The OBBT Grow Show!

[McDanger]

McDanger,

I've read various opinions on how late Neem can be applied to flowers with some saying up to 1 week before harvest. I just lost a few oz's to pest's outside, I had to do something to protect these indoor girls when I saw some munched leaves. There were only a very few damaged leaves, but after seeing the hollowed out, feces filled mess they leave behind....I sprayed. I'll let you know if my buds suffer for it.

The White Russian's clawed on my 1st grow as well. I belive a number of factors are at play here, light, air blowing on the plant, excess watering, and excess nitrogen. I kinda tweaked my methods to reduce these claws, without effect. I noticed recently that the leaves that are on the "lit side" of the plant are clawed. The leaves that I tucked back through the screen are looking beautiful, no claw whatsoever. My thoughts are that this is a tendency of this strain. I think these White Russians are a little too green, even though I cut the N earlier. Next grow I may preload a little less.

Respect,

Good luck. It only happened to me on the white widows, and I thought I had a Ph problem causing it even though the other strains didn't do it. Did it slow the stretch down? Mine seemed to stop upward growth and only added weight and trichs after the clawing started. I'll see if I can get a current pic. These are in soil, not OBBT. 12/12 on 8/20, so 25 days.

 

[Kanye WeED]

def gotta look over this one when i get home tonight, looks like some one is all dialed in

subscribed!!!

 

[LadyLargely]

Motherfucker

Motherfucker

catastrophic failure



Is how I would describe these images. My center three plants are all behaving the same way. On all the shoots above their most recent supercrop locations they are withering up completely.

I have no idea why this is happening. I've known for a long time that as a general rule you don't supercrop after going 12/12, but its a general rule that I have successfully defied for years. It would be one thing if all of the plants where behaving this way, but look:



A horrific supercrop mark on WW#1. Look, there's a hole in it, its awful And yet, here is the attached growth tip upstream from that break:



Its fine! Better than fine, its still growing and getting more and more pistils on it by the day. During the same training session that absolutely decimated my three center plants the White Widows have put up with the exact same treatment with a business-as-usual appearance. So far there has been no difference in my treatment of these 5 plants. I don't think its genetic either. White Widow is not known for being particularly hardy. My Sheerah! genes on the other hand where always very tough and would put up with anything.

This is deeply troubling. Something tells me it has something to do with this sexual-suppression regiment that I do not fully understand. A recent post by magiccannibus caused me to do a lot of new research on my Tomato Spray. Turns out the magic of my non-seed non-genetic feminization technique was a substance called Kenetin, which is an artificial derivative of cytokinin and not and all-natural kelp extraction like DrunkenMessiah lead me to believe back in the day.

So, as it turns out, my 100% fem technique is deeply flawed.


Now, for all you OBBT users out there: This means nothing! The issue I am having, I can absolutely assure you, Is not an OBBT issue! Its a problem with my specific brand of voodoo.

Happily, I've already learned a lot after coming to this community. Next run, I'll be trying a different hormone source, I'm thinking perhaps Nitrozyme. I'll be tweaking my method to be something less brute-force. The sexual suppression made possible with Tomato Spray made me drunk with power and I continued to push deeper into forceful techniques.

I think this latest failure is a sign that is not the way to go long-term. I'm thinking of a more harmonious, less aggressive grow method. This was easily my most aggressive, most forceful grow ever and it has cost me dearly. Not even a week ago I was boasting in another thread that I fully expect to crack 1 gram-per-watt. With this, I will now be lucky to crack .4 grams per watt. Hopefully I can still pull around a QP off this to give me a bit of a stash for he next grow, but I expect little more than that now.

I'll let them go for another day or two but I am expecting no miracles. As soon as I opened the door to my room today, despite the fancy carbon filter, I smelled death. The three center plants smell like a just-formed compost pile, the amount of dead/dying foliage is horrifying. I will most likely chop them down tomorrow so that mold doesn't spread.

I'm definitely finishing this grow. Despite the bad karma in my box the White Widows look fabulous! They're gonna be awfully lonely in that bigass screen all by themselves, but they should finish.

