FDM Cinderella Mix, and a few friends too

[Howard.Crane]

Day 16, Seedling Stage

Got my new Floraflex pots yesterday. Given that the strains I’ve got going right now are likely to have a pretty significant stretch and I’m very limited in available height, it looks like my best option is automated drip-to-waste. I’ll be setting that up in the tent over the next couple of days as time allows.

Two days since my last photos isn’t really enough to see much of a difference, but I snapped some pics anyways, so…

There’s not a lot of distance between the tops of the tallest plants and the 150W CFL I’ve currently got in there, which is a bit surprising given how young the plants are. The lighting I had in there before got repurposed and I only had the CFL handy at the time so I threw it in, and it’s looking to me like the corners of the cab are pretty dark. I’m not getting the kind of light coverage I want in that cab, so I ordered a new HLG 100 Quantum Board light to replace it. That should be here in a few days, and I’m really looking forward to getting it in place.

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Topped the four tallest plants, which had five nodes. Normally I would wait longer to do that, but I’m worried about vertical space right now. I’m also worried about them shadowing their neighbors, which looks like it’s already starting to be a problem. The new light can’t get here fast enough for me

[Meesh]

They look gorgeous! Nice job!

[Howard.Crane]

@Meesh

They look gorgeous! Nice job!

Thank you, I appreciate kind words

[Howard.Crane]

I ended up getting two new HLG Quantum 100 boards. One will go in the veg cabinet, and I think I’m going to try a run with one replacing one of my DIY cob lights. It’s 95w versus the 110w of my lights, but I really want to see how it performs. I can always swap back when and if I decide I like the cobs better for this setup.

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In other news, it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any sort of automated watering or feeding this round. I’ve got somewhere around 20lbs of Megacrop on hand that I want to use up, and as much as I like the stuff it is absolutely not suitable for use in a reservoir. I’ve been using it in the recirculating feed system in the veg cab, and as much as I like it even the new 2.0 formulation gets funky within three or four days in the rez. So screw it, I’ll be hand watering this time.

I ordered a set of the Floraflex caps anyways as I figure that they’ll be handy even when hand-watering, and as you can see in the pic above I won’t have any room for cover mulch after transplanting the seedlings from their Solo cups into the Floraflex pots. I figure that because they sit on top, the Floraflex caps will be the best way I have available right now to slow evaporation.

I might go back to Jacks 3-2-1 after this run, we’ll see. I’ve got at least a year’s supply of that stuff on hand too, and although I like the Megacrop results better it may be that convenience will win out in the end.

[Howard.Crane]

Day 21 Seedling Stage: New Veg Light

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Got the new HLG 100 light installed in the veg cab. It was a pain in the ass to get installed, but so far I’m extremely pleased with it. The new light is way brighter than the previous light (of course), and has much better coverage for the area (also of course). There are no longer dark corners in the back, and there’s a bit more headroom for the plants. Thank goodness, because it looks like I’m going to need it.

Bit busy this morning, so just gonna drop some pics for now.

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I handled the plants a bit rough moving them in and out of the cab today, so there are some bent petioles and leaves that weren’t like that before I started

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I hope this light is not too bright for these little plants, lol. They are accustomed to much less light. The pics don’t capture how bright it is in there, I guess my camera doesn’t have a high dynamic range. It’s as bright as the flower tent.

[beacher]

They’ll love it, the intensity should keep the node spacing short too.

[Howard.Crane]

The Solo cups felt pretty light this morning when I pulled the plants out to install the light, so I changed the timer to increase the number of waterings from twice a day to three times a day. They’ve already had two waterings today, and I just checked a couple of minutes before the third, and most of them were light again. I never let coco dry out, but they were very light in weight, so I feel pretty confident they can handle it.

[Howard.Crane]

Also, several of these plants are seriously branchy for being so young. This is a very good thing

Got the ghetto cloner all bleached out and cleaned up, and I’m ready to take clones at the earliest opportunity. So far I’ve gotten a nearly perfect strike rate with this DIY bubble cloner, and I’m looking forward to grabbing some cuts ASAP.

[Howard.Crane]

I’ve decided that I am going to cull one of the FDM C99 Mix plants. It’s never looked sufficiently healthy, in my opinion. It’s growing slightly slower than the others, and is quite pale in comparison. I don’t know what it is about this plant that doesn’t like the same treatment every other plant is getting, and I don’t much care. This is a seed run, and if any plant can’t play nicely with all the others, it’s not what I’m looking to propagate.

Having decided that, I’m lazy and probably won’t get around to the actual culling until Monday

Out of the eight seeds I’ve popped from that pack so far, it’s currently looking like I’ll end up with four. That’s not great, and I’m rather disappointed. Of the rest of the pack, several seeds were already passed over for this run because they look immature and of dubious viability.

I don’t know at this point if I’m going to follow this round with another round of seeds from that pack or revisit my favorite Haze line and come back to the FDM later.

[Howard.Crane]

@beacher

They’ll love it, the intensity should keep the node spacing short too.

I think it might have been a bit too much to triple the light intensity at 12" from the tips instantaneously. They are looking like it’s hitting them pretty hard today, lol.

I don’t have any way to acclimate them properly, either. I cannot raise the light, although I guess I can turn it off for a while each day.

I will think on it and see how they look in the morning. I may just have to move them into the tent for now, where I have a great deal more control.

I’m sure it will work great for new starts that can get acclimated properly, so I’m still pretty stoked about the light

[Howard.Crane]

“Add ‘spliff’ to dictionary?”

Don’t know how that slipped by me, lol.

[Meesh]

@Howard.Crane

I don’t know what it is about this plant that doesn’t like the same treatment every other plant is getting, and I don’t much care. This is a seed run, and if any plant can’t play nicely with all the others, it’s not what I’m looking to propagate.

