thanks for a spot in your grow my friend.
very cool …
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They showed off some pretty colors along the way, but it does look like they’re on their way to a nice recovery. 
With all those varieties you’re growing at so many different stages, you’ve got your hands full!
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You’ll have a place in my grow for a long while, friend. I’m at a place where I’d like to gather experience with different cuts and keep it moving but will pretty much always have something of yours going. At the end of the day, I have to balance trying to do this as a career and profession while also doing it for meds. I’ve got a chronic bone condition that results in some niiice pain. I’ve found longer flowering plants, high thcv, and strong Hindu and Thai lineages seem to help me most…constant battle of wanting to dig through things that help me the most while exploring the more modern and popular crosses that people rave about.
Have sweet and sour Cindy pollen on the way from DD… am most definitely going to hit a few branches of the fritter with it and pass those out to anyone who wants to help dig through them. Should be a fun, cindy heavy mix. Won’t be ready for probably 3-4 months.
Thanks @MrGreenJeans !! Ya know the first day or two, I was like…okay. this isn’t the end of the world. Looks kinda cool… but that ‘kinda cool’ look faded quickly and then I was just met with annoyance when I saw them. Fast forward to now and they’re growing how I expect 
tense 10-12 days even though the world is not ending. And you’re right! It can be a headache to have 10ish varieties going, but labels help, being lax helps and having decent(maybe?) canopy management allow me to let it roll. I really enjoy the write ups you do over in your log and the details you give to each update. Very well worded and your passion is so very evident…I hope yours dry up nicely, my friend.
I’m going to make an attempt to start keeping/breeding predatory mites! Going to try for a. Swirskii and p. Persimilis in petri dishes. Because I mix so much soil outside, compost outside and regularly bring in soil from various places to add to compost and things, I’d like to have some defense to fall back on in case I bring in mites or thrips and would really like to avoid any late term sprays again. So look out for updates on those in probably the next 6-8 weeks.
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21 gallons more of soil has been made 
I’ve been noticing some transplant stress on a few plants so I spent time looking at and playing with my mix yesterday.
The compost must be getting a little hot as my runoff initially was 7.0ph and 1.5ec. Flushed it down to .9-1.0 EC.
My pH is also a touch higher than I’d like it but I’m not wildly concerned as I just mixed this up and it will likely float down. Regardless, I’ll check it again in a week or two and if it hasn’t dipped back down to 6.7ish runoff or so, I may add some something. Under the microscope there is still an abundance of diversity, so we seem righteous there.
Tossed in:
A smidge or rock phosphate,
Slightly bigger pinch of potassium sulfate,
Ventana commercial microbes,
Better organix bio media pro,
Some kelp flour(I know I’ve talked a little shit but it’s on hand…and it is loaded with shtuff)
Fermented oats with raw goat milk(my own thing)
Pine needles at roughly 1:5 compared to coco/compost
Coco - 3 or 4 bricks
Compost - 5-7 gallons worth
Hydroton - what felt right
Put two clones right into the mix and they show no stress signs this morning so I’m pretty positive the transplant stress was from all the nutrients the compost seems to be holding. Keep keeping on, OG.
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Always weird seeing rain puddles in early January - though next week should feel more “normal” for this time of year. I should probably mix some soil while it’s semi-warm still as well.
Very cool. Hope you attempt to log it here, that sounds very interesting! One of the entomologist / bug guys told me the way they do it commercially is on pole beans. I guess Persimilis will always attempt to climb up and so they can use that to their advantage for harvesting. Not sure how they actually harvest them but found it interesting.
Did you have any specific resources you’re leaning on for the petri dish route? Sounds interesting for sure.
E: typo climb
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Yes… yes it is. The early darkness and windy, wet cold weather make me want to just stay inside, but I figured it wasn’t going to get much nicer and the soil won’t mix itself. Also have to fill up the flower tent come February so it needed done.
I like that idea! I didn’t realize they just tend to climb up. Interesting cats. I looked at keeping a small tent with a spider mite infested plant and a vivarium of persimilis where you just drop infested leaves into the vivarium.
What I’m going to try is to use cotton pads for moisture and either pine or bee pollen as a food source. You can distribute a pack of them amongst 4-5 dishes with pollen and then lid them up. After a few days/weeks you’ll see them start to party, apparently. I’ve read that they enjoy the pollen and it doesn’t hurt their hunger for mites when they do become present. You can put Vaseline or something slick like that on the tops of the petri dishes to contain them without lids, but I’ll probably try with lids at first. So long as you keep them fed and environment right, they can keep almost indefinitely. I like this because I won’t need to keep spider mites in my place constantly and you can also just set a petri dish at the base of issue plants and let them be free.
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Any thoughts on pine needles vs fir needles vs western red cedar tree sheddings? I am thinking of adding some to my soil mix to help lower pH.
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I’d love to hear more about your microscope adventures and how you check that compost. Man, keep the updates coming! Happy growing!
