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My first notill, trying to decide on an initial mulch
- Thread starter Aphotic
- Start date
I might think about upping your kelp meal to 1/2 cup and removing the neem meal all together if this mix will be used for a short period of time. Clones require less food than seedlings do I've learned, and you can always top dress or feed with a tea of some kind if need be.
I use this for seedlings in beer cups before immediately transplanting to their final homes:
Seedling Mix
1 part peat
1 part pumice
1 part compost
1 cup oyster flour
1 cup gypsum
1/2 cup kelp meal
1/2 cup crustacean meal
Many ways to skin this cat however!
Sorry about the image quality, I guess my camera was as tired as I was last night. This is the take from 1 of my 3 beds. The closeup with the lighter is just to give u an idea of scale, unfortunately I didnt get the full buds in the shot. I'll try to get some clearer shots later today, I'm very impressed with the quality and how tight and sticky the buds are, also I'm smelling fragrances I've never smelled before, which is pretty rad!
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LCs mix first post of the Organics for Beginners sticky https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=53792
Thanks, I really appreciate it, I wonder why it didn't come up in my search attempts, I often feel like the search engine for this site misses a lot. Or maybe I'm just not using it right.
that'll fill the jars 
Right, I've been begging everyone I know for jars. I wish that the half gallon ball jars had straight mouths, everything sticks together and its difficult to turn it while curing. My favorite free jars are the large Adams penutbutter jars, they are just a little smaller than the half gallon ball jars. Ive got around 20 of those. Though if I could afford it I'd buy the big jars with the clamp lids.
Here's a few more pics, we were up until 6:30am trimming, now we just have one bed left to trim. The flower room looks so sad with two empty. I can't wait to see how the second cycle goes! So far it's looking like a pretty good harvest for the first run with the new setup, now it's time to dial things in.
i still use ball jars for everything.
we hang whole plants after chop for 10--14 days then rough trim and break down into branches and they go into food grade buckets to start the cure and to give us a little flexibility on the trim schedule. then we give them a final trim and break off the buds into 1/2 gallon mason jars for the rest of cure/storage.
basically simons method after enough years experience that i dont use the hygrometers anymore.
i also LOVE .JPG's freezer cure and would be doing it for everything if i had the space. i highly recommend trying it with an oz or two to judge for yourself.
the absolute best IME is a dedicated climate controlled space where you can cure the whole plant "on the vine" for 4--6 weeks before you ever touch it. one day i hope to have a garden with a dedicated curing room.
also worth an experiment: traditional malawi cob fermentation curing. tangwena has an excellent tutorial thread. i tried it with a half o of our colombian/afghani gal, figured she was our most landrace-y specimen.
we hang whole plants after chop for 10--14 days then rough trim and break down into branches and they go into food grade buckets to start the cure and to give us a little flexibility on the trim schedule. then we give them a final trim and break off the buds into 1/2 gallon mason jars for the rest of cure/storage.
basically simons method after enough years experience that i dont use the hygrometers anymore.
i also LOVE .JPG's freezer cure and would be doing it for everything if i had the space. i highly recommend trying it with an oz or two to judge for yourself.
the absolute best IME is a dedicated climate controlled space where you can cure the whole plant "on the vine" for 4--6 weeks before you ever touch it. one day i hope to have a garden with a dedicated curing room.
also worth an experiment: traditional malawi cob fermentation curing. tangwena has an excellent tutorial thread. i tried it with a half o of our colombian/afghani gal, figured she was our most landrace-y specimen.
Funny, I've read every single one of those threads,the freezer cure is fascinating. Also the cob cure, and the argument for the fermentation style cure makes sence.
I cannot stand trimming when the plant isn't fresh, some people swear by it, I don't even like trimming limp branches, I try to only cut what I can trim in 30-60min depending on how hot and dry it is in the room.
I've never had a problem with my cures and I've never used a hygrometer, I've always cured in mason jars as well, I'm just not a fan of the constricted mouth on the half gallon jars, I just end up putting less in them than I'd like, I just found out my girlfriend has a few cases of old old flip top canning jars with glass lids, and she has given me permission to use them
I try to shy away from plastic, but after a certain harvest size I can see how it can make life a lot easier, especially if youre working on a tight schedule. This is the first cycle that I've had a dedicated cure room, maybe I'll try hanging one plant like you suggest, and see how the trim goes, or if the difference in quality is dramatic, I guess I'd have no choice but to adopt that method.
Thanks for all the tips, I appreciate it!
Heady, are blumats worth it? I'm thinking about going bonsai on my mom collection, but with my big beds in the flower room, and 10gal or so mom pots, i only have to water once a week or so, and I don't want to go back to watering every day. Would they work in say a half gal pot?
Would I be better off making a drip system on a timer for watering?
Would I be better off making a drip system on a timer for watering?
