The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Azimuth]

I've seen people sprout the seeds like bean sprouts, then blender them in water and pour that in, and I know people who toss the seeds, still in the shells, into a blender dry, turn it into a seed meal and cook it into their mix.

Both Coot and Jeremy at BAS are big proponents of malting the seeds. Sprout them and as soon as they get a small amount of root into the blender they go with water as a high enzyme tea.

I think I'll have a look at the grocery store for bulk sunflower and pumpkin seeds and try them different ways. Kind of like I use my top dressing mix as a top dressing plus a soil amendment plus now a tea amendment.

So, sunflower seeds for P and pumpkin seeds for K. Sounds right up my alley.

 

[Gee64]

I have seen many articles on both aloe vera drenches and coconut water drenches so I'm currently growing an aloe vera plant and I bought some coconut water powder.

The aloe plant is multiplying in the pot so pretty soon I will divide it into multiple pots and then I should have a steady supply.

It's hard to find exactly what is in aloe but it sounds a lot like kelp, and also a good P source.

Over 75 plant/soil friendly beneficial compounds apparently. Vitamins, aminos, growth stimulators, and the limited info hints that it's 1-1-1 to 2-1-1 on npk.

Coconut water has been used forever as a plant food. It is also supposed to greatly enhance calcium uptake.

Once I have enough aloe to perpetually harvest it I am going to do a clone run and compare aloe/coconut vs those without.

If you have an aloe plant this might be right up your alley.

 

[Azimuth]

Aloe in the Garden

And the coconut is the world's largest seed, so using the water is getting all the intro to life stuff in a seed into your plants.

Check out the Build-a-Soil website as I know Jeremy (and Coot again) are big proponents of that. The Kis Organics site is another good one for background info on organic inputs. That one has a ton of very good podcasts where the owner Tad Hussey interviews various masters of their craft and many of them are quite sciency.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Sorri Azi I just saw this post now. That sucks. Have you grown this strain before?

To drought properly I think you would have to know how long the plant flowers for to get the timing right.

I'm not a droughting expert by any means, the only droughting I have ever done was back in the day when we all used to drought into harvest because we seemed to feel it upped potency, but there was zero science attached to that.

I wonder if Maritimers threads indicate that timings are different for strains that run longer?

You've possibly noticed I was wondering about the timing for my own grow.

Theres a lesson in breeders times to be learned too. When I run a new strain I usually let it tell me, not expecting anything really. Some seed companies are spot on, but some have no idea really.

Do you think the time to initiate droughting is determined from flip date, or from time left to finish?

Time left to finish makes more sense to me, but again, I really know very little about it other than it causes multi-headed trichomes.

Good question.

It's end of life so different for sativas than the indicas I grow, though the paper this is all based on was a PhD study and it wasn't all that robust in my opinion so I think there's more info in Krissi's thread than there is in the science so we're all kinda flying blind really.

The official version was a drought in week 7 of an 8-9 week strain if memory serves, but to my knowledge that official version was not run again to test different time periods, nor different strains, different conditions, mediums, etc. Maritimer has some good info as well.

in Krissi's thread we tried all kinds of different variations and one thing that seemed consistent was the elongation of trichs that we called corralling since it looked like sea corral under a loop.

Good to know. Also interesting to know the etymology of words of weed.

So I guess my plants are too far advanced for the week 7 option, as they are now in their 11th week with a couple more to go?

 

[Azimuth]

So I guess my plants are too far advanced for the week 7 option, as they are now in their 11th week with a couple more to go?

Well again, end of life stuff, so if you've got a couple of weeks to go and you're on week 11 you're likely growing a sativa or at least a sativa dominant plant so I would definitely give it a go. If you have a loop you can watch the trichomes as they elongate and twist and fall all over each other.

I made the mistake of droughting multiple times as I wasn't seeing the elongation response and I think that interrupted the filling of the trichomes as the plant probably didn't have the energy to do that while it was fighting to stay alive from lack of water.

