Those stems are vibrant…blood-filled 
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That’s awesome @Dirt_Wizard. I hope my Dragonsblood x A11g will be like that.
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Everyone in flower is looking great, the Chem D x BOO is a late stretcher and trying to catch up, but G-Unit keeps on getting bigger faster!
Should I put my card in this 
guys?
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Yea that ATM looks totally legit.
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Who’s e46 is that?
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Not mine! Someone who works at the recovery center that the old ATM is in the alley behind…
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Damn! Growing up quick 
Gorgeous and happy, love it. That G-Unit is flying, the Blueberry T1000 pacing itself for later 
Nice work
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G has the unfair advantage of being both a Tonygreen joint, which have been pretty reliably big and beefy so far, and it also got Osmocote topdressed at the beginning of flower to make up for its 15G pot vs the sisters in their 25Gs. It remains to be seen how slow release 15-9-12 works through flower but I’m gonna spike it with langbeinite just like the others in weeks 7-9 that stuff is 0-0-18. Basically I will be pushing this thing hard till the end, might have to make some eggshell vinegar calcium because Tony says these chew it up
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Just curious, why do that as opposed to soluble gypsum or something similar? I’m guessing the vinegar dissolves the Ca and neutralizes the acetic in the vinegar. Is that actually faster than the gypsum? Or just a DIY approach? I guess you avoid the additional S ions as well. I’ve read about eggshells in compost and soil but the breakdown is too long for a late flower supplement. Neat idea 
G-Unit hot rodding 
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So @FieldEffect it is definitely a DIY thing, and I could start with another form of calcium carbonate besides roasted eggshells, but I like reuse and recycling my home waste. This is a KNF technique called WCA or water-soluble calcium, basically you react a calcium carbonate with brown rice vinegar or any other acetic acid source to produce calcium acetate.
“ Eggshells contain mostly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and it dissolves easily in vinegar which is acetic acid (CH3COOH). The result is calcium acetate in solution and CO2. Calcium acetate is a soluble form of calcium. The acetate is an organic molecule that is easily decomposed by microbes leaving the calcium free for plants. This is sound chemistry and can be used to provide calcium for plants. If you also add Epsom salts you create a Cal-Mag mixture”
DIY Cal-Mag Fertilizer, vinegar and eggshells - does it work?.
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Awesome thanks for several new pieces of knowledge.
The KNF thing is mostly foreign to me. I’m coming to understand some of the underlying fundamentals just getting into the organics a lot, but it’s super interesting to take it that extra step. I’ll ease into that incrementally.
Your plants are inspiring! Great job taking care of them.
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Everyone should check out and contribute materials and ideas to this neat project @mufafa is doing, someone’s finally transcribing the dang podcasts!
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I did the eggshell thing and the dealbreaker for me was the inability to accurately measure dose.
Maybe I’m missing something but that was the killer on my end.
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Yeah I’m not sure how I’ll use it yet but probably weakly because of that concern, though I think there’s probably some sort of calculation assuming a starting weight of eggshell, I looked up the ASTM test method for calcium in solution, and it’s a little more white lab coat than I want to do, though the chemicals are common and not expensive: EDTA, sodium hydroxide, and another solution or two:
D511-14.pdf (123.1 KB)
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I got into moles and that shit and tuned out.
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Couldn’t you just assume the shell is almost 100% CaCO3 and use the fractional atomic weight of ~40% Ca to make a reasonable guess? Add vinegar according to starting mass of shell for controlled neutralization (one acetic acid per CaCO3). You’ll have a known volume of liquid with a known quantity of Ca. Hell, you could probably get away with more vinegar than you really need you’ll still know how much calcium should be in there. It should be pretty easy to dilute to the concentration you want from there
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See now that’s the sort of thing I was talking about!
Edit: just looked it up and eggshells are 38% calcium by weight, I don’t know yet what roasted are.
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Right, that’s easier than metering it out carefully. Just excess eggshells to react all the acetic acid. Cool.
I haven’t worked out the conversions but you can also calculate the amount of egg shells required to react a given amount of vinegar.
1L of 5% m/v vinegar is 0.83 Molar, implying you will need half that, 0.415 moles of Ca. CaCO3 is about 100g/mole, so you need AT LEAST 41.5g of shells to yield a liter of your 2.5% m/v Ca solution.
I only worked that out because I feel like that’s quite a bit of eggshells. And it may be easy to not have enough of them. I’ve never weighed them but I’d pay attention to it.
EDIT: Google says an eggshell is about 5-6 grams each. So, I expect 8-9 shells to disappear into 1L of 5% vinegar. Note this is based on the limited chemistry knowledge I had to gain for my soil amendments
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Today: I got an exciting new job, details to come…
Tomorrow: we pollinate!
Time to work through more of the packs of pollen @Radicle_Reefer traded to me, last time I did it too late I think and also my technique wasn’t good. This time I think I’m ready.
From this freezer selection:
I picked:
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