I've been a huge fan of blumats for YEARS. Before the blumats I tried a drip system. The problem I ran into (with the setup I went with anyway) was that every pot got exactly the same amount of water at every watering. I knew some pots didnt need it or some needed more than others. Blumats give exactly what is needed on an individual basis.
After I saw in a side by side of blumats v handwatering first hand, I was a blumat fanboy forever.
After I saw in a side by side of blumats v handwatering first hand, I was a blumat fanboy forever.
i'll echo lappy's sentiments. blumats 4 LYFE!
not only are they a genius perfect gizmo (nerd points), and the ultimate convenience (lazy points), they also pair perfectly with living soil/no till (harmony points).
better than all those winning features, they SUBSTANTIALLY increase growth rate and general health over hand watering in all my experiences with them ($$$$ points).
side by side during stretch is silly between hand watered and the plants on blumats.
plus, i use a single reservoir and the same troph blumat for every plant in the garden from the 1/2 gallon bonsai moms and newly planted rooted cuts, to the 5' monsters in the throws of flower.
and, somewhere in our garden are the same dozen blumats i started with 5--6 years ago. they are legit.
not only are they a genius perfect gizmo (nerd points), and the ultimate convenience (lazy points), they also pair perfectly with living soil/no till (harmony points).
better than all those winning features, they SUBSTANTIALLY increase growth rate and general health over hand watering in all my experiences with them ($$$$ points).
side by side during stretch is silly between hand watered and the plants on blumats.
plus, i use a single reservoir and the same troph blumat for every plant in the garden from the 1/2 gallon bonsai moms and newly planted rooted cuts, to the 5' monsters in the throws of flower.
and, somewhere in our garden are the same dozen blumats i started with 5--6 years ago. they are legit.
Heady, you do bonai moms? What do you think about them? I have a horrible problem in my life, I'm a research whore. I'm constantly reading, and when I see a better way of doing something I can't wait another second and I have to change my method. That's how I got into notill, just as I had finished retooling for RDWC, before I even got one plant in my newly hand built system, that took me two months are so to construct and learn. I got sucked into the old notill threads on here, and it was all over. All that equipment collecting dust. I was able to rehome some components in my ACT brewers. Maybe there's a way to diy a blumat system?
Anyways thanks Lap, and heady for the heads up!
On another note I just finished harvesting 9lb hammer, when I got the strain I didn't know it was one of Subs, personally I think the guys a tool and a hack. The pheno of 9lb hammer I received made some glorious colas (every single 9lb hammer plant I've seen looks completely different, most don't even look related). Well see how it smokes. I'll post pics soon.
I'm pretty much finished with the harvest, all the main colas have been trimmed, the only thing left are the smaller buds on two 9lb hammer plants. I had to harvest and trim as fast as possible, as I need to get back to work and I'm behind schedule on just about everything on my farm right now. I hadn't even had time to take clones for the next cycle.
My Nieghbor brought over a bunch of cuttings for me, so I spent the day getting everything ready to make clones. She brought me 3 new strains, Cannatonic, American Beauty, and Queen Bee. I've only ever had Catatonic, any of you know anything about American Beauty, or Queen Bee?
I'm trying out my new seedling/clone mix, so I split the clones between soil and my cloner. I also planted 10 Afgahn Kush seeds. I'm going take cuttings from the seedlings, then place all of the seedlings in the flower room, along with a selection of my favorite strains and do an open pollination. From this I'll have many Afgahn seeds, and some fun mixes from my other strains to play with. Or perhaps I'll change my mind and bag the male flowers and hand pollinate, I haven't fully decided.
I'll start a new grow journal after I finish my current harvest.
My Nieghbor brought over a bunch of cuttings for me, so I spent the day getting everything ready to make clones. She brought me 3 new strains, Cannatonic, American Beauty, and Queen Bee. I've only ever had Catatonic, any of you know anything about American Beauty, or Queen Bee?
I'm trying out my new seedling/clone mix, so I split the clones between soil and my cloner. I also planted 10 Afgahn Kush seeds. I'm going take cuttings from the seedlings, then place all of the seedlings in the flower room, along with a selection of my favorite strains and do an open pollination. From this I'll have many Afgahn seeds, and some fun mixes from my other strains to play with. Or perhaps I'll change my mind and bag the male flowers and hand pollinate, I haven't fully decided.
