The OBBT Grow Show!

[McDanger]

I second your thoughts rrog. My new air pump just came today, so I plan to move 1 seed started plant and 1 cutting to the buckets tomorrow. My LB seems to be slow to make the "cheese" but is starting to put out some at least. I think I did not let the rice wash sit long enough since I was not adding air at that stage. Is it ok to use 2% or must you use whole milk??
I thought this was going to be a more hands off way to grow, but with all the foliar feeding it may even be more labor intensive. Especially if you consider making of the teas and LB.
Oh well, I am in it for at least 1 full cycle.
I think that is all of my ?'s for now.

 

[rrog]

I'm thinking this is less measuring and more stable than traditional hydro. It all seems overwhelming when you're trying to understand it. That's the way it is with me.

The milk has the lactose, not the cream, so lowfat should work. But I've never done this.

 

[LadyLargely]

WTF is that shit? I have no idea what DM is on about with those recopies but that is WAY too concentrated. A whole bottle of kelp? What the hell?

He must have fucked that up somehow, no way that shit is right. Stick with my numbers. His recopies would be too fuckin gooey to even go through a sprayer. The coco moist is prolly a good idea as is the molasses, but one gallon of lacto B. culture? Jesus H. That is overkill like none other. Might as well light a cigarette with a flamethrower!

Liquid fish is fish emulsion. I use Maxicrop (5-1-1) for veg purposes and Bonide (2-4-0) for flowering.

McDanger:

This OBBT bullshit must be seeming pretty labor-intensive by this point eh? I promise you this is the roughest part. Once you get going it is very little work to maintain. The foliar stuff is all optional. If you grew with clones I would hesitate to include it at all. Starting teas is a bastard but remember you will only brew some up new 3 times over the entire grow. Lacto B sucks as well, but once you've run a culture you never have to do it again. A lot of this stuff is a pain in the ass once and one time only. After much of the initial setup is done this system will crank out bud till the end of time with very little input from the gardener.

Rrog is right about how things go later on. No measuring TDS, no babysitting the Ph, no acidity tight-rope walk. Water once a week, feed once every two weeks. Nothing to it really.

As for milk in the Lacto B culture I would say because you didn't bubble the rice wash you had only a very small lacto B population to work with. It will take longer to get ramped up. Should make it eventually though, no need to reproduce my record-breaking sub-4-day-run.

As for fat content of the milk I doubt it matters. The bacteria can only consume carbohydrates, the fat and protein get pushed out. I've always used 2%, but I'd wager that skim milk would work just fine. Because it contains so little fat it actually might be nicer to use, lower cheese production means less work.

ripman

Yea, Tomato spray can be tough to get your hands on. What we want from it is cytokinin, a naturally-occuring plant hormone. Tomato Spray is nothing more than super-concentrated kelp. Liquid kelp contains a battery of growth hormones, cytokinin included, which is why I use it as well. There are a wide variety of kelp-derived products on the market and I've no doubt that Tomato Spray isn't the only one that contains high-dose cytokinin. Look around, call manufacturers, because it has no nutritional value they are not obligated to put "cytokinin" on the label and I suspect quite a few "SUPER BUD" and other 'magic' foliar sprays include it.

 

[rrog]

Thank you LadyL. I’m trying to keep a list and track of all of these products that get mentioned:

“I use Maxicrop (5-1-1) for veg purposes and Bonide (2-4-0) for flowering.”

You like to switch these out? Any reason?

“Supplement with flower fish (2-4-0) for small amounts of N.”

What is flower fish? Fish Emulsion is 5-1-1 so I'm not sure what you're wanting us to use.

 

[Citizen024]

Nitrozyme is a really nice high quality kelp extract. And it's 0-4-4. I just saw it make some of my girls tips explode into multi tips in week 5. Very strange- then again I used it with Penetrator (forces open the stomas to make things go systemic- pricey but handy for certain purposes) and Zone (copper sulfate) for PM. Zone/Penetrator is EXTREMELY effective for PM control. The bud tip became 5 bud tips, kinda dready and dense in a good way. The ones that didn't do that still shot up a bunch. First some of the pistols reddened, then the nug exploded in all directions. Not sure if it was a hormone effect, an effect of the Zone or nute burn. I have never had it happen before with kelp sprays. Anyone seen this before with kelp? Maybe the Penetrator really shoved it in there.

