Basements are the Best! wtfn strikes again

[whythefnot]

I'm not sure why I was so impatient with these clones; they are coming along very well. The 3 blacks aren't rooted enough for the 1 gal pot, but I'm trying to hurry them along a little. You might notice I burned a couple of them with blood meal and had to stick them back in the dome No big deal, they probably aren't my keeper anyway.

 

[whythefnot]

Day 20

Things are coming along very well! Much better than I thought they would be a week ago. Black string is still the clear winner for trich coverage, but Blue string looks like she's catching up, and her structure and growth and ease of cloning all seem to be nicer.

 

[whythefnot]

Blue string

Black string

Not too bad for 3 weeks! This harvest is looking like it might have some potential after all!

 

[LakeEffect]

cool thread. I like your diy humidifier.
Gonna follow along as you (hopefully) get the arduino rigged up. I'd like to do the same for my cabinet.

No more cops!

 

[iTarzan]

They are starting to get interesting WTFN.

 

[whythefnot]

cool thread. I like your diy humidifier.
Gonna follow along as you (hopefully) get the arduino rigged up. I'd like to do the same for my cabinet.

No more cops!

Thanks! I'm super excited about the arduino project myself. I've always wanted that kind of control over my environment. Just a matter of time and money. I was thinking about getting one, then testing it out exclusively on a CO2 setup until I get the hang of things and can let it rip. I'd like to see what you do with a rig like that. I know I'll have things tight on the programming end, but 12V wiring and microcontrollers are still kind of a mystery to me -- I'm very impressed by your cab!

Pretty sure we've seen the end of the cops here. The guy was charged with all kinds of B&E type stuff, multiple felonies. And my neighbor (the crazy looks-like-a-crackhead one who keeps getting robbed) is actually a defense attorney, and she broke down crying while she was thanking me for helping to catch the guy. She's really, really, reeeaaally grateful (like, "hey you don't have any felonies, do you? I can help you get your rights restored! how about traffic tickets?" grateful). And when I turned down the beer she was trying to buy me, she decided to buy me something more my style
Good asset to have in my corner.

They are starting to get interesting WTFN.

They sure are! Blumats are dialed in now -- it's just a matter of topping off the res every 4 or 5 days for the next 5 to 6 weeks, and we're there! Oh, and taking photos.

I'm the worst about getting pet hair into my buds (we have 2 dogs and about a bajillion cats) so I'm making it a point to be totally hands-off from here on out, which is super cool! Unzip the tent, gawk, zip it back up, go to bed, wake up, repeat. 40 more days

 

[whythefnot]

Starting to lose some lower leaves, looks like they're getting hungry. Got a tea brewing for them now. Maybe I'll start a once-per-week brew schedule, I didn't realize how much I usually feed the plants, in addition to the soil, with the teas I brew. That's fine, I really like brewing them anyway. I was just trying to be a little more conservative about it to minimize my chances of screwing up.

 

[whythefnot]

Wow, two of these plants (blue string and black string) are much, much frostier than their mama was at this point. Looking back through old photos -- definitely the same plant! But that frost tho...

Fingers crossed that it means faster finishing time, or higher cannabinoid content.

 

[whythefnot]

Hey guys, I think you know what time it is ...
UPDATE TIME!!!
DAY 28

I'm pretty stoked right now. The grow is going great (I think I nuked my clones with a strong batch of compost tea and super cold temps, but that's a story for another day!), I've had a solid month of rest without a day job, and I just landed my dream job. After my side work and the 'meager' revenue from the grow this coming year, I'll probably be breaking 6 figures. Having been a dead broke loser my entire life, and being particularly adapted to spending couch change on ramen noodles and riding my bike to get them, this is a big deal for me. It will take me years to get accustomed to this kind of lifestyle but I absolutely love my work so you won't hear me complaining one bit. I didn't ask for the pay. I actually asked for a lot less. They just gave it to me based on some standardized test results. I've always been really great at standardized tests -- it's finally paying off I guess!

Weird part is, I'll be getting my first (fucking HUGE) paycheck in the same week that I'm going to be harvesting this crop, so it doesn't do me any immediate good toward improving this current run (although I did afford myself a bottle of EM-1 immediately after getting the phone call)

Anyway...on to some grow stuff... I finally got some EM-1! I started my first bokashi bin, and I fed all my ladies a heaping pile of kelp meal and PSG, with a pile of new soil around it, and a heaping lump of EWC on top, right under the drip line, followed by a half gallon of EM-1 solution and AACT per plant. That AACT was pretty strong. Didn't seem to affect the big plants, but the clones took it pretty hard. I suspect it was mostly the cold that struck that same night, because the flower room is fine and the clones' runoff is testing at 6.4 pH. I put the seed heating mat back in the clone room and they look a little perkier now, but I'm gonna need a space heater in there. Probably tomorrow. I already put the single-disc humidifier in there on low to be sure.

I washed off the color on 2 of the strings. So the white, purple and orange are guesses at this point. I don't think any of them are the keepers if bud structure and trich coverage are the main indicator (they are). I have a good idea of which is which, though.

