COCO COIR Grow Journal - Blue Mystic (Nirvana)

[Eigholte]

Just getting started with a new grow.

2019-04-09: Soaked 3 Blue Mystic Regular seeds from Nirvana. Perfect outcome for me would be 2 females, 1 male, but as long as I get both sexes represented, I should be pretty happy. I can clone one female into two, if I have to. (I think? Last cloning run was a bust, so maybe I lost all the cloning skills I got during my first grow?)

 

[Eigholte]

Planting Day!

Process was:
Soak seeds in a shot glass full of water for 24 hours, or until they sink when poked.
Place seeds between two layers of moist paper towel, and place that in zipper sandwich bag.
Rest the half of the sandwich bag that DOES NOT have the seeds on my seedling heat mat
(I don't have a thermostat on this mat... So it's too hot to have the seed directly on. They should get indirect warmth of around 25C, ideally)
Let sit there for 48 hours, or until seeds are cracked with a ~1/4" rootlet
Plant in coir that has been flushed with warm, seedling-strength nutrients.
Place in veg tent under weak light. (Light is up at 36" right now)


Stats on my soaking solution: 26c, pH 6.5, 425ppm
Made from: 2L Tap water, 30mL Phosphoric acid stock, 4mL Cal Mag and 1.5g MegaCrop

 

[Eigholte]

Day 0 - Plants have sprouted.

I am quite happy with these little plants - they co-operated with my attempts at timing them so that they sprouted on a Sunday. (I already have my preferred day for plant updates, so I am pleased that I can continue making a weekly habit of going to check and photograph my plants on Sunday morning.)

A and B are looking strong already. C is still struggling to cast off its shell. C was a little behind at the "cracked seed" stage too, so maybe not surprising that its a touch behind the others.

A,B, and C - left to right

A

B

C

 

[Ell]

like your cups.

 

[Eigholte]

The Blue solo cups were a little different. I like them.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 1:


So these little guys got really thirsty a day or two back and I was caught off guard without any "seedling strength" nutrients on hand - so I watered them with the stuff I'd prepared for their "roomates" - the cotton, avocado and mango plants. They seem fine, despite the stronger solution (~650ppm). But today I made sure to make up a few litres of "seedling strength" to have on hand, just in case.

I think I'm going to run these ones with my Mega Crop nutrients. While I still have my Advanced Nutrients stuff, I am down to somewhere around or below 1/3 of the bottle. Since this grow has three plants, I think I might run out of the AN part way through - so I'll run these on Mega Crop start to finish and will try to do a comparison, and I will keep using the last of my AN for my non-cannabis plants.

I think they're already whooping my Royal Medic: They've already got a well developed second set of leaves by day 7. My Medic had 1/4 leaf buds, based on my photos from that grow.

So, off to a really promising start.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 2:


What a difference a week makes! These little plants are taking off.

I am very pleased with them! They've been the fastest plants I've grown to date. (Well bred, Nirvana!) I transplanted today, and noticed that I had a little root circling at the bottom - I probably could have transplanted a day or two earlier, but I'm hopeful that they shouldn't be set back too far by the delay. The problem was that I was under the erroneous impression I wouldn't have to worry about transplanting until maybe next week - so I didn't have my pots ready. I spent today doing a lot of sewing of the new smart pots. The new ones are around 10L/2.5 gallon pots. Smaller than my other ones, and they should be a little easier to keep in a tent together. Made a set of four, just since that's the number above which you become a super-criminal around here. :silly:

Of the three, Plant B is now the leader, with 4 well developed nodes. A and C have 3 full nodes, and are still forming the fourth.

Plant A is in the front, B back left, and C back right.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 3:


So, transplanting went well. A and B had only ~36 hours of downtime while they got used to the new pot. C took closer to 48 hours. and showed a faint flush of red in the new leaves at the top growth tip and some lightening of the tips. Same thing happened to my plant in the last grow too. At this point, I'm wondering if it's maybe a light-burn related symptom, due to the change in position relative to the lights. A and B did not show symptoms, but they were growing faster - maybe more tolerant to the higher light level?

Anyhow, they're growing like mad. Today I gave them a full soaking, instead of the more cautious 'watering around the drip line' I did for the first week after transplant. We'll see how they respond to that.

Their roommates have been moved to the other tend. The Cotton, Mango and Avocado thrived with the attention they were getting while sharing a tent with the Mystic Trio, but there's no longer enough room to make 6 plants work in there.

Also started training today. Most of the plants have 6 well developed nodes - I could have topped and begun training these plants into a full quadline, but I held off. There are no signs of sex yet. I would prefer to top once the plants have hinted at male vs female, because then I might be able to turn one of the topped sections into my 4th plant. (Stupid plant count laws). So instead I removed the growth at node one, and started training the growth tips at nodes 2 and 3 to grow level and flat.

We'll see how it grows, but I am impressed thus far! Left to right in Photo, A, B, then C.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Afternoon Eigholte man those did grow fast for 3wks. I got some of that mega crop last fall just payed shipping deal. Stinky stuff but I noticed when I use it on my 1month old starts they love it. I am tempted to use it in some seedling water very lightly perhaps 1/2 tea. spoon per gallon of water? You ever try that? I also liked your story of how you found that light, excellent ! Happy growing

 

[Eigholte]

Thanks SoOrbudgal! I have used the Mega Crop on seedlings once or twice. I did that for these three plants here - they've been fed on it since germination. I just use the "Seedling-Small Plants" level of dosing from the feed calculator on the Mega Crop website - it works out to about 2 grams per gallon of solution. I usually also pre-soak my coir in the solo cups with Mega Crop for germinating as well. I haven't had any issues, but I tend to err on the side of being fairly light with the fertilizers at that point just to make sure I'm not overdoing it. These plants right now are getting a ~500ppm solution where 150 of that is tap water minerals, 150 is CalMag and ~200 is the Mega Crop. Leaf color seems close to right for now, but maybe I should make it a little stronger next week, as plants A and B have gotten a little lighter in leaf color recently.

The LED light bar was totally the weirdest story... and maybe the best valentines day gift ever. I'm glad you got a kick out of it.

Happy growing, and a fantastic weekend to you as well!

 

[Eigholte]

Just saw the first hints of pre-flowers on Plants A and B. (Nothing on C yet). It's really hard to say for sure, but I'm going to make a guess that A is female (Huzzah!) and B is male. This just because I think I see a 'narrowing' on B's pre-flower that reminds me of a stalk. That said, these preflowers are probably only around 0.7mm (mechanical pencil led width, at best), and it's hard to be sure.

ALSO: Noticed something unusual about A. Wonder if anyone has seen this before:

Plant A has had a normal 2 branches/growth tips per node pattern on all nodes UNTIL the second set of leaves formed on the 2nd node growth tip... then it started getting three branches per node. It doesn't look like a true genetic whorled phylotaxy to me, at least not as I understand that condition, both because it's only impacting some areas of the plant, and also because at least one of the three leaves are always a little offset from the others when they grow. If it were two nodes spaced closely, I would expect four growth tips... but this is just unusual.

Also, neither of the other plants is showing this. (and all are from the same group of Nirvana Blue Mystic Regular seeds). Plant B is grown enough that I should have seen this in the same place, if it was there, but C is behind and doesn't have that second node of the second node yet... So we'll see if I have a second plant like this or just a one off.

EDIT: Checked C more thoroughly - it is totally creating three leaflets in the same spot on the second node. it required a close look, though, as that node is just forming right now. 2 out of 3 plants agree, they are happy little freaks!

The plan in this grow was to pollinate a branch or two to create more seeds from these plants, if possible. If A ends up being my only female, I could end up with a very bizzare line!

Anyone else seen anything like this in the past?