I treated again with Nitrozime a week and half later (I usually hit em just in week 1-2, and 4 and 5, sometimes 6), no Zone/Penetrator, and didn't have the same result again. Which is good, cause more tip explosion this late in the cycle would have gone from a good thing to a really bad thing I think.

1 bottle of nitrozyme will last you FOREVER, and it's pricey. Seriously, don't go more then the recommended 5-10ml per liter. Use a wetting agent too.

 

[rrog]

Nice to see you Citizen. Thanks for that rundown.

Well... I used Penetrator, Nitrozyme and Liquid Light in my grow. I thought it was awesome. Buds were quite fat.

The penetrator is also a surfactant I believe.

What is "PM?"

I wouldn't be surprised if what you experienced was hormonal. In fact, I'd expect it to be given the Cytokinins.

 

[Citizen024]

Life is keeping me busy- 12 days from finishing a round. Yes, I will post pics.

PM is powdery mildew.

I have used Nitrozime with CocoWet numerous times and never have seen that before. My temps are a bit warmer then I would like too, higher 70's.

 

[ripman]

Hey guys thanks for all the replies. I'd say Nitrozyme then should be good enough to replace Bonide in my case and I'll look for some serious ascophyllum nodosum as well.
About the delivery and wetting agent, looks like everybody uses Penetrator... is it so much radically better than Wet Betty? I know Penetrator costs a lot and you have to use a lot, while Wet Betty is much more concentrated and costs 4 times less... what is the issue with Wet Betty that everybody recommends Penetrator then?

 

[rrog]

I'd be interested to know how "un-organic" Penetrator is.

Citizen, high level Copper is toxic to plants obviously. Small doses for PM works, I guess, but maybe ingesting Copper through the Stoma, gave them a case of botanical gas or something.

 

[McDanger]

McDanger:

This OBBT bullshit must be seeming pretty labor-intensive by this point eh? I promise you this is the roughest part. Once you get going it is very little work to maintain. The foliar stuff is all optional. If you grew with clones I would hesitate to include it at all. Starting teas is a bastard but remember you will only brew some up new 3 times over the entire grow. Lacto B sucks as well, but once you've run a culture you never have to do it again. A lot of this stuff is a pain in the ass once and one time only. After much of the initial setup is done this system will crank out bud till the end of time with very little input from the gardener.

Rrog is right about how things go later on. No measuring TDS, no babysitting the Ph, no acidity tight-rope walk. Water once a week, feed once every two weeks. Nothing to it really.

As for milk in the Lacto B culture I would say because you didn't bubble the rice wash you had only a very small lacto B population to work with. It will take longer to get ramped up. Should make it eventually though, no need to reproduce my record-breaking sub-4-day-run.

As for fat content of the milk I doubt it matters. The bacteria can only consume carbohydrates, the fat and protein get pushed out. I've always used 2%, but I'd wager that skim milk would work just fine. Because it contains so little fat it actually might be nicer to use, lower cheese production means less work.

Thanks for the reply.
The cheese really increased today, I removed about 2 inches of it. My dog loves it.
I put plants into the 2 buckets I made up today. 1 from seed and 1 cutting, straight into the bucket right off the plant. They are 2 different strains so I cannot compare them to each other really. If the cut lives at all I think it is a success.
It is surprising how dense the layer of fungi is on the top of the bucket. I can see water droplets trapped under it like a humidity dome.

 

[rrog]

Wow. How cool is that McDanger!!?? Extremely cool.

I'd also like to replace Bonide with Nitrozyme since I have a big jug of it.

 

[Citizen024]

Penetrator is not organic, but I have no idea what the "phospho-lipid" whatever it uses is in proximity to organicness.

It is necessity for me to use it, but I might just get a copper spray from the gardening store and see if it does as well.

The Grapefruit (not the one most folks have) is completely free of PM, and the guy I got it from says it pretty much is resistant. I am thinking of dropping my Deep Chunk Afgoos completely if I can make Grapefruit perform properly. Really exceptional genetics, aggressive growth- god bless wherever it came from.

10 days till end of week 8!

LadyL:

I saw faster acting fish bone meal today (3-12-0 w/calcium) as well as oyster shell for calcium. Any feedback on these? How fast they breakdown etc, your experiences . .

