Growing Up North North (incorporating Bokashi Composting tech)

[NorthNorthNugs]

Over the weekend I dealt with the Bokashi Amended soil. It had been 4 weeks since I mixed it with the food scraps so it was time to mix it all together with some aeration and a few other dry amendments this time.

I’ll be honest. The food scraps weren’t as broken down this time around as the first time I did this in May. I’m honestly not too sure how to take that. Also, the smell of the soil was a lot stronger. Not putrid, but reminded me a lot of manure. People use manure to grow all kinds of stuff so this didn’t necessarily scare me but does have me a bit concerned that this run might be a fun learning experience. On the other hand, this might turn out amazingly! So I’m willing to see it through to the end. It’s just a few seeds and this will be a fun little experiment.

To the soil I added 1 part each of Alfalfa meal, Crab meal, Insect Frass and Kelp flour to 2 parts Rock Dust. For the rock dust I did a 50/50 split of Basalt - Huplaso and Soft Rock Phosphate. I got this ratio from a guide I saw online. They topped dressed with that ratio because they were growing no till style but I mixed mine into the soil. I also added rice hulls, pumice and about 4-5 cups of earth worm castings to the soil and thoroughly mixed everything by hand.

Once the pots were filled with the soil I sprinkled some inoculant on my cover crop seeds and sprinkled them on top of the soil and watered everything in. To the water I added 2ml per gal of EM1 (essential microbes) from Stepwell Super Soil. I also covered everything with hay and have been keeping the top of the soil moist the last few days to make sure everything germinates.

The new autos going in have been growing well and have been getting hardened off outside since Friday. I will transplant them in the next few days. Once the cover crop gets a few inches in height I’ll terminate the cover crop and top dress with my “Craft Blend” mix, earth worm castings and then water everything in with a compost tea. The tea will be made from EM1, castings, kelp flour, humic acid, alfalfa meal, insect frass and liquid fish fertilizer. I’m basically hitting this soil with ALL the beneficial microorganisms I have in my arsenal for the most diversification possible. If there are some bad organisms in the soil this will give the good guys their best shot of fighting them back and taking over.

[NorthNorthNugs]

Another little update on the Northern Lights Autos I harvested last week or so. Buds dried up really slowly due to the bud to leaf ratio on this one, the opposite of a “trimmers dream”. Lost probably about 10 grams to bud rot but was real careful you cut it all out. Still got a lot of useable bud though. Pulled about 6 oz from the 2 plants.

NL definitely has some thin leaf sativa qualities to her, thats for sure. Some of the nugs looked indica and some sativa… Can’t wait to try it. Frosty too!

I need to upload some pics of the Mephisto nugs… they are really beautiful! More to come!

[NorthNorthNugs]

Lastly, here are the 2 photoperiods in all their glory! The plan is still to extend the water lines and pull these two apart but I haven’t had time.

SxI on the left and PP on the right.

[CADMAN]

@NorthNorthNugs
You have done a fantastic job here start to finish congratulations… Your plants looks very happy and healthy… IMO your leaves look fine
It could be one of 3 things tho if I’ve missed something:
1 the newly amended soil takes time to feed the nutrients to the plant.
2 the plants could be pissed about being transplanted
3 leaves are showing normal signs of decay

I’ve noticed in a few of your photos atleast 1 plant has 2 toned leaves, so it could be genitcs as well. But as I said before, everything looks good to me. These photos are from today I’m assuming.?

[NorthNorthNugs]

Cheers @CADMAN!

Ya the photos from post #47 are from a few days ago. The most recent pics are in my other thread asking whats going on with the Leaves in the Sick Plants Category. Those are from a few mins ago.

[NorthNorthNugs]

Things are moving along here in the Northern Garden. I was able to give the Photoperiod plants more space and things are looking better. Flowers stacking up and still looking healthy with no pests.

Peach Puree seems to be yellowing out me. I posted another thread and the consensus seems to be either nitrogen deficient or simply senescence. I am noticing that Peach Puree is moving along quite a lot faster than Sherbert x Irene Kush. The flowers are forming faster and she’s yellowing out on the internal leaves and I expect her to have a faster finishing time. Nugs are forming beautifully on both plants though and it’s starting to get pretty stinky around the house lol…

PP:

SxI:

Using the milk crate as a step so I can scout the plants and take nug shots!