I'm seriously toying with the idea of cutting the center plants down, re-composting their OBBTs and then popping some new beans in there. I've seen some interesting stuff on 12/12 from seed grows around here, those spots are gonna be otherwise useless till the White Widows finish. Perhaps I shall give it a whirl.

I have been deeply humbled this day, but it only steels my resolve. I was not a member of this community for very long when I realized that after taking in all the information avaliable around here I want to make some big changes to my grow style. I still have a lot to learn but I'm not giving up! I still believe very strongly in environmental influences having control over the sexual expression of cannabis. Use of tomato spray definitely made me think that I had stronger control that I truly did. I'm going to take a lot of steps back, go back to basics and begin anew.

I still feel that I'm in great shape though. The OBBTs are proving even better and more flexible than I thought they where now that I see them being tried out by others. There's something very wrong with my grow technique but I know for certain that the OBBTs are very right. At the end of the day that's something I still have.

With this latest failure I've been given a new vigor for putting out the OBBT message. My grow may not be the nicest-looking example at this point, but thanks to our early adopters like RipVanWeed and Silver_Surfer_OG we do have some fabulous OBBT-generated nug porn.

After talking to Kanye Weed today I think we should form The Bio Box Club! (thanks to SS_OG for the name) Having read recent posts by h.h. I don't think the club should be OBBT-only. I think all microbe-assisted oxygen-injected medium-based grows should be eligible for membership. This means any crazy re-circulated table-style OBBT-spinoffs (Like Citizen_024 has been planning) would be eligible as well.

The idea with the club would not so much be for it to be an information repository. Threads like this one and DrunkenMessiah's thread here in the organic hydro forums are more appropriate for that. I think it should be a place for all OBBT-growers to post pics and generally show off. It'll be a place where all of us can post OBBT-generated bud porn in one place and have it actually get seen by a lot of people. I'm thinking the thread should be located somewhere really high-traffic, perhaps the Indoor Hydro forums. The idea would be to generate interest and get new gardeners familiar with the technique. I think there are a lot of gardeners out there who want to go organic hydro but have been unhappy with their results or seeing the results of others.

There seem to be a lot of disgruntled gardeners like Kanye WeED who very much want to go organic but are frustrated by the massive differences between it and more popular forms of salt-based hydro. I've thought from day 1 that the OBBTs could be capable of bridging this gap.

So what do you guys think!? rrog, RipVanWeed, and all the rest of you: would you join Club Bio Box???

I really need support from you guys to get it off the ground. It won't do any good just having me post "Club Bio Box" thread in the indoor hydro forums ally by myself. It'll get buried 5 pages deep within a day and nobody will pay it any mind. We really need to make a splash for it to be successful. Shortly after I form the thread I need some of you guys, RipVanWeed and Silver_Surfer_OG especially, to pitch in and post some glorious pics like you have been doing in this thread and DM's thread.

PM me if any of you are interested. We'll figure out a good time to make the thread and quickly get 2 or 3 good posts in it right off the bat so as to make maximum impact. I think this could be really fun, chime in if you think so too!

 

[rrog]

LadyL, I'm certainly sorry to see some of this with your plants. The reality is that we'll all learn something more about this OBBT process after looking at this. It's the way science is done.

Clearly not a reflection of the OBBT technique.

A while ago you mentioned that we should back off your published recipe by 20%. I did this and posted the revised recipe. Still think that's a good %?

You feel the Kenetin, the artificial derivative of cytokinin, does contribute to the heavy feminization, but you're bummed because you thought the tomato spray was natural cytokinin? Maybe interestingly, Bonide Tomato Flower spray is banned by FDA or USDA in some areas. No idea why at all.

I think (?) that Nitrozyme is organic kelp extracted cytokinin

Much learning is happening and that's exciting.

 

[Citizen024]

Hola gang! Just dropping in for a minute. I am back from the Burn- refreshed and renewed.
Been cleaning out my room and building infrastructure. Gotta rid myself of mites. Bleach and time.

My harvest went well, final number soon. Cure went fantastic.

Sorry to see what happened there LadyL- live and learn. We all know how it goes. I am guessing you might have pushed nutrients high too- then with hormane stress it was just too much. Or some such thing. .. blah. .