EDIT: Found what sounds like a similar trait in a breeder journal elsewhere. ( https://www.thcfarmer.com/threads/breeding-for-whorls.63887/page-1 )
from that thread, the plants start out as normal bi-leaflet seedlings (check!), and at some point before full maturity, they switch from a normal two node-per-leaf to three nodes per leaf. When/where this happens varied in his plants by how 'strong' the whorling trait was, and it had some environmental triggers/influences around apical dominance/maturity, eg, he could get the trait to reoccur faithfully with clones taken before full maturity, but it was less reproducible after the plant switched to a fully-mature, alternate leaved growth pattern.

Color me fascinated!

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 4:

So, I'm still struggling with those pre-flowers: B may actually be female? So hard to tell. A and B both have their pre-flowers large enough to be visible with the naked eye, and as they're both very conical, I think A and B may both be females. Not a bad thing, those are my two strongest plants.

C is slower to grow/mature, but has small pre-flowers now that can be seen with my loupe. I'm not completely sure, but I'm guessing male? It may take a few more days to be sure.

I want them to hurry up a little, so that I can move any males to my flowering tent for pollen harvesting, and start taking clones of my females. If it weren't for plant count laws, I'd just clone everything and move from there. *sigh*.

However, I can't fault them on growth! I have 7 nodes on some of these. I am training nodes 2-3 into a "quadline" shape, and nodes 4-7 will become my clones if/when I can confirm the plants are female.


Pre-flower on A: (it is crossing in front of the stipules in this photo)

Preflower on B: (still small and in the "crotch" of the branch"

Pre-flower on C:

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 5.

Sorry this update is a little late. Yesterday I had a bunch of company, including my in-laws, and couldn't get to my plants in the afternoon to look after them and take photos.

And NOW my spouse has decided it's great time to take over the WHOLE area down there (Including my little hydro-nute area) to BREW ALL THE THINGS. This wouldn't be an issue if he'd just left space, anywhere. Anywhere at all. But alas, no. So I have watering to do and cuttings to take and 'masculinizers' to spray, and I can do none of it...

In general, I'm feeling the whole project has gotten a bit overgrown: The plants are doing well, but in waiting for them to show their sex, I've ended up with 2 foot tall, untrained plants - and I'm a little stressed out about this. I'm not sure exactly how to bring them back to a "flat" growth habit. In addition to that, I think plant C might be female too! Normally, this would be a win, right? Three regular seeds, all of them ladies? Except I wanted to make a seed crop (In all honesty, I think I need to get a pool of self-perpetuating genetics going, because I really don't trust the Canadian Licensed Producers to create a steady supply of high quality seeds. That would basically be working against their primary profit avenue - selling finished buds). But I'm having awful luck when it comes to that goal. So far, I haven't even been able to get a plant to herm when trying... curse these fantastic genetics!

So, because A, B, and C are now too big to reasonably share a tent, C is getting punted to the flower tent (Least favorite plant). Where it will flower early and be used for GA3 treatment experiments to try and get a proof of concept on getting pollen out of my other female plants.

All of them have had their existing branches trained a bit, and then were replaced in the tents with a little more room. All are topped at around the 6th or 7th node. They just have some really long inter nodes (Not my favorite growth habit).


Plant overview - before trimming/training. Left to Right, A, B, then C.

After trimming training: A and B

And after training, C and Friends in the Flower Tent

 

[Ell]

thats a shame.they aint bad plants. what is 'masculinizers' ? bedroom closet or under some stairs perhaps, gotta find a nook somewhere.

 

[Eigholte]

By masculinizers I meant mostly GA3, but it's my personal catch-all term for the various colloidal silver, STS, GA3, etc solutions used to prompt female cannabis plants to make male flowers. I'm still going to try and get a seed run out of these three - it's just going to be so much harder and have a higher likely failure rate than it would have been if one of my plants had been male in the first place.

That said, if I can get it to work this time and get at least one branch to fully reverse sex, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if my first seed run was entirely feminized seeds by default.

And C can live in the flowering tent - main disadvantage is that one won't yield quite as well being flowered as an untrained plant at 5 weeks, but it will get it out of the way of the other, much more vigorous plants at least.

 

[Ell]

thank you.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 6.


This Week:

- BM-A is throwing pistils over in the veg tent.
- BM-B does have female pre-flowers, no pistils yet

- BM-C Is throwing pistils in the flower tent, even on the treated branch. Be MALE dang it!

Treatment plan this time is 10 days of 100ppm GA3 and 40ppm silver. We'll see how that goes!

Today's photos are blurpled. For Variety! (Actually because I am rather behind and lazy)


In the Veg Tent (A Left, B Right)

Flower Tent. C Left - Miscellaneous Plants (cotton, avocado, mango) Right.

 

[Eigholte]

End of Week 7:


So, as much as I was feeling behind and over-grown last week, I realized there was a solution: Top the plants back down to size!

So A and B got aggressive haircuts today. Brought them down from ~38 inches down to closer to ~26.

I am taking a couple clones off of A because her first and second clone attempts for making female pollen with failed AND because I think I would like to see if I can get one of her clones growing outside. I'd like to see what kind of timing a photo has when exposed to the local conditions here. I may get nothing (frost may come before harvest does), but I think the experience will be fun.

Also, because it's legal, I can KNOWINGLY plant it right where my stupid busy-body neighbor with the chain link fence can see it from his kitchen window, if he were to look long enough and with enough interest - which he always does... (This is my little act of rebellion in response to the complete lack of privacy I get in my back yard. Well, that and helping my spouse build a 13 foot tall garden shed that looks like a barn right in his line of sight which I then filled with rabbits.)


Plant C is setting up to flower right on time. Proto-buds are forming, and I think there was *just* enough room to accommodate the stretch.

In good news, I MAY have troubleshot the issues I'm having with my GA3 treatments - they may have been too potent! Plant C seems to be forming what appear to be solidly male pre-flowers on the GA3 branch!

It looks like the issue may have been that my past solutions have been too strong. There is a bi-phasic effect with GA3 where low concentrations promote male flowers, and high concentrations promote female flowers. My original solutions may have been promoting aggressive stretching and female flowers.

I discovered this when I was too lazy to make new solution, and just diluted down what I had. Within 2 days, I noticed these little ball formations starting... and now they look pretty convincing for male flowers.

Prior to that I'd been using my homemade 40ppm silver combined with the GA3 stock made in my usual fashion - to no effect. But as soon as the GA3 was diluted down, I started seeing changes! So I will be making weaker stock from here out, to see how that goes. It's just a real pain trying to make a well-measured solution at home... Even my littlest 0.1g scale can't measure the weight of how much GA3 I'm supposed to be using for a 100ppm stock. I would need some of the medical-grade equipment that measures down to 0.001 of a gram for that... Sometimes I miss having access to that kind of gear. I don't miss the hours, or the co-workers, though...


Anyway, Who knows? Maybe I'll get this process figured out yet. The Grow Weed Easy page for making feminized seed doesn't have instructions for using GA3 yet... If I science the heck out of this, maybe I can contribute to the greater body of knowledge!


But seriously... this was supposed to be the easy seed run. Plant normal seeds, get male, make seeds, profit! Instead, three regular seeds were planted, and NOT. ONE. FREAKING. MALE. GREW?! I may be cursed with the kind of curse that a sensimilla grower would have appreciated...

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Man what I wouldn't of given to grow females more than males when all I use to use was old bag seed. Figures you'll get it down i'm sure.

 

[Eigholte]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, SoOrbudgal! My attempts towards seed-creation are looking more promising than they have during past grows, and I still have two other females I could experiment on if C gave up the ghost or failed in someway. Fingers crossed!

If this works out, I'm going to have to try and produce feminized seed from one or more of my CBD strains and send some to my mom. She's having a devil of a time getting a female plant going for her own CBD grow - the curse may NOT be genetic!!