So, I'd try it by the book at least for your first try (Droughting instructions from Krissi) and that is a 50% drop in LWA (leaf wilt angle) and not a 50 degree drop. I use a cheap plastic protractor and track the angle daily until I reach the goal. In my SIPs that's usually up to 11 days, but with this last plant I was watering by monitoring Gee's water stick and I got to the target LWA in 3 days I think.

Maybe @Maritimer will weigh in as he was the one that brought this to our attention and I think he grows sativas as well and he can maybe speak to the timing of all this. Here are some recent thoughts from him.

 

[StoneOtter]

Do you think the time to initiate droughting is determined from flip date, or from time left to finish?

When I drought them I wait to see that they have bulked up enough for me to be able to say, yeah these buds are done growing out, I'm waiting for trich color now. I guess I wait for the end, Usually for me it's drought, rescue water and cut in the very near future, usually a week or less.

I've changed my droughting habit to only droughting my pain med weeds. The rest are strong enough. The family can't enjoy a full 25 to 30% thc plant that's been droughted and be party hardy. Maybe a lower thc one I will too.

I do the roll it around between my fingers too but then I squeeze it between coins with pliers and dab it onto the glass, but I still wrestle with getting that drop from full fingered fan leaves.

I think it still depends on the barometric pressure some days. Some times I can't get a drop no matter what I do. Others they come as I ask.

 

[Gee64]

When I drought them I wait to see that they have bulked up enough for me to be able to say, yeah these buds are done growing out, I'm waiting for trich color now. I guess I wait for the end, Usually for me it's drought, rescue water and cut in the very near future, usually a week or less.

I've changed my droughting habit to only droughting my pain med weeds. The rest are strong enough. The family can't enjoy a full 25 to 30% thc plant that's been droughted and be party hardy. Maybe a lower thc one I will too.

Thanks Stone, that makes sense. I don't drought anything anymore. I like mid-grade when it comes to potency. If I was growing a run strictly for hash or hash oil then I probably would.

I think it still depends on the barometric pressure some days. Some times I can't get a drop no matter what I do. Others they come as I ask.

I never really thought of that. That could be solid intel

 

[Gee64]

Well again, end of life stuff, so if you've got a couple of weeks to go and you're on week 11 you're likely growing a sativa or at least a sativa dominant plant so I would definitely give it a go. If you have a loop you can watch the trichomes as they elongate and twist and fall all over each other.

I made the mistake of droughting multiple times as I wasn't seeing the elongation response and I think that interrupted the filling of the trichomes as the plant probably didn't have the energy to do that while it was fighting to stay alive from lack of water.

So, I'd try it by the book at least for your first try (Droughting instructions from Krissi) and that is a 50% drop in LWA (leaf wilt angle) and not a 50 degree drop. I use a cheap plastic protractor and track the angle daily until I reach the goal. In my SIPs that's usually up to 11 days, but with this last plant I was watering by monitoring Gee's water stick and I got to the target LWA in 3 days I think.

Maybe @Maritimer will weigh in as he was the one that brought this to our attention and I think he grows sativas as well and he can maybe speak to the timing of all this. Here are some recent thoughts from him.

Thanks Azi. That makes sense. I have always done end of life droughting. We didn't know about droughting, we just figured that droughting into harvest would speed the cure, and stumbled onto the added potency.

Me and my buds back in the day had always done this outdoors when we were young. It was all California Redhair back then, so Indica as thats all that would ripen in time.

I've done it end of life indoors with Durban, which is a sativa, and you get the monster multi-headed trichs there too. Wayyyyyy too potent for me.

 

[Azimuth]

And when I say "end of life" I'm really saying towards the end after the buds have built but I don't drought directly into harvest. I'd rather rehydrate them since that seems to give me a more consistent drying/curing process as the plant has a normal amount of moisture in the tissues to slow down the initial part of the dry/cure cycle and better fits my normal dry/cure process.

If the plants are too dry going into harvest they may be drier than ideal to keep the microbial level up for the cure.

