer pots to shield them from the fierce heat of the sun would be a good thing.
Training:
I will be using a combination of quadlining/LST and supercropping as necessary to keep them stealthy and allow maintainance of them in the restricted space of the balcony to be more manageable. Because I have started these girls off later than I did last year there will be less time for them to veg before flowering, so it is likely less training will be needed.
Last Year's balcony grow:
Here are a couple of pics of last year's 3 plant balcony grow, the bigger one (a White Widow x Gorgonzola reg cross), a couple of overheads (also showing a White Widow reg and Gorilla Glue auto) and the final jarred curing harvest. The 2 photo regs were quadlined, the auto was LST'd. The yield of 23oz was really pleasing. By harvest, the buds took up most of the balcony even though I Quadlined and LST'd as well as supercropped them to keep their height no more than 2.5 feet so they would remain below the sight line of the neighbours. The combined buds produced quite a dank smell, which wafting out into the neighbourhood air gave me a wee bit of concern at times.One of the plants had a diameter close to 4.5 feet, and because I didn't prune off larf/weak growth it probably contributed to the plants growing wider canopies than they needed to.
For this current grow:
I intend to prune off all weak growth to focus on quality bud only (if possible) to help keep the plant's canopies smaller and more manageable, and hopefully any dank odours produced will stay within "recommended stealth limits". Last year I wondered if my neighbours were aware of it, or maybe they were but they had no idea that the smell was cannabis. But either way, it is hard to believe that they wouldn't have smelt it. I'm hoping as a balcony that a lot of that dank air will just go straight up skywards to dissipate, hoping..
Aim for this year:
- To grow a high CBD strain, I have read great things on the benefits and 'experience' of high CBD bud and I'm intrigued, so I want to see for myself what a high CBD can offer.
- To grow 2 or 3 THC strains
- At least one sativa dominant strain and one Indica dominant strain
- an overall 'smaller' garden than last year for both manageability purposes and also to reduce the amount of dank smell that escapes into the neighbourhood which should, in turn, reduce my own stress about anyone with a knowledgeable nose picking it up.
- I have not cloned cannabis before, but as the first Godfather seed failed to germinate, I have used the topping of the second plant to see if it will root and if it does then I will grow it out and make full use!
- Similarly, the early sprouted auto has remained very small and will provide very little bud yield, which means if I like her then a small yield will last me no time at all. So I will try to reverse her, in an attempt to at least make use of her and get some selfed seeds if possible.
Germination:
This year I started germinating seeds 4 - 6 weeks later than last year in order to keep the plants to a more manageable and sensible size. I realise now that this doesn't sit well with me as I regret it already, as by this time last year my plants were already a good size which I miss. Now, I would have preferred to have started earlier and prune harder later, to keep the strongest growth which would still allow development of a big root base to ideally power stronger buds. And although this grow I started germination later, some seeds failed to initially germinate which caused further delay because I then gave them more time to sprout which further delaying kicking off replacements when they didn't.
Strains germinated (from L to R):
- CBD Express auto- This is said to be up to 21% CBD and less than 1% THC.I found this strain germinates very strongly.It is from our 420 sponsor Weedseedsexpress who have been excellent to deal with, timely, really helpful, informative, they look after you, I will very happily use them again.
- Mango Sherbert- I have my fellow countryman @syenite to thank for allowing me to share this order with him. This is Indica dominant, said to be uplifting, energetic without couchlock, great all day smoke. Sounds fantastic.
- Godfather OG- from Weedseedsexpress. This looks a very interesting strain. High THC up to 30% and said to be good for strong night time medicine, OG Kush genetics, Indica dominant. I'm intrigued.
- Strawberry Cough- from Weedseedsexpress. This strain has some folk rating it very highly, as being quite special. It is not massively high in THC so it must give a good/special entourage effect, I am really curious about it, Sativa dominant.
CBD Express auto
I initially germinated one of these seeds mid-October. It grew a tap root very strongly and once underway has grown strongly. I have only previously grown 1 auto which was the Gorilla Glue auto last year, that gave me just under 4oz and was grown at the peak of summer. This seed I sprouted quite early in the season (early/mid Spring) which was suggested in the growing notes but I am guessing this is the reason it has only grown to 30cm and altho she has thickening up now, it is still only a trunk without any branches shooting off. I probably started her too early or more likely the balcony didn't provide sufficient sunlight to stimulate further growth.
