this information you are sharing is outstanding. i am really thankful you are. i will put it to good use when possible. thank you for doing this. there is something about pure micjigan that just calls out to me every time i see it. i cannot wait for the day to arrive when some finds its way to me. i was searching pure michigan and came across your project thread. i will def be following along. in addition to the great info you are sharing from all the hard work and efforts you have put in over the years, it is well written! easy to read and understand! respectfully mainerJ.
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Thank you for the kind words. We are just getting started! I hope to contribute to everyone’s toolkit, and perhaps add to my own as we go.
As for Pure Michigan. I have some news that I can start to share.
The next step in the evolution of Pure Michigan is Black Truffle. It is Pure Michigan x White Truffle. It adds a deep luxurious Opium/Rubber flavor to PM vibe, while turning up the buzz level from the powerful Bleaf creation, White Truffle. It’s another level of weed.
I have been commissioned by Michigan’s largest clone company to do a grand reversal cross of Black Truffle to 18 of the hottest, best, and most expensive clones out there.
And I plan to do it here live on Overgrow.
I can’t say who is in the cross yet, but here is a pic. 
Just a little to the left of our seedling girls lives:
The plant in the front will be reversed and crossed to everyone else in the pic. There’s about 20k worth of clones sitting there.
I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities for some giveaways.
I look forward to the challenge of doing this complicated process while continuing our Pheno Hunt here.
I’ll share more details when possible. I’m just so excited to get to it, and your encouraging words just add to the energy!
Thank you for your interest
-al
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Seedlings Day 35
The seedlings are getting close to harvest. Remember we have 2 objectives with these plants: Generate side branches for cloning, and keep everyone alive while those branches grow roots, veg out, and bloom out. They are going to be some ugly, pissed off girls by the end of this.
Here are some of the plants getting trained to great moms:
The shoots are close to ready. They have gotten 3 doses of tea and foliar sprays. We have to wait until everyone has at least 3 quality branches to harvest before we are ready to go the cloner.
My old method was to grow out the seedlings just long enough to lop off the top, to then clone and bloom out. This is a couple weeks faster than what we are doing here, but has several problems.
First is that the top growth tip has all the wrong hormones for growing roots and can stall out and rot. Since it is the only one of its kind, it’s then out of the running.
Second is having 3 side shoots to make clones gives you better odds, with better hormones, of getting all participants in the run together. The method here is head to head competition, and spreading the plants over different runs doesn’t give us the information we need to make the best decisions. This also leaves us with extra copies that allows us flexibility to replace the mom, or double down with more copies ready to make even more clones.
And finally, we are preparing these plants to be clone mothers. The old method left plants unprepared for fast branch production. More columnar plants like Pure Michigan need this training to produce any usable shoots quickly. This can save you weeks of time.
These ugly moms will be ready to transform into lush clone producers within a month of transplant, if their clone daughter blooms into a winner.
A group shot of our girls already looking a touch raggedy:
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
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-al’s Mail Bag
Occasionally I will repost questions asked in other forums or mail that seem relevant.
Looks off the charts nice. What consderations are giving for potency via mom plants.
-m
Potency is first. Of course secondary considerations of vigor, terps, etc matter, but why bother otherwise right?
So the issue of rapid phenotyping is time. It would be great to hold all these seedlings for another year and run them again to see if any fully matured into something better. But practically we can’t.
A plants bloom room performance changes as the mom ages.
There is certainly plenty of controversy in this subject. My personal experience has been that buzz and flavors CAN intensify up to a couple years old. It plateaus for 5 to 8 years, and then starts to trail off.
Young plants tend to get better potency not worse. I have had young plants change their flavor for worse, but not power. Old plants will fade and it can be quite dramatic and traumatic!
After all we are forcing an organism to live for a decade or longer that started with a full lifecycle of 9 months. One of the reasons you need to breed your best when you get a chance, and keep your clone mother generations to a minimum.
Mom selection as early as possible can lose a potential late bloomer. My process to select the best contestant is to use a panel of experienced judges for the smoke test. Lab results come second. We test everything here in Michigan, but everyone knows that the rap sheet doesn’t tell the whole story.