I'll be back to continue working all this stuff.

Much love kids!

 

[ScrubNinja]

Ahhhhh really gutted, LL. That would be devastating but it's good you're looking ahead. Stay positive as always. Sorry for being thick but could you elaborate on exactly what the problem is with the tomato stuff? Is it that it influences the sex artificially, thus negating your results? Will you still use it anyway?

Best luck.

 

[LadyLargely]

I think the nutes where fine. Right on the edge, but fine.

rrog I therefore think the recopie is still great. 20% less than what I ran this time round should be perfect. Most non-micro growers will prolly have to use a veg tea later in veg to get enough nitrogen, but thats OK.

ScrubNinja

The issue with the tomato spray is that it wasn't doing what I was thinking. I thought it was just tricking the plant's chromosomes into expressing a set of sex genes from the male sterility series instead of the real male series.

Instead it is completely supressing sexual development. That's why stretch always took forever. My kenetin-treated plants where actually acting quite a bit like autoflowering low-rider strains.

If you've read up much on autoflower plants you know that you just pop them under 12/12 and they flower when 'its time'. If you know someone who has run them you know that autoflowering plants are not real females, they are sterile! Even if you coat them in pollen you will get no seeds.

A sterile cannabis plant will eventually form female flowers. This I think is exactly the trick I was getting with the tomato spray. The Kenetin just suppressed the sex for so long that the plant goes 'fuckit' and acts sterile. As soon as buds form I always stop with the spray which explains why the plants could still be pollinated.

This whole process is deeply unnatural, not just because of the artificially-derived Kenetin but because of what it does to the plants. What happened to my center three girls was almost certainly an as-of-yet-unkown side-effect.

I've concluded that, while effective, the tomato spray is an unnessesary stress that cannot always be put up with. I still don't know why the center plants reacted the way they did wile the outside plants where fine, but it doesn't really matter now.

What does matter is that there are a lot of other viable options. I'm going with the more natural nitrozyme next time. I doubt it will be as effective in making 100% females from mixed seed though. I've been leaning hard on my ability to do that these past few years and now its gone. I think I'm gonna try some ethelyne treatment next time. I've seen surprisingly good results from it and I think combined with a gentler and more naturally-sourced hormone regime could make good on my 100% girls target without raping mother nature.

Much to learn indeed! I will be making pleanty of tweaks this time, but now that the shock of loosing 3/5 of my harvest has subsided I'm still pretty stoked to see this grow through. I've never grown with fancy 'real' genetics like my dutch imports before, I'm really excited to watch my remaining white widows wad up with nugs.

I got a good response from a few people and so I'm going ahead with Club Bio Box. Will be back in soon to post a link to its location and I will be PMing critical members immediately. See ya!

 

[LadyLargely]

Hey buddy, good to see you.

First off, plz edit that post. I've already bugged someone about it. This thread is a HUGE hard-to-read information repository and cluttering it up with full-size quotes like that (specially of whole posts complete with images) make it worse than it already is. Please just delete all quote content that isn't relevant to your question, or in this case, the whole thing.

Secondly, the oxygen injection is vital to this technique. If you aren't injecting oxygen then you aren't capable of doing what we do. It is the main thing that sets it apart from other organic medium techniques. It is the biggest 'trick' to never babysitting your pH again. The oxygen injection is needed to make the microbes very aggressive. In this state they are able to make super-rapid changes to the soil chemistry because their metabolisms are shot through the roof. Without the bubbler its just a pot full of dirt with all the typical pitfalls you get with a pot of dirt. No oxygen injection means the microbes cannot react quickly enough and you will still see pH fluctuations and the like. It takes the bacteria/fungus superteam to make an OBBT function.

As for the name, I was not happy with the term OBBT. The techniqe's true origionator, DrunkenMessiah, gave it that name and by the time I wound up in here it had already become the popular term. Trying to change it now would just cause confusion.

Happy for the interest buddy, but you are gonna have to make some changes to your current setup if you want to reap the benefits of our methods. See you around!

 

[Kanye WeED]

Hey buddy, good to see you.

First off, plz edit that post. I've already bugged someone about it. This thread is a HUGE hard-to-read information repository and cluttering it up with full-size quotes like that (specially of whole posts complete with images) make it worse than it already is. Please just delete all quote content that isn't relevant to your question, or in this case, the whole thing.

Secondly, the oxygen injection is vital to this technique. If you aren't injecting oxygen then you aren't capable of doing what we do. It is the main thing that sets it apart from other organic medium techniques. It is the biggest 'trick' to never babysitting your pH again. The oxygen injection is needed to make the microbes very aggressive. In this state they are able to make super-rapid changes to the soil chemistry because their metabolisms are shot through the roof. Without the bubbler its just a pot full of dirt with all the typical pitfalls you get with a pot of dirt. No oxygen injection means the microbes cannot react quickly enough and you will still see pH fluctuations and the like. It takes the bacteria/fungus superteam to make an OBBT function.

As for the name, I was not happy with the term OBBT. The techniqe's true origionator, DrunkenMessiah, gave it that name and by the time I wound up in here it had already become the popular term. Trying to change it now would just cause confusion.

Happy for the interest buddy, but you are gonna have to make some changes to your current setup if you want to reap the benefits of our methods. See you around!

Sorry bout the previous post hope this one is more suitable

Not trying to be offensive but i def feel like the dumb jock in a room full of steve erkels here, seeing as i need to reconstruct my grow is there anyone on here doing this on a smaller scale in which i can follow and explain it with less complex terms? I mean im no dummy but i just dont see how a set up like that could be possible for me.

Is there any way i can use the same medium as u and do like a potted grow like urs, or is it pretty much just gonna have to be in one of those big ass tubs like in ur start up page. I have 1 10 gallon rubbermaid tub but there is just no way i can have a continuous water flow plumbed to it. I can put water in it. and change it out every so often but this wouldnt be possible correct?

I might not be able to do this andmay just go with the potted coir, but i really like ur way better, the way u explain the microbes going crazy and having a high metebalism just sounds asstonishing to me.

If anyone can point me in the right direction please do so, but dont lead me on if u dont think i have what it takes than tell me, and ill be gone just as rapidly as i came, thanks!!!

 

[Citizen024]

Kanye:

I would advise you to read up on LadyL threads- she very well lays it out with great pics. Surfer has some great pics too, and there are a couple other people who post up in her thread with their variations. None of these are really large, and you can easily run just one tub and do well if your in a tight space.

You will not need to plumb anything other then the tub, and you add water by hand. The start of DrunkenMessiah's very very long thread has the basics of how this thing works, and all the principles you need to understand.

Read up, get a strong solid feel for how this thing really works (cause while we all love to help, you gots to get it all straight in your head for yourself before you can do it)- then come with the ?'s. You should pretty much be able to follow other's build diagrams and have a working model.

LadyL:

Damn my dear, now that I have read it all over my heart goes out to you. I admire your unflinching ability to push that edge for all she's got; and being willing to go all in. You gots balls baby!

It would have been great if you could have tested just one plant for safety sake; though I understand it really was not an option as your trying to suppress males. Sometimes the dice come up snake eyes, and sometimes they don't. Your risk has helped us all learn a bit more, and I hope your two remaining babes rip rock it out of the house.

Thanks for sharing the info. I have never tried to tamper with nature in quite this way, so its all education on this end. I am curious to see what it looks like when its all dialed.

 

[LadyLargely]

Essence of OBBT

Essence of OBBT

Sorry bout the previous post hope this one is more suitable

....


If anyone can point me in the right direction please do so, but dont lead me on if u dont think i have what it takes than tell me, and ill be gone just as rapidly as i came, thanks!!!

More suitible? Brah? Really? Man, you're my first friend! And I didn't click the "ok add friend" sequence just because you where the first person to ask me.

I've seen you post about in here before. Man, I lurk a lot. Soon as you started asking me questions and before I even really suggested you going OBBT I clicked on your name and leafed through your posts.

*aside*

oh the wonders of the internet forum!Everything you say recorded for posterity.

*/aside*

You're a very competent gardener KW, and you are not, as you have very much insisted, in any way inclined towards the intullectual bullshit.

