The OBBT Grow Show!

[rrog]

LadyL to start the LactoB culture you've mentioned to use brown rice. I assume you simply want a starch source for the carbs. So white rice would work also, right??

Also, this process needs to be done in the dark? Always? Does it last long, or are we always brewing up a batch, essentially?

Thanks

 

[Kanye WeED]

KanYeWeed,

I too failed to wash/rinse the coco in my buckets. I don't think it mattered at all. Be careful not to over think, or over do this method. Once you get these things going there's alot less to do compared to a more conventional soil or hydro grow.

Sit back and let your system percolate for a week, then look real close for "hairy molds and fungi". There should be a few different kinds.



When you think you see this activity, plug your plantlets in and watch'em pop.

Good Luck!

Respect,

hey ripvan weed i love the way u use those lil doodles in ur post by ur pics to kinda infesize the pic u post, very unique.

good to hear i didnt mess up im soooo glad but the coir i picked up was cheap here is a pic of the coir i got i dont know if i posted a pic yet so here goes

 

[Kanye WeED]

WOW, LADY L that sounds really cool i hope they do come to life

i have yet to add the LIME yet cause i didnt know what kind to get so im gonna look for the stuff like u got in the pic, all the stuff at lowes said for LAWNS and i didnt know if that would be good or not, but it looked like thew stuff u had in the pic had a big yard on front i couldnt really tell all to well. So i will add lime and myco madness tomorrow night

how much lime should i add

i added like a half of 2/3 rds of a cup of kelp to the mix, and like a tbsp and a 1/2 of epsom salt

actually im about tp go check on it right now, it seems real moist in the tub.

i didnt know it was suspose to be coming to life, lol....cool

i hope it can live for a while in there cause i wont be using it til around the 20th or 25th of next month

maybe i should put it on in the obbt bucket and let it perculate like ripvanweed said. hmmmm

ok im off hope everyone had a good day i sure didnt

night!!!!

 

[LadyLargely]

The lawn lime is fine, like I said, I like it. The stuff I get is called Fast Acting Lime I add two tablespoons of it per 5 gallons of medium.

Your little coco brick looks great, but you will definitely want to use the boiling water trick on it.

Yes, the fact that it comes to life is the whole point of OBBT. This 'live' medium is what the Bio Box technique is based off of. Zillions of little life-forms all live in the soil and do your bidding. This is why they are 'maintenance-free'. See, there is no such thing as true maintenance-free soil chemistry. The best we can do is set it up so that you are not the one doing the maintenance! Just get a couple hundred million little organisms to do it for you; they are better at it and they never get bored. That is the mechanism at the heart of the OBBT, it is what drives this lovely gardening method.

As for delayed usage you should be OK. The tubs will have plenty to eat and once you incubate them they will stay alive for a long time. Just feed them with a little molasses-infused bubbled tap water whenever they get a bit dry.

Good luck!

 

[LadyLargely]

LadyL to start the LactoB culture you've mentioned to use brown rice. I assume you simply want a starch source for the carbs. So white rice would work also, right??

Also, this process needs to be done in the dark? Always? Does it last long, or are we always brewing up a batch, essentially?

Thanks

Doesn't have to be totally dark, just avoid very excessive light and heat. White rice is fine, brown rice is just richer with more complex carbs.

The rice wash gives you a generic culture of all the aerobic bacteria local to your given chunk of the atmosphere. When we add a small amount of this cultured rice wash to the milk all the aerobic bacteria that can't process milk die off, leaving only precious lacto bactilli

Fresh cultures are always best. Lacto B has many uses and I haven't been touching much on them. You can add it to almost every step of the process if you want. I like to brew up a nice strong culture and add it to my first tea that gets poured into the buckets. Because I didnt run an early tea this time I just added straight Lacto B culture with the first watering.

You can also add it to foliar sprays for benefits against pests. Lacto B can colonize on the surface of your plants (they crowd around the inlet pores) and do a good job of keeping nasty multi-celled pests at bay. They are suprisingly effective against aphids, spider mites and mealy worms.

Now, lacto B will not help you with these pests if you already have them. Lacto B foliar treatments are a fabulous preventitive measure against pests. It will do little if they have already taken hold.

My reccomendation is to brew it often and use it with everything. I like fresh cultures but by adding a bit of molassis or refridgerating it a culture will stay viable for several weeks. Its usage is beneficial and won't hurt anything, but I admit it the extent to which I make use of it is relatively voodoo. Beyond adding the culture to the OBBT itself once there aren't any hard, scientifically-provable benefits to its use.

 

[rrog]

Yes but it's too easy and interesting to NOT do it

 

[h.h.]

If you take yogurt and leave it in cheesecloth or a coffee filter you get a yogurt cheese with a clear liquid as a byproduct. I usually throw that into my compost bowl. I'm guessing this is the same lacto B?

 

[rrog]

Ya know h2, I am thinking the same thing. I make a gallon of yogurt every 2 weeks as it is, and am thinking that folks here are making a slow, cool LactoB culture, whereas yogurt is fast (7 hours min) and at 100 degrees.

Either way I'd have to speculate that the green-ish runoff of yogurt is full of LactoB. How could it not be?

 

[h.h.]

Got ants? You got LB.

 

[LadyLargely]

It most certainly is, these types of bacteria are the basis for every bacteria-driven milk-culturing process. From yogurt to cheese to curds and whey. Turns out they are quite flexible and while they are capable of digesting milk they don't need it. When they process milk all they do is use up the present carbohydrates. Fats and proteins are always pushed aside somehow, they cannot be consumed. Let loose on other forms of carbohydrate and Lacto B can do just as well.

 

[Kanye WeED]

The lawn lime is fine, like I said, I like it. The stuff I get is called Fast Acting Lime I add two tablespoons of it per 5 gallons of medium.

Your little coco brick looks great, but you will definitely want to use the boiling water trick on it.

Yes, the fact that it comes to life is the whole point of OBBT. This 'live' medium is what the Bio Box technique is based off of. Zillions of little life-forms all live in the soil and do your bidding. This is why they are 'maintenance-free'. See, there is no such thing as true maintenance-free soil chemistry. The best we can do is set it up so that you are not the one doing the maintenance! Just get a couple hundred million little organisms to do it for you; they are better at it and they never get bored. That is the mechanism at the heart of the OBBT, it is what drives this lovely gardening method.

As for delayed usage you should be OK. The tubs will have plenty to eat and once you incubate them they will stay alive for a long time. Just feed them with a little molasses-infused bubbled tap water whenever they get a bit dry.

Good luck!

LOL, how will i be able to tell if they are dirty or not? Ok so im gonna add a few tbsp of lime when i get some...

Damn today i got the smallest thing of myco madness and it was freaking 25 bucks FUCK im glad i didnt get the one u guys had the pic of i couldnt imagine how much that was, SHIT

kinda looks ALOT similar to the plant-tone

any way im gonna add like 2 tbsp of myco madness to my soil premix, and hopefully start the grow here in about 3 to 4 weeks maybe less

ohh and the next time i make a mix i will rinse, but like i said before this stuiff was just wetted up enough to make the coir come loose from the brick it was in, WASNT RINSED AT ALL........ but im ok with that cause rip van weed says he never rinses his shit and his grow looks amazing.

thanks yaw, hope yaw have a good weekend!!!!

 

[LadyLargely]

The formation of horizontal colas

The formation of horizontal colas

Hey everyone! Was gonna wait till Monday but good ole KW bemoaned my lack of updates, so here it is. Lets see what has been happening in the six inch gap between my lamp and soil:



(Note: the white at the top of that photo isn't image editing. Those are the bulbs for my lamp, with the over-driving they are so bright that they just show up totally washed out!)

Finally starting to bud up a bit:



There's WW#1 on the left and WW#2 on the right, before their latest training session. Even though they are budding up I am still training, and look to continue to do so for some time. Which brings us to:

Today's Lesson!

Horizontal Colas

When dealing with florescent light for budding you really need all the help you can get to generate sufficient bud density for a solid yield. Getting the lamps as close as you can to the buds is a good way to help. Forming horizontal colas is even better. I'm starting to get some good examples of it, look:



All of the buds you see, aside from the one in the top-left, are part of the same cola. Yes, even the one in the lower-left forground! And there where two more little budlets further down this offshoot that I couldn't fit in the shot. Continuing to lean this cola over on its side has caused all the bud locations to rotate around towards the light. You would think that doing this would make a few buds end up on the 'bottom' where they would get no light. However, the plant's light-sensing cells twist the growth around and keep this from happening!

Instead of the little budlets staying vertical and curling around the main stem to form a big, tall 'crown' they curl to the side and form up induvidually, making more of a 'hedge'.

This results in unprecedented bud density:



I've got over a dozen bud sites here all crammed within a space that couldn't be 4 square inches. My cannabis gardening mantra should now become very apparant:

"See that empty space? There should be a bud in it"

I mean look here at this picture:



Most gardeners would not look at it and say "You know Lady Largely, you're looking pretty sparse in the bud department there; I think you could use a couple more."

But see, I think there could always be more bud! So I do this:



That big pile of tops have all been bent over and trained into the screen, and look what was revealed beneath them:



MOAR TOPS!

The tiny things are barely more than a half inch long, but they are already sporting pistils. Once exposed to full light they will stretch up and fill out within a matter of days. I mean look at the right image, there are FIVE new tops in a single 2 inch hole in my screen. As long as I continue to hold off on the first round of starving these new little shoots will continue to stretch rapidly, bud up, and mature.

After much training the girls looked like this:



Now they're good for a couple more days!

I will continue this nitrogen-heavy stretchy bit of flower for a while. I want to develop all these little tops as much as I can before locking down the plants' stretch with the first starve. Hopefully they will have completely filled out and finished up inside of another week. Then, finally, I can initiate the first starve cycle. My nutes are sitting omnuously in the corner, just waiting to be unleashed:



Soon my pretties, very soon you shall go to work. Till next time, stay tuned!

 

[Kanye WeED]

LOL, sorry no one gave me the memo about waiting until monday, MARY JANE dont wait so why should i. there are atill things to be asked and lessons to be learned

ALRIGHT, glad to see ur grow is under way and on the way to some great looking flowers, they look like they might grow to be some very tasty morsales.

hope it just keeps biggewr and better for u ma, and thanks for all the help thus far!!!

 

[LadyLargely]

Attention Urkles!!

Attention Urkles!!

Haha, its cool KW, just mostly updated on mondays so far, no real reason. Happy to have people so interested!

OBBT Urkles:

Sick OBBT-related reference matirial

Along with pictures of Bio Box grows and explination of techniques, it recently occured to me that this thread should be a repository for something else:

Reference Material

Proposed Entry Number One:

http://www.saviskyproturf.com/doc/mycorrhiza.pdf

Big post about it over at Club Bio Box, its some good stuff

 

[rrog]

It most certainly is, these types of bacteria are the basis for every bacteria-driven milk-culturing process. From yogurt to cheese to curds and whey. Turns out they are quite flexible and while they are capable of digesting milk they don't need it. When they process milk all they do is use up the present carbohydrates. Fats and proteins are always pushed aside somehow, they cannot be consumed. Let loose on other forms of carbohydrate and Lacto B can do just as well.

My dumb re-inventing the wheel question. If we're looking to select out LactoB, would we not save a step if we added the green runoff from yogurt into the rice water? If the runoff is just about pure LactoB wouldn't this help?

 

[Kanye WeED]

LADY L

wow, thats def a home work assignment there, SHIT

now i got plans for this weekend, for sure, lol. Looks like a really good read lady l

very long aand informative. im more than sure there will be some scientfic mumbo jumbo in it i wont understand but hopefully theyll all pull together and make since when im done!!

DAMN DONT U GOT CLIFF NOTES GURL!!! lol

 

[Citizen024]

My only ? LadyL: are all those buds sites actually going to produce decent nuggage size- or are you simply going to get a whole bunch of flarf (little buddy bits)? I have learned to concentrate the plants energy into just a couple colas, if there too many it gets so spread out it means no sizable nugs. The yeild might be the same, but they lack size and stature. I know spreading a plant for light is GREAT, but I have never tried to restrain the bud shoots once they start going up.

I guess with floro you might have to do this, since you have no penetration really by the light.

I'm interested to see what happens.

 

[Kanye WeED]

My only ? LadyL: are all those buds sites actually going to produce decent nuggage size- or are you simply going to get a whole bunch of flarf (little buddy bits)? I have learned to concentrate the plants energy into just a couple colas, if there too many it gets so spread out it means no sizable nugs. The yeild might be the same, but they lack size and stature. I know spreading a plant for light is GREAT, but I have never tried to restrain the bud shoots once they start going up.

I guess with floro you might have to do this, since you have no penetration really by the light.

I'm interested to see what happens.

id say it would def depend on strain and by the medium u r using but in this case im sure u r refering to the obbt method.

higher yielding indica strains such as maybe a good pheno from a northern lights family would do well under these conditions and methods i do believe.

i could be wrong tho, i didnt know LADY L was using floros i thought she had hps.

its been my expierence that floros def dont produce as meaty as a bud as a hps i do both but just use my floros for breeding purpose and sexing new seeds that arent fem.

but obviously a ambitious enough grower maybe able to get a bigger yield from a floro than a hps due to how close u can get the light to the plant, and how many more spaces on the plant u can put the floros close to that a hps would be to hot for.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW!!!

 

[MrGreen]

Just thought you guys should check these out- http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=72215

In the next couple of months I hope to combine OBBT and CMH to produce some exceptional bud. Stay tuned for my grow journal!

 

[Citizen024]

LadyL: rereading I sound a bit asshole'ish. My bad. Didn't mean to say you might just pull flarf.

Anyhow, please keep the pics coming! Excited to see what the potential is. Really not practical for my set up, but a great education for me to see it done.

Kanye: Well, its not so much strain dependent to my mind. Medium and nutrient play in only if they are lacking somehow. If you take a plant and it has too many leads, that will not be large nugs. Some strains branch off easier or more readily then other true. But pruning, trellis, and bending can get even those plants to branch by messing with them. Many thin leads= lots of thin buds. I personally shoot for a topped little bush with 4-6 good leads. Sometimes less.

I have a canopy to fill, so I am not so concerned about any one plant, but the forest they create when packed in.

I hear what your saying. I just have see it in a context beyond those factors and I look at it more as a "how much can the plants energy support" kind of thing. You can focus it, or spread it out, your choice. Genes do influence what is possible with a strain for sure.