How I started growing weed WAY more easily.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Yet another week and not as much progress on the burn victims as I would like to see. But - I did have this tray to deal with:



I've got the whole Mr. C's grow method working up through early veg at least and now I need to get it together enough to finish. These guys were started in coco/perlite/worm castings plus 3-3-3 starter mix and are coming up on their third week. I started watering from the tray this time around and they grew fast! I transplanted them just in time - roots were sneaking out of the bottoms of most of the pots.


I had six sprouts but only five were big enough this week. I brewed a tea last night of molasses, worm castings, kelp meal and a helping of root excelurator and myco plus some quillaja and gave everyone of them some plus a double dose for the ones I need to recover. I bought saucers to go under the pots after the photos were taken to try watering from the bottom for the whole grow. All of the ones in early veg are larger now than they were Sunday morning!

Super Lemon Haze is on its way to chop, maybe this weekend.


The flower tent is still a bit too roomy for my tastes.



Wedding Cake and Pineapple Express are at least making bud after being burn victims themselves.

The Mangoes are slowly coming back but I still may start more seed and begin anew.


More seeds are in the nursery waiting to pop plus a Banana Blaze and an Alien Rock Candy seedling that need another week or two before transplant. At the rate things are progressing, the newer batch will lap the burn victims. I may just need to purge some of them, but I hate to.

[TOKABIGONE]

Hey UF, you def have a lot going on in there. I've been looking over your thread and see you are kinda where I am with soils. I am going for the never pH anything soil. I encourage a strong microbe colony growth and never check or adjust pH. Might I suggest you study Clackamas Coot approach to creating soil that does that. Good info about it on there. He suggests using Canadian Spahgnum peat moss but I won't use that for environmental reasons. However coir, castings and perlite with a recipe of organic and mineral amendments will achieve that for you. I just finished an auto grow using this with good results. Cali also is using this and doing well.
Even with your 9 pH water it will work as the microbes are feeding the plant everything they need and microbes care less about pH!

[TOKABIGONE]

I almost feel like those few of us beginning to go this route are pioneers of such trying to guide the way out of this never ending pH and chemical nute trap. Not so much it hasn't been done before, just a much more
natural and simpler way to grow that seems to have been forgotten in the wake of "modern" growing with chemicals. Not enough kids growing up on small farms with dirt on their hands anymore and the hydro hype that began this. Yes I'm an old guy who believes you can't say the new way is better just because it's new. Newbs see nothing but you have to buy all these grow nutes and flower nutes, Ph up/down and sideways! If you think about it you begin to see how we have been scammed by the fertilizer companies that you can't grow high test pot w/o them! MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT!

[UndergroundFarmer]

I'm absolutely on board with letting all of the so-called lower life forms do all the hard stuff for me! I still need to dive into CC's work and will probably do that after this post. I'm hoping the bottom watering will make it easier for all life involved to keep the pH stable at root level. The water in the saucers has become a helluva good gnat trap though. I found quite a few of them that were knocked into the water by my floor fan and drowned.

[TOKABIGONE]

Sticky traps are a great investment! When my soil was put into the tent to cook after mixing they came up in clouds and in a day they were all caught. Probably a couple hundred or more.

[UndergroundFarmer]

I've got a fresh one of those going too. Gnats are getting scarce in that tent!

Clearly, I'm going to have to clean those saucers at least once a week or it's going to get nasty.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Five of the new crop got topped. Three burn victims were put out of their misery. Most of the remaining burn victims will be moved to flower to see what can be salvaged next weekend once Super Lemon Haze goes down. I even started another eight seeds just in case.

Here's the veg tent looking less leafy:


The Mango tent:


The flower tent with a SLH just about to go to chop:


I've had to install dual heaters to keep the room warm enough to keep them happy. I will probably have to insulate the walls if two heaters can't keep up.

[UndergroundFarmer]

At midweek, five of the eight new seeds are above ground! Romulan got over its transplant blues and will definitely be ready for topping this weekend. SLH is down to about 10% clear trichs and should be ready to go in the dark by Friday.

Here's a bit of advice for making compost tea with kelp meal: Leave plenty of room for the stuff to expand or it will burst the bag when it starts absorbing water.

[UndergroundFarmer]

It's been a weird week at work so Monday's update happens on Thursday. I've got another sprout so six of eight popped. I've replaced the other two and probably won't start more because all other seedlings are thriving. All Mangoes were scrapped and moved to the compost pile. I've moved the larger burn victims from the veg tent into the 4x4 flower tent and moved the Pineapple Express and Wedding Cake into the 3x3 the Mangoes were in to finish flowering. The veg tent now only has six in early veg but will soon host more seedlings from the nursery. I've backed off on watering in the saucers because the coco was staying too wet. I'm only giving them water in the saucers when I see dry coco on top now. They've also been reamended so I'm needing to give more of their water from above anyway to help break down the caking nutes. I did finally break out the soil pH pen to sample some of the girls and found that indeed pH is staying at 6.4 to 6.9 with no adjustments given.

Here's Super Lemon Haze just before chop:

She produced similarly to ILGM's Purple Haze in bud formation and size. I expect great things from the smoke.

The veg tent now:

I goofed and cut the wrong nodes on Expert Gorilla so I will have to top again to get eight tops. She is the one at lower right with a "friend" that sprouted alongside her.

Here's the 4x4 flower tent:

They've been upgraded to larger pots except for Purple Kush in the upper right. She was just reamended with half 4-4-4 and 2-8-2 and worm castings. I'm seeing some early signs of bud growth already in some of these.

Here's the 3x3:

Pineapple Express handled the pH problems much better than Wedding Cake and may make some very nice colas yet.

The whiteboard had to be wiped and rewritten after all the changes:

Obviously, the chop date for the 3x3 will have to be moved. They are only at about three weeks into flower. I also need to add a note to reamend on 1/2.

Soon enough I'll know how well using Mr. C's method works if you consider a few more months soon enough. I'll try to summarize the important stuff once I can get a harvest in from the six in veg now. I'm stepping away from the seedy grows for a while until I've got this method down. After that, I might just try a living soil grow. I just don't ever rest. Maybe I'll get it all figured out one day and relax!

[UndergroundFarmer]

Happy 2022 to you all! I've been slack again this week because of work and umm "product testing". Super Lemon Haze went into jars - 2.5 of them - Thursday. It was some of the easiest trimming ever because of the lack of larf. It is also the best I've had straight off a ten day dry and cure! I've been trying it out over the past few days which is part of the reason I haven't been able to post! The high and bud structure are similar to Purple Haze of course. SLH seems to be a bit more of an intense head high though. Wedding Cake and Pineapple Express are now in the dark awaiting chop.

Once again, I've got clawing and crinkling in the newest growth in my vegging plants after making the cuts for manifolding. pH is not a problem this time around as it was in the last batch but low humidity likely is since it's been hanging around the 30s until I slowed down the exhaust fan. The weather here has been all over the place and I can't seem to keep up. I'm guessing the combined stress of low RH and being cut on is triggering a reaction that resembles Boron deficiency. This time, luckily, I've caught it very early. I've also cut out the COB boosters on my light panel in case light stress is also happening. More importantly, I bought two Niwas for the 4x4 tents to get VPD right and maintain it. Winter grows and manifolding never used to be a problem for me in hydro so I'm getting into some new territory. I've got nine seedlings in the nursery to take the place of the most badly burned ones now trying to flower. Purple Urkle and one of the Cloud Walkers are showing signs of flower but it's all coming more slowly than I'm used to.

I've managed to find a few more ways besides hydro that I can work this year and that's some kind of progress. I can rock using Soul nutes in coco with worm castings for sure. Mr. C's way likely is very workable but I haven't had the environment as dialed in as it needs to be for winter growing so it's tough to judge. I will finish off the ones I can that way over the next few months. I've also mixed up my first batch of living soil as of last weekend. It's a coco version of Coot's mix using DTE amendments and rice hulls (as I'm phasing out perlite) for extra aeration and organic material.

That said, I will close out this thread that has gone longer than I ever meant it to go and begin a new one for the New Year and the Niwa.

It's been quite a season of growth for both plants and grower!

Happy farming,

UGF.