Been way too busy, will eventually add and clean this thing up. Started this response in another thread and decided, “what the hell, might as well start my own garden thread” under a new topic.
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Layout: 4X4’ alcove, walls and a side reflective panel painted with Behr’s Ultra White latex enamel which has a LRV, or Light Reflectance Value of 94.4. ViparSpectra KS5000, now on 75%, 18" above the plants. Great light!
Seeds soaked overnight, sowed the next day. Plants: 3 Afghaan 90 X Master Kush 90, 1 Cannacopia Lapiz Mtn. indica, 1 Sensi Hindu Kush, 1 Deep (Freak) Chunk indica (very stunted for while), 2 Maui Wowie probably original Mexican stock from Oaxaca.
I made the mistake of leaving my faves in my cups WAY too long and sure enough, they sat there stunted with some lower leaf drop on a couple. I knew what was wrong but with the holidays and such… Algae growing along the rootball was eating the food, primarily N and they were severely pot bound.
They were upcanned to MicroKote treated pots Xmas day in my custom Soil – sand, vermiculite, BM7 soil less potting soil, 1 cu. ft. Landscaper’s Pride pine bark mulch/fines, blood meal, bone meal, alfalfa nuggets, gypsum. The slop is not a rebound from eating too much spicy Mexican food, it’s a slop made from soaking a qt. of small horse nuggets aka alfalfa, in a bucket of water and using it as a soil moisturizer/nutrition. Alfalfa contains triacontanol, a growth hormone. Alfalfa Tea - The Garden Academy
As I finished the upcanning I worked in about a TB of Osmocote Indoor-Outdoor Plus into the top inch of soil for the 2 - 3 gallon pots. I bury them as deep as possible, sometimes removing the cotyledons and burying them up to the first true leaves. This will increase root mass, and when it comes to growing plants it’s all about the roots, PERIOD. I love this stuff, buy it by the 50# bags, use it on everything - field grown seedlings, greenhouse tropical fruit trees (citrus, avocado, mango, annona, pineapple), herbs, maters, etc. 15-9-12 with micros. Osmocote 5 - Next Gen Controlled Release Fertilizer Technology | ICL Blog
Maui Wowie started later. 2 seedlings are Juliet grape tomato.
Plants almost doubled over night. I’ve got 2 stretchy ones in veg. Will experiment with a Paclobutrazol app, probably go about 4 ppm as a soil drench.
Potted them up in a MicroKote treated pots and in a couple of days they’ve almost doubled in size with a fine color. The algae was pretty thick. Moral of the story - there is a good reason why nurseries use black pots as their standard.
Original experiment with Griffin’s Spin–Out, spray cans. How can I use Spin-Out for chemical root pruning?
Only painted an X this time, not the entire surface.
Today:
The middle one, Deep Chunk, did not grow for a couple of weeks. it’s now snapped out of it.
Maui Wowie seeds germed about 2-3 weeks after the others - left and right, back row. They were potted up “wearing” juvenile single leaves and since the 25th have grown this much.
Grow hard,
Uncle Ben
