Here’s More!
Two weeks old and everyone is looking good. Can see some similarities already by strain. Got them nice and spread out under 24hr floros with an 18 inch pole fan on them.
One tip for stronger clones is to use an oscillating fan on young plants. Stronger stalks and less constant shade, along with greater transpiration, make it your best move to make them move!
They are still only sipping RO water, but that is about to change soon.
As always, don’t hesitate to ask questions.
-al
Seedlings Day 16 - Time for Miniskirts!
The seedlings have grown to 8 sets of leaves. It’s time for their first skirt trim.
I skirt trim for several reasons.
First is exposing the side branches to maximum light and transpiration. The side branches are what we will be harvesting from these plants.
Second is to avoid pests and litter. The leaves we are taking are normally the first target for problems, and first to die off and make a mess.
Here’s Before:
The first trim takes out the first set of single bladed leaves and then the next two sets leaves. Leave the cotyledons on, they are still helpful.
16 days old and Ready to rock! It’s almost tea time!
Here’s a group shot of the girls showing a little leg.
Thanks for your attention, and as always, your questions are welcome.
-al
Really interesting and really cool pics al, I would never have thought seedlings could be pruned so young, but yours are well advanced, awesome growing:+1:
Thanks for your interest!
I do a lot of pruning for sure. It’s a key tool in the belt for maxing out the potential of your plants. It’s all about directing the plants energy to your ends.
Stay tuned for more unconventional tips. I steal tech from vineyards, tea farmers, and giant pumpkin growers. Whatever will improve the performance of our favorite plant.
-al
No better knowledge of her parentage, but here is a link with more detail on the lineage.
That sounds delicious 
I’d be french inhaling that all day long lol. Check this smoke review of it I found https://toastednposted.com/2020/02/24/chocolatina-by-skord/ I don’t know where these guys come up with this stuff 
Thanks for the info. That review was hilarious! I got it from my local clone dealer and didn’t really RTFM on it. Whomever did the selection got it right, she really rips.
What’s really funny is that I grew out some of the first Exotic seeds back in the day.
These and Starfighter F2s:
Looks pretty familiar a decade later. I shoulda kept up with Mike!
Thank you for adding to the conversation, and I appreciate your attention!
-al
Seedlings Day 21
I have removed another 2 sets of bottom leaves and you can see now that the bottom branches have greatly benefited.
Here is a Gran Dawgy Purps Contestant:
Pure Michigan’s Turn:
And lovely Lava Cake:
We will continue to remove bottom leaves as they grow. This gives them an hourglass profile for now, that will eventually turn into a cone of perfectly snippable side branches.
Here’s a group shot:
The pruning we are doing now is setting up every girl to be a productive mother plant. If their clone sister proves to be a star in the bloom room, you will literally be able to pop her in a 5 gallon, and fill up cloners in a couple weeks.
Some plants are showing a slight bit of tip burn. This is a critical clue that the roots have reached the confining edges of the cup, and its time for their first full saturation watering. We need to flush out any waste and calm down the biota before we add our own. If this were a hot mix problem, the burn would be apparent from the start, and the remedy would to flush asap.
Till now they have been lightly perimeter watered. This lets the roots develop without getting washed out. Now is the time for a full saturation watering. We are still using only RO(reverse osmosis) water. We want to water to the point it streams out the drain holes.
This takes a little heat out of the soil mix, and gives them a good flush. We will be supplimenting them soon enough, but for now they will coast on the nutes from the mix.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome, and thank you for your attention.
-al
Time to Brew!
I try to give seedlings 3 successive flushes and 28 days before supplementing with any nutrition. It’s getting close, so the time to prepare their food has arrived!
Recipe Number 1: als Dirt Plant Delight Tea
Disclaimer first: I have refined this recipe over 20 years. This what I use, your mileage may vary. It will most definitely if you alter ingredients or dosage levels. You can flat kill things. Less is better until you are familiar its use.
Into a 5 gallon bucket of reverse osmosis water, with a large vigorous airstone add:
1 tspn Great White
1 tblspn Ancient Forest
2 tblspn Worm Castings
3 tblspn Peruvian Seabird Guano
2 cubes compressed alfala
4 tspn Molasses
Here’s a pic:
The goals of this mix: To maximize the number of beneficial and commensalistic bacteria and fungi, provide organic based macro and micro nutrients, and allow the use of smaller containers by reducing salt content.
Brew for a minimum of 48 hours. We are letting our little friends multiply and break the food down. Don’t strain it, just make sure it is vigorously stirred before pouring. Those particulates help sustain and reinvigorate the soil.
Dosage: % Tea/ RO water
Seedlings - 10%
Young Plants - 25%
Moms - 50%
Use every third watering.
I love teas. I will share more recipes as we get through the process. You can even flower with this recipe - just substitute the PSG with a nice Jamaican bat guano and a tspn of Epson Salts.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
-al
Welcome back to Overgrow @als_weed! 
You have beautiful flowers in your garden. peace
Seedlings day 28
I have continued to ‘skirt trim’ the girls and our ‘cone of shoots’ continues to develop.
Profile Shot:
Some of the plants have started to lighten up, a clue that they are ready for some Nitrogen. So today, they get their first taste of tea. At 10% tea / 90 % RO water, the plants were saturation watered. I’ll give them a couple days and then hit them up again with poop soup. I will slowly increase to ratio of Tea/RO water until they match up with the older plants at 50%.
I will also begin supplementing with foliar feeding in the next few days. Another recipe coming soon!
Here’s a Group Shot:
As always, thank you for your attention, and your comments and questions are always welcome.
-al
I’m definitely going to try your nutri recipe in a future grow! I’m loving the way you have things organized and figured out. Following this thread for sure!
Honestly,that review describes that strain in such a way that I am basically feeling obliged to get some of that to see what all this magic is all about. 
Foliar Spray
The seedlings are now old enough for a little boost - foliar spray.
At this stage in their development, the growth tip has put out at least a dozen rounds of shoots, and the cuticle is tough enough to handle some oils. The plants are lightening from explosive growth and tea limited nutrition, so some extra food through direct absorption is in order.
Disclaimer First: This is what I use. Your mileage may vary. You can harm your plants if made, used, or dosed incorrectly.
als Super Feed N Kill Foliar Spray Recipe
Into 1 Gallon of Reverse Osmosis Water add:
30 ml Plant Therapy Concentrate(peppermint oil)
30 ml Heavy 16 Foliar mix
5 ml Heavy 16 Fire
5 ml Super Thrive
Spray lightly. You do not need to drench the plants. Spray no more than every 3 days, you can damage the cuticle with a higher frequency. Spray the bottoms of the leaves first, and then lightly mist over the tops. Keep your fans and modern lights on. Do not spray just before any lights out period.
Looks like this:
I used to have a more complicated recipe, but this one is the result of many years of paring and testing. It will feed your plants raw sugars, micronutrients, Cal/Mag/Sulphur, the Vitamin B spectrum, and strengthen the cuticle and cell walls. All the while protecting against mites and powdery mildew.
The plant therapy concentrate is for the peppermint oil. It desiccates Spider mites and other critters, while altering the surface pH of the leaves to prevent mildew, and finally softening the cuticle to allow easier absorption of minerals and nutrients.
I have tried several commercial and home brews, and I was surprised how well the Heavy 16 mix duplicated the results of the best more complicated mixes. It obviously has some form of molasses brew in it that I have found universally effective.
The Fire adds MG/Cal/S complex.
The Super Thrive adds more kelp, vitamins, and minerals.
I use this spray pretty much everywhere. From seedlings to, in some cases, up to a week from harvest. You have to stay tuned to find out more secrets! This one is pretty significant. I’d say it’s worth an easy 10% yield increase overall - for just pennies and a few minutes effort. Your plants will visibly love it.
Thank you for your attention, and as always, your comments and questions are welcome.
-al
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.
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
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
-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
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
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
Always so informative and written so well, you’re practically writing a grow book right here, awesome work mate:+1:
