Seeds look fantastic!
The general consensus here is 6 weeks minimum from pollination so you nailed that.
Cheers
G
7 Likes
The little auto that wasn’t
I want to take this opportunity to derail my own topic. The following has nothing to do with lophophora and does not take place in my bathroom.
I have never before grown any auto plants until somebody recently blessed me with a blueberry auto. From the day the plant first appeared in my yard it was different, sporting three fingered and disfigured leaves, and baffling growth patterns. At seven weeks I see no signs of flower. I’m confident the original grower planted autos as I saw his plants from the same seeds earlier today and they are certainly flowering.
Is it possble that childhood trama prevented this plant from flowering? Can auto plants re-veg themselves? Is it likely that this plant will respond to photoperiod changes and flower in autumn?
I figure the 5 gallon pot is sufficient to flower an auto for 8 weeks but I’m starting to second guess the pot size as the 8 week mark looms on the horizon. Would this pot see a plant through to October? Would it be best to transplant straight into the ground? The soil in the yard has lots of clay and rocks, but the weeds seem to thrive with no problems.
There is also the option of just administering a bunch of LITFA and allowing nature to take it’s course. I’m not on any schedule and this unexpected orphan plant has already exceeded all of my expectations.
If any of the seasoned auto growers here have any insights or advice to share it would be greatly appreciated.
16 Likes
I’ve heard that some plants that haven’t been fully line bred to be autos might have the occasional photo plant in its seeds. Likewise, an auto female that was hit by pollen from a photo male will probably a mix of auto & photo plants in the offspring.
Did your friend get these auto seeds from a breeder or did he make them himself?
3 Likes
The seeds were purchased from a breeder as auto seeds.
My buddy has already harvested one of his plants from the same batch, and based on the dates provided to me the plant is supposed to be ready in five days. I suppose I just got the black sheep of the bunch, makes for a unique first-time auto experience.
5 Likes
Out with the old
Took down three ladies last night. The purple looking plant was a mystery seed I found while cleaning. I suspect it could have been one of the chocolate seeds but that is as much certainty as I can offer. This particular bud is surprisingly dense and smells reminiscent of roasted coffee.
The other two plants (only one of which is pictured- they look the same) came from what I thought was a sweet tooth (Pictured two weeks into flower) that turned hermaphrodite and left me with many surprise seeds. These plants have a citrus smell to them and the buds are remarkably sticky. I think these seeds would be S1s given they were self-pollenated, but correct me if I am wrong.
Normally I would abstain from growing out some hermaphrodite seeds, but this plant had a vigor unlike anything I had seen before (until recently). It was a lot of wasted effort to remove pollen sacks and cope with the emotional rollercoaster that ensued. Still I decided to take a gamble out of desparation and it seems I got lucky this time around.
At any rate I don’t want to tell anymore sad seed stories. Time to put the past behind me.
In with the new
From right to left (and in chronological order):
-
Swackhammer, courtesy of @DougDawson and @DannyTerpintine. Thank you very much. There is a new space jam movie but I don’t see Swackhammer listed in the cast of characters. (I planted two but accidentally killed one, sorry.)
-
Skywalker Kush x JLO, courtesy of @ReikoX. Thank you very much. A rose by any other name would smell as dank, but I am a sucker for star wars named cultivars it seems. Edit- Any ideas how to speed up harvest or teleport me off this rock?
-
LSD, courtesy of @doge. Thank you very much. The little orphan clone that appeared on my doorstep really made for a great birthday surprise.
I very much appreciate the support and I hope to make each of you proud.
As I have recently made substantial upgrades and refinements to my space I think this will be more of a learning experience than usual. Hopefully I can get everything dialed in on the first try and pull six pounds per plant, fingers crossed.
All of the seedlings are at the three week mark approximately. Not sure how long to veg these plants. I’m going to play things by ear but I’m open to suggestions.
15 Likes
Shed some light on my LED Build
After seeing the Cheap LED Strip thread (Cheap LED Strips : A Viable Alternative) I decided to construct and LED array of my own. Many of the builds in that thread are made with aluminium channel frames, or flat sheets of metal with nice threaded screw holes for mounting, with build quality surpassing many of the LED units available in the market. Of course I don’t have any metal working tools nor access to a machine shop so I had to improvise and wanted to share a few of the details of my bridgelux LED array build.
The driver is a meanwell XLG-240-L-AB, driving 17 Bridgelux BXEB-L0560Z-35E2000-C-B3 strips.
The frame is repurposed from a discarded painting. With the staples and canvas removed the frame revealed itself to be surprisingly sturdