How You Can Develop Cannabis To Do What You Want

[CharlesU Farley]

The topic today is going to be competition and why it's good for cannabis. We used to call cannabis _weed_ back in the '60s for a very good reason, that's what it is. Weeds, by their very definition, are competitive, thrive and in fact, do best when they are in that type of environment.

From the time they are seedlings until final harvest, my cannabis plants are exposed to a maximum amount of light, air circulation, and water/nutrients. Those are the things _everybody_ thinks about and most growers provide their plants with.

But what my plants are also exposed to is intense, unrelenting, _competition_.

As a result of being in this competitive environment, these cannabis plants ended up doing exactly what I wanted them to do:



They compete with each other for positioning to achieve the maximal exposure to sun, airflow, and nutrients. The lower, lateral branches are in such competition, not to be overpowered and put in shade by the upper, larger leaf mass, the cells expand and grow _towards_ the light. The scientific term for this is phototropism.

As a result of this competition, almost all of the plant growth hormones (auxins) are redistributed to every branch off of the main stem, not just the very top of the stem. This hormone redistribution obviously occurs _without_ the need to hack/top the main stem, so the rapid, vegetative growth doesn't grind to a halt with this method.

The end result is you have more branches, with slightly smaller buds, that will be _less_ susceptible to PM/botrytis. There will also be a much larger total bud mass, than if there was just a single, main stem Christmas tree shape to the plants, that is the traditional shape with the standard NL phenotype.

An added bonus, you're not exposing any plant tissue to invasion by mold/fungi by ripping/hacking the protective cells off the plant, when you're cutting it's fucking head off.

Sometimes a little finess and manipulation goes much further than brute force and coercion, and the plants ultimately reward me for my decision.

 

[Dragon's Den]

I just want weed that waters itself. Maybe it's time to learn these fancy electronicals.

Skip the electronics, get Autopots!

 

[Dequilo]

@CharlesU Farley great read thank you for putting it up

nice dog

all the best and grow well

Dequilo

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Finally getting over a good case of COVID but still don't feel like sitting in front of a computer and writing, so this is going to be more photos than text. Nice change of pace, isn't it?

It's time to harvest now. These girls are almost 3 months into flowering and the temp/humidity is increasing pretty dramatically, now that summer is almost here. PM is starting to be an issue so I know botrytis won't be far behind, so it's time to bring 'em down.

Please note there's no netting or support poles. SouthEast Lights can stand on its own, no matter how many or heavy the buds may be. Goes back to my basic philosophy that I wanted my cannabis plants to be Terminator plants that don't need any special treatment, support system, specific fertilizer requirements, etc..

For me, harvest time is always a bit depressing. Trim jail is no problem with me whatsoever, it comes with the territory. But putting 'em down, after putting so much time and effort into 'em, is a time for celebration but also reflection.

Besides I've got clones! They've gone from this:

To this in a little over two weeks:

The next post I'll get into more about using light, competition and air velocity in unison to get cannabis plants to do what you want them to do.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Cart 'o buds... life is _good_.

With harvest done, the clones have another tent to stretch out a bit, before they go into larger fabric containers:

 

[*GROWHIGH*]

Great read with some great info,....I'm just wondering tho ...do you think there has been a trade-off from the first original generation, has selecting for hardiness ...diminished resin content or potency ... your plant's morphology seem to be very landrace indica ...very leafy ... very stout... different coloured phenos .....has there been a quid pro quo in terms of desirable traits

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Great read with some great info,....I'm just wondering tho ...do you think there has been a trade-off from the first original generation, has selecting for hardiness ...diminished resin content or potency ... your plant's morphology seem to be very landrace indica ...very leafy ... very stout... different coloured phenos .....has there been a quid pro quo in terms of desirable traits

Good question and I've wondered that myself for a long time. I won't say the resin production has gone down but it definitely hasn't gone dramatically up either. I've just never selected for that particular trait, and I often wonder what things would have looked like if I had of concentrated on that specific aspect of the plant.

I'm no different than anybody else, when I see those frosty, resin saturated buds that look like they've been snowed on, there is a little spark of envy there, even for me. But I wonder what the plant had to go through/endure to produce that kind of resin.

