4 Crosses of Slapz - All al's Tech Here

[als_weed]

Looks off the charts nice. What consderations are giving for potency via mom plants.

Potency is first. Of course secondary considerations of vigor, terps, etc matter, but why bother otherwise right?

So the issue of rapid phenotyping is time. It would be great to hold all these seedlings for another year and run them again to see if any fully matured into something better. But practically we can't.

A plants bloom room performance changes as the mom ages.

There is certainly plenty of controversy in this subject. My personal experience has been that buzz and flavors CAN intensify up to a couple years old. It plateaus for 5 to 8 years, and then starts to trail off.

Young plants tend to get better potency not worse. I have had young plants change their flavor for worse, but not power. Old plants will fade and it can be quite dramatic and traumatic!

After all we are forcing an organism to live for a decade or longer that started with a full lifecycle of 9 months. One of the reasons you need to breed your best when you get a chance, and keep your clone mother generations to a minimum.

Mom selection as early as possible can lose a potential late bloomer. My process to select the best contestant is to use a panel of experienced judges for the smoke test. Lab results come second. We test everything here in Michigan, but everyone knows that the rap sheet doesn't tell the whole story.

The crappy ugly duckling weed story does happen. But if you start with Swans and the best genetics possible, your odds are better.

Thank you for your interest.

-al

 

[als_weed]

I normally don't play with commercial style strains. I recently came across a decent one: Tropicanna Bananna.

Love those 2 liter shots!

It has a fruity pleasant aroma/flavor and a warm relaxing buzz. A good starter strain for growers and smokers alike. It’s super vigorous and doesn’t mind a little torture, to up the density of its large buds.

-al

 

[als_weed]

Seedlings Day 42

We are almost ready to go the cloner, but they need a little Nitrogen boost before we snip them. 2 Tablespoons of worm castings to the rescue!

The great thing about earthworm poo is that it won't burn even the youngest of plants. You can just dump it on the dirt and add water.

Here's a pic of the girls getting their "spoonful of sugar"

So close to snip time. Next time we make aero tea!

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

Tea Time - part deux!

The seedlings will soon be cuttings going to the cloner, so we need to prepare the tea that we will need soon.

Here's the ingredients:

Disclaimer First: This is what I use. Your mileage may vary. You can harm your plants if made, used, or dosed incorrectly.

Tea Recipe 2: als Awesome Aero Tea

Into a 5 gallon bucket of reverse osmosis water, with a large vigorous airstone add:

1 tspn Great White
1 tblspn Ancient Forest
4 tblspn Worm Castings
4 tspn Molasses

When you brew the teas together, you can see the difference in them. Here's a pic of Dirt(bottom) and Aero(top) tea together after 2 days brew:

So What Does This Do?

Aero Tea is the result of many years of development to create living systems in aeroponic environments. Aeroponics have always before required a sterile system.

I found that the dreaded brown and pink slimes will attack roots and cuttings eventually, even if you are growing in bleach water. The solution is to have your own biological army to defend and assist your plants.

That sounds great until you consider we are working with spray lines or nozzles that will instaclog. And when that happens, you have hours to fix the problem before your plants die. So high particulates and living goo must be avoided.

This recipe maximizes the number and strains of beneficials, while keeping food and particulate levels low. It makes your root zone a hostile place for interlopers, and boosts your plants with commensalent organisms along with micro and macro nutrients.

How Do You Use It?

First give it a good stir, then strain with a regular tea strainer into a quart cup.

For cuttings in aerocloners: 1 tsp/5 gallons

For vegging rooted plants in aerocloners: 1 tblspn/5 gallons

For bloom in aero machines: 2 Cups/40 gallons

Apply no more than once per week. Excessive application will affect your Nitrogen balance and screw up your plants.

Plants just love getting the bio available partially digested nutes from the tea. They respond with more intense, complex aromas and flavors, along with greater vigor and overall health.

This is how you get organic results with synthetic base nutes, while also protecting and boosting your plants.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

 

[Dropped Cat]

Great tread, subbed.

 

[als_weed]

-al's Mail Bag

Occasionally I will repost questions asked in other forums or mail that seem relevant.

Tea Questions - Answers Here!

So you just feed plants the tea only? -m

No the tea is designed to be used with base synthetic nutes. You can use any brand, just reduce the concentration slightly until you are familiar with the tea effects. For me the tea changes the base res ppm by less than 10 and is negligible.

Do I really need a big air stone? -k

Yes it's critical. The stone forces Oxygen into solution. This helps the beneficial aerobic bacteria we are growing, and poisons the harmful anaerobic varieties. A tiny air stone doesn't have the surface area to keep the bucket bubbling vigorously.

How long is it good for? -b

I make fresh tea once a week. It's best at 48 hrs and begins to degrade after that.