 

[SwitchAvenger]

Thanks for the reply.
The cheese really increased today, I removed about 2 inches of it. My dog loves it.

Good stuff man! Hopefully all goes as planned...

 

[Citizen024]

LadyL would you mind real quick like listing the uses and amounts of the Lacto culture. Tea making, foliar, and whatever else. Like a cheat sheet version of some of the basic formulations. I know you have much details to come, I am just getting an idea of how YOU use these things.

Thanks much!

Look at you guys go!! Love it! Get mine going sometime after the Burn (and cause I am shutting down for a week+). . too much to do till then. I have buds so heavy I just had to stake and tie like crazy- not a bad problem.. . . 9 days . .. gonna be a crazy cut, dry and prepare for Burning Man all at once affair.

 

[jaykush]

ladylargely good stuff with the lactic acid bacteria, but i will not eat my heart out lol. i am a patient person, and see no need to rush, it takes me 4 days in warm weather. maybe your just impatient but i dont mind the wait since it stores for months. just to let you know, lacto bacillus is a anaerobe, well Facultative anaerobe to be more accurate. but an anaerobe none the less.

i may try your way to compare under a microscope and in application, see what differences there is. im sure different species are selected with the additional air.

 

[rrog]

So they use O2 as long as it's around, then go to fermentation when no O2.

 

[LadyLargely]

Busy Busy Busy

View image in gallery​

Greetings from the Midwest! Where bats inexplicably appear in your basement!

Anyway.

ladylargely good stuff with the lactic acid bacteria, but i will not eat my heart out lol. i am a patient person, and see no need to rush, it takes me 4 days in warm weather. maybe your just impatient but i dont mind the wait since it stores for months. just to let you know, lacto bacillus is a anaerobe, well Facultative anaerobe to be more accurate. but an anaerobe none the less.

i may try your way to compare under a microscope and in application, see what differences there is. im sure different species are selected with the additional air.

Hehe, sorry mate, have to admit that I only skimmed through your stuff after I saw a mention of you in a post by DM. I saw the instructions and that some step said "week". Just riding a little high on my quick culture, had no desire to shoot ya down buddy!

I know that the culture is good for a while, specially in the fridge, but I think I even saw you mention the percieved benefits of right-there-and-then freshly churned out culture. I have to admit I get a little voodoo about my grow techniques some times and fresh Lacto B (or whatever the fuck it is, all I used to know that the stuff was basically curds and weigh) is part of that regime.

Speaking of that regime there seem to be a lot of questions about timing and teas and how exactly I bang things out. Gonna have to be honest with you guys, I rarely grow the same way twice. I'm pretty inconsistent and on top of that I don't tend to measure shit. Fly by the seat of my pants and so on. It was quite a task for me to actually make up a recopie for you guys to mix up medium. Measuring out nutes in standardized cups instead of by the handful was a new experience for me!

The end result is, that recopie was indeed quite hot I mean really hot!

Really sorry if anybody has copied that shit verbatim and then run into problems. To be honest its prolly bad but I like it. First off its been a little hard to set sprouts in. For whatever reason I've had bad luck getting a plant set in spot #2. It started of with Dutch Mystery #1. According to my old habits I had picked one of the smallest and oddest seeds from my mystery bag. Really hard and black and tiny. Looked very Indica. Wouldn't sprout worth a shit though!

Quickly moved on to Dutch Mystery #3, which went ok but in my haste to get it into the medium stuck it in quite early, only just after having removed the inner seed skin. It didn't take.

So here we are, basically a week into my ambitiously-designated "BEST OBBT EVARS" We have various signs that the plants, especially the purebred Dutchies, are a little hot under their collars. One got a bit stunted and they are all a wee bit ugly. They all took ages to root in and get going at first. And tub #2 won't set a goddamn plant!

And yet, I am grinning from ear to motherfucking ear

Oh yes, all is well in the Land of Nod.


A Quick Rundown. From Left To Right:



White Widow #1, Dutch Mystery #4, Sheerah!, Dutch Mystery #2, White Widow #2

Yea! So, as I said, there was a little trouble rooting and they've all been bitching in their own ways. WW#1 and Sheerah! show off some decent burns and DM #2 isn't without her spots. WW#2 has been a little stunted and spotty and of course tub #2 hasn't yet bothered to really grow anything yet. No, wait, that's not fair. *checks the time* DM #4 has been in the medium for almost 2 hours now. some growing has surely gone on by now!

Despite the burning and stunting they are remarkably happy little buggers. I think the slight bitchiness is telling me that my pre-loading is right on the limit of what is possible. Anymore and I'm not sure seeds could be started in them. Perhaps tub #2 is a bit hotter than the others... We shall see.

So they took their jolly time rooting in, but in the last 24 hours they've really hit blastoff! WW #1 has easily doubled in size during that time and the others aren't far behind. New nodes have gotten quite big now and no signs of burn on them so I think they've gotten over the high nute concentration.

They are beautiful healthy little plants, despite the imprefections. The complexity of them is very high for their size which is what has me excited, I mean check it out:



Yea, I know its mostly the little leafy tabby things that the pre-sex dealies come out of, but look between those. Yup, that there is a brand spankin-new node. One day it will be its very own cola. It has emerged millimeters from the origional round leaves. The bigger plants are getting on their fourth set of serrated leaves and have still yet to generate any measurable verticle stem-sections at all. I normally would have started supercropping by now but they've got nowhere to pinch them. Fucking Perfect!

So, all is pretty well with the plants I have managed to start. As I said I'm not sure if emulating my techniqes perfectly is the real way to do this technique justice, especially on your first try. More standardized nutes may be the answer. I must admit my tonics and sprays and teas have a strong whiff of voodoo about them. I never measure shit and I'm not the best teacher anyway. I'm gonna go ahead and record stuff how I do it, but be forewarned you need to use your own noggin to decide the right way forward.

Anyway.

Today's Lesson

Seed Surgury!

The old farts on Overgrow used to say that wet paper towel sprouting was sketchy enough how they said to do it: which is just to let a tiny little tail come out and them plant it. I've come a long way from there and there is extensive work in "berthing" a seed for me. I like to do it this way, doesn't mean I'm saying its automatically better. But its what I prefer, I think it is the best way to sprout, makes the strongest plants:

It starts a lot like wet paper towel method. Get a small sealable plastic container and fill it with a nice absorbant clothy matirial. Paper towels are the obvious choice, but I don't use them. With my advanced sprouting I find that the plants will often penetrate the paper towel and liberating them tends to break shit.

I opt for little strips of old microfiber cloth in a nice little tupperwear. Keep somwhere warm, 84-86 is wonderful. Know what else likes these sorts of conditions:


Mmm. Delicious psychedelics brewing. Can't wait.

Ahem. Sprout away. After 1-3 days you get this:


Ye olde tail. As normally perscribed you would stick this guy in the dirt and move on. But for me this is just the start. At this point it is easy to peal off the hard brown seed casing:



Like such. Note the brownish on the ends and how the tiny leaves haven't flopped open. Inside the thick husk there is a brownish translucent cellulose skin. It holds in the leaves and usually gives the plant a hard time. Leave it for now. Stick her back in the incubator for 12-24 hours.



Now we are here. The little root has gotten longer and the plant will naturally started to slip out of the skin. At this point you can "help" it out. Remove the skin bag thing and you get this:



Hooray! Its a plant! Roots, leaves, perfect! However, don't pull the trigger yet. stick her back in the incubator for another24-48 hours. then you get this:



The whole thing is bigger still, and look! Despite it's tininess it sports it's very first set of serrated leaves! This means its time to finally stick her in a medium!

Doing this I find the plants get more complex earlier and have a willingness to stay short-stemmed. More vigor and more biological inertia result. They chlorinate within hours of being placed into their new homes. Because of their completeness they tend to bust out some tiny leaves and then spend 3-6 days hammering away on the roots before they proceed. I find a multitude of benefits with this and even attribute it to my high Female/male ratio.

 

[LadyLargely]

Thanks for the reply.
It is surprising how dense the layer of fungi is on the top of the bucket. I can see water droplets trapped under it like a humidity dome.

Yus! Water-retention is just one of the many benefits of rocking a strong mycelium network. It is like many of its other benefits which all stem from it's physical structure. It helps to have really nice thick fungi and it sounds like the ones you've got going fit the bill!

Thank you LadyL. I’m trying to keep a list and track of all of these products that get mentioned:

“I use Maxicrop (5-1-1) for veg purposes and Bonide (2-4-0) for flowering.”