Flower tent mrhrhehrhrheheheheeheehhe
I changed my mind about cutting these ladies early. Apparently I make a fucking butt load of money now, so this grow is no longer about bringing in extra cash, although that is probably inevitable ... this is gonna be mostly personal smoke, and medicine for my family, so it's in my best interest to give these plants as long as they want to become the best them they can be. Plus I just picked up a sack of electric cheese (a favorite indica of mine) and another unnamed delicious and powerful indica-dominant strain. I'm mostly an indica guy. I used to be a sativa guy, but then my life became overtaken by the sound of my thoughts (aka anxiety) so whatever numbs that nerve is my favorite now. Anyway, rambling done and indica here we come ...

White string

 

[whythefnot]

Green string
This one looks like a piece of trash lol ... the trichs are just not there. It's my largest and oldest plant (really low germ rate on these homemade seeds so I ran 3 batches of 10, a week apart, to get 8 starts). They're starting to pick up a little bit of frost but I suspect this will be a major dud, and I'll be running some big ass low thc buds for rosin.

And right next door, ding ding mrs. black string! Remember, 28 days ...

 

[whythefnot]

And the other definite keeper ... I'll be trying this blue string pheno against the black string pheno in an even head-to-head next round. I might keep both, but black string looks like she doesn't yield very well, and blue string looks like she yields very well compared to the rest, and has almost the same trich coverage as black string.

I'm really loving this DSLR ... getting used to getting good in-focus macro shots. Thanks for watching !!

 

[SwampyTHC]

Looks nice mate I dream of buying a house with a basement all the time I'd build a little room down there though if it were me

 

[whythefnot]

Looks nice mate I dream of buying a house with a basement all the time I'd build a little room down there though if it were me

If I owned the house I totally would! But I'm renting for the next year or so. By then my girlfriend will be out of school and we'll both be making great money, and a big basement with lots of nooks and crannies is high on my list, plus room for a few greenhouses.

 

[Phases]

Hey - congrats on the new job, that's pretty sweet - nothing better than getting a good job that pays well especially after being broke!!

Things are lookin good - going to have some keepers in there forsure eh.

Keep it up... Good vibes brother-

 

[LakeEffect]

yea man, sounds like things are taking a good turn. Enjoy every second of it

 

[whythefnot]

Hey - congrats on the new job, that's pretty sweet - nothing better than getting a good job that pays well especially after being broke!!

Things are lookin good - going to have some keepers in there forsure eh.

Keep it up... Good vibes brother-

Oh yeah, I see 3 big producers I'm going to have to choose from by taste and high after harvest. Then there's the black string, which doesn't look like she'll yield much, but she's probably the frostiest thing I've ever grown already at week 5 and looks like she'll be done by week 7 - 8, so I'll probably keep her for another run or two to see if I can get a bigger yield from a better run.

yea man, sounds like things are taking a good turn. Enjoy every second of it

I certainly will. I'm secretly more excited about this harvest than I am the awesome new job, but the adult trapped inside of me knows why that's wrong.

Week 5 pics tomorrow! Buds are starting to get big, and they're all frosty as hell already!

 

[stoned-trout]

no basements here In san diego for the most part...don't have a good attic either... I miss my basement now..yeehaw,,I cant figure out all the fancy stuff my Nikon does still...went from 2 mp Fuji to a nikon d70s..still cant get even as good of macros as you..even with lense with macro setup...lol

 

[whythefnot]

still cant get even as good of macros as you..even with lense with macro setup...lol

I can't wait to get a macro lens, but they're absolutely not necessary. I took these shots with the standard lens that came with the camera. I stand back 3 - 4 feet (sometimes I turn off the fan to keep things more stable) and hold the trigger slightly depressed I watch through the viewport to see the focus indicators light up. Once I get one or two focus indicators lighting up on the bud I'm trying to shoot, I squeeze the rest of the way.
Then, when I get them onto my computer they're these massive 5000+px images. From there I can crop out any part of the image. I still have to resize most of them down to 1024 (bash/zsh: "for file in *.JPG; do convert $file -resize 1024 $file; done") but the most zoomed-in shot I got last time was cropped at 1024, and is the true photo quality that the camera is capable of.

That macro lens is gonna be the bomb tho.

 

[whythefnot]

Day 35
Bad news first: I'm snowed in and my plants are starting to show low pH again. I've used all my pH up and I don't have any dolomite lime on hand. I gave them some pretty strong molasses with a little bit of humic acid two days ago, which looks like it turned out to be a bad idea. Maybe they'll clear the roads tomorrow so I can run to HD to pick up a bag.
The little plant in the middle of the room threw 2 pollen sacs because I neglected it and let its pH get super low compared to the rest, and I didn't catch the pollen sacs before they opened. I found some half-formed seeds in a bud near the bottom of black. My hope is that it was low enough that it didn't pollinate many of the nicer buds. Not a bad deal for me. These seeds turned out to be pure gold, and I wouldn't mind seeing what comes out of a plant like black.

Good news is that these plants are really mature for 5 weeks. Black looks like she'll be ready to pick sometime during week 7. Purple, white and blue all have a great structure with nice big buds. Blue looks like it's probably more potent, but purple and white have a much better bud to leaf ratio.

I've managed to re-identify the washed-out colors on the orange and purple string plants. Competition is getting fierce in here.

Brown string:

Purple string:

 

[whythefnot]

Green string is showing the worst deficiencies, just like she did last time. She's the oldest, so she has the largest root system. I'm not a big fan of how this plant grows or looks, and I'll probably end up running most of this one for rosin.

Black string isn't handling the pH too well either, but she's looking frosty as hell!