Finally ramped up the nerve to start a grow journal. I figured it was best to document the soil I am using which is loosely based on Coot’s.
Anyway, specs of the hardware first. I was using a 3x3x6 tent which I found lacking in height and so have moved my grow into a 35x78x96 closet. I am running 600w HID in a cooltube, using 15G hard pots to which I’ve had to add more drainage holes.
Soil mix is as follows:
50% Promix HP
50% EWC into which I added perlite to give it a consistent fluffiness as the Promix although I could have used more.
As for amendments (per cu.ft.):
1 c blood meal
1 c bone meal
2 c kelp meal
1 c alfalfa meal
1 c ground eggshell
1 c oystershell flour
1/2 c dolimitic lime
1/2 c mineralized phosphate.
This was moistened with LAB and left alone for ~3 weeks. The first cycle went fine although the PP hermied on me.
For the current 2nd cycle I top dressed with Neem meal, Karanja cake and ground malted barley, moistened with LAB then lightly watered with molasses tea once.
Both were sprouted in peat pots filled with used soil. Now that I know the soil can germinate without any deficiencies or toxicities, I think I will try sowing future seeds into their final pots. It should work as long as I can manage my watering practices. Also using timothy hay for mulch as I can’t find a source of straw in the quantity I need.
It also helps in fungus gnat control. In fact I layered crushed eggshells (~1/4" size) and covered with hay. I won’t ever get rid of them since they’ve been here before I moved in but this keeps them under control. Only downside is you need to eat a lot of eggs.
In the past month, I manage to find some rotten wood off a still-living ash tree which I scooped up along with some “dirt” and leaves. The rotten pieces I had taken crumbled almost like dust when I rubbed it. I had in mind to amend my soil wih it (just for a little something extra) but decided against it seeing as how my current mix was performing.
Then I spied an ad from the local equestrian center for composted pony-poop. Although there were clumps of un-digested hay mixed in, it crumbled readily and smelled really nice and “earthy” if there is such a word. So now I have a worm bin. I just used shredded newspaper for a base then lightly broke up the bigger chunks and added the rotten wood. My thinking is that the hay could serve as greens while the wood takes care of the brown portions. I don’t exactly know the proportions but I scooped up about 2G of manure and 1G of wood. Sprayed lightly with LAB then moistened with water. Hopefully I can get my worm count up so that I don’t have to buy them.
if the gnats get super irritating, I find a layer of sand on the surface prevents them from laying eggs. I know it’s not very convenient, but it works good.
Diatomaceous Earth on the soil and lots of yellow sticky traps right above the soil to trap the adults as they emerge so they never get to lay eggs keeps the counts way down too.
HaHa. Spell check says I spelled diatomaceous wrong and for a repair it only offers Semiautomatics. Must be an american dictionary. lol
I have a 1.5lb bag of food grade DE in my hand that says my spelling is fine.
I’ve taken a couple of clones from her. Now all I need is a male from either the Afghani or GDP or I could try my hand at CS treatment and see if I can get some feminized seeds. Here’s hoping. I think an 8 week veg period would give me enough headroom.
@LabRat, I’ve used D.E. before and found it really did nothing other than piss them off. It needs to be dry to be effective and once wet, dries to a hard crust. The eggshell layer underneath the straw has been the most effective for me.
Cheers.
When I’ve used DE for a top dressing I water from the bottom to keep the DE dry. Damn fungus gnats get in and out of the f’n drain holes too the sneaky little bastards. I’ve tried using it in a spray bottle so it dries on the leaves but didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the thrips. Never tried it on mites.
I’ve been making CS for 10 years and never did try it to re-sex a girl. I’ve got STS now so will be playing with that over the winter. I’ve been pollen chucking for almost 20 years and would like to make some fem seeds and crosses of my fave ones.
I had some DE success keeping root maggots out of the broccoli. When it dries to a crust they can’t lay eggs in cement ;). Saturate the ground and plant with BTK it kills thrips. Never thought of using a layer of ground up eggshells! Used to use that on slugs, but found uhh btk kills them easier. Stuff doesn’t kill gnats though. I wonder if bti would kill em? ooo and I’m off to test that hypothesis!
So…a new member decided to show up, a Grand Daddy Purp which I had lost hope in trying to germinate using my tried and true methods. This time I just scuffed up the seed, let it sink in water and once the shell cracked open, planted into a peat pot with used soil. It took two days.
So far so good. No complaints other than heat in the high 80’s with humidity in the mid 40’s. Not ideal but it’ll have to do as I can’t really justify or afford an A/C unit. I may have mis-calculated my veg time with the Afghani.
Cheers.
I think it’s working as the leaves never showed any signs of heat stress. I don’t know what the heat will do with the final outcome as it went on for about 2 weeks.
Flowering update week 7+ Afg. Foxtails are really evident now possibly causing a delay in plant maturity. The bottom branches seem to be ripening faster than the upper colas.
Trich development is minimal as is the scent. Any idea how much potency I lost? The buds feel heavy enough. It’s actually getting top heavy I’ve had to secure the main from leaning too much.
In contrast, here’s the Punch Pie in its second week. More trichs and scent though it did suffer through that heat wave during veg under LED.
So the Afghani came and went. As I predicted,did not put out the best output. Although the colas seemed bushy, they were light and airy, devoid of scent and trichs. Disappointing to say the least but at least now I know the limits of my environment and have made some changes.
I am now growing in 7G pots filled with a new batch of homemade soil. But the biggest change was moving from the HID to the TS1000. I know it is under-powered for my space which is about 3’x5’ but I wanted to see its limitations before I commit myself to higher powered version or more of the same power output. I am leaning towards the latter as it would give me flexibility in light arrangement.
So this is where I am at. Afghani I (open pollinated from male) at Week 5:
