Before I sprouted these seeds I sorted the seeds into two groups, based on the aperrance of the shell. The larger seeds in one group on one side and the smaller seeds on the other side of the tray. I've kept them separated in the two groups, with in the different aeroponic units.
The small seed group is the top picture and the large seed group is in the 2nd picture (same order as the last post)
The small seed group are smaller in size then the plants in the large seed group. The small seed group looks to be more uniform in size.
All of the stems turned a red/purple color after several days in the aeroponic units. Some of them where a darker red/purple color, I placed a small piece of masking tape next to them.
These first three pictures where taken after transplanting on day 14
These next two pictures where taken a day or two ago. I started transplanting them last weekend, and moved them all to the larger tray. They didn't have any noticeable side branching/growth. I removed two fan leaves from the top of the plants to allow more light to reach the lower growth. I removed more of the top leaves 3-4 days ago. the plants have now started side shooting out the side branches.
One plant self topped it's self, and is the first to show full formed female pre-flowers. I have since found 2-3 more that are looking/showing to be females. There are more plants that are looking to be male then females so far.
I just got my males and females separated into different rooms. I have 15 males that where moved to their own room. But there is one other male that I still have in with the females. That one male is the only male that has the same smell as the female pheno that I'm looking for. It's the same smell as his mother. He is also the runt of the males, really no side branching even with selective pruning of the fan leaves.
I'm not moving him because I want to be able to get cuttings off of him. It looks like he might not even get in on this bloom cycle. Or he might go in with the girls. I'm now going to be flipping the males a week or two before the females.
Speaking of the females... Some of them have tossed a good amount of side branches, some just tossed a few side branches. I now think that I'm going to top all the females.
All plants showed the same trait of not having side branching until selective pruning was applied to increase the side branching.
There are several females that have that desired smell when rubbing the stems. Some of them have a stronger smell then others. It looks like I could get several females of the my desired phenotype.
Looks like there are 15 females and 16 males. That means 16 males to select from for pollen. I just may just have to cull some of them. I was only expecting 10-12 males, that has been the ratio I've had when growing out any of this family's lines.
I've been thinking since males peak way before the females. Perhaps they should be feed differently then the females? Perhaps they should get more bloom nutes and bloom booster after week 2.
A few months back I set up a top feed system for 4 plants in 6inch net pots. The results where less then expected. There was hardly any root growth with in the hydroton in the net pot, roots came out of the bottom but with poor vigor. Since then I've been playing around with a F&D system. My conclusion is there is nothing better then a F&D set up to get my desired root growth.
I have three plants I need to flower. They have been in 6inch net pots. I need to induce them to start growing more roots again. My solution is a flood and drain tray. The top of three buckets (I altered these bucket tops years ago). The picture shows how those are used. The net pot sits 1/4-3/8th of an inch above the tray. There are roots hanging out the bottom of the net pots, but I'll be trimming them once new roots start growing. Each net pot has an air line and air stone. I recently placed them into buckets and had them set up for dwc. The air stone are set up to the air pumps, but they are plugged into the timer for the pump. When the pump is on, the air pumps are on, when off they are both off.
The three plants in the picture above, in the F&D tray. They re-rooted quite nicely with large thick roots. They would NOT have started new growth like this if I had kept them in a bubbler (dwc) bucket.
I've gone and collected pollen from all the Blue Grass males that I've been flowering. To date this is the largest group of males that I've collected pollen from. My previous record was from 5 plants, from my f2 blue moonshine males (which also happens to be the same males that pollinated the mother of these plants). I collected pollen in paper folded to make a paper packet.
I did collected several packets with a mix of pollen from all the plants and then some with maybe half of the males.
Had two male start producing female flowers at the top and they seeded out. I didn't let them go long enough to to be mature. the male flowers at the top turned into bananas instead of the normal male flowers.
I've gone and had a redesign for the veg room. Part of that was due to seeing how well the three plants (previous page) re-rooted while using the shallow flood and drain tray.
Just finished up the Blue grass flower run. Took them to 70 days, although some had a couple more days. There is one plant that turned up, it's a Sativa pheno. She needs one more week before getting harvested.
I fucked up all the cuttings I got from them. As a result I'll be re-vegging all of them. I also applied pollen I collected from the males, onto the lower branches about 2.5-3 weeks ago.
It looks like I'm going to have more "Keeper plants" on my hands then I was expecting out of these seeds. I've been looking at 6 of the plants as being keepers, but there have been a few more that started expressing them selves in the last month.
A good portion of the plants got purple colors by the time they where harvested. Most of the purple colors where only from the sides exposed to light and on the other side they are a light green color.
Getting ready to transplant a bunch of Sour d to flower . The bubble cloner is full and they are shooting out roots. just added some light nutrients. they are getting a little too much yellow.
I'm in the process of re-doing a few things to make room for something new.
This is going to be my new flood and drain tray. This was just a test to see how the new tray, and a light fit. I haven't added the flood and drain fittings yet.
I had to adjust the shelves to accommodate the new addition and any plants that may find their way into it.
I finally have the new flood and drain tray set up and working. I had to use one of my pumps from one of the aeroponic units. At first test, I had the pump plumbed straight to the tray. The over flow drain couldn't keep up. I went and built a manifold for the water line. I have one of these manifolds for each F&D tray.
I'm just finishing my best sea of green style grow in a F&D tray. The buds at the base of the plant are so big it's difficult to just eye ball where you are cutting branches off/harvest.
This is one of those plants, you can see how dense the buds look.