I'll start a new grow journal after I finish my current harvest.
i do keep bonsai moms, i have for years. it's out of necessity. i would never recommend it over normal sized moms, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
if i take a two cuts from the same plant, but one cut comes from the bonsai mom and one comes from an 18" plant in veg, the bonsai mom cut will take longer to root and longer to take off after transplanting.
but, with extremely limited real estate in the garden, i choose to keep bonsai moms so i can have a larger genetic library. it's a nightmare doing big seed hunts and trying to keep everything backed up!
if i had the space i'd keep my moms in minimum 5 gallon containers.
i've always wanted to try grafting several varieties onto one root stock for a multi-mom, as a possible alternative for saving space.
if i take a two cuts from the same plant, but one cut comes from the bonsai mom and one comes from an 18" plant in veg, the bonsai mom cut will take longer to root and longer to take off after transplanting.
but, with extremely limited real estate in the garden, i choose to keep bonsai moms so i can have a larger genetic library. it's a nightmare doing big seed hunts and trying to keep everything backed up!
if i had the space i'd keep my moms in minimum 5 gallon containers.
i've always wanted to try grafting several varieties onto one root stock for a multi-mom, as a possible alternative for saving space.
Most people do not grok our method of harvest/curing. We cut the whole plant and hang in a dark ventilated room. (At the time of full farming a harvest filled a 60 x 12 trailer) It would hang like this for a minimum 3 weeks but up to 3 months. This acted like a giant curing container.
Then the sun leaves are pulled off by hand easily and plants are chopped into manageable sections. We found that most bract leaves which we begrudgingly removed also snapped off by running fingers over the floral clusters. The effect of this is usually to snap off these potent little appendages close to the stem, rather than cutting them with scissors as is normal practice which leaves half the bract leaf and the entire 'stem' attaching them to the main stem.
We then completed the cure in gallon jars and large coffee cans.
Now, I did say begrudgingly. This is because we were providing the product to a medicinal dispensary that insisted on the trim. I tried in vain to point out the logic that general knowledge states that the medicinal and psychotropic effects of cannabis are 'caused' almost entirely by glandular trichomes and that one can observe that most floral bract leaves are entirely covered by these trichomes. What sense does it make to cut them off?
They countered that their clients had become accustomed to seeing them trimmed and felt they were getting an inferior product if the bracts were not trimmed off. And so it goes and so it is. We just turned the trim into extract, which of course they loved.
Then the sun leaves are pulled off by hand easily and plants are chopped into manageable sections. We found that most bract leaves which we begrudgingly removed also snapped off by running fingers over the floral clusters. The effect of this is usually to snap off these potent little appendages close to the stem, rather than cutting them with scissors as is normal practice which leaves half the bract leaf and the entire 'stem' attaching them to the main stem.
We then completed the cure in gallon jars and large coffee cans.
Now, I did say begrudgingly. This is because we were providing the product to a medicinal dispensary that insisted on the trim. I tried in vain to point out the logic that general knowledge states that the medicinal and psychotropic effects of cannabis are 'caused' almost entirely by glandular trichomes and that one can observe that most floral bract leaves are entirely covered by these trichomes. What sense does it make to cut them off?
They countered that their clients had become accustomed to seeing them trimmed and felt they were getting an inferior product if the bracts were not trimmed off. And so it goes and so it is. We just turned the trim into extract, which of course they loved.
Do you use the bonsai method oldtimer posted? Along with that method, they also take smaller younger clones, only from the freshest newest growth, there can be absolutely no woody outer layer on the stem. Some of my strains are woody to the tips, so I plan on using one of Robert Clark's methods, which is to tape over the portion of the stem where you plan to root. This causes the stem to idiolate. The outer layer changes and preps for rooting. Taking smaller clones from younger branches was reported to root faster than larger clones and produce more consistent yields. The faster rooting time is due to the young stem tissue, its sort of like animal stem cells, the cells are still mostly unassigned, and are able to form root tissue faster. I hope I'm explaining that correctly, I read it once and repeating it from memory, anyways its a sound method.
I wouldn't suggest grafting a mother in such a way, save grafting for flowering plants, with the mother you run a higher risk of genetic ineverything,exchange, it doesn't happen often, but its possible. In mostgraft situations genetic information is only exchanged at the graft site, but since the moms will be kept longer term I imagine the risk is higher of producing a chimera.
At some point i plan on saving genetics via tissue culture, its a way to keep many strains, thousands even, in a small fridge. I plan on attempting to make crosses using tissue from close to the graft site on a grafted mother kept long term, it would be a way to cross plants without a father, and without upping the risk of hermaphriditic tendencies. I came up with that method after reading a research paper on grafting, which studied genetic information exchange in grafted plants. One of the reasons I decided against keeping my mothers in a large raised bed was the risk of genetics mixing via the root zone, or even branches fusing together. Given enough time the risk goes up and up. One study I read years ago found that bean plants, were able to exchange genetic information, even though the were separated above and below the soil level by glass, when the same experiment was run with a plexiglass seperator no information was exchanged.
I can handle my clones taking longer to root, as I'm not interested in profit, I just love growing. Besides I'm always running behind on everything, so usually by the time they root I'm not ready to move them yet
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