The two autos in the re-amended soil are coming along nicely. They have been fed with a compost tea and a then 3 days later with sprouted see tea that included some BioAg Full-Power Fulvic Acid and Silica. I hit them early this time with the LST and they have seemed to taken to the new pots well and are showing some vigor. So far so good! The stinky soil didn’t kill them so I am pleased. The soil smell has also subsided leading me to believe the good microbes took over. I just listened to a Shaping Fire podcast where they spoke about aerobic and anaerobic microbes and it blew my mind. I would definitely suggest checking it out. Basically, the take away is to have as much diversity in your microbiology as possible!

Here are some pics of the autos, Electric Quoolaide and Mango Sunrise. Excuse the leaf graveyard in the background lol

[NorthNorthNugs]

Some update shots. Crazy how fast the plants are maturing. Peach Purée has been concerning me a little bit. The inner leaves are really turning yellow at a fast pace but she is absolutely swelling her buds. So I’m thinking she’s just using everything in the storage leaves. Buds are looking amazing though and literally grow on a day to day basis. I’ve fed her extra magnesium sulphate, water soluble gypsum and potassium sulphate to keep up with her P and K usage. Also a bit of soy aminos for nitrogen.

Here’s Sherbert x Irene Kush stacking nicely:

[NorthNorthNugs]

Here are both autos in the re-re-amended soil. I’ve been hitting the pots with compost teas and sprouted seed tea, once each per week. They’re feeling a bit small for me but it’s still early. They’re both shooting out some pistils so it doesn’t look like I’m going to get the growth I was hoping for. Either way they’re growing well and looking healthy despite a small amount of transplant shock. I still haven’t been able to master the art of sowing indoors and transplanting outdoors quite yet but I’ll get there.

[NorthNorthNugs]

Lot’s going on in the North North Garden.

First off, the auto’s have exploded with growth in the last 7 days. I would attribute this to a pre-flowering stretch but still, it was a welcome change.

Peach Puree is yellowing out on me quickly and I can’t seem to stop it. I believe she is just finishing up really quickly and using all her stored nutrients but I also feel like I have a few deficiencies like nitrogen and most likely potassium among a few other small micro nutrient deficiencies. I checked the PH of the soil by taking a few samples from around the pot and shaking it up in distilled water. I got a 7.0 reading on my blue lab so I think it’s just that there are deficiencies in the soil. I’ve been slowly spoon feeding water soluble nutrients as not to over do it but she seems reluctant to stop. She’s getting extra doses of soy aminos, epsom salt, sulfate of potash and a freeze dried coconut water feeding. I may have to harvest her sooner than later but I also feel like she’s really close to being done. Trichomes are still mostly clear as of a few days ago so I’ll keep a close eye.

Plucked out a bit of bud rot.

Sherbert x Irene Kush is also showing some signs deficiency. After some research I believe it’s mainly magnesium combined with possibly a few other deficiencies. She’s also been spoon fed some sulfate of potash, epsom salts and TM7. Her leaves are a rich green colour so I’m just going to have to try to keep up with her magnesium, potassium and phosphorus uptake in the next couple of weeks to help these flowers beef up as much as possible.

It’s almost CROPTOBERRRRR!!! Hope you guys got your jars and gear all sorted out. That shit sells out fast.

More to come!

[NorthNorthNugs]

Fall is setting in quickly in the Northern Garden. I can’t take my eyes off these beauties!!! Sherbert x Irene Kush is starting to straight up blacken up on me and Peach Puree is going yellow, purple, red, etc etc… It’s a beautiful thing to witness.

Sherbert x Irene Kush

PP

I had to harvest a few buds off PP due to the fact that she got a bit damaged in the storm here last week and is suffering from a bit of bud rot in a few of her colas. All good though, buds are nearly finished and still a lot on the plant to pick through.

It gives me a chance to do a bit of an experiment and wet trim a few of the colas to see how they dry up and compare to the dry trimmed buds. This will good to determine how I will treat the rest of the plant at harvest. I snipped a single bud a few days before this and dried it for about 3 days and jared it. It actually smells like peaches!! No shit. Hopefully that comes through with the rest of the harvest. Getting really close with Peach Puree. I imagine I’ll have her down within the next 7-10 days. If she really is a 3:1 CBD:THC plant that has sativa qualities and finishes this early in the season I will more than likely keep her around for awhile and use her as potential breeding stock as all those attributes are great for what I have planned.

[CADMAN]

Great photos of your big fat plants. Congrats.
It’s always so nice to see the fruits of one’s labor.

