The James Gang

[H.A.F.]

How much vertical space you got vato?
You think the stacking it on top of another pot filled half-way/full would work?

I have about a foot between the light and the tallest one. I already pulled them off the rolling caddies to get a bit extra. Adding soil on top wouldn't change the height. I still may bend the top(s) over, and if it comes to that then adding height won't matter as much. For now they seem OK with the light.

 

[1oldfart]

I have been working on a few theories about weed like why purple plants don't ever seem as potent as green ones. I think it has to do with loss of chlorophyll as it purples and less ability to photosynthesize when they get old and purple. Bro-sci idea I can't even test.

Another one is why you don't need to pH water for living soil but it can be catastrophic in DWC if you are not precise.
I wish I saved the podcast, but I have a feeling it was Matt Powers discussing how microbes actually feed the plant. The short version is that the root exudates actually strips the microbe of all the calcium it brought, then recodes the DNA to send it back out on it's next mission to get some molybdenum, or boron, or whatever. The same microbes are being reprogrammed and recycled, and the more "living" your soil is the better the plants can do it.

In a bottled nute recipe system you are providing (supposedly) all the plant needs, but it's already chelated so microbes are not necessary for the intraveinous absorption by the roots. That's a whole issue by itself, and why bottle growers feel such success when they pull off a good harvest. But the reason it is imperative is that different nutes are available to the plant at different pHs. You as the chemist are prescribing what the plant can eat, and trusting that the bottle has it, and that every plant wants the same thing at the same time.

But if the roots are recoding microbes to get the next need, they are likely using pH as a factor in in that re-coding, making sure the microbe has the ability to attach an element that requires a certain pH. So as long as the water you are adding is not super basic or acidic, the roots do the rest.

@H.A.F. that stands to reason,slowly gaining on my soil this run has only gotten cal/mag epson salts and water and home brew teas ,build a soil addies look to be 4/6 weeks left for these and doing better than ,any of the other runs to date!picked up reds wigglers yesterday, to put in the totes of rerun soil to work on the root hairs i failed to get pulled out! seems like every run i pull more weight! thanks man !You have been a gift from the cannabis gods for me!

 

[1oldfart]

I have been doing a lot of 2-3 bean drops for regs and gotten more duds than I like. I noticed doing the 20-bean drop that I dumped the beans to count, then put the best looking ones back in the container. Just a habit because I'd rather not have my last bean be the possible dud. So in general when I open a pack, any iffy ones get wet directly.

I had enough pop up to check on those that didn't The Trinity OG are 100%
View attachment 135283
Xmas has a slow one but moving
View attachment 135284
I found one dud CLHP cross.
View attachment 135285
And the Dogma are older beans and I only got 2 maybes out of 5. Left one had the root growing up, the other is a helmet head I need to check on later.
View attachment 135286

I am wondering if some of the older beans just lost vigor due to one of the many storage practices I have had before getting the little fridge.

used a ammo box for years sat in the back corner of the shop on the floor that corner of the place has 7 ft, of dirt half way around the building stays about 60/ 63 degrees in the summer!

 

[H.A.F.]

Damn. I lost one of the Potions to trannyism. He was a healthy girl

I saw a dangler at a node and immediately plucked it, but looking then I loupedd it and found a flower with a nut at each node-junction under it.

Later tater!

 

[H.A.F.]

But on the up-side I harvested the mid-range Raspberry Boogie. 9 weeks today and if the pink trichs are the ambers she's way done.

I'm leaving the super-purple and the green to go long. The green still has lots of clear.

 

[H.A.F.]

Got the babies into some 1g shoes. These are all regs, 4wk flip, then flower clone all the girls.

And my moms are loving life. The Chemdog is my next project, getting the clone dome started up so I can get something rooted and flip her. I'm taking the top, and some lowers but I need to sort where I top it and how many limbs to take so I leave a decent plant to grow for smoke. After I get stuff rooted I'll be setting up a multi-clone run to get some bio-mass.

The Headline I have in flower is more astringent than the first one, so it's good I started two more to start hunting for the right mom. I know the buzz will probably be the same but the smell (at least mid-flower) doesn't make me want to eat the plant like the first one did.

The Muttzarella just sounds too good to not be cloned - at least for now.

Both tomatoes were in the chunkadunk pot and will go outside as soon as I can tell they aren't dead from the transplant. The flowers are not forming like cherry tomato clusters so I want to see what it is. But I need the soil more than a few tomatoes that won't be ripe for a month. I'll keep them in pots so I can bring them in for frost. But they get outside soil for any up-pots. I had to pinch a sucker off each node of the big tomato, none on the smaller one.

 

[H.A.F.]

Those tomatoes look like hell tonight, moving them out of the tent just so they don't fuck anything else up. No freeze here for a bit so they'll live or not.

Chopped the Dirty Taxi. She was an almost at the full moon but I had to have at least one leap-day harvest with so much close.

Trying to get into the cloning mood while I water.

 

[H.A.F.]

I waited until tonight to do the clone thing. I left the top, but I snagged 3 sets of lower clones on the Chemdog. I am sticking her in a 7g pot and was planning to wait until I see a clone root before flipping, but I think I'll just give it a day or two to make sure they don't all droop and die imediately. I have a brand new pack of beans to run for a mom if none of the 6 take.

Not sure how deep I can bury it but it's got a lot of trunk before the first of the remaining limb starts. Tomorrow is watering day and I'll figure it out then. If the roots look really thick I may flatten the rootball out a bit, just loosening up the wrap-arounds at the bottom usually dies the trick.

I'll get pics. I don't usually like letting roots hang out while I fuck with a camera but this girl is healthy. But I'm done fo tonight, just needed to get the date noted for taking the clones.

 

[H.A.F.]

I know the Chemdog stretches enough to make it matter if I let it go too long. I am thinking about putting just a few inches of soil in the pot, then really unravelling the roots so I can sit her down low and get the new soil 3-4" up the trunk. I never use gloves but I know hand oils can be bad for roots so I just rub my hands in soil good before messing with something like this. When I got this and the Bombthreat into the 3g pots I didn't have enough soil ready so they got about a half-gallon of vermi-compost each with lots of worms. Should get some interesting pics tonight.

For me the difference between castings and vermi- is 1/8" sift vs 1/4". The castings sift gets almost all the worms out. The 1/4" lets more worms therough, and because of my soil and worm bedding it has a good bit of rice hulls too. They do take a while to completely decompose so they are great for aeration.

The reason for the "dirty" rice hulls this run is because it and about the top 1/2" of soil came off the recently harvested pots that may still have my beneficial mites hiding in them. I think the time-lapse on the sachets is about done though, so I'll be dumping them in the worm bin to see if any remaining ones thrive.

 

[H.A.F.]

Tambourines and elephants motherfuckers! (for you old peeps that might get the reference)

I got out the graph paper and the tape measure so I can do real garden planning. I don't think there's a y way it could gt bigger so I'll likely just keep improving this. I set the fence back from the front ledge so I can keep fucking with that and not mess with he actual garden. I have it drawn out on paper as a rectangle but it's actually 20' x 22', so almost a square now.

 

[Fiddler's Green]

Fuck yeah vato. I'm jealous, my ground is still frozen.

 

[H.A.F.]

Fuck yeah vato. I'm jealous, my ground is still frozen.

My back door has the standard 9-pane window on the upper part and I have a shelf mounted inside for the cat to hang out.
I hang out there and watch birds and FUCKING CHIPMUNKS and watch stuff grow and be stoned and stuff
Tomorrow I plant peas around all the fence, and I have some asparagus to find a spot for, and i may do a few rows of beets where they won't be in the way. Mainly for the woms and the weed - I don't eat beets. I have a few rasperry that overwintered in little 2g pots, and I covered the whole area thick with leaves and forgot about them. They have thorns though and fuck that - Didn't notice when I bought them. So they go near the woods somewhere. I am rigging soaker hoses so I can do that whenever.

I'll keep planting random stuff in bare spots until I get a good cover crop, last year was too hit and miss. I know that the cover crop kept everything healthier during the summer droughts. But that's about all I can do. I'm starting peppers inside because they are fairly slow, and some marigolds and shit like that. but I can't start tomatoes until the end of the month.

I am planning more, and instead of nursing plants that have stopped producing well I want to have some benchwarmers ready to fill in. If I see early on that one of the "heirloom" plants is trash I'll cull it soner this year and get another one started that has done well.

 

[H.A.F.]

Here's veg minus the 6 clones which are still vertical - yay me LOL
I have the regs bunch that flip with the next new moon - except maybe the 5 Xmas Bud which are more midgets. Maybe 5 weeks on them.

The Dog was nowhere near rootbound, and had no curly's on the bottom of the pot yet, so gently spreading everything flat then transferring it to the pot went well.


I ended up raising her another few inches from this after I got the soil in, so I'm happy with how it worked out. Tons of vermicompost and worms in here and I'll feed worm treats as top dressing. I want to see if that slows the self-consumption process in late flower so I can mabe get a pretty Chemdog at harvest.

This is no longer the 100w tent after getting the 4x4 light and rearranging lights The two Headline and the Muttzarella are gonna be a better planned version of the Chemdog cloning process. From the 1/2g pot they'll go to the short 5qt bucket size. I'll snag clones whenever I can andd make sure they are gonna make some flower before flipping.

 

[H.A.F.]

The two Raspberry Boogie extremes

Those and the JD Skunk are done on the 27th at 10 weeks. At that point the Chemdog should be recovered and can come in here

This is the crazy assortment,

and i didn't get another pic of the tall girls they're the same. But this Flashback is a winner already.

 

[H.A.F.]

Wow was I high - the Boogies and Skunk are 10 weeks on the 5th.

There must be something happening on the 27th - need to check that out now LOL

Everything but the four 707 plants should be done in March. Lots-of-smoke!

 

[Fiddler's Green]

The Flashback is looking a bit.....

 

[H.A.F.]

I still don't know where I'll put it but I got a shorty 2x2 for the 100w light that is now extra. I think it's 3' tall. Probably get a bigger table to house both. I want one that's plug-n-play for clones and one for seedlings - but interchangeable if needed.
The current clone set-up is worrking and since it's not the mom-tent I'll probably be good here and rig the new one for seedlings.

This is some backwards, rednecked stuff but it works. From the bottom I have a sturdy, injection molded 1020 over the thermostat controlled heatmat for indirect heat instead of cooking roots.

Then there's the dome being offset under the light. Between roots and up-pot I can slide them under the light in a new dome.

I have the thermostat in an Oasis cube that is kept the same moisture as the clone cubes. It is only set for 78F, so the heat mat mainly comes on at "night". The light provides enough heat.

Because of my low humidity I need lots of water but to keep the cubes from getting drenched I have them in the ramen trays. The thermo-couple cube is in a cut-up solo cup.

The last thing I am doing is I put the stem in the cube with it upside down. The end needs drying to callous up before roots will form, so I have the pre-cut hole as another humidity dome for the cut end. As the cube dries so will it, but I'll re-moisten it when needed.

I also have several of these domes so if anything starts to look nasty I can switch and get the old one into the dishwasher. And I have a few of the extenders as well.

 

[H.A.F.]

The Flashback is looking a bit.....
View attachment 135856

And it smells delicious like the first headline I grew out. I think there is a certain combo of terps and stuff that just hit me. If the high is like the smell and the previous highs from similar smells it will compete for a spot in the deli section of my mom tent

 

[H.A.F.]

Everything but the four 707 plants should be done in March. Lots-of-smoke!

... and the two WNBA chicks. lemme snag a pic. I have to bring a stool to get a good one LOL

 

[H.A.F.]

On the left is the Flamethrower - very citrus and I think I'll like it. Right is the Blue Jack City. They started selling these "Monkeydog" seeds on Dagga but it's under a different name. These appear to be the breeders take on classic or well known and copied combinations. Up front is the Bombthreat HP13 that is also loving the low light.


The Flamethrower is Truffle Pig Lemon Jack x Headbanger, I had no clue before but with the citrus it makes sense. She is taller and still kind of larfy looking. I expect a more thin-leaf high there but ya never know.

The BJC is not Blueberry x Jack Herrer. It is actually ((Blue Widow x Grapefruit) x Blue Cheese) x (Jack Herer x Lemon Skunk)
I think I'll be cloning the next one. This smells great and edible/food-like on the meaty side, but fresh herbs and spice too.

She stopped stretching after a few pinches on the main stem. No bending, just enough to hear the crackle. Supposedly diverts some of the growth hormones to healing for a few days but who knows. It knuckles up and it slows the stretch.

There has apparently been no ill effect, she's gonna be a beast.

On the little Bomb13 girl I have been snipping fans as the limbs stretch up to meet them. I think once I see flowers setting in I'll move her to the regular tent and get more light and take all the fans for a nice little tree. She hasn't shown any need for a larrger pot but she's drinking well between waterings.