How You Can Develop Cannabis To Do What You Want

[CharlesU Farley]

Judging by this little NL I just aquired, you have showcased quite the effort. There’s no way I could ever manage a thing like this indoors.

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Reading your posts makes me feel really bad about taking the easy way out and running 24h lighting.

I've been digging through the Mr Nice Forum because Neville and NL Seattle Greg both were active participants there, though not at the same time. I absolutely hate I was on a self-imposed cannabis forum internet absence because of the Patriot Act.

Nevil was a firm believer in 24/0 lighting and I would have loved to have debated with him over his reasoning.

As part of my ongoing desire to treat the cannabis plant as a living thing and not an object, my lighting schedule is 16 x 8 because I believe all living cells, not just human, have to have some "down time" to regenerate and recoup, to the face the next day.

It's a biological process and I don't know of any place on earth that has 24 hours of light, all the time.

My ultimate goal (unlike Neville and other Netherlands breeders) is not to push a cannabis plant to produce the _maximum_ amount of flowers in the _minimal_ amount of time.

It's to produce the highest quality flowers, that will give me the high that I need to treat PTSD, and I don't care how long it takes to develop those flowers. I was in a discussion on another thread discussing landraces, and made the same point in that thread I'm going to make here.

One of the main reasons I think I was so impressed with Northern Lights the first time I tried it (and at that time I had no earthly idea who really developed it, Vietnam vet) was that it helped me deal with PTSD more effectively than any other cannabis product I'd ever tried.

And I tried a whole _bunch_ of cannabis to deal with PTSD.

It was developed by a group of Vietnam vets, who were having great difficulty sleeping, who had to grow indoors, with a very low smell factor, so as not to attract the law/attention.

I was never in Vietnam, but other than that, it was my exact profile of what I wanted to do.

Getting back to your comment, maybe consider giving your plants a little break from the action. Even if you end up with a little bit less flower, it'll be higher quality... knowing the plant wasn't stressed out to the max just to produce the largest amount of THC / CBD the shortest possible time.

Give it a try, it might just help you to get cannabis to do what you want us to do.

 

[I Care]

That’s a genuine answer. I appreciate that you reminded me about what the NL is all about. That’s what really sticks out to me. You’re talking about a name that I wish I had some time to work with, and I’m honestly not necessarily sure if I ever came across it aside from that NL99 my buddy grew after the BKDC being beyond funky I don’t recall anybody ever claiming NL the all of the years of herbal gift exchange.

Maybe by the time the one I showed you starts to darken up I’ll be able to see if I am able to recognize anything there.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

This next post will be a previous post here on ICM about lighting. Lighting is one of the two foundations that you will use to get cannabis to do what _you_ want it to. You are going to use it to "steer" the tops of the growing shoots to direct them towards the light. Can't get into basic botany now but investigate the word auxins. They are hormones that cause the elongation of cells and we use this growth to "show" the plant where we want it to go. This is the major reason I believe that decapitating's the top of the _main_ stem of growth, just to redistubute the auxins to the remaining shoots is most assuredly injurious to the overall health of the plant.

Have you ever actually _observed_ how a plant reacts after you cut it's "head" off?

I'll give you a hint... it _doesn't_ like it and it brings almost all natural growth to a virtual standstill. What if we could accomplish the same purpose without cutting it's fucking "head" off? Or mashing the shit out of the mainstem just enough to fuck it up but not kill it? Or pinch off _most_ of the growing shoots on a plant in a pathetic attempt to "direct more energy" to the top bud?

To me, that makes as much sense as hacking off fan leaves, and in some cases _most_ of the leaves (defoliate), so the buds will "get more light and get bigger". Here comes Chris Farley's voice again, "For the love of God and all that's holy, why??????".

What works for me instead of breaking out a shiv and slicing the shit out of living plant is to use light and spacing of the plants when they're in their vegetative stage to get them to do what I want them to do. To do that, you have to understand light. While I'd love to get into all the intricacies of the physics of light, this ain't the time. I'm an exceedingly practical man and I know experience compliments knowledge, so the rest of this post is my history of using lighting to develop cannabis.

Damn, since I quit wasting my time in the Old Farts thread, I've got more time to get back to why I came here to ICM in the first place. That's to learn about and teach skills and techniques to develop better cannabis, not have to talk U.S. _politics_ or have in rammed down my throat on a _cannabis_ forum.

On the subject of old farts, I'm gonna link to an exchange I had with Old Uncle Ben in another thread. It would take much too long to explain, but we have utilized many of the same Internet resources to further our knowledge of developing cannabis, for a _very_ long time.