Once I was in a situation to produce more than my wife and I could consume, it gave me the freedom to concentrate on plant structure and hardiness. I've always felt if I needed more resin to catch a higher elevation, I'd just vape more.

The different colors really didn't show up until I isolated the Type II/Indica portion of NL and started concentrating on it. I think the biggest desirable trait that I've lost in doing all of this has been the uniformity, consistency and reproducibility of Sensi's original NL.

All my plants definitely don't look the same now like they used to.

 

[*GROWHIGH*]

Good question and I've wondered that myself for a long time. I won't say the resin production has gone down but it definitely hasn't gone dramatically up either. I've just never selected for that particular trait, and I often wonder what things would have looked like if I had of concentrated on that specific aspect of the plant.

I'm no different than anybody else, when I see those frosty, resin saturated buds that look like they've been snowed on, there is a little spark of envy there, even for me. But I wonder what the plant had to go through/endure to produce that kind of resin.

Once I was in a situation to produce more than my wife and I could consume, it gave me the freedom to concentrate on plant structure and hardiness. I've always felt if I needed more resin to catch a higher elevation, I'd just vape more.

The different colors really didn't show up until I isolated the Type II/Indica portion of NL and started concentrating on it. I think the biggest desirable trait that I've lost in doing all of this has been the uniformity, consistency and reproducibility of Sensi's original NL.

All my plans definitely don't look the same now like they used to.

yeahh i can understand that ..or even make some beautiful hash if you really want potency,..i see this as a fascinating experiment ...in a way you're mimicking natural selection by purely selecting plants that do best in your environment,..and i think we are seeing plants revert to how we would expect to find them in the wild .....wolves only became dogs when the natural parameters for survival stopped being applicable....great thread

 

[goingrey]

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.

They will "sleep" even with 24h days (leaves droop) and have that downtime. But I also do 18/6 because it's less electricity used.

 

[I Care]

I was thinking about your friend Nevil yesterday. Mainly what you said about how he would use 24h and my own experience of a clone showing pistisl because of a few hours with lights off. The original GMO cutting I got from the dispensary popped pistils because I turned the light off before bed. It may have been 10 hours and showed flowers the first time I gave it dark hours.

I also believe I read somehwere, many years ago that plants go into
react to bloom faster when going from 24h. This may have been my experience with the cutting. Also, I may read the opposite and then mixed it up with what I’m thinking based on a single recent experience.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

I've written quite a bit about competition in cannabis plants and why it's a good thing but there are some obvious drawbacks. When plants are in very close contact during the veg stage and growing rapidly in a warm, moist tent environment, it ultimately leads to PM. When plants are in flowering, botrytis becomes the major problem. So we have to do something to try to keep the fungi from procreating and we do that with high velocity airflow:



It doesn't matter whether they're seedlings, recently transplanted clones, or vegging out, all of my plants are subjected to constant, high velocity, 24x7 air flow from all directions:



In addition to the six fans that are constantly blowing on the plants, there's also a 570 CFM exhaust system that is evacuating the air in the tent. The increased air flow also helps tremendously with photosynthesis because constant CO2 is available and the 02 produced by the leaf is transported away from the leaf surface. Without a doubt, this is the simplest, most effective and efficient way to increase CO2 availability to the leaf surface.

It took many years for SouthEast Lights to adapt to this type of environment and when I was first developing this method, I dehydrated / killed more seedlings and clones then you can ever imagine. But after multiple generations, the plants adapted and evolved where they could tolerate the increased air flow without the leaves curling, drying, and dying.

Another thing I do as an inside grower that I'm not sure others do is to spritz, spray, or douche the entire plant with water at least once a week:



The combination of all these factors comes together to create roots that do this:

And leaves that do this:

I've often wanted to put pics like this in the What's Wrong With My Plant threads, but I'm old school and don't sandbag fucking anybody... even over-knowledgeable Millennials who are always quick to diagnose problems, where none exist.

What you're seeing is leaf cells that are developing faster than the NPK can be transported to them, so they can utilize it. That's why the tips of the leaves are much darker than the rapidly reproducing cells near the petioles. In a couple of days when the plants are adjusted to their new environmental conditions, the leaf color will be completely normal, without the addition of anything... especially CaMg.

This is one of the main reasons I'm such a strong believer in Peter's 20/20/20. I can titrate the amount of fertilizer required by judging the color of the leaves and, as opposed to timed release or organic fertilizers, the results are immediately visible.

