Zion's Soil Outdoor Grow Journal - First Grow - 2015

[Zion Ganja]

To my humble grow...

I'd like to start by pointing out that I know I should've started this journal months ago (I could've really used some help). But to be honest I wasn't very confident about it.
See... I'm only 18, but I had my fair amounts of shots on growing ganja, never succeded though. To begin, it's very complicated to grow in a closeminded coutry (cannabis still not legal!), 'cause nobody can know about your grow, so you gotta be very steath, and you all know, this makes huge difference in budget if one is growing indoors, plus, all the seeds you can get comes from poor poor quality "parangas" (as we call the bricks of compressed goodie, here), they aways have seeds in abundance (ugh ;c), also you can never know a thing about the strain. Unfortunatelly, ordering online it's not an option, it might have a bonus letter of the federal police with you package.
And after last year's try, it was even harder to consider growing again. Someone (neighbors for sure) saw the plant, called the cops and I almost got arrested for 1 medium size plant.

5 months ago my parents split up (no big deal), I moved in with my mom and sisters. And since this house has a perfect stealthy backyard for outdoor planting, and everyone here smokes, I gave it another shot.

Since my plant is actually on the 5th week of flowering, and despite my little-to-none experience, I guess reading so much about all stages of the plant really turned out to be helpful. I was able to manage most problems, her hard days (concerning growth, nutrients, deficiencies etc), are probably gone. - sure hope so -

But for any of you guys who can, and want to stay to help me or just watch her last days, will be really welcomed!
I also plan to post about the curing process, (unless there's some rule I don't know about, that forbides posting about curing in a grow journal, I frankly never seen anybody doing it) since it's something completely new to me, so stick around for more!


About the plant... OUTDOOR

Strain: can't really tell the strain and breeder since the seed came from a "paranga" (local name for cannabis preesed in bricks) But probably comes from somewhere in colombia, and most likely to be a cross of indica and sativa, dominant sativa.
Stage: As said, is curently flowering for 5 weeks (got some reeeaaally incouraging nugs)
Medium: Soil - Regular soil with 10% worm castings - 4 gallon pot


About the growth...
Well, considering I used no ferts until, say... the 2nd month of veg, they did real good!!
A little nitrogen def in the beginning of veg, but all good when I used GROW ferts rich in N. Now in later flowering, I got the same problem, I know that its normal and even desired to get a little absence of N in flowering for bud development, but not in this much, the deficiency started too early in flower (2nd week of it), and now its too late to fix, almost all fan leaves had died off, but I'm not worried about that (or should I?) since all the buds are light green looking very healthy.
The biggest problem I had and still do, is spidermites, they show up and then a few days later, they're gone, and then back again.
It's really hard to control it in flower, they are killing me! I'm spraying Neem Oil weekly all over my backyard (of course, I take my girl away so no buds have straight contact with the oil).
Also, a very important detail is that I'm growing outside and flowering in summer, so to get that 12/12 light schedule the plant needs to flower, I have to put my plant inside a container leaving room for air entrance during the 12h of darkness, this sure is not the most accurate method, but is the best I can try and worked just fine...

I'll be owing you guys some info about my ferts, age of plant, timing of stages and some pics, but I'll try to upload everything I missed as soon as I get home from work today. Tell me your sincere opinion and advice! I'm sure I can learn a lot from

 

[Zion Ganja]

So I'm back home and got a confesion... I'm a little high so if my writing gets confused, blame it on the trees


The good news is I got a good selection of pics I took with my mobile separated for this journal from the plant's sprout to her bud. But the bad news is that no matter how hard I try, and I'm trying for the last 30 minutes, I can't upload the pics, photobucket is my only way and is not working, so I'll give it another shot tomorrow

I figured since I'm home with my plant's notes, I'd throw some info about the plant's life cycle.

Germination: 9 days
Start - 16/09
Finish - 25/09
I have no good kit for these simple operations, maybe in future grows I spend some money with this phase, but as long as my seeds have random genetics and have little chance of sprouting, I'll not be so worried in losing them (as long they're not sprouted ;p). The method I use is soaking a piece of cotton and placing the seed inside, then place the cotton with seed inside a milk box wich I cut in half before, I also roll a shirt around it to avoid heat loss.
In this case the seed was transplanted to organic soil as soon as the root was visible. The root broke the seed only on the 9th day, it was all curled inside the seed and had developed around 3cm of root. I guess I can call that a head start.


Vegetative: 93 days
Start - 25/09
Finish - 28/12
Feeding: I fed her 2 soup spoon of castor bean cake (day 62).
The sprout managed to grow it first set of true leaves on day 15 of veg, I kept the soil very humid on her first month wich probably stunted the grow, but after her first month I transplanted her to the 4 gallon bucket/pot, she started to grow very fast, but as soon as she got her budsites growing, and was big enough for defoliation (wich after reading a lot about both sides of opinions, I decided to try), she started to show some yellowing on older leaves, so I fed them with some castor bean cake, rich in Nitrogen. I really like the idea of going natural on cannabis, so I guess until someone convinces me to use any other method of feeding, I'll stick with organic food. =)
After the feeding the plant was back on its feet and I defoliated and topped her, the plant response was great and in only 2 days I could see some faster growth of colas and lower budsites.
The plant also had some hard times with spidermites during all her vegetative phase.

Well, thats it for today. I'll finish off guessing that the problems she had during vegetative must have helped her early N def during flowering.

See ya tomorrow (if photobucket decides to cooperate)!!