Do I need Ancient Forest? -k

Any high quality humus will work. We are looking for wild type beneficial bacteria and fungi spores.

What's with the molasses, and do I need a specific brand? -b

Molasses does several things here. It feeds the critters we are brewing, the sugar metabolites provide critical krebs cycle building blocks for your plants, and has many vitamins and minerals in it.

Molasses is the main ingredient in many expensive bottled products. It's used in many finishing products and foliar sprays.

Even the cheapest supermarket molasses has awesome stuff in it:

The best choice is the least processed. Sulfured Black Strap molasses is the gold standard. But any will do, and I used the cheap stuff to show that here.

Did you really grow in bleach water? -m

Yes we called it Zone or pool sticks, basically Chlorine. It was required to control pathogens in sterile systems. And it certainly did not enhance flavors!

Thank you all for your interest, and feel free to add your questions or comments to the thread, as I'm sometimes slow with mail right now.

-al

 

[als_weed]

Even More Tea Questions

Every time I used teas my roots brown and looked sick. Show us your roots! -b

Sure. I went around took these today to show what they look like at different ages. Roots can get a slight tinge from tea, but should never be slimy. As they age, you will see some coloration in late bloom as exposed roots in the air eventually decline.

Here you go:

Do you have to deep clean after using all the bios? -m

I only use bleach on the first cloner the cuttings go in. All the other cloners with rooted plants just get sprayed out. Hose out the sludge and replace the blown out pucks.

Thank you for your interest

-al

 

[als_weed]

It's Finally Cloner Time!

Before we can stuff the cloner with our carefully cultivated shoots, it needs to be set up with the nutes to root.

Here's what you need:

Disclaimer First: This is what I use. Your mileage may vary. You can harm your plants if made, used, or dosed incorrectly.

als Rootin Tootin Cloner Setup Sauce

In 8 gallons Reverse Osmosis Water

20 ml A (heavy Nitrogen)

20 ml B (heavy Phosphorus)

10 ml SuperThrive

1 tspn Rooting Agent

2 tspn Aero Tea

This works out for me to about 225 ppm and a pH of 6.0.

You can use any brand of nutes you like. Just keep the ppm under 250. If you increase the nutes any higher, you will slow root development. Why grow roots if you insist on force feeding them?

I use this specific rooting gel because it has B1 in addition to the rooting hormone. This bubbles up in the res, so it tells you when it needs to be refreshed. Don't dip cuttings in the gel, just add a tspn to the res. Cuts way down the amount you go through and it just rinses off when you dip them anyways.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

To the Cloner We Go!

Moms by strain -

Starting with WAGZ:

Next is LVCZ:

Here's PRMZ:

And finally GDPZ:

Time to snip. We are going to take the top and the largest 2 side shoots.

Here's a before:

And after:

We immediately put the shoots into a labeled cup. Positive Identification and Traceability are required in this work. If I find something without a label, I throw it away. If you don't REALLY know what something is, it is worthless.

Notice the mom plant is now a perfect cone of shoots ready to grow. And with the top gone, the plant can now concentrate completely on those shoots. This is a good time to transplant to a medium small pot, but I think we will keep them in cups for a while longer.

Clean up the cuttings until just the top shoot and a small set of leaves remain. I like to leave 5 - 7 inches of stem, and cut with a box cutter at a 45 degree angle. If you leave strings or fibers hanging, the cutting is more likely to get infected. Make sure your cuts are clean and leave no leaf buds or leaf petiole tissue on the bottom of the stem.

Here's a before:

And after:

And finally everyone in the cloner!

I have added Pure Michigan, Lava Cake and White Angel to the run as backups in case anyone refuses to root.

This is the trickiest bit, trying to get 21 individuals to root in a reasonable window, so that we can get useful information on everyone.

Hold onto your butts! Here we go!

Your questions and comments are always welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

-al's Mail Bag

Occasionally I will repost questions asked in other forums or mail that seem relevant.

Cloner Questions

do you use a cover/dome on the clones in the clone machine? also what do you consider a reasonable root window? -m

Great Question!

I actually do the opposite of domes and gently blow them with oscillating air. Because the aerocloner maintains the rootzone with fully saturated air, both in terms of water and the dissolved oxygen in it, domes become a hindrance to transpiration.

This is why aerocloners work so efficiently. Plants are really straws, so blowing across them helps. Don't do this with peat pellets!

As for timing, my hope is that we can get a representative from every individual rooted by around day 21. This should get us on target for 40 to 50 days veg.

Here's the cloner 24 hours later:

What is your biggest worry about the cloner? I hate aerocloners. So undependable. -b

It's August. I use biotics, some wild type. We face searing heat waves, rolling blackouts, and getting above 84 degrees in the res means start over.

The tea helps a lot. I haven't ran an aero device without it for a decade. The old 'flapper' style of sprayer will stick and kill everything, but those are relics.