This leaf variation almost always happens with my plants when I go from 1 to 7 gallon fabric containers, because I bring the lights down within a foot of the canopy. This essentially supercharges root and leaf development. After a couple of weeks in this environment, I'll raise the lights to around 3 ft from the canopy, to encourage vertical growth once the roots and leaves have been developed to support that rapid growth.

I hope you're starting to see a pattern here. We are manipulating the environment, without injuring or stressing the plant, in order to get it to do what we want it to do.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Well, it's been a hell of a couple weeks since I last posted in this thread. Was finally getting over Covid when I got one hell of a case of Whooping Cough, yes Whooping Cough, in a 69-year-old great grandfather.

I _so_ wanted to get a picture of this plant, four or five days after this was taken but at that time, I was coughing and hacking up a lung )

By the time I was able to go downstairs and check out the plants, I couldn't even remember which one this one was, because it didn't look like this anymore. Again, gotta love the instantaneous availability of N, P, K of Peter's, compared to organic or time released fertilizers.

Even though I felt like shit, I did take pictures for the last couple of weeks and discovered photographic evidence of my assertion that you can get cannabis plants to do what you want them to do.

Here's a shot I took when these seedlings were first developing:

Do you notice how this plant is quite a bit different than the rest?

On closer inspection:

What I hope you're going to notice is there there is no evidence whatsoever of topping, chopping, or fimming the plant.

So I decide to go back and look at some of the other pics I had taken and discovered this:

This clearly shows two separate and distinctly different kinds of "grass" !!!!

Decided to dig a little bit deeper into the photo archives, here's how the plant has developed:

Now I realize it is totally possible I accidentally topped the plant when it was young by hitting it with the water wand (go back in this thread to see how delicately I water ). But this is not an anomaly, it's a trait that I have concentrated on ever since I developed this plant:

Quite a bit different structure than the standard Sensi Northern Lights that I have worked so long. Those big, fat donkey dick buds look good but in the basement tents, when the temp is 85° and the relative humidity is 90+%, I _had_ to do something that would ameliate botrytis/bud rot:

I don't think I'm willing to go so far as to say _all_ of my plants do exactly what I want them to do. However, since I have worked this particular varietal as long as I have, used common sense and observational skills to actually _listen_ to my plants, I'm almost positive you'll find that your cannabis plants will do what you want them to do, like mine do for me.

Isn't that the very essence of what we're trying to do?

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Well it looks like the couple of weeks of hell are turning into a couple of months. Lots of shit going on in life, more sickness, death in the family, etc. Just haven't felt like posting much other than music and funny pics. But all it takes is a visit down to the basement tents to get me in the right frame of mind, so here's an update.

Was going to do this post on cloning and how I do it differently than almost everybody else but in going back through the photos of the last couple of months, there's a couple pics that are illustrative of the difference between developing clones vs. seedlings. Here's the clones and the seedlings:

Time to get the clones in dirt:

Now the seedlings:

Out of the closet and into the tent:

Notice how the clones are much darker, squatter, and smaller than the seedling plants? Even though they've been in the exact same environment, received the same watering, fertilizing, and lighting and are the same genetics.

The clones are used to the environment, fertilizing and watering schedule, as these are third gen clones. The seeds I used are three to four years old now and were grown in a different environment in the closet upstairs, where I didn't have to use potassium bicarb to control PM and botryitis.

At first, the seedlings did not respond well to their new environment and the use of potassium bicarb. It took them a little while to adjust to the new environment, as you can clearly see in this photo:

But they eventually came around:

So what does all this mean? Cannabis, when properly developed, adapts and changes to fit its _environment_. It does not have to be babied, coddled, or treated like a delicate orchid or gardenia because after all, it's a weed. But it needs time, and sometimes several generations, to adapt and adjust to the _environment_ it's growing in.

When I read all of these posts where people are contantly measuring pH, EC, PAR, PPM of nutrients, etc. and doing everything they can to adjust the temperature/humidity to create what they think is the _perfect_ environment, I just have to chuckle.

Because of the way SouthEast Lights has been developed, it'll grow and adapt to its environment, instead of the other way around. I found this plant in the recycled dirt pile on the north side of the house, where it only gets a couple hours of afternoon sun:

Wonder what the EC, pH and fertilizer ratio were on this plant?