I sprouted my 1 remaining CBD Express auto seed to try and time this seed for the peak summer weather and see how this one grows compared to the first (same location). I am hoping she grows bigger by being in a hotter sunnier more favourable weather window. It will be interesting to see. After a scuff and soak followed by wet paper towels she sprouted and like her sister grew a long strong tap root very quickly, an erupting root tip overnight then about an inch long a day later.
From my limited experience of autos I am very impressed so far with how strongly they take off. The other observation of these CBD Express seeds is that they are very big seeds. The tap roots they have produced on germination have been long and strong.
And the CBD Express that sprouted just this week
Mango Sherbert
This plant started rather slowly but now seems to have picked up the pace a little. So far she's a bit of a leggy girl.
Godfather OG
The first seed I tried didn't germinate. I topped this plant above the 4th node. Previously, I have usually 'micro topped' where I only wait for the growth shoot to grow a couple of centimetres and then a 'wiggle waggle' back and forth and voila the shoot comes away and she's topped. However, this time I decided to wait for her to grow further so I couldattempt to grow out the topping as a clone. I have kept her stalk in a glass of water with some sugar and a humidity dome over her. It is not going to happen immediately so I will just change the water every few days and hope it is successful. After 2 weeks it is probably still too early to expect roots but we'll see in the next couple of weeks, So far, her leaves still appear in good condition.
I intended to Quadline this plant but because her 2nd node only grew one side I decided to leave this node on and nodes 3 and 4 too, so she will be a 5line/quinline. Unfortunately, when I was focusing on securing the end of one of the training wires, I accidentally applied unintended pressure elsewhere which snapped one of her 'arms', it was at least 80% if not 90% snapped thru but I managed to patch her up with some electrical tape and it looks like she will recover, thankfully. It's a reminder to keep one's wits about you as mishaps are always possible, it doesn't help that my once sharp eyesight is these days a blur of what it recently was.
Strawberry Cough
Like the Mango Sherbert I am waiting for her to start to motor. She is still in a bit of a slow phase and a bit light. Interestingly, she has the same number of nodes as the Mango Sherbert but instead of being leggy she is very low with very tight internodal distances.
Screwups:
I have only just started this grow and I already have made a long list of screwups, it's unbelievable.
- Mistakenly, I planted in concentric planted pots thinking I could make it easy for myself with up potting. Where I could take out the plant out of the pot and place it's root mass into the hole left by it's own previous pot and so on. The trouble is, that when buried in the soil of a bigger pot it didn't make a meaningful root ball for uppotting, instead it grew a long deep tap root thru it's own pot and into the next which meant the Godfather got ripped when uppotting. God knows what I had been thinking/smoking when I did that.
- I failed to see the shell case membrane throttling a newly emerged seed for 2 days and when I did notice it and freed it, it seemed too late because altho it's cotyledons opened it didn't grow any leaves or grow any bigger.
- Another seed, a Mexican Sativa, first emerged from the soil with it's root and after replanting it emerged also throttled by it's own membrane and in my attempts to free it I caused the sprout presumably fatal movement where it then remained stunted from that point. It was the only one of 5 that germinated the chances are it would have grown fine had that not happened. My thanks and apologies to Emeraldo for failure to notice this in time.
- In uppotting the Strawberry Cough, from my previously mentioned stupid concentric pot idea, as soon as I realised it was a bad idea I just wanted it out, but because the roots were insufficiently developed, it all fragmented and the whole plant got momentarily buried in soil during the move, thankfully without harm.
- I mentioned above already where I snapped one of the Godfather's arms, thankfully it looks like it's healing fine. These plants can take a lot of punishment and still shine (if you're lucky), but still, all the same, fucking sausage fingers.
Anyway, it will be a bit slow until growth picks up. I'm always happy for any suggestions as I appreciate all the experience here, and it is great to see and read what folks are doing.
Your neighbors are probably like me and catch a wiff and say,"hell yea! someone forgot to invite me to the party!"
I'll help defend your case brother!! 
Drop me a line if it even came to that.