[gramps]

As long as the buds are green and growing the yellowing fans are done and will start dropping imop .

[NorthNorthNugs]

Peach Puree has been officially harvested as of a few days ago. These large plants are a lot of work, no doubt! Took her down branch by branch due to limited drying space and took a tip for Ed Rosenthal and left little hooks at the bottom of the branches… worked a treat!

She was showing ample cloudy with about 10-20% brown trichomes. Weather was looking shitty for the following week so I decided to chop her. Sherbert x Irene Kush will get a least another week to mature.

Peach Puree puts on a nice show by harvest and I was obsessed with going up to check her out on the daily.

That is a shit ton of delicious cannabis.

All told it took me about 6 hours total to pre-trim all the fan leaves off the branches enough that it wouldn’t wreak havoc on my humidity levels in the drying room. Not a wet trim, I just like to remove all the long fan leaves or anything with a stem sticking out past the buds. I’m drying in my grow tent but also in the room the tent sits in. It’s sitting perfectly at 21C and 60% humidity so no need to create a enclosed environment for the buds.

6 long hours later… this is 1/3 of the fan leaves.

I’ll painfully maintain an average of 60% humidity using my dehumidifier and AC infinity fan on constantly set to level 5 with some AC from the house pumping into the room. If I could afford the expense and space for a portable AC unit I would but I’m working with what I got. Been a few days and she seems to be drying at an appropriate rate. I like to keep it a little higher than most at 60% for slower drying times. Typically it takes 7 days with this environment in my drying space, which I have found to be really ideal. When I get the buds in the jars I’m typically sitting at about 68% percent and I burp them down slowly to about 62% for the long cure. Seems to work out quite well in my situation.

Enjoying my last few days of freedom before I head to trim jail!

[NorthNorthNugs]

The last round of autos seems to be doing pretty well in the re-amended soil. I feel like I’m going to be cutting it really close with the timings on these ones but either way, it will help me dial in my timings for next year. I’ve been keeping up with the SST and worm casting teas weekly. Same general routine as with the other plants. They seem to be growing nice, showing a lot of trichome coverage early on so that has me excited. These are 50/50 hybrids so they are showing more sativa like qualities with longer fans and buds. The potential frost tho… got me looking forward to them filling out.

A few toppings with insect frass and grounded up malted barley keeps the microbes active and seems to be keeping the bugs away. For about $8 a bag of the insect frass I would have to say that this stuff has been a big part of my IPM and something I will continue in the future. The frass bolsters the plants SAR (system acquired resistance) and puts it in defence mode to build up immunity from pest attacks. It seems to be working nicely.

Pics are a span of about 10-12 days:

[NorthNorthNugs]

Trim Jail!

Just a little update for today. After a total of about 12-14hrs of trim jail I’m happy to announce that the Peach Puree is dry and in jars! The jars are a bit of a PITA for curing and I’m going to build a self curing system like in this video:

DIY: An Innovative, Automated Cannabis Curing System / Derek Gilman / Green Flower

I’m just waiting for some Gamma Seal lids to come in stock at my local grow store. I really think it’s a great way to store and cure cannabis and I already had most of the parts on hand.

Some pics of the trimmed buds.

Not a bad little score for one plant. I’ll be making a lot of tinctures and topicals with most of this stuff. Just experimenting really. I’m going to start a new thread so I can post all my musings.

Sherbert x Irene Kush was also taken down a few days ago. That’ll be in the next update. Gearing up for another few long nights in the trim jail cell…

[NorthNorthNugs]

Just a quick update on the auto’s in the bokashi amended soil and some thoughts…

Well I don’t believe I took into consideration that these two auto strains I am growing (Mango Sunrise and Electric Quoolaide both from Night Owl Seeds) lean more on the sativa side and are therefore not really digging this late summer/early fall weak sun and cooler temps. Overall though, I would say they are doing “not terrible”. Then again, if you were to ask me how I was doing and my response was “…not terrible” I don’t think you would think that I was doing that great lol. Although I suppose it’s not the most negative response… anyway the point here is that upon looking at my calendar I definitely didn’t consider that these would take a few weeks longer than my last strains and it probably wasn’t the best decision. I had a tentative harvest date for these plants this week but they are at least 2 weeks from being anywhere near finished at the level I would normally harvest them at. This really sucks because the plants are showing a really decent amount of trichome coverage and resin rails and I feel like with the proper sun energy and warmth these plants would be really exciting to grow! Plus they smell INCREDIBLE!! So I will say that I definitely haven’t done these plants any favours and looking back I feel like I definitely wasn’t thinking properly when I decided to grow these at this time of the year. We live and learn.