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Western red cedar is good for pest prevention, as far as I recall. When it comes to the needles, I’d say they’re fairly interchangeable. Also I’d have to go do some digging to prove this but they won’t lower your pH too much. They are themselves sort of acidic, but they don’t really break down and acidify your soil the way many think. Over time(years) they will add to the acidity, but it’s not a quick process by any means.
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What’s up @FloydUjamie 
happy to see you drop in. I’ve got a camera coming in February for the microscope and will throw up more pictures than are welcome when the time comes. I’m definitely a hobbyist and have lots to learn, but luckily there is a lot of information to sift through out there. Much of what I’ve learned has come from Elaine Ingham and her soil biology/miscroscopy course work.
@JoeCrowe is no slouch, either. I do suggest seeing the microscopy thread and his hash making thread 
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Hmm. I think I can shortcut the “over time” thing what I’ve got is many years of accumulated duff under some trees in my yard and neighbors. I can scoop the composted stuff preferentially, and in that case I’ll go for what’s under the arborvitae hedge, because those plants won’t miss it like the trees might. I’m thinking bring it in the warm house and keep it in a tub for a month so any spider mites or thrips wake up and then starve to death. Other ideas welcome though - I appear to finally be pest free indoors and I really really want to keep it that way.
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Hell yeah! Hah obviously if you just water through some of what you intend to use and it’s pH is cool, then I say go for it! I don’t have any surefire ways to sterilize outside inputs. I’ve read all kinds of different things but generally rely on cleanliness and beneficials to help me out there. I’ve found that when I don’t put the plants through more than they can handle, they seem to have really excellent pest resistance. It’s usually when I’ve messed up that bugs start to win battles. When I get these swirskii and persimilis all ready, you’ll be one of the first people to receive some 
More microcosmos from me to you
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brew some plant juice with a week of fermenting. I’ve never seen things like powdery mildew survive that process.
Hell, yah! I can’t wait to see some photos!
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Ew. 
Yep, sounds effective. I sprayed with skim milk and had 100% defeat if powdery mildew last time. Outdoors I’ve used “live” coconut vinegar to kill various fungal things on my fruit tree leaves. That’s a lot like your fermented fruit juice. I bet the folks are right who theorize that the living microorganisms in those things, combined with the acid pH, take out the powdery mildew. I have a pretty resilient organic system nowadays, but it tends to reach “balance”, and I feel the need for “zero” on the thrips, spider mites, and scale 
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Well, I use anaerobic decomposition so it kills everything including weed seeds. I don’t think I’ve seen something survive that process!
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Counted my chickens before they hatched! Hah! Both of these Eternal Sunshine turned out boys. Along with one more WMBK. Perhaps me really wanting them to be ladies has clouded my judgement on calling things early. Nice plants, too. 6 more seeds to drop here in the near future with some other long flowering things… onward!
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Oh man. This kind of stuff where local grow pals would be fun. If you lived down the street you could rehome those boys right here and I’d have some fun with them.
Hope your next batch give you more girls! 
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Thanks! I do wish I had a little more space to continuously play with the boys. That sounds weird. If I could give them away to those who want them, that’d be even better! Lol
I left them both in the veg tent. Probably going to kill one and clone the other then kill it. I loved the way the smaller sunshine grew and it may find its way into a breeding scheme eventually, but I’ll dig through the other 6 seeds before making those decisions. My love for long flowering buds must wait…that’s okay.
Got tails on all the BBPS and the chem d x cheese so we will have more stuff to look at shortly.
Just throwing this down for those who question reusing soil from a 4-6 week old plant. The wmbk was a boy so I pulled it out and put a Ginger grant f1 in its place! Soil smelled great. I’ve done this lots but will update how it does 
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They all woke up! Had to go in and play doctor on @JAWS helmet head baby, but luckily looks like they’ll come around. Those were all big and tough shells on the cheese x chem d. Off to the races we are!
3/3 on the BBPS @JohnnyPotseed . Thanks for the magic beans! Hope to do them right.
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Scarlet grapes really putting out some pretty structure and looking like they’ll stack into some nice little nugs. With 9 of them total, it may be a pretty nice pull of them. This is my first time ever running autos, to be truthful. And they are doing so well I almost regret dropping them all. Will have to bug those auto boys for some more…
20 days left on the bigger girls. Going to let the crasher go 10 weeks but am pulling fritter and bubba at 9. Uniform buds all over for everyone. Mostly excited to get them out of there and rearrange a bit and get a bunch more stuff down. Last shot is just one of the 2 fritters into I threw in flower a few days ago. Really love how quickly it grows and it’s upright but branchy structure. Not really counting this run as representative of these three varieties because of some of the environmental struggles they went through, so I’ve gotta do them again 
but the smells are coming in crazy. I came up from messing with them and my partner said “woah. Blast from the past you smell like hubba bubba…exactly.” so that’s fun. Not sure if it’s from the crasher or bubba, but I think mostly crasher. It’s unbelievable how sweet it smells. The bubba smells almost exactly like tablahuasi coffee if anyone’s familiar. Some gas is coming in more with some light chocolate notes but smells like good soil with good coffee and a sort of clean gas going on. Included is just a quick top shot of the 15 gal pot with the wmbk and the grapes. Excited to keep rocking.
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