hush's new hidey hole — I'm growing for one, now!

[hush]

Time to dust this journal off. I was very busy for a while there finding a new job. Finally got that taken care of and life isn't so stressful anymore. It's amazing what financial insecurity will do to ya! Anyway, while I was away I finished up two grows: Nepalese Jam and PCK. The NJs were harvested a month ago or so and I've already gone through the Nepalese pheno, so no pictures of that one, but I'll try to take some pics of the Jamaican pheno to share in here. The PCKs were just harvested last week and two of the plants are still hanging on the line, so I'll be able to share pics of all of those with y'all. I'll get around to it soon, I promise.

I also just started up another round with a clone of one of the PCKs that was just harvested. I want to do a proper SCROG with it and see how it does. I saved two of the three PCKs so that I can keep one of them as a mom. I'll try to post updates of that in here as time goes on.

And last, I just popped a bunch of seeds that I made from my Golden Tiger grow earlier in this journal. I'm curious to see how they compare to the originals from Ace. Those were F3s, so my homemade ones are F4s. I just really want a powerful sativa in my supply again. As soon as those seeds get put into a permanent garden I'll start regular updates of that.

If anyone's still following along, thank you for sticking with me. I'll try to give you some good pics along the way.

 

[blynx]

Great to see you back! Looking forward to the updates.

 

[SolarLogos]

Welcome back brother, very good to see you back in action. I always enjoyed your posts, looking forward to more. Best of luck!

 

[bsgospel]

How'd the Nep Jam treat you? good stuff?

 

[hush]

Welcome back brother, very good to see you back in action. I always enjoyed your posts, looking forward to more. Best of luck!

Thanks man!

How'd the Nep Jam treat you? good stuff?

I fucking love it. Lllllllove itttttt! I don't particularly play the favorites game, but I keep thinking to myself, "holy shit this might be my favorite Ace variety!" It's just perfect in so many ways. Except for yields anyway. But that's not a deal breaker.

 

[Ncali]

Welcome back hush. Just came back from break too.

Speaking of golden tiger genetics, I used a gen one Golden Tiger to dust a bunch of cool girls. Always had some killer results with golden tiger.

His daughters are Big yeilding, frosty, and mostly let momma's terps come through. Lemon comes through sometimes. And, of course, strong potency haha


Anyways. Glad to watch along with your new adventures

 

[JustSumTomatoes]

Nice to see you back hush, and congrats on the new job!

 

[bsgospel]

Glad to hear it. I'm going to try and pop a pack of Nepal jam x kali china at work on Monday. I've been pushing it for ease of trim, super heady effects, and resistance to mildew.

 

[woolybear]

hey hush, welcome back. i just bought some ace seeds; would you have a link handy to your golden tiger posts?

asking, haven't checked b/c i'm toasted

 

[hush]

hey hush, welcome back. i just bought some ace seeds; would you have a link handy to your golden tiger posts?

asking, haven't checked b/c i'm toasted

It started right around page 5 of this journal you're currently reading.

 

[hush]

I've decided to make some big changes to my grow room. I'm going to wait until after the current gardens are finished but right after that, big changes are coming. I want to start doing a perpetual harvest, and that means having lots of small, 2x2 gardens. I'm going to ditch tents and line the wall with 2x2 flood tables, and every two weeks I'll start flowering a new plant. I think that will keep the hobby fun for me, because in the past several years it's just gotten a bit boring. So all of that will happen in the next few months. For now, here's what's currently going on...


PCK starts flowering tonight:

Golden Tiger, started flowering last week but still not showing sex yet:

 

[Guest]

Very nice Hush.
I'm sure you're gonna kill it, welcome to the perpetual garden: the scrog that doesn't end it just goes on and on my friend, one day hush started scrogging them not knowing what it was and he'll continue scrogging them forever just because it is the..

 

[bsgospel]

Looking good, man!

I do perpetual at work so when I get home I have no brain space left for organization or timing/planning. I'm more or less winging it every time.

"I GUESS this can come down today..." "Maybe I'll flip tomorrow.....or the next day.....fuck it, next week. I don't know."

 

[hush]

Thanks for the encouragement, friends. So yeah what I think I want to do is line a wall with five of these 2x2 flood and drain systems that I use. They're called megagardens, sold by General Hydroponics. They're not cheap, unfortunately, which sucks, because they end up being the most expensive part of the garden. But they are so tidy and so effective that I'll pay the exorbitant price. I just wish I knew how to do vacuum forming on my own so that I could clone the thing and not have to buy them. But whatever. I'm still using the first one I ever bought, like ten years ago or so, and it still kicks ass. So they at least last a long time. But I just like the footprint, and I like how tidy they look.

I'll have 5 of them, and so if I start a new plant every week, that means I can work with 10-week flowering varieties and keep the cycle going perpetually. Based on what I know about LED lighting and wattage and square footage, it seems that the benchmark will be that I should never harvest less than 4 ounces per system, and that would be for a low yielder. It's safe to say that the average expected yield would be about 6 to 8 ounces for most varieties. Huge yielders might give me an ounce or two more but basically I'm saying that I think 6 to 8 ounces would be the typical yield. And if I'm harvesting that every two weeks, I'll be able to offload a few QPs from time to time. I need a little extra money.

This also means that I'll have to keep an 18/6 garden going at all times, but I think I can do that in my kitchen garden, so what I'm going to do is convert that one to a double-decker, where the top tier will be my microgreens/lettuce garden, and the bottom tier will be for cannabis. I don't actually need the entire tent for microgreens and lettuce, so I'm currently wasting space in there anyway. That means I'll have to order a 24 inch by 24 inch bakers rack that will replace the tube frame that currently holds the tent's shape. That way I can have multiple tiers. But that ought to be easy enough. There's a website called shelving dot com where you can order any size posts and shelves to customize your own bakers racks, so that's what I'll do there.

Then, basically, I'll always be starting one new plant every two weeks. Whether that will be new, feminized seeds or whether it will be rooted cuttings from mother plants, that remains to be seen. I have to think more about the logistics of all of that. But basically, plants will be born and raised in the kitchen garden, then when it's time to flower them, they will be moved into the grow closet into one of the five systems.

I think I'm going to use Viparspectra brand LEDs. I just find the company to have reasonably good quality for the price, compared to like Spider Farmer units which are a bit more costly. I'll be using their 150 watt units (that's actual wattage) because those would provide an excellent spread of light over a 22 inch by 22 inch garden (the actual size of the megagarden footprint) without a whole lot of difference between the corners and directly beneath the light, at 18 inches high. And while there might be a difference in terms of how the plants won't be inside tents reflecting light off the shiny walls anymore, possibly lowering yields a bit from what I'm used to, there will be some overlapping light from the adjacent gardens, possibly making up the difference. I don't know. We'll see.

By needing to do things every two weeks I think it'll keep my interest a bit more actively and I'll be less lazy. Also, in the long run, I'll end up with much more bud. A QP (or more!) every two weeks is a lot of weed for my intake, so that's why I'll be able to sell some, too. And last but not least, this will allow me to have more variety which is something I miss having.

So all of that will happen in the coming months. It's gonna be great. I can't wait! I'll also considering not doing SCROGs anymore at that point. Instead I might just start topping and growing little pruned bushes. That would be only for factoring in labor amounts, that's all. Or maybe some will be SCROGs and others not. Time will tell.

I just need get my interested piqued again. It's amazing how something that used to be so exciting and empowering to me just ended up being another household chore a few decades later. Perspective is everything.