In truth man, you represent something very important to me. You have, for your own reasons, come to the point where THC is an assistance to you. Rather than trade United States Federal Currency for illicit narcotics you decided to become an amature gardener instead. You can follow simple instructions, execute them within a tolerable degree of accuracy, and you have cleary harvested some amiable results.

If the OBBTs are worth a shit at all as a gardening concept, an easily re-created tool, they need to be very usable for cats just like you! If it isn't easy for you to run, if you can't reproduce it on a small, simple scale on your own without too much trouble then this concept is a faliure.

Your first post was absolutely suitible, it was fine! It was MY POST that I had a problem with! I love the way you where responding to having read my first post, impressed with the density of info there. You just don't need to quote the whole damn post you where referring to! It was too long in the first place, I didn't really like it the first time and I wrote it.

Everything is cool in here brah, a "Jock" like you is much more than welcome among all these Steve Urkles; for you embrace the ganjas. We are united my brother!

And it isn't just Urkles either. Comb through the thread, take a look around, good ole RipVanWeed has cracked off a heap of killer bud in his second evar grow attempt!! And frankly he's walked all over my pathetic screen. He's just gone at it with whatever the fuck he had laying around and took a handful-of-this-and-a-dash-of-that approach to his fertilizing program and LOOK:

Hey y'all, here's an update on my OBBT stylie


Super Silver Haze

:jawdrop::jawdrop:

He dialed those buckets the fuck in. No trouble at all! With whatever was handy! What has he done to mantain the water chemistry? What has he done to make sure the pH is just so?

Uhhh, back me up on this one RipVanWeed, but am I right in saying that the answer is nothing? Aside, of course, from some good stabalizing lime or whatever added in up front when you mixed the medium? I think I may remember you mentioning checking pH of soil/runoff in DM's thread, but I do believe you've not actually done anything about it. Nothing beyond bubbling a little unsulfured molasses in with your tea yes? Certainly a far cry from needing a regular dip from the pH pen to tell you how much buffing you need to do!

This guy is no scientist, no Steve Urkle for sure. Come on, he started off that post with "Hey y'all" I rest my case.

I do think RVW has been adding water to his res fairly often, which makes it higher maintinence. But to put that in perspecive with the way he built his buckets he's chosen a res thats not much bigger than mine. He's growing countless-cola bud-bushesunder a bleeding 1000 watt HPS.

I think its quite safe and effective to go up to nearly 50% bath in the OBBTs. That means RVW might've been able to get much more water in his res.


My point, good man, is that I do believe at its heart the Bio Box concept is simple, and scalable, and easily moulded to what you need it to do.

Ditch the complex plumbing, you don't need a dump valve, the starve/flush business is totally optional. You could build it nearly as simple as a hempy bucket, pot-with-a-hole-in-the-side is not too far from the bottom line here. Its prolly a worthwile venture to try to get your overflow hole plumbed up in some way that it doesn't leak a lot of air. Nothing fancy, just try to make this:

Any pot, any tub, any bucket, anything you can drill a hole in is a potential OBBT.

The essentials are all here, boiled down to their simplest known combination of components. From the bottom to the top:

Grey Blob:
an air stone hooked up to an appropriate pump. I'm picky with mine but to be honest there's no good goddamn reason you can't run it off any ole air pump, aquarium, 2 watts, whatever. I've been lead to suspect that the minimum air requirements are very low. Don't know how low, you just need 'some'

Protrusion:
Perhaps the simplest way of getting a straight overflow drain with air-loss protection. It acts like a u-bend keeping air from the stone going where it needs to be: through the medium. Also, if you can get the vertical part of it to be transperant tube somehow then you have yourself a built-in sight tube that tells you how full the res is.

Blue line:
water. Ordinary tap water is fine. Try to get the excess chlorine out; this is easy. Bubble it with an air stone for a couple hours, let it sit in a shaft of direct sunlight for a bit, or just leave it sit out in an open container for a couple of days. Or heat it up. RO or distilled water is mostly empty and actually de-stabilizes super-organic rigs like this. I know, its odd, that sort of water is praised by hydro enthusiasts for, yep: its stability. Just goes to show what a different animal organic can be.

Red line:
Rocks. I prefer cheap, well-rinsed red lava rock. But you can prolly use anything from hydroton to chunky pearlite. Just some sort of super-low-density inert matirial, ganja gardeners have all kinds of stuff like this.

Brown line:
Medium. A combination of good soil, coco and vermiculite/pearlite. I'd wager that you could get quite creative with what goes in though....

White Line:
layer of pearlite. Holds in bled-off mostiure and protects the sensitive fungus from HUGE swollen 1000 watt HPS rigs.



So far we've been really specific, but the only real trick is you are making a composit. Lets go back shall we, to that first post you felt the need to totally reproduce. Perhaps that wasn't such a bad idea, at least in part:

So as we go along never once allow yourself to forget that we are here for Dirt. What we came from, what we will one day become again. Mother Nature then is on our side. What we are doing is coaxing her into our calm little boxes. We wish that she leave her unpredictability...outside and come in with us to grow the ganjas

Its the minority ingredient but its the most important. Soil, we're just augmenting nature here. All we're really doing is providing unusually good conditions for the oxygen-loving creatures who have evolved to coexist in this crazy substance: Dirt

All the other stuff, the coco, the pearlite, whatever, all its doing is propping up the soil. Holding it in place, spreading it out, suspending it in such a way that fresh air can filter through it without bubbling like a soup. ANY substance that is relatively inert and non-toxic could be suitible for this task. The trick is a mix of grains. Vermiculite is the smallest grain and 'grips' onto the tiny little soil particles directly. Then, it sortof nudges up aginst the slightly larger pearlite which is then all gathered into place by the fabulous, hairy, spongey cocoa moss. Gardening Composite, this is no carbon fiber, it aint no high-tech shit.

We just like this combo because it does a good job. You can dump gallons of water through it and you get no muddy runoff, it really 'grabs' the soil, especially after the fungus have taken over! In theory there is nothing to stop you from going wild with it. Use chunks of rockwool in the bottom layer, use shredded straw to make the medium nice and fluffy. Go mad!


You could easily do a couple of these with super-simple matirials and some simple little 2-3 gallon pots. Even if you don't want to swing all the plumbing to do that cool overflow, just poke a hole in the side of the pot, just make it tiny so that not much air gets out. Water will still leak quick enough to set the water level OK when you water them.

And its just a hand-watered affair, pretty much like you do now. Bubble up tea and toss in whatever organics you have on hand. Garnish with some nice salt nutes and away you go. So far we've liked to add big loads of organic ferts to the medium up front so it can "incubate" heavily, but in reality it doesn't take much. Just some nitrogen-heavy organics and some source of bennies. Fuck, just run down to Lowe's and grab a bag of any of Espoma's Tone products (plant-tone, bio-tone). Chock full of good bennies that stuff, fungus and bacteria. Just a little bit will do, get a small bag.

We really love to pick apart what's goin on under the hood of this technique, but that shit doesn't matter. You don't gotta be an Urkle to get one of these puppies off the ground

 

[LadyLargely]

LadyL:

Damn my dear, now that I have read it all over my heart goes out to you. I admire your unflinching ability to push that edge for all she's got; and being willing to go all in. You gots balls baby!

It would have been great if you could have tested just one plant for safety sake; though I understand it really was not an option as your trying to suppress males. Sometimes the dice come up snake eyes, and sometimes they don't. Your risk has helped us all learn a bit more, and I hope your two remaining babes rip rock it out of the house.

Thanks for sharing the info. I have never tried to tamper with nature in quite this way, so its all education on this end. I am curious to see what it looks like when its all dialed.

Arrrg!

Thats the infuriating thing, it was dialed! Somwhere between going with more pre-loaded nutes and swapping grow situations enough variables changed to where it didn't work (completely, WWs still look great thank god, may still get them to fill in a bit yet with extra N now that they've got pistils. For the most part, they're acting just like all my last couple of sets did).

You say I've got balls but really, there was little discernable difference between this grow and my last couple aside from moar pre-loaded nutes. Temps where a lot higher in my old cabinet. I literally lifted this method (and indeed the first iteration of my grow kit) straight from DrunkenMessiah. I did very little over time to mess with his wacky formula. It filled my screen with over 300 grams of the finest ganja from random-ass seeds under floros, I didn't really care how it worked as he assured me that it was very organic (which it was, sortof).

Its turning out more and more than what we got up to wasn't so much a well-finished re-producable grow style as it was the best way to yield out of a box that we had been banging away on for nearly 5 years with shit we could get our hands on locally.

This run wasn't supposed to be a test, but it fell on its face like one anyway.

But it turns out there are greener pastures. I've got 288 cubic feet of the universe all to myself and I've got a great big vibrant community to help me launch this humble little box of bubbling dirt into the stratosphere. Still feeling pretty good about it all

 

[h.h.]

The issue with the tomato spray is that it wasn't doing what I was thinking. I thought it was just tricking the plant's chromosomes into expressing a set of sex genes from the male sterility series instead of the real male series.

Instead it is completely supressing sexual development. That's why stretch always took forever. My kenetin-treated plants where actually acting quite a bit like autoflowering low-rider strains.

If you've read up much on autoflower plants you know that you just pop them under 12/12 and they flower when 'its time'. If you know someone who has run them you know that autoflowering plants are not real females, they are sterile! Even if you coat them in pollen you will get no seeds.

A sterile cannabis plant will eventually form female flowers. This I think is exactly the trick I was getting with the tomato spray. The Kenetin just suppressed the sex for so long that the plant goes 'fuckit' and acts sterile. As soon as buds form I always stop with the spray which explains why the plants could still be pollinated.

This whole process is deeply unnatural, not just because of the artificially-derived Kenetin but because of what it does to the plants. What happened to my center three girls was almost certainly an as-of-yet-unkown side-effect.

I've concluded that, while effective, the tomato spray is an unnessesary stress that cannot always be put up with. I still don't know why the center plants reacted the way they did wile the outside plants where fine, but it doesn't really matter now.

What does matter is that there are a lot of other viable options. I'm going with the more natural nitrozyme next time. I doubt it will be as effective in making 100% females from mixed seed though. I've been leaning hard on my ability to do that these past few years and now its gone. I think I'm gonna try some ethelyne treatment next time. I've seen surprisingly good results from it and I think combined with a gentler and more naturally-sourced hormone regime could make good on my 100% girls target without raping mother nature.

Much to learn indeed! I will be making pleanty of tweaks this time, but now that the shock of loosing 3/5 of my harvest has subsided I'm still pretty stoked to see this grow through. I've never grown with fancy 'real' genetics like my dutch imports before, I'm really excited to watch my remaining white widows wad up with nugs.

I got a good response from a few people and so I'm going ahead with Club Bio Box. Will be back in soon to post a link to its location and I will be PMing critical members immediately. See ya!

Sorry about the loss. I said originally my goal was to find out as many ways as possible to kill a plant. If you don't fuck up, you're not trying hard enough. The efforts are appreciated.
It seems that ck has the same tendencies.
http://www.interchemtechnologies.com/ic/N6BAP.htm
I guess the bottom line is if it's a health issue and does it get you high?
I can see it being a problem for propagation. Unless it screws with the DNA and you're looking for freaks, don't use it in natural or unnatural form when producing seed.
I like the idea of your club. I can see shooting for a high traffic area yet it seems to belong here. It doesn't matter either way, I'll check in on it if it retains this same quality. I hate reading threads full of "Great gro bro" one liners just to get to the one thread that has information. I realize sometimes the thread might need a bump, but anyway...I'm primarily an outside grower. We have high power rates and lots of sun. It's a gimme. It's legal and I no longer worry about helicopters. I can supplement with light in the winter without worrying about being stealth. It's a new world for growing. As with other crops hydro can add tremendously to the outside grower and with the high value of the product even more so. Your techniques are adaptable and may easily be lost to the newcomer under the inside lable.

 

[McDanger]

LadyL, I'm certainly sorry to see some of this with your plants. The reality is that we'll all learn something more about this OBBT process after looking at this. It's the way science is done.

Clearly not a reflection of the OBBT technique.

A while ago you mentioned that we should back off your published recipe by 20%. I did this and posted the revised recipe. Still think that's a good %?

You feel the Kenetin, the artificial derivative of cytokinin, does contribute to the heavy feminization, but you're bummed because you thought the tomato spray was natural cytokinin? Maybe interestingly, Bonide Tomato Flower spray is banned by FDA or USDA in some areas. No idea why at all.

I think (?) that Nitrozyme is organic kelp extracted cytokinin

Much learning is happening and that's exciting.

I looked on Bonide's site. They sell a different version for California that is not from cytokinin. I don't remember what it is derived from, it was a couple days ago when I looked it up.

Sorry for your loss LL. Now that I started using the tomato spray you got me scared. I am still in veg so all should be good. I will not use it once I switch to flower.(Saturday) My 3 OBBT's are all different size plants but I think they will all (1 more to go) be mature by then.

 

[rrog]

Just wondering if there is a hormone interplay possible here:

Research has shown that in tissue culture, a high Auxin to Cytokinin ratio stimulates root growth while a low ratio stimulates shoot and bud formation.

Might there be a continued high Auxin source? NAA is synthetic (1-naphthyl acetic acid ) or IAA (Natural indoleacetic acid).

Or may there be a need for more Abscisic acid which limits IAA for flowering?

Or maybe I should be quiet and keep taking notes.

 

[h.h.]

KW,
I'm about where you are. Just trying to understand these things. It helps to read Drunken's original thread. It seems everybody has a twist on the concept. All starting from scratch like us. I'm expecting some fresh ideas out of you once you get going as well.

As far as male suppression. What lady wouldn't get a little smirk from it?

 

[LadyLargely]

Sorry about the loss. I said originally my goal was to find out as many ways as possible to kill a plant. If you don't fuck up, you're not trying hard enough....
I like the idea of your club...
As with other crops hydro can add tremendously to the outside grower and with the high value of the product even more so. Your techniques are adaptable and may easily be lost to the newcomer under the inside lable.

Heh, like your philosophy on that.

I think the OBBT's true home will always be here in the organic hydro forums. This environment was just fringe and experimental enough for some of the folks around here to simply read DM's hot air and give it a go based on no real evidence at all! The hardcore threads like this one where experimental grows are covered in earnest and we all sit around talking about crazy shit like horomone influence on sexual development and other rocket-science-of-pot type shit will always belong here.

And you make a good point about this thing's potential for outdoor. I think because of that I'm gonna wind up starting the club thread just out in the main Grower's Forums.

...As far as male suppression. What lady wouldn't get a little smirk from it?

LUL, , damn right!

rrog:
I've been reading more and more on the hormone action in cannabis spicifically. DM's old findings on the technique I ran this past time came mostly from scientific work which had been done on single-sex plants, but not specifically on cannabis (although it was included as one of the plant types in several of the tests)

The Axin vs Cytokinin thing is very interesting. I think with better knowlege and some new recopies we could get a whole new hormone regime started. Use weaker, but naturally-derived hormones that are more specific for your growth needs. Sounds like perhaps start out with heavy natural cytokinin treatment in veg for mega-root development in the OBBTs and then shift slowly to more auxin-heavy stuff (that IAA sounds like it could be perfect!) as sexing happens and we settle in to flower.

Much to investigate thats for sure. I think hormone treatments have a lot of merit, but it will definitely take a more delicate touch than what I've been doing.

Keep it real buddy, I might get bored later and go ahead with the club thread. You better be getting your grow into gear so you can come and show off with us; plus I wanna see what you can do with all that we've learned!

 

[rrog]

plus I wanna see what you can do with all that we've learned!

oohhhh the pressure.

 

[h.h.]

Perhaps using the whole coconut in the mix. It sounds like the meat is chock full of hormones. The milk from it anyway. Maybe I'll buy some shredded and make a tea. See if I can kill something.

 

[rrog]

IAA and Ethylene can encourage females in early plants. Once sexed as females, shut off this IAA source as much as possible to promote bud growth.

Abscisic acid naturally inhibits IAA during budding.