Having decided that, I’m lazy and probably won’t get around to the actual culling until Monday

You totally crack me up!

[Howard.Crane]

I would have preferred to wait a week or two, but my schedule for next week is pretty crazy and I don’t think they’ll wait until the week after in such cramped quarters, so…

Day 26, Transplanting Seedlings

I transplanted all of the seedlings, including the two late starts, into the Floraflex pots this morning. I started by filling the pots with coco, and leaving a Solo cup in place as the placeholder. Then I remove the placeholder, leaving a perfect hole for the plants:

Then I pop the plant out of the Solo cup and inspect the roots. I love coco roots, can’t get enough of 'em:

I’m still questioning the use of mycos for growing in coco, since mycos reportedly don’t do well with the high amounts of P in most coco nutes, but I’ve got some on hand for the veggie garden so I’m going to try it. It might be moot since there’s trichoderma also, but that’s okay. I’m definitely 100% sold on them in organic soil gardening, however.

Since I’ve got the roots conveniently exposed, and mycorrhizae need to actually be in contact with roots in order to propagate, I sprinkled some directly on the roots at transplant time. I’m using Xtreme Gardening Mykos, which is 100% Glomus intraradices. Lots of products include multiple types of mycos, but this is the only one you need. If a product has five different types of mycos, four of them are probably filler as far as we’re concerned

I do this over the plug hole, so some will always fall into there as well.

I don’t normally bother with this stuff, but this time I decided to water them in with some Recharge. I think the stuff is overpriced and not particularly useful for me most of the time, but there was a good price on what is effectively a sample pack:

I had put a full packet into a gallon of fertigation solution and bubbled it for a few hours. Reminds me a bit of making ACT when I was growing organic, lol.

Then I plopped them in place and watered them in with the Recharge “tea”, placed the Floraflex caps on, and placed them in the tent.

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Did I mention that I like coco roots? I may not win any awards with these, but in my opinion these are pretty good roots for plants that sprouted less than a month ago.

[Mr.Sparkle]

… and update? , feed my feasting eyes lol.

very healthy roots.

[Howard.Crane]

Heh. Busy days lately. Thanks for reading along!

Two of the FDM plants appear to be male, and I only need a few good branches left on each, so even though they are not quite a month old yet I took three cuttings from each and placed them in the DIY bubble cloner. I want to make sure that I can harden them off and acclimate them to the new HLG 100 veg light as early as possible, so I know what to expect before it’s time to clone any females that present themselves.

One of those cuttings is a quad-foliate branch, for whatever that’s worth. I expect it will grow out of that, since it was the only branch on the plant like that, but time will tell.

Both males are branchy and fast growing, and are currently at seven nodes. I rather like the look of one of them, I’m excited to see how it’s going to mature.

No pictures at the moment, I’m too fried from medical appointments to take any. Will try to do a fully illustrated update tomorrow

[Howard.Crane]

Day 31, Cloning “dry run”

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For cloning I use a 2.5 gallon Rubbermaid container, primarily because it fits on the shelf where I had a little bit of room for it and is big enough to hold eight small cuttings.

I just drilled eight holes with a hole saw and used 2" net pots with foam inserts to hold the cuttings. There’s a 3.3 L/min air pump which runs to two 2" airstones for aeration, which keeps the water movement at about halfway to the “rolling boil” stage in this size of a container. The translucent part of the container is wrapped in reflective insulation, and there’s a 24 watt fluoro tube light mounted above it. Super simple, super cheap, and as effective as I need it to be. I just plug in a cutting and LITFA until it has roots, in most cases.

I didn’t spend a lot of time picking out cuttings here, because these are just throwaways from suspected males that I’m using for a test run before the real fun begins. I just needed something quick that I can root and transplant into Solo cups to assure myself that I can acclimate them properly.

With decently vigorous strains, I typically see them start to root in five to seven days. Temps and humidity might be a problem this time, but I’m optimistic at this point that these will be showing roots by Monday after next.

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It’s not as obvious in these photos as I’d like, but this is the quad-foliate male cutting:

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Turns out that today’s going to be busier than I thought, but I will still try to get an update on the plants in at some point if possible.

[Baudelaire]

Your “quad-foliate” is likely a Generals Daughter cross. Something in the G13 shows up in whorled phyllotaxy fairly frequently. Shantibaba has noted the tendency in his G13x Skunk crosses. It’s recessive, so it won’t likely be expressed in progeny. -b420

[Howard.Crane]

@Baudelaire

Your “quad-foliate” is likely a Generals Daughter cross. Something in the G13 shows up in whorled phyllotaxy fairly frequently. Shantibaba has noted the tendency in his G13x Skunk crosses. It’s recessive, so it won’t likely be expressed in progeny. -b420

Ah, cool. Thanks for the info, much appreciated!

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FDM C99 Mix, Plant #1, Day 32

Here’s what the rest of him looked like this morning:

The branch I took for cuttings was the only branch expressing this trait, but I only noticed that after I cut the branch off as it was somewhat hidden by a neighbor. You can see exactly where it came from in that first pic, lol.

I’m loving the morphology and vigor of this particular plant, pretty stoked to put that pollen to good use.

[Howard.Crane]

FDM C99 Mix, Plant #2, Day 32

This plant has some pretty strong funk for being so young. Even just brushing it causes it to release a noticeable scent, and the stem rub smells really good. The pics I took don’t properly capture how branchy this thing is. It really wants to take up all the room you can give it.

[Howard.Crane]

FDM C99 Mix, Plant #3, Day 32

This is generally the most perky plant in the tent. Seems happy to be hanging out with the rest of its Royal Court relatives, just chilling out and soaking up the rays.

Wants to be bushy as can be, though. Time for some selective pruning, I think