In the universe of Internet communication and learning about new cannabis development techniques, Uncle Ben and I are fucking Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi. In the 90's, we both got seeds from the Netherlands from a nym who went by Jock. UB has pics he's posted about the "stealth" delivery method Jock used. Let's just say it was a little bit different _way_ back in the day, than it is now. I'm convinced this guy got more early cannabis genetics into the US than any other source until OG went live.

See this thread to observe how two old "war horses" show respect to each other, even though they are doing things in a diametrically opposite way and are known for communicating best with a sledgehammer and a chainsaw. We both know and have been around long enough to know there are many ways to develop a cannabis varietal and there is _never_ a right or wrong way to do something.

You just have to respect that some people think and do things differently than you do.

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Haha. The original tea. can imagine if I had gotten the job at the golf course. any golfers? That stuff is free and it’s good for growin grass. Pro grade. The best I can advise is dont change a thing if it’s workin for ya. May even tweak what your doing simply with some molasses and get...

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I've been following the LED and Bud Quality thread for a while now and even an old geezer like me can't believe growers are still debating this topic. With various participants slamming their dicks/clits down, saying either LEDs suck or they're the best, I thought it might be a good idea to see just what various growers have used in the past, what you're using now, and what you think your next light will be.

My first grow light was a 4 ft Gro-Lux fluorescent tube fixture, bought in 1979. The seedlings are from the occasional seeds I would get from Jamaican sinse, smuggled into the U.S. for the Zion Coptic Church. Never got 'em to flower, not enough juice with with fluorescent and I was scoring great bags at cost, so the grow was based more on curiosity than need:

Photo developed in Miami at Fotomat, when the War on Drugs didn't include cannabis.

Moved to the mountains, started gorilla growing outside, got divorced/vindictive wife, so had to move inside. Bought this light in 1987, for a 5 by 2 grow closet. A 1 KW MH from Midwest Supplies out of Ann Arbor, from a High Times ad. Big fucking mistake, read about Operation Green Merchant. One of the few companies that didn't rat out their customers. I could debate MH vs. HPS with anyone, for my situation. I tamed those Jamaican Type I/Type II hybrids with this monster:

Obviously, heat, humidity and airflow were a challenge in a 10 sq. ft closest but after a bunch of fuckups when I first began, I started hitting my groove. Power bills, specifically paying them, could be a problem so when LEDs first appeared, I was intrigued and investigated. Got this light, a G8LED (140 watts at the wall) for $320 USD in 2013 and utilized another closet to start seedlings for a proof of concept, to see if it would work in my situation. For seedlings and early vegging, it was great:

I never bought into the "replaces a 400w HPS" hype but the seedlings thrived, so I decided to go all in. Decided to use the G8LED for spouts and seedlings in a small closet and use two of these in the 2 x 5 closet:

So I replaced a 1 kW MH with 750 watts of _adjustable_ LEDs, in the same space, for $1.5k USD! Bought it direct, so don't know the exact date purchased but I remember the price, 'cause had to scrimp, sacrifice and save just to purchase them. Originally, thought I'd hit the plants with heavy blue during veg and heavy red during flowering. Too long a story for now but turned out plants did best when hit with full burple lighting _all_ the time, rather than reduced blue or red for specific growth phases. Imagine that.

Due to the political situation here in the U.S., my wife and I's cannabis consumption dramatically increased, necessitating the need for a tent in the basement. Couldn't afford more LumiGrows but KingPlus blurples, with "new" improved 10w LED chips, were affordable. So got a pair of these, KingPlus "1800 watt" 340 actual watts lights, $239 USD in 2017:

They were decent lights but not terribly reliable. Learned to replace the PCBs myself... that they sent me a couple of times under warranty.

Was overall fairly happy but when one of 'em totally crapped out, decided to go back to a U.S. manufacturer and got this, the only "bloom booster" that actually works.

Can't remember how much it was but it was expensive, compared to other, lesser quality lights made in China. That light is built like a fucking tank, leans heavy red and still works fine even now, many years later. I don't use it anymore because the electricity use bang per buck just isn't there.

Political situation got worse and needed a bigger tent, so got an 8 x 4 to go with the 4 x 4 in the basement. Went with 2 SF2000 SMB lights, $320 USD a piece in 2020, for the 4 x 4 and 2 SF4000 lights at $600 a piece for the 8 x 4.

4 x 4 tent started deteriorating, so upgraded to a 5 x 5 tent and added a SF2000 Pro for $220 last year, definitely one I shouldn't have ordered because they no longer use Meanwell drivers.