The crappy ugly duckling weed story does happen. But if you start with Swans and the best genetics possible, your odds are better.
Thank you for your interest.
-al
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Seedlings Day 42
We are almost ready to go the cloner, but they need a little Nitrogen boost before we snip them. 2 Tablespoons of worm castings to the rescue!
The great thing about earthworm poo is that it won’t burn even the youngest of plants. You can just dump it on the dirt and add water.
Here’s a pic of the girls getting their “spoonful of sugar”
So close to snip time. Next time we make aero tea!
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
-al
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Tea Time - part deux!
The seedlings will soon be cuttings going to the cloner, so we need to prepare the tea that we will need soon.
Here’s the ingredients:
Disclaimer First: This is what I use. Your mileage may vary. You can harm your plants if made, used, or dosed incorrectly.
Tea Recipe 2: als Awesome Aero Tea
Into a 5 gallon bucket of reverse osmosis water, with a large vigorous airstone add:
1 tspn Great White
1 tblspn Ancient Forest
4 tblspn Worm Castings
4 tspn Molasses
When you brew the teas together, you can see the difference in them. Here’s a pic of Dirt(bottom) and Aero(top) tea together after 2 days brew:
So What Does This Do?
Aero Tea is the result of many years of development to create living systems in aeroponic environments. Aeroponics have always before required a sterile system.
I found that the dreaded brown and pink slimes will attack roots and cuttings eventually, even if you are growing in bleach water. The solution is to have your own biological army to defend and assist your plants.
That sounds great until you consider we are working with spray lines or nozzles that will instaclog. And when that happens, you have hours to fix the problem before your plants die. So high particulates and living goo must be avoided.
This recipe maximizes the number and strains of beneficials, while keeping food and particulate levels low. It makes your root zone a hostile place for interlopers, and boosts your plants with commensalent organisms along with micro and macro nutrients.
How Do You Use It?
First give it a good stir, then strain with a regular tea strainer in to a quart cup.
For cuttings in aerocloners: 1 tsp/5 gallons
For vegging rooted plants in aerocloners: 1 tblspn/5 gallons
For bloom in aero machines: 2 Cups/40 gallons
Apply no more than once per week. Excessive application will affect your Nitrogen balance and screw up your plants.
Plants just love getting the bio available partially digested nutes from the tea. They respond with more intense, complex aromas and flavors, along with greater vigor and overall health.
This is how you get organic results with synthetic base nutes while also protecting and boosting your plants.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
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Always so informative and written so well, you’re practically writing a grow book right here, awesome work mate:+1:
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been following along since the start and taking notes, love the info on how to prepare the plants to get them ready for taking cuts. game changer for me.
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Great looking seedlings a fair bit of uniformity to them so far. I’ll tag along for the show.
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Thank you all. I appreciate the kind words. We have several months to go, and I hope to reveal more usable gems along the way.
I intend to use this thread as a depository for all my base methods and recipes from seed to finished bud. I’m on several boards but plan to stay based here on Overgrow.
In fact, very soon there will be a new sponsor and forum here to host my future projects. 
Coming soon:
Thanks again for your interest
-al
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Probably best list them as exoticgenetix bro. Exotic seeds are another breeder/line. I used their tangerine kush in my JR cross.
Other than that you got some 
stuff going on here. I’ll perch and watch from my little spot here 
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I’m interested in some clarifications on your aero tea; from the proportions you gave, it seems like you make 5 gallons of tea at a time and then use it very sparingly. 2 cups/40 gallons, which is the highest ratio I’m seeing, would mean these 5 gallons dilutes into somewhere between 1600-3840 gallons. Are you using this all immediately after brewing it, or storing it for use over a couple weeks? As far as I know, compost tea needs to be used within ~4 hours after you stop actively aerating or the bacteria will start to die… or am I confused about something here? It seems like this is just a compost tea with worm castings, humic acid and mycorrhizal inoculants that you strain before using.
Also, what kind of strainer are you using? I typically strain my teas before using them as well, but they don’t come out anywhere near clean enough to use in an aero setup… or is that not a concern simply because of how much you dilute them? I guess at 320:1, it would be tough to get enough to congeal and clog.
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I’m still not great at the quote thingee yet. So let me try to answer. I got several tea questions from other folks that I will add at the end.
The tea has to be used sparingly for a couple reasons. First is that there is significant Nitrogen, enough to tamper with NPK balance, and certainly the bloom cycle. Second, that too high of population of biota and concentration of food can clog spraylines and create fairy rings of goo. I know what this looks like and its normally a start over situation.
The tea is going to areo devices so dO2 will sustain our friends. We want them to set up shop and live long term with the plants. I use a lot of tea and replace it every week. I have a very green back yard!
Yes it is a simple recipe, but effectiveness is what matters, and you will see the results yourself here.
I use a mesh tea strainer that fits over a cup. You just need to strain out the leftover worm castings bits and suspended colonies of critters. It’s not a lot volume, so particulates are low.
Hope this helps. Thank you for your questions and interest!
-al
Several others had tea questions so I’ll add them here.
-al’s Mail Bag
Occasionally I will repost questions asked in other forums or mail that seem relevant.
Tea Questions - Answers Here!
So you just feed plants the tea only? -m
No the tea is designed to be used with base synthetic nutes. You can use any brand, just reduce the concentration slightly until you are familiar with the tea effects. For me the tea changes the base res ppm by less than 10 and is negligible.
Do I really need a big air stone? -k
Yes it’s critical. The stone forces Oxygen into solution. This helps the beneficial aerobic bacteria we are growing, and poisons the harmful anaerobic varieties. A tiny air stone doesn’t have the surface area to keep the bucket bubbling vigorously.
How long is it good for? -b
I make fresh tea once a week. It’s best at 48 hrs and begins to degrade after that.
Do I need Ancient Forest? -k
Any high quality humus will work. We are looking for wild type beneficial bacteria and fungi spores.
What’s with the molasses, and do I need a specific brand? -b
Molasses does several things here. It feeds the critters we are brewing, the sugar metabolites provide critical krebs cycle building blocks for your plants, and has many vitamins and minerals in it.
Molasses is the main ingredient in many expensive bottled products. It’s used in many finishing products and foliar sprays.
Even the cheapest supermarket molasses has awesome stuff in it:
The best choice is the least processed. Sulfured Black Strap molasses is the gold standard. But any will do, and I used the cheap stuff to show that here.
Did you really grow in bleach water? -m
Yes we called it Zone or pool sticks, basically Chlorine. It was required to control pathogens in sterile systems. And it certainly did not enhance flavors!
Thank you all for your interest, and feel free to add your questions or comments to the thread, as I’m sometimes slow with mail right now.
-al
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I don’t know whether to be more impressed or horrified that you go through over 1600 gallons of water a week. 
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I use about 3 gallons of Aero Tea, 4 gallons of Veg Dirt Tea, and 4 gallons of Bloom Dirt Tea per week. The leftovers have my lawn happy, unfortunately in patches!
-al
Dunno how I missed this thread
Dig your style @als_weed …
You say you use Sulfered molasses in your teas?
I kind of always believed from what I’ve read on the subject that the extra sulfur used when processing the cane into molasses inhibits beneficial microorganisms/bacteria to some degree.
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Glad to have you here!
Yes the Sulphur can inhibit some of our friends, but the concentrations are low and the effect is minimal.
I like Sulfered molasses because the plants need it, particularly in recirculating systems that use low levels of nutes. Less than 400 ppm levels is the sweet spot I work at and this is a nice fix.
Thank you for your interest
-al
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O k that makes sense now
Clearly your plants must be happy cause those bud shots look killer !!
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Even More Tea Questions
Every time I used teas my roots brown and looked sick. Show us your roots! -b
Sure. I went around took these today to show what they look like at different ages. Roots can get a slight tinge from tea, but should never be slimy. As they age, you will see some coloration in late bloom as exposed roots in the air eventually decline.
Here you go:
Do you have to deep clean after using all the bios? -m
I only use bleach on the first cloner the cuttings go in. All the other cloners with rooted plants just get sprayed out. Hose out the sludge and replace the blown out pucks.
Thank you for your interest
-al
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Some hydrogen peroxide helps but at that late stage there bound to getting brown .
I try to transplant around your 21 day time frame.