The big problem with new cloners is that the reservoir is too small. Makes it too easy to heat up, and when the plants transpire, can concentrate the nutes to the point of burning. My old 64s hold 8 to 10 gallons, while the 'new and improved' low profile ones hold only 4 gallons.

You don't cut your tips? -m

No. I just make sure the center of the shoot gets light. The fan helps keep them gently swaying, reducing shadow spots while increasing transpiration.

What's the obsession with days and the calandar? -p

The art of crafting plants requires both accuracy and precision. Not only do we have to hit the target, but be able to do it repeatedly. A deeper understanding of the timing in each stage of the process is critical to success. They built Stonehenge for the same reason.

Sorry that sounded pretty high n mighty, but I am passionate about the subject!

In this experiment, the biggest trick beyond rooting, is getting all these different strains to perform together. Timing, pruning and other methods will be required to manage the bucking bronco that is aeroponics.

Here's a sneak peak at 12 days of growth, where the plants doubled in size:

Thank you for your interest.

-al

 

[als_weed]

1 Week in the Cloner

We got a couple roots, but more significantly, everyone is still with us. No slime or snot balls on the stems. The res is still foamy and I have only added fresh tea so far.

Here's a shot of our cuttings:

Here's our moms in waiting:

They will continue to sip tea while the cuttings become clones. This next week is when the action should speed up, as rooting begins in earnest.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

2 Weeks in the Cloner

We have 15 of 18 represented individuals with some significant root development. I took backup clones of the 3 that have failed to root so far.

Here's a shot of the tops:

And the roots:

Some are a bit bedraggled, while others are taking off already. You can see how a lot of rooting triggers off the tendencies of individuals.

Another reason is the hormones in the growth tips that we started with. Here's a shot showing the side shoot cuttings fully rooted, while the top cutting from the same plant is just starting to bump.

This is a common result that proves spending time to develop mom plants is worth the effort.

I am topping off the nutes and tea for another week, letting the cuttings grow. Soon it will be time to figure out who will make it to the veg cloner.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

A Time to Veg

We are setting up the cloner in the Veg Room.

This is What We Need:

Disclaimer First: This is what I use. Your mileage may vary. You can harm your plants if made, used, or dosed incorrectly.

als Go Go Veg o Matic Recipe

In 8 gallons RO water:

60 ml A (heavy Nitrogen)

30 ml B (heavy Phosphorus)

2 Tblspn Aero Tea / 4 after plants established

For me, this results in 425 ppm and a pH of 6.3. They need to be topped off with RO water daily, as allowing them to concentrate the nutes can result in burning all the new growth tips and leaves. This happens when you get above 500 ppm for these nutes.

I replace all veg reservoirs weekly and double the Aero Tea dosage once the plants start to take off.

You can use about any nute line out there, just make sure the mix is Nitrogen heavy for this stage. I prefer a 2:1 ratio for the healthiest results.

Here's a pic of our girls out of the nursery and into the veg room:

This is Veg Cloner Row:

We will have to start picking winners and losers soon. I would estimate that we are about 3 weeks out from the bloom room. The contest for the 18 grow show spots begins now.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

 

[CannaRed]

Awesome. Subbed

 

[als_weed]

There Can Be Only One!

We have 4 individuals that are seriously behind or failed to root. I took backup clones of these and a couple have started to root. We will go to the bloom room with whomever is rooted, no matter the size. Pheno hunting requires some compromises to create the largest net and snare those elusive keepers.

I selected the best representative of each individual and discarded the rest. With extra space and go-go juice, the plants have gone into explosive growth. At this rate, we will head to the bloom room in about a week!

1 Week Veg Cloner:

I decided to uppot our moms to 2 quart containers. They were getting raggedy to the point that recovery time to be a mom would be a problem. I could have drug them over the finish line, but giving them the extra space ensures that they all live, and gives me some extra time to rerun anyone that doesn't make the show on the first try.

Here's Our Moms:

Just a couple days after the uppot, you can see the fresh green aggressive growth. We are still a couple months from selecting winners and it will be a struggle to keep them small, yet ready to sprout fresh shoots.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

-al

 

[als_weed]

Sneak peek at what's next!

 

[goingrey]

Looking great!

How do you keep the stakes up? I see some strings to the roof but that's probably not everything?

 

[Frosty Bottoms]

Meanwhile I will continue to attempt to control my eye roll when someone wants to synchronize some activity to moon phases. I understand.

I seem to sync my harvests to raining weeks because why not have 100% humidity when trying to dry herb.

 

[als_weed]

Looking great!

How do you keep the stakes up? I see some strings to the roof but that's probably not everything?

That's the trellis. We custom build it to the plants growth. It's stolen tech from pepper growers.

I promise to show all when we get to the bloom room with this project.

Thank you for your interest.

-al

 

[CosmicGiggle]

Very nice show al!