Not being obsessed with scientific measurements, creating the perfect environment and/or finding the perfect seed is one of the primary keys to getting cannabis to do what you want it to do.

 

[Stone]

Reading back on what I've written so far, I have left out the most basic principle that is needed before you start a project to _develop_ cannabis:

Why are you joining two disparate types of cannabis and what are you trying to accomplish with the union?

I have to kinda chuckle when I see people posting about various combos of cannabis they're wanting to create, when they are _all_ multi-poly-hybrids with no uniformity and/or stabilization performed by the developer. It’s easy to think you’ve got a special “pheno” (a plant that looks different from the others), if there’s no homogeneity to begin with!

My first couple of generations of Sensi’s NL looked _exactly_ the same, there was almost no variation in structure, color, or potency. This is the genius of what Nevil accomplished with what NL Seattle Greg (NLSG) had created. He standardized and stabilized the best versions of NLSG’s work and created one of the most foundational varieties of cannabis in history. When I get the time, I’m going to cut ‘n paste a post I did on RIU here to ICM about the real, true story of how NL was created, actually _written_ by both Nevil and NLSG, on various cannabis fora that are now deleted. It’s conflicting and contradictory, to say the least.

So, what am I trying to accomplish with the developmental work I’m doing?

After growing for decades in the 2 x 5 closet, when the political situation changed dramatically here in the U.S., Harley (my wife's nym, Harley Farley ) and I were consuming so much cannabis that we were starting to have to smoke less than desirable parts of the cannabis plant. Since we’ve got a large, unfinished basement, it was only logical to increase production by utilizing tents downstairs. That environment is nowhere close to the ideal environment I could control in the 2 x 5. Started having problems with botrytis and PM almost immediately. Imagine having buds like this and seeing them rot because of fungi and mold:

View attachment 18982404

I know everyone just loves those big, fat donkey dick sized buds but when the temp inside the tents is 80 degrees F and the relative humidity is 90+%, guess what becomes a problem? Researched the shit out of it and came to the conclusion that a khco3, veg oil, and Dawn solution was going to be best for my environment and style of developing cannabis. During flowering, it burns the shit out of pistils, turning them red but as you know by now, I don’t care about color, taste or smell of cannabis… it’s the “high” that I’m most concerned about. Tired of fighting the fungi, I decided to join one of my hard core Type II/Indica staminate studs, because I like the high that it gives, with a branching/dividing structured Type IV/Hybrid plant that seemed to be resistant to fungi. Here they are:

View attachment 18982406


View attachment 18982407

You’ll immediately notice the Type II/Indica staminate plant is quite old. That was done on purpose because I always use not only the oldest pistillate but the oldest staminate as well. It is part of my continuing effort to, and I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever, un-Dutch NL. Back in the day, a short flowering period that led to faster turnaround for growers was _essential_ for making money. Since I’ve never been in it for the money, I always felt like the Dutch “pump and dump” strategy wasn’t the best way to develop cannabis. So I’ve lengthened the vegging and flowering time, dramatically. I usually veg for 3-4 months and flower for 2-4 more.

I chose those plants because I wanted the larger, Type II/Indica buds that would branch out and up towards the light in a uniform manner like the branching Type IV/Hybrid. I wanted a canopy of buds that were large but _not_ massive and I wouldn’t violate my belief that a cannabis plant should not be topped, fimmed, hacked or otherwise abused just to increase yield. I’m not there yet but I’m getting pretty close.

View attachment 18982409

Working on standardization and stabilization now because I’m still getting the occasional outlier.

View attachment 18982410

Next post will be about why I use soil. As long as something more important like this post, which explains the very foundation of what I’m trying to accomplish with SouthEastern Lights, comes to mind.

I’m getting nostalgia over here.
First traveled to BC for beans in 98.

I think the civility of the old forums had a lot to do with illegality.
You were taking a big risk just signing up, not to mention cultivating.
Not to mention the culture of fear instilled in growers then.
No one had time to go to all that trouble just be an asshat like today.

I’m REALLY interested in the SGNL story.
That was the first quality cannabis I ever got.
Blew my mind that this was even the same plant as brick schwag.

Subbed.