Autumn grow

[aliceklar]

Sorry to hear that! Hope you stay on top of it!

Thanks dude... Its a pain but I will prevail! Have ordered some insecticidal soap with neem, and some spinosad also, as organic options. Have heard that its best to hit spider mites with multiple different treatments to get rid of them entirely.

 

[aliceklar]

Start week 6 flower cycle

Start week 6 flower cycle

Starting to get colourful in there - not all in a good way... Racecars. But flowers and seeds all progressing, and some great smells are starting to emerge.



Veg Area
Got rid of the ratty space blankets. Washed down and sterilised the walls and floor with alcohol. Painted all flat white emulsion.



Cuttings left in veg after the cull are 2 Gelato (?), 2 Ragnar, and one each of Michka, Highland Thai, Dance World, Blueberry, and Buddah. oh, and the little pingulica - living flypaper.
Tomorrow morning just before lights out I'll spray the cuttings with a second dose of deltamethrin to hit any mites that emerged since Thursday or were missed last time.

 

[aliceklar]

2nd round of seeds

2nd round of seeds

Plants in flower are maturing rapidly now and it will only be a few weeks before the Blueberry, the Dance World and the PBxBb F1s are ready to harvest. Dont want to risk putting any of the cuttings into flower yet until I'm sure I've eradicated the spider mites, so time to get some more seeds going. I fancy something a bit more sedative than what I've been growing so far:

• 6 x Afghan mix from The Real Seed Co (bargain bogoff mixture of Northern Afghan landraces: Balkh, Badakshan, Mazari and Kunduz)
• 1 x Sherbet Queen from Royal Queen Seeds
• 6 x Medical Mass (RQS) crossed with White Rhino (MSNL) from my last grow

Hoping to find some nicely relaxing and flavourful keepers from this lot. Will OP all the Afghans (assuming I get both males & females)

 

[aliceklar]

End of 6th week flower

End of 6th week flower

All plants in flower putting on bud nicely. Of the Johaars, #2 and #8 look promising. Buddah (foreground right in pic above) is handsome.



First few seeds have broken surface. Sherbet Queen was early, but came up root-first... I tried to put her back but may have broken her. So it goes. One of the MMxWR F1s is up and showing healthy seed leaves, and I can see a shoot also on one of the Afghans.

Set up a new area in a corner of another room for keeping clone mums - using two cheap LED floodlights (15w 3000K & 22w 5000K). Made a very rough wooden frame to hold the lights over the plants. Light on 20/4.

Gave the clone mums and cuttings a 3rd anti-mite spray (mixture of deltamethrin and spinosad).

 

[aliceklar]

Week 7 of flower

Week 7 of flower

View image in gallery​

Wont be long to harvest now for some of the more indica hybrids (esp the Purple Bud x Blueberry F1s). Not sure whether to give them any more feed at this stage - they are still putting on new white pistils. Repotted Johaar looking healthier. Reckon next time I can get away with 7cm seedling -> 1 litre to flower -> 2 litre pots for the females after sexing without reducing the overall plant count.

One of the Fecida COB LEDs in veg (the first one I bought just over a year ago) has failed. Pft! (50,000 Hours my arse! This has failed after significantly less than 1/5 of its stated lifespan) Thankfully the new LED floodlight setup has meant there are not too many plants in there, and the new seedlings are fine c. 15cm under the remaining Fecida light. Am thinking of replacing with fluorescents when the next one fails.

• 6/6 Medical Mass x White Rhino F1 up and looking healthy and uniform. 4 sprouted more or less at once after a couple of days, and the other two came up the day after. Am going to bet that 1-4 are male and 5-6 are females, but lets see.
• 5/6 Afgan Mix (TRSC) are up and looking gratifyingly diverse - range of sizes, incl one small one (#5) that emerged with its underseed cap still on initially, and looks to show dark grape purples. Not seen that in a seedling before.
• Sherbet Queen, against the odds, has survived my cack-handed replanting. Nice.

Did my first trial grafts yesterday. Want to back up my clone mums in a smaller space, away from the veg/flower areas. If I can get the hang of grafting, I can potentially keep dozens of strains on 4 smallish plants.

Another thought is that grafting might be a solution to my "johaar in tiny pots" problem. These plants like to be in deep sandy soil - not small pots of rich compost - but I have limited space and intend to evaluate / make seed with multiple plants each cycle. I dont just want to grow out one or two at a time. So I could potentially use a larger pot than I have previously, with 8 (or 10? 12? what are the limits..?) different scions on a single rootstock, and scrog them. Plant will be happier, and I will still be able to keep the numbers up for selection.

 

[aliceklar]

Ugly bits

Ugly bits

Some leaf closeups, showing the yellowing and leaf necrosis I've been experiencing - primarily due to growing in such small pots I believe, although nutrient burn and/or lockout may also be factors (made worse by the small pots).





This morning I took note of how relatively green and lush the Johaar have been since repotting (#12 makes a good control - still pallid and losing leaves having been left in the smaller pot), and decided to top-dress the rest of the plants. The repotted Johaar are not perfect - they are still clawing (I dont really mind this - it seems to make no practical difference) and have freckles of brown dead tissue - but are mostly a much lusher, darker green than they were, and look healthier than anything else in the flower area.
Made a mix of c. 450ml of compost mixed with sand & gravel, added 4 tsp blood fish and bone, and 1 tsp kelp meal. Put 2-3 teaspoons of this on top of each plant apart from the Johaar that had recently been repotted, and a couple teaspoons of sand & gravel on top of that. Watered in.

