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g0v - yeah the black cheese is a good cross - one of my friends reckons its the most potent thing ive grown...
Desert Dan - thanks for the support!
Strapped - im always happy to hear that someone has copies my method and its working for them - 35 days flower is 5 weeks in - not much can go wrong now - even if they start to yellow soon then thats ok.... good luck with the rest of it
heady - nice one mate
mugenbao - thanks - nice to have you around - the more level headed posters like yourself the merrier
Habel - yeah its a decent list on paper, and all the ones ive grown out have been worth smoking. blimey has grown out more than me tbh over in the UK section and he seems to like most of them. i usually choose seeds to buy that are IBLs or that will make good crosses or F2's
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well the solitary seed that i got from the Bubba x DC is up - im praying for a male so i can do a swift back-cross. i'll be running a bubba in my LED cab this round so that i can cross it to a few things to it. i must have forgot to cross it with the CB last time - typical that it turns out to be my favorite.
very close to showing you the new lineup for next time.
I've grown out a few of his crosses, and they've all been impressive, a couple spectacular...
V, you really need to crack some of the Lemon Thai x DC, and Blueberry x DC....
.....and run the KC again so you can have her bear many children by a legion of pollen donors .....and a Black Forrest x DC cross (or the other way round, if you don't want to run something for 15 weeks again lol).
I've also used some of his work in my own crosses.....The Lemon Thai x DC and NL x DC have proved great studs so far....everything they touch turns to sugar.....
(Lemon Thai x DC) x (NL x DC) aka "Kissing Cousin"
Got some Cherryjuana x (NL x DC) beans in the making at the moment actually.....
That looks awesome Blimey!!! Maybe VG has a future as a breeder. Hey VG, how did you like the herojuana? Did it send you to bed wrapped in a blanket as the description says?
DD - tbh nothing really send me to sleep smoke wise - heri is certainly a heavy indica but all weed tends to make my head buzz even if it has a strong body stone..
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right, here are some pics of the new/old soil comparison - i repotted these last friday i think and they were identical, im very surprised to see how different they are today - these are blueberrys and the plant in the old soil mix on the right is already considerably bigger than the one in the new bark based mix on the left
and the shark1's - the difference is less pronounced here but the one in the old mix is defo a bit bigger. early days yet though. the slightly yellow leaf on each is from before they were repotted.
i'll post up the exact details of the mixes later..
Old soil based mix: (recycled this time for the first time)
30% Peat
30% Perlite
20% Topsoil
10% EWC
10% mushroom compost
New Bark based mix:
40% aged pine bark fines 2-7mm
20% danish molar clay (sophisticat pink kitty litter - exactly the same as seramis)
10% peat
10% Biochar
10% EWC
10% Mushroom compost
the ferts/amendments are the same for each,
5g/litre each of N Guano, seaweed meal, dolomite lime, rock phosphate, rock potash
10g/litre P guano
the recycled bark mix was re-amended with 5% EWC, 2.5g/l seaweed and a full dose of guanos.
N guano was reduced for the blueberry down to about 3g/litre in both mixes
vg i havent been in here in a long time, over a year probably. i just thought id drop you a note to say that your grow is just as stellar as always, and im glad they made it a sticky. it was one of the first threads i followed when i started (on my old account) and i really learned alot from here. thanks for sharing brother!
I'm going to try your soil mix on my next run and compare it Fox Farms Ocean Forest. So do you just water with plain water for the rest of the grow after all those amendments are added to the soil mix?
TLS - pretty much just plain water (i actually use my alkali tap water amended with citric acid) , but if the plants start to look hungry i'll give them a bit of organic bloom, i also have some home-made comfrey extract i use sometimes - good for K, and i'll use molasses a couple times towards the end ( 1 teaspoon / gallon )
also i find a couple handfuls of EWC topdressed once they've stopped stretching is a good move and i tend to do that on most plants.
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hoping to get all the plants potted up and in the big cab under a MH tomorrow...
Did you have a noticeable difference with the airpots? I use smart pots but they are near to impossible to do a mod scrog. So I use pipe cleaners and 12gage wire which works pretty good. Just a lot of maintainence throughout the process.
hi guys, this is slightly embarrassing ... but the soil/bark comparison is over already. ive pulled the two plants in the recycled bark mix and repotted them into my trusty old perlite/peat/topsoil!
they just werent looking happy and the plants in the old mix were already twice the size.
here is the shark1 cut in the bark mix after a week or so
and the blueberry (its already just been repotted here) not quite so bad but hardly grown
and for comparison here is the blueberry thats been in the old mix from the get-go - looking much happier and twice the size!
some thoughts about the bark mix and what might be wrong. it performed pretty well on the first run, although perhaps not quite as good as the old mix - certainly not better - but the whole point of it was to have a mix that i could recycle over and over. ive always shied away from recycling soil for the same crop, being old-school i had crop rotation drilled into me so it always seemed wrong to do this - i tend to re-use my old weed soil in the regular garden for potting etc rather than for weed again. i took advice on how to re-amend it but how can one know what a soil is short of? i think my soil volume to yield ratio is quite high so perhaps my soil just too worn out to be re-used? dunno - other thoughts -
the soil temp was a lot higher in the bark mix when i measured it today - about 85f - so that wont help - i guess the white perlite helped reflect heat from the lamp away from the soil rather than absorb it.
10% biochar may be too much?
i measured the pH of the bark mix and it was pretty neutral so i dont think that was the problem
anyway hopefully we are back on track. +rep for the first person to name the song (no google allowed)
"i know it's over, And it never really began, But in my heart it was so real...."
shame for your babies V. but testing is necessary if we are to improve our methods! i would say its probably the amount of oxygen in the soil that is the problem but thats just my guess.
bootz - yeah its a shame that i couldnt have done the side by side - but i'll keep on experimenting with soil mixes, probably just more 'tweaking' on my existing mix rather than totally new ones.
i'd like to try some molar clay instead of perlite for example...
tbh i also think that the weed from the first run with the bark mix wasnt quite as tasty as my usual standard.
habel - thats true, at least it went wrong early enough to do something about it. now my only problem is when to flip the plants to 12 /12 ! - the two that were in the old mix from the start are ready to flip but the two repotted ones are going to need a week to recover at least. i'll probably top the bigger ones to try and even them up...
im hoping those two plants will be back on track when i get up there to check tomorrow morning
hi blimey, the congolese was a geurilla gold cross - congo x GG and yes it was in the greenhouse. real soaring high to that one!
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so the cab got flipped into 12/12 yesterday after i was satisfied the re-potted plants were growing well again. the slight problem is that the other two plants that were started in the old soil mix are now pretty huge and its going to be a challenge to scrog them down to a manageable height. especially the blueberry which is a real stretcher. im hoping that the MH lamp will help with that but its going to be some fun and games for sure.
Nice looking set-up ya got going on there VG. I found my Blueberry just last night, i want to put a couple in cups for the contest. I will get a late start, but what the heck, iv never grown one. Had a beauty of a Purple last years outdoor, but this kid i was teaching him a few things and he ripped me off. Took my only Purple plant/bud i had ever seen before, which still had over a month to go and the tops of my big ass re vegs. And the punk got the re vegs twice and i was trying to help the bastard, he and his pal had one growing upside down, like those tomato's you see on TV. And im still pissed, sorry.
Looks like this is going to be a nice one, il be around for this one for sure.