You like to switch these out? Any reason?

“Supplement with flower fish (2-4-0) for small amounts of N.”

What is flower fish? Fish Emulsion is 5-1-1 so I'm not sure what you're wanting us to use.

Yes, of corse I switch them out. What have I been saying about nutes the whole time? Doesn't really matter what they are or where they came from or what it says on the lable. Get the ratios right and all is well.

In veg we want 3/1/1. The 5-1-1 (ratio of 5/1/1) fish fits this nicely, letting us sneak in extra K while keeping the ratio in tact.

Flower prefers 1/2/1 and then 1/3/2 once things really start getting fat and sticky. To this end we go with a 2-4-0 fish emulsion. It has lots of phosphate and a little boost of nitrogen. A ratio of 1/2/0 is perfect for sexing and doesn't need much help to be spot-on for later flower as well. Indeed we back off on foliar treatments as flower wears on anyway.


I think thats all the questions. Good luck with all your plumbing gents, I hope sombody develops something nicer than the contraptions I have rigged up.

Some other details on the grow:



I'm going floro all the way. 4 Overdriven T12s (280 watts) and 2 regular T8s (64 watts). T12s are 6500K and T8s are 5000K. T8s stay in through the first week or two of flower (I call it sexing) while the T12s are swapped for GE Plant & Aquariums. Later the T8s are loaded up with evil UV-B generating tubes. The light is very intense but the shape of the distrobution means ScrOG will be basically a must. It means sacrificing some time, I've figured a 2-3 week difference over ordinary SoG or whatever, but the payoff is worth it. Every bud on the finishing rack is beautifully consistent. I think you will all be surprised at the nug porn floros can generate.



Veg spray is bubbling happily. Has long since stopped foaming and spewing out nasty. Been feeding it a wee big of the brown good stuff every week. Will start using it soon.



De-chlorinated tap water. All the hydro guys have a hard-on for RO water and the like, but tap water is far more stable for organics. Depending on where you live the mineral content can range from mildly beneficial to brain-bendingly awesome. All we need is to get rid of the excess chlorine. We don't actually want to get rid of all of it, it's presence helps our organic chemistry. Simply bubble tap water in an open container with a small air stone for a day or two. I bubble a supply continuously just for shits. This will eventually become a tea, but I don't need that yet.

Which brings us neatly to maintinence. Since finishing the seed surgury and sticking the littl buggers in the ground I have done nothing to these plants at all. No water, no sprays, no cropping, nothing. The water level has barely dropped and I figure with the lights where they are I could go a week without looking at them and all would be well. After all that hustling and gathering supplied and running around and work work work its been nice to sit back, light a fat one and watch the grass grow.

This intensely lazy mantinence schedule shall contine. I will not be checking the pH, TDS, EC or indeed anything. No measurements shall be conducted whatsoever. Watering will be uneven and unceremonious. Even sprinkling is pretty unneccessary when you aren't feeding. Just dump the water in wherever. Have no concerns about the mostiure of the medium so long as the bath has any water in it at all. Kick back, relax. Check in next week. Sorry you guys thought I flew the coop but this is how it will be for a while. Things will be getting hectic soon enough, I'll surely be in here quite often during sexing. Until then, grow on my brothers!
P.S. Nearly forgot my parting pic:



*squints* Hopefully I get some mingling of good psychedelic vibes. Trippiness through osmosis, oh yes!

 

[Citizen024]

Just for the record Lady L, that ughhhh. . "other jar" shall we say is a bit of a taboo on here. They like to keep it straight cannabis only; and it keeps LEO not quite so into trying to shut it down.

But I am not telling. Been there and done that one too Another good use of your chunky vermiculite. Owww the joys of home biology labs.

Look forward to your next update. I do the same with seeds, works so much better, just don't let em get too tall is what I have learned. Ever seen em get too stretchy on ya?

 

[rrog]

Yes, of corse I switch them out. What have I been saying about nutes the whole time? Doesn't really matter what they are or where they came from or what it says on the lable. Get the ratios right and all is well.

I for one appreciate you sticking around to help us now that DM has left the building. I realize this documentation is almost a job. So thank you.

I ask questions regarding your product choices because I am going to great lengths to acquire the exact products you have used. I could probably use some of the products I have already, but I don't want to risk anything.