The closet lights had some years on them, so last year decided to upgrade with this for the original closet, a ViparSpectra XS4000, for $320:

Would I make different choices now? Without a doubt. But right now all of the current lights are humming along, doing their thing, using just a bit more energy than the original 1 kW MH.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

To those who are wondering if they can be patient enough to read through all of these walls of words, just to figure out how they can get cannabis to do what _they_ want, here's a little incentive to stick around, from my latest grow. If I can do this, so can you.

And of course this was done with no topping, fimming, supercropping, SOG, ScrOG, support nets, spankies, or dirty talk :

 

[I Care]

“just a bit more energy than the original 1 kW MH.”

Now that is cool


Really are you talking about the lights or the fans?

 

[I Care]

Do you want me to explain to you how this started?

Actually it’s simple, I was abusing the thing cause it really didn’t seem to mind, I accidentally cracked the top off of it. 5 months later someone pretty much paid me to take good sun system 24” HPS light and powa off their hands. Only problem I really ever had was PM.

 

[I Care]

I’m trying to steer the bubba and diesel together right now. With two different halves of a muffin tin. Or I was. I may need to raise the diesel up again.

Good thread u got going here CF

 

[Kimes]

waiting for continuity


very promising thread, thnaks!

 

[Marz]

I was reading somewhere that you grows same NL phenos for last 25 years, is that right @CharlesU Farley ?

 

[CharlesU Farley]

I was reading somewhere that you grows same NL phenos for last 25 years, is that right @CharlesU Farley ?

Yes

 

[Marz]

Yes

Would be nice if you could give - or sell - some of your seeds to someone else to grow this old school strain... Someone in Europe, maybe Asia, South America... Just for the sake of conservation...
Or even you buying some NL available and compare growth aspects and effects, registering it here… I dont believe even in traditional seed banks having the same strain for all this time, so its definitively a differential..

 

[I Care]

Now that’s a good reason to take a vacation.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Feeling quite a bit under the weather this weekend, which is when I usually have time to concentrate on this thread. So I'm just going to use a couple of "visual aids" to make my point about getting cannabis to do what you want it to do.

The first pick is an extreme example of how to get a _watermelon_ to do what you want it to do:

Yes those are real, not Photoshopped or AI. These developers got a watermelon to do _exactly_ what they wanted it to do, be square, so it could be packed more efficiently and cheaply for shipping.

Now I have no earthly idea how that watermelon _tastes_, but something tells me that wasn't the priority when they were developing these watermelons.

Moving on to Cannabis, plants grown in this type of environment will _never_ do what you want them to do:

These won't either:

But in a tent or greenhouse environment, it's quite easy to get a cannabis plant to do what you want, just like those scientists got a watermelon plant to do what they want.

If I had to choose between one of the two above environments, it would definitely be the one where the plants are exceedingly close together. That's going to be the subject of the next post, and is one of the keys to getting cannabis to do what you want.

Competition.

 

[Kimes]

they used a mould

 

[farmerfischer]

they used a mould

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Yup.. you beat me..lol..

 

[farmerfischer]

@CharlesU Farley Good read so far.. you had some beautiful males in them couple pics you posted..

 

[CharlesU Farley]

@CharlesU Farley Good read so far.. you had some beautiful males in them couple pics you posted..

These aren't in full bloom, and I only used the one on the far right, because I was concentrating on the Type II/Indica side of the house. These staminants run the gamut from traditional Type IV/Hybrid Christmas tree, standard Northern Lights pheno on the left, to the true to type, Type II/Indica on the right:

I like my _boys_ just as much as my girls and irl, I'm a raging heterosexual.

 

[farmerfischer]

@CharlesU Farley you said in an earlier post that you buy the cheap soil mixes like sta-green.. I thought that was alittle funny only because had just recently bought 10, 25 quart bags of sta-green garden soil for 2$a bag.. I couldn't pass that deal up..

 

[farmerfischer]

Now that I can post pics again.. lol

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Now that I can post pics again.. lol
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Looks like things are back up to speed for me so it must have been just a temporary glitch.

Now the stuff I use is specifically, stay green potting soil and doesn't look like the bag that you're using, but that ain't going to mean shit. The song was just a medium for root development and growth.

First thing I do when I get new bags in the spring, flush the living shit out of them with water. Hopefully you don't have to pay a lot for your water bills, but if you can, just flush the hell out of it with water for at least 10 to 15 minutes. This will get the soil used to _your_ water pH, chemical composition, etc., and flush out those minute particles of fertilizer they always throw in there.