I haven't done a side by side test on that since my space is small and I grow perpetual harvest style one plant at a time, but that's what makes intellectual sense to me.

 

[Azimuth]

The sprout tea would probably work too but I'm a fan of cooked in.

I think the idea of the sprout tea is that the seed has activated the most growth enzymes and hormones right as it germinates but before it uses any of them up in growing so that's the exact optimal time to get the highest benefits into your soil.

So, they're active not dormant as they would be in a stored seed.

I've got a bunch of seeds I got a while back in storage so maybe I'll try them over my next few rounds of tea since apparently I'm a regular tea user now.

 

[Gee64]

I think the idea of the sprout tea is that the seed has activated the most growth enzymes and hormones right as it germinates but before it uses any of them up in growing so that's the exact optimal time to get the highest benefits into your soil.

That makes sense.

So, they're active not dormant as they would be in a stored seed.

I've got a bunch of seeds I got a while back in storage so maybe I'll try them over my next few rounds of tea since apparently I'm a regular tea user now.

Ohhhh, an experiment!

 

[Carmen Ray]

Thank you all for weighing in on the droughting.

 

[Azimuth]

That makes sense.

That's the idea behind malted barley for the beer industry. They got all fancy with the drying through an oven at the exact right time, but basically the same concept.

But hops and cannabis are related so I assume it's really about cannabis but they had to talk about it relative to something legal to get past the authorities. It's just like my theory about grow stores. They have to call them "Dollar Stores" or big box stores, euphemisms like that, but come on, we all know what's going on here.

Ohhhh, an experiment!

Well, really more like a group of anecdotes. There will be no controls, no math, no science of any kind. Just Azi trying different things, throwing stuff against a wall to see what sticks.

 

[Azimuth]

Ohhhh, an experiment!

Since I know you are fond of experiments, here's one I'm going try today. It's a Spider mite spray alternative to neem from Clackamas Coots that I just posted to my journal.

It's made from mint leaves which I happen to be growing in my backyard so it fits right in to my theme. Coots says it's as effective as neem against the little bastards so I'm going to find out since I am well supplied with test subjects.

 

[Gee64]

Since I know you are fond of experiments, here's one I'm going try today. It's a Spider mite spray alternative to neem from Clackamas Coots that I just posted to my journal.

It's made from mint leaves which I happen to be growing in my backyard so it fits right in to my theme. Coots says is as effective as neem against the little bastards so I'm going to find out since I am well supplied with test subjects.

Interesting. And a good grow-op masker. People will only suspect it's toothpaste they smell.

 

[Azimuth]

I'm going to pick more leaves than I need this round in the off chance I can't get brix high enough to do the job for me going forward.

I'll make a crumble out of dried leaves and stick them on the shelf. (In a jar)...

 

[Gidorah]

Sunday fun day, quick SoCal update. All plants are showing bloom now.

Here's the IKLWA, I need to measure how tall she is. In watching your TMSC plant Gee, I hope I can show the same patience if this one gets all raggedy. I would think it's done and chopped it already so I'm glad you're leading the way here. She's finally showing preflowers

Here's the OG Kush. She was the first to pop so she has a headstart. Will make the trimming staggered which is nice

Enjoy your Sunday!

 

[Gidorah]

Suspense was killing, IKLWA has reached 9 feet tall!

 

[StoneOtter]

Suspense was killing, IKLWA has reached 9 feet tall!

They all look great! IKLWA is just fabulous!

 

[Gee64]

Suspense was killing, IKLWA has reached 9 feet tall!

Haha!! Freakin Awesome!!. She may even stretch more! Too cool. I wonder what the neighbors think?

My Iklwa didn't self cannibalize but RVDV has every time. 5 for 5 now. The flowers are worth it tho. They are unlike any flower I've ever grown.

You will like Ikky. Nice and nuggy for a landrace, great smells and taste, and a fantastic buzz.

I haven't tried RVDV yet other than some young testers that were suprisingly potent but really zippy. She will calm down with a cure.

It looks like your stash will get a huge boost this autumn