:Thanks:

 

[CyTheElectric]

Hey zion, sorry to hear about your spider mites. To keep them away from your plants, try placing a basil plant near your girls. Basil is a spidermite magnet, and should keep them away from the girls. If neem oil isn't working, try using rosemary oil. 90%water, 10% rosemary oil. Good luck.

 

[Dontscrewup]

Best thing for Spider mites is lady bugs. They do wonders and are totally safe and cheap. Order them online should arrive in a few days. Let half of them out put the other half in the fridge (cold makes them dormant). You can save the other half in case they come back or just let them loose also, they will probably eat all the mites within range of your crops. I did this once and it was amazing seeing the lady bugs just having a feast on the mites.

 

[Zion Ganja]

Hello Cy!! Thanks for the reply, coming from you makes it even better!
Last weekend I spent some hours reading your journal on your father seeds, and gotta say, became quite a fan of your father and yourself, sure learned a lot and had some nice gigles hahahah. It's never boring to read a grow journal but sure was even more exciting with the whole context behind the grow, mus have been quite an adventure to live!! I promise I'll read some more of your journals and show up sometimes!!
I'll definatively get some Basil. My dad used to plant them, if he still has some I'll post my garden reaction!

I have 2 more plants on the garden wich I haven't talked about yet (planning on writing a new journal for them), one is a clone from the sativa in flower, and the other is just a seed I got from a paranga. None of them have mites, and they where sprayed with the same neem oil as the infected plant.
I guess the problem is on not spraying the oil dirictly on the plant.
I'll give it some more days and I should be able to know if the oil sprayed on the environment helped my infected plant in late flower.

 

[Zion Ganja]

Hi Friend!!

Thanks a lot for the recommendations.
I considered ladybugs, but my sister just had a daughter and her room is right by the side of the garden, if any of the ladybugs get inside the room my sister could freak out. I'd really rather not see what happens. Thanks for passing along the knowledge !
It would be my #1 choice if Bruna (my niece), wasn't in my way, I think I would also love see the mites being feasted upon (lols), these a-holes give our girls such a hard time.

I am really excited to see the progress of the Pineapple Chunks in your tent, I'm sure they'll do fine!
Really organized set you got there, is it completely DIY? Got a friend who'd love to see your projects !!

 

[Dontscrewup]

Hi Friend!!

Thanks a lot for the recommendations.
I considered ladybugs, but my sister just had a daughter and her room is right by the side of the garden, if any of the ladybugs get inside the room my sister could freak out. I'd really rather not see what happens. Thanks for passing along the knowledge !
It would be my #1 choice if Bruna (my niece), wasn't in my way, I think I would also love see the mites being feasted upon (lols), these a-holes give our girls such a hard time.

I am really excited to see the progress of the Pineapple Chunks in your tent, I'm sure they'll do fine!
Really organized set you got there, is it completely DIY? Got a friend who'd love to see your projects !!

I don't know what the world is coming too! When I was a kid we looked for lady bugs to play with. Seems these days if you can't control it with a game controller its creepy!

 

[Dontscrewup]

I just re-read your post, if your niece is a newborn I can understand your sisters concern. My Veg tent hydro system is DIY, but my main system was bought, but modified by me to make it better. It is a Greentrees Multi-Flow System which I have changed over to Top Feed.

Looking forward to your results of harvest.

 

[Zion Ganja]

Whatsup

As promised, I gave uploading pics another chance. I'm a little high, but very energic though, this might work!

Nailed it


Seedling was nice. The recipient that the seedling was insite is the same used for germinaition, a cutted in half milk box. As you can see below the soil was very humid while I kept her there, all changed when I transplanted to her final pot.

After transplanting the plant started growing pretty quicker, although not with full strenght.

After a couple of days in the new pot and just little growth. Took this one 13 day after the picture above

Unfortunately I couldn't find an pic to show feeding respond in veg, but I have this one that was taken just 4 days after switching light to 12/12. So you can almost see how the plant was on her last days of veg.

This picture is interesting, shows how early and fast the progression of yelllowing fan leaves happened during flowering. This pic was taken on her 4th week and a lot of the fan leaves where already yellow and some died off. I should have taken pics of it when the deficience started to show up, the yellowing started on bottom with older leaves, so I'm pretty confident it's just a Nitrogen def. Not worried though, the lack of Nitrogen is natural on flowering, although not in this scale, but what it mainly do is cause buds to get airy and disturb calyx development, as my buds are looking very healthy, I'm not going to panic of feed her anything, or the bud might might get harsh when smoked for excess nutrients.

This last pics are just to show how the buds are developing.

I'm planning to harvest it next week, but I'm afraid to be early. Mostly because I can't really tell if there's enough amber trichs on them, I want to have a 50/50 color, but the only glass I could find is a 6X. And with all the fan leaves diyng off and with mites still giving me a little bit of problema I'm kinda pushing my self to the harvest.

As aways, all coments are very welcomed.
:chers2: Wish me luck!!

 

[Zion Ganja]

I just re-read your post, if your niece is a newborn I can understand your sisters concern. My Veg tent hydro system is DIY, but my main system was bought, but modified by me to make it better. It is a Greentrees Multi-Flow System which I have changed over to Top Feed.

Looking forward to your results of harvest.

Hahah, no worries, yes, she is just 2months old and cries all day long. My writing is not the best, sorry for the confusion lols

Although you sure do have a point, I am relatively young, but I can say I have quite a bunch of memories of street running and knees grinding fun days. No kids will be able to say this in just a couple of years. :c

Nice smoking to all!

 

[David Bowman]

Hope all is well in your world.

Is this grow still alive?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

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I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.