I will say though that the added aeration has done wonders for the plants but I probably added a little too much because I’m noticing a lot more run off with the same measurement of water when I feed the plants. I will most likely end up cutting back some of the bokashi compost soil into the mix to thicken it up a little next season.

Here’s Mango Sunrise:

Here’s Electric Quoolaide:

The first few pics of both were taken about a week after the last few pics. So not much growth on both but just a little. By the way these are filling out there’s going to be frost by the time I get anywhere decent with them IMO. We’ll see though… maybe they’ll fatten up magically but the cold weather is really ramping up here in the Northern Garden! Either way these will be used for edibles, topicals or probably still smoke some of it tbh haha… Was a fun little experiment but it seems my timing needs to be dialed in a little.

[NorthNorthNugs]

Sherbert x Irene Kush got the chop last week and is curing in jars. What a beautiful plant to grow. Not much of a bush maker and seems to really just want to grow straight upwards. She might benefit from a bit of scrogging. A bit of susceptibility to PM outdoors near the end of her life cycle on the lower branches, at least in my area she did. I would recommend a good defoliation from time to time on this one, at least for this particular pheno. Clip all those lower popcorn buds… pain in the ass. Although I have a good stash for edibles now!!

Here she is at chop:

Here are some harvest pics:

I did get a slightly seeded crop from both photoperiods. I was not able to locate any intersex traits on either plants so I’m assuming this is just some pollen that some asshole loss track of outside somewhere. Either way I’ll stash these seeds in the vault for a phenohunt at another time… might be some fire. The SxI seeds were especially large too when compared to the PP seeds. A small handful from each plant… could be something fun in there.

That about wraps it up for the photoperiods! The auto’s are outside freezing their tits off… time to give up on those I think unfortunately. They aren’t showing much growth at all. Will update on those and wrap up my thoughts about Bokashi composting in a future post.

[ReikoX]

Looks like a very successful season.

[NorthNorthNugs]

Definitely! I have more than enough to play with as I experiment with some of the extractions/topicals that I’m learning about from your tincture thread. Spread some around to family and friends! And a lucky OGer will get a nice gift basket from the Secret Santa gift exchange!

[NorthNorthNugs]

Here’s an update on the Night Owl Auto’s, Electric Qoolaide & Mango Sunrise, that finished up this Fall.

The were taken down on October 30th. Definitely could have used some warmer weather and stronger sunlight hours. When I decided to run these strains as my second crop I did not take into account these factors. Keeping that in mind when you look at the pictures, these plants are actually really frosty, beautiful and they smelled amazing! Very tropical, pleasant and fruity with a hazy, peppery spice on the back end. I have never really grown out more sativa leaning phenos but they were a pleasure to have around. I will do these justice and either grow them again indoors or at the beginning of the season outside next summer.

The Mango Sunrise started to darken up on me and just looked killer at chop:

The Electric Qoolaide with it’s bright, lime green leaves served as a nice contrast to the frosty trichomes covering the bud:

I chopped the plants and hung them whole for one week. I decided not to do a full trim on these and allowed them to dry with their fan leaves intact and will trim prior to consumption. The smells coming out of the jars are incredible. The Electric Qoolaide smells straight up like stale cheese puffs. Just a really delicious, rich, musky, cheesy smell smacks you in the face when you open the jars. Totally unexpected! The Mango Sunrise is straight mango and spice! Like if you dried a mango and put pepper or cayenne on it or something… really nice. I have not tried either as of yet!

Smoke reports on the others to come.

Mango Sunrise after hang dry:

Electric Qoolaide:

Overall Thoughts on Bokashi Composting:

I would say this has been a good learning experience for me. I’ve learned how to turn food scraps into food for my soil and that is great, however, I don’t think I’ll be growing directly in the Bokashi amended soil moving forward. I believe that this soil would be better utilized as a compost to incorporate into a soil mix or used as a top dressing or however you would use earth worm castings. In the future I will use it to make teas and to generally feed the microbes in the soil when I see fit. I think this is a really great way for organic growers to add organic material into their soils and a way to reduce food waste going into landfills or otherwise and would encourage everyone to get on board with it. At the very least learn how to make your own Bokashi Bran and use it to inoculate your soils by top dressing or otherwise.

I’ll be back to wrap this thread up with some smoke reports!