Meanwhile, Back @ Casa Bacca Racca -- A Continuous Grow Journal

[BaccaRacca]

This is where my grow room is at the moment. Over the next week, I'm planning on getting into the Way-Back machine and setting it to 4-17-2021, when I dropped the current Do-Si-Dos sprout, and let you in on all the fun and drama in the Casa Bacca Racca grow room. But as we join our young friends, we have ...

Blue Dream from Seedsman is nearly in the fourth week of 12/12. I have 18 colas going in this 2x2 cabinet. Apical meristem training has helped keep the canopy fairly level. I'm approximately 9 inches from the VS 450 lights. This plant can take the light and is very hungry for nitrogen.



Next up. Is the GG#4, again from Seedsman. I got high one night and decided 10 laterals would be the thing on this grow. Then I had to figure out how to tie them all down. I came up with some custom stakes. She's fairly even in the canopy, and has grown and inch a day over the last 3. I counted 23 bud sites clear the top of the perennial cage. The 18" round cage matches the 18" diameter of the 10-gallon pot. This makes it easy to spin and trim the plant in a tight space. She doesn't need the light or the nitrogen the Blue Dream does. Very thick & bushy plant.



Once I got the Blue Dream all set up and growing even I took some cuttings and set them in my Octo-Cloner. Instead of growing one plant in a 10-gallon pot, I'll experiment with four plants in four 2.6-gallon pots. Two of the stronger clones will have 6 colas, while the other two will have four. I want to see how they do with different foliage densities. I'll need to wait until I harvest the Blue Dream in 5-6 weeks for flipping to 12/12. Until then, grow my little beauties, but not too much.



Oh, and at the same time I took some GG#4 cuttings, cloned them and set them into my seed & breed chamber. The one in the front, right is getting 2x daily sprays of colloidal silver. They've been in 12/12 for two weeks now -- in the blurple cage of plant sex. Tawdry, tawdry tale of inbreeding.



And now we visit the nursery. The two babes in back are Blue Dream clones set aside for seed production. I'll keep them in here until I get some decent pollen from the GG#4.



The little one is a Do-Si-Dos from Pyramid seeds. She was planted a bit over three weeks ago and looking good.


For my Michigan plant limit, I have one more plant -- with roots -- I can grow. So first one of the GG#4 that shows a good root system is next in line for vegging out and flowering.

I'll get back with the prequel soon.

BR

[bboyfromwayback]

Good looking setup! I like how those rings turned out. That plant has great shape

[BaccaRacca]

Thank you bboyfromwayback. Your tutorial has been an inspiration.

[bboyfromwayback]

Wow man thanks! I give credit to a picture in High Times and growing in a closet at one point with little overhead. Gotta get creative

[SoOrbudgal]

Way to get that grow on there BaccaRacca your my hero LOL. Those look fantastic fella. I'm gifting many of my early spring clones i took from GG#4 like you i took alot. But we want to do some camping around for abit of time so i need to close down my tents after my autos and my outdoor photos get done vegging an waiting for right time outdoors an big enough to move into greenhouse, then outdoor under Mother Sun. You are blowing me away with the great varity, i do love having a different strain to choose from at home My flowering GG are ready by 31st of May yippeee

[BaccaRacca]

You're my hero, too, SoOrbudgal, maybe when the Missus and I do our great American road trip we'll drop on in. The clone thing has become a quirk. I had to giggle a bit at the thought of you giving yours away the other day. I never saw the sense of cloning until I got my cloner, now it seems like I clone any little tip as long as I have the soup mixed -- even though I don't need them. I think I need more friends locally. As for variety, oncologist says 32-56 more months, gotta taste life while I can!

[Farmbuck]

I just love your set-up !! I'll be following you for sure.

[BaccaRacca]

Thanks, Farmbuck. I have a writeup on it somewhere, I'll go dig into my posting archives. A series of dumb-luck decisions ended up making it work well, starting with the basic design is based on quartering an 4' x 8' into the three walls and door that form the structure of the box. Reason? Those boards could fit into my car and I saved a delivery fee. Then it was dumb luck that the inside dimensions would hold two standard nursery trays, and four 2.6-gallon pots, or one 10-gallon pot. They're fairly easy to build.

Always looking forward to your latest photos. Thank you for following.

[Farmbuck]

So BaccaRacca 80% perlite you are ok with it ? I'm curious my grower friend.

[BaccaRacca]

Farmbuck most important is that the plants are OK with it. Perlite does an excellent job of holding fertilizer and water solution. Basically, it's a hydroponics system with a substrate. The Canadian peat moss is simply there to buffer my tap water, which hovers around a ph of 8.0. I can go two days without watering the 10-gallon pot and more than a day with the 2.6 pots. I prefer to water daily. My last grow with the Amnesia Trance, I suspect I had too much peat moss -- around or over 25% and had some burn issues if I didn't water twice a day. As I've moved around I found that I had to vary my concentrations of Canadian pea moss based on the relative ph of the tap water. Thank you for your interest.

[JeffInCanada]

Good stuff...I love seeing what overs are doing in here. Interesting that you are using mostly perlite, I checked out your Perlite, Peat Moss and Tap Water grow. Very interesting, I learned a lot, thanks for the detailed write-ups.

[BaccaRacca]

Thanks Jeff, stay tuned for more misadventures!

[BaccaRacca]

APRIL 1, 20201

Before getting to the official start of the first cycle (dropping of Do-Si-Dos seed) of this continuous grow journal, I'd like to introduce you to a couple of players that have lent plenty of drama to this Spring Grow.

First up is the now-flowering Blue Dream plant. At this point it has been very sickly. While the GG#4 was doing well. While the Blue Dream had curling, burn't tips and significant chlorosis, the GG#4, was fairly healthy, suffering only a bit of leaf tip burn after a transplant.

This is the GG#4, at this point, fairly ignored as I'd been spending a lot of time with my cancer treatment. It felt good to get back and grow with some kind of purpose.


The Blue Dream here is not doing well. DX: Nitrogen deficiency. This is when I went from 1 tsp/gal of Vegetables & Herbs to a 1/2 tsp each of V&G plus Miracle-Gro All Purpose.



I use the sticks, threaded through holes I drilled into the side of the pot, to anchor the wires that control the height of the individual laterals. This takes advantage of the apical meristem hormones, which migrate to the highest branch, or so an old orchardist told me. Seems to work in my small orchard and seems to work here.

BR

[BaccaRacca]

April 17, 2021: Do-Si-Dos Seed Drop & Other Adventures

With the Do-Si-Dos dropped into the seed starting cup, Cycle 1 of this continuous grow journal begins.

I've never been one to mess with complicated seed germination rituals, rather I create a friendly spot to germinate inside a standard seedling pot. I start with my standard mix of perlite and peat, wet it down and stick my forefinger right down into the middle of the pot, to create a little hole for the tap root, then fill that hole with vermiculite, once even with the substrate, I place the seed and cover the contents of the pot with about 1/2" of vermiculite. I'll spray everything down until soaked and put a plastic cup over it to maintain humidity. I use a seed starting mat to warm things up and get things started.



It was also a good day to flip the Blue Dream.

Once the nute change was made, things took off pretty good. I'd been following the SrcOG tutorial created by @bboyfromwayback, and it inspired me to copy some of his work. I don't have the space to spread like he does with his setup (the cabinet for that, aka "Big Jenny" sits as lumber in my garage), so I have to trim back a bit. The 18" perennial towers fit my large 10-gallon pots perfectly. I included a shot with the underside scaffolding and wire restraint system, tall laterals get pulled down, short ones are let to go free.



Meanwhile, I'm learning that the nute adjustment for the Blue Dream is virtually toxic to the GG#4 I'm growing.



This was about the time I posted regarding nute differentials. I was concerned.

Notice above, that I've chosen to have 10 laterals for this grow. OK, I didn't choose. I got high and didn't count right. By the time I started to lay things out I kinda liked it. But there was no room for the scaffolding beneath, so I got high again and invented these stake hook thingies. They work pretty well for maintaining lateral height and vitality.



Following the GG#4, are some clones off the big Blue Dream that I took just before I flipped her. I also took some GG#4 clones, just because. Three of the clones were ready to plant, with one kind of straggling, so I planted the three good ones, and decided to wait for the fourth.

The plan here is to grow six colas in two of the 2.6-gallon pots, and four in the 2 other. The larger plants now will get the six branches, where the smaller plants will get four. Fertilizer for these girls is the hotter nitrogen mix that I use on the big girl.



And finally, here is the nursery, with two freshly planted GG#4 clones, which will go into the breed box when they settle into their substrate a bit.



That's it for the first week of my cannabis cabinet continuous grow. Thank you for following!

BR

[BaccaRacca]

April 22-26, 2021: Blue Dream Growing Like a Dream, GG#4 is a Nightmare.

The Do-Si-Dos came up in four days and is looking good. I'll keep the plastic cup as a humidity dome for the week. I'll use the sprayer and regular tap water for now.



Here's the nursery cabinet, with the seedling, two Blue Dream clones set for seed breeding, and the two GG#4, and will follow the Blue Dream for seed breeding.



These clones get the higher nute mix that I prepare for the mother plant. I learned my lesson!

Five days after flip, for the Blue Dream and I'm on a new nute mix consisting of 50% Veg & Herb, 25% All Purpose and 25% Bloom Booster (from an old box with really high phosophorus), plus 1/2 tablespoon of Botanicare Sweet Berry flavor enhancer. Things are looking very good. She is stretching at over an inch a day.



But by now, feeding the GG#4 the same high-nitro mix I'd been giving the Blue Dream -- the pre-flip mix -- was an all-out disaster. She was burning up, yellowing up and things were getting ugly. I trimmed off all the ugliness, because I couldn't bear to see it, and because I wanted to see any improvements in new leaves.


Then a did a big flush and went back to the basic, what I now call my "indica mix," simple Veg & Herb. Three days later, things were looking much better.




Yay! I put some time into you, sucker, now you better produce!

In the mean while I've added the fourth Blue Dream clone to my 4x2.6 Blue Dream Grow. The yellow in the leaves? Oh yeah, once you know plants need different nutes, it is important not to mix them up, which I did once.

[BaccaRacca]

May Day! May Day! May Day!

Nothing to be alarmed about. But the Blue Dream is starting to look like something fun. Keeping the top of the canopy at 12" under the VS-450s. This is 2 weeks after flip, and I'm starting some very careful pruning, only taking out large, lower fan leaves, and some fan leaves on larger colas that are shading the shorter ones.

I wanna do scratch-and-sniff photos.

[JeffInCanada]

For sure these are great photos..and plants of course. Do you happen to dabble in photography (probably not dabble...more like lots of experience)? They're that good.

[BaccaRacca]

JeffInCanada, I am sorry it took so long to reply. I've had personal issues to attend to. Yes, I dabble a bit. I worked as an ad agency creative director before I retired. Photography is one way I can be creative without clients.

[JeffInCanada]

No problem at all @BaccaRacca...I totally understand life taking priority...I've had a few curveballs thrown my way lately as well. Again, great photos!