 

[exploziv]

It's great you are adding amendments in but sadly they are slow release so won't solve your problems in time. Also, you shouldn't add too much N in flower.

 

[TexanTerps]

i think he knew he didn't want to amend very heavily, therefore just watering in some nice things will give a tea effect... and then kinda ride up top for the microbes to feed on if present.

can you check your runoff? I wish you could have before amending i just read you said it could be lockout..

Hey nice thread thanks for sharing this stuff by the way gonna be some prime nugs here.

 

[aliceklar]

i think he knew he didn't want to amend very heavily, therefore just watering in some nice things will give a tea effect... and then kinda ride up top for the microbes to feed on if present.

can you check your runoff? I wish you could have before amending i just read you said it could be lockout..

Hey nice thread thanks for sharing this stuff by the way gonna be some prime nugs here.

Thanks dude Yes, I was just going for what I hoped was a very subtle amendment. In 7th week of flower now, so may be too late for some, but some of the strains I'm growing are 12-16 weeks so there may still be time.
Yeah, I should have checked the runoff first, you're right! I've only just got my hands on a ph testing kit. Mostly I have been using rainwater on these plants, which is neutral, but where I've been unable to get this I have used tapwater a few times, amended with food-grade malic acid to bring the ph down from 7.8 (we have super-hard water here) to 6.5.

 

[aliceklar]

Start 8th week flower

Start 8th week flower




Few quick pics I took just before lights out.

 

[aliceklar]

Johaar & crosses

Johaar & crosses


Johaar2 #2 and Johaar2 #10 both have great form & good flower to leaf ratio.
Tricky to get a good shot of the Johaar x NLH as it has been severely trained but the buds are looking nice - also seem to be maturing really fast. I chose NLH as the father of this cross as I'm trying to get Johaar type effects with reduced flowering time. Last shot is of the NLH for comparison of ripening time.

 

[aliceklar]

Babies

Babies

And here are the next few - probably should have started these a week or two earlier - was a bit delayed with spider mite drama (fingers crossed I got them all...). Everything also seems to be maturing faster than I expected - possibly because of the smaller pots?

 

[aliceklar]

Johaar2 #10 (the healthiest and best looking of the batch, with best bud to leaf ratio) has started shedding seeds - noticed them just falling off the plant as I was watering. Am taking this as a good sign, if it is maturing them more rapidly than the others. Hoping it also has the same characteristic happy high. Fingers crossed, this one looks like a winner.

In other news, I pruned the Gelato cutting, top dressed it (compost/kelp meal/ blood fish bone), and moved it into flower.

 

[zif]

How much seed is she dropping? I.e., what proportion?

They're pretty. I like the relatively elongated form. =)

 

[aliceklar]

How much seed is she dropping? I.e., what proportion?

They're pretty. I like the relatively elongated form. =)

Hard to tell for sure as the buds are wispy sativa type and I dont want to handle them too much, but at a guess I'd say the seeds that have dropped are c25% of what is there. I pollinated all the Johaar fairly generously as I wanted to make sure of plenty of seed to play with in whatever line(s) I decided to carry forward.


Seeds are nice, eh? I think the elongated form and particularly the "pucker" where they join to the plant is a wild-type trait - ie promoting easy "shattering" and seed distribution without human intervention.

 

[zif]

Yeah - the shattering trait is exactly what I had in mind. It’s not unusual for a mom to drop a few seeds, but 25% definitely sounds like a throwback to the wild-type.

Exciting that she has some nice traits for modern gardens. Hope she comes through on effects! =)

 

[aliceklar]

Johaar2 #02 and #10

Johaar2 #02 and #10



Very happy with the way that these two are developing, and am loving the diversity in this landrace. This J2 batch is the result of a single male crossed with a single female in my last grow, and every plant has been different in form. #10 is just packing on the bud (and is still dropping seed!). Obvs, I'm going for effect over yield, but they are looking fine, and both have the same lemony floor-cleaner fizz smell. Cannot wait to try these...

Note for comparison J2#11 in the background of the 3rd pic - it is a handsome plant, but is not much more than a stick of leaves, with sparse flowers mostly hidden under the leaves.

 

[aliceklar]

Organic pest control

Organic pest control

And here are some of the non-chemical ways I keep on top of pests in the grow Meet Tina and Raymundo:

 

[aliceklar]

Autos

Autos

Also started off 3 Royal AK autos (RQS auto version of AK47), 3 seeds in a 3 litre pot with 20% sand and gravel, and 10% perlite mixed into the compost, and a teaspoon of BFB. Growing these to assess them and make seed rather than for yield, so am going with the smallest simplest setup I can think of - which is three plants to a pot (assuming all germinate).

 

[aliceklar]

PB x BB F1s chopped

PB x BB F1s chopped

End of 8th week, and I've chopped the 3 Purple Bud x Blueberry F1s. Some of still had a few white pistils, but all nicely frosty and frankly looking so tired (inc leaf necrosis on some sugar leaves) that I thought it was time. All had mature seed clearly visible. All smelling good - leaning more toward mum than dad. Little disappointed with the messy bud formation - quite irregular with large sugar leaves - interested to see what segregates out in the F2.

#2, which was the one with some deformed and asymmetrical leaf formation initally, seems to have produced the most bud. #1 has the best purples on leaf and bud. #4 has some paint splatters from where I repainted the adjacent veg space... ooops. Will trim those off!

Really wish I could find my usb microscope.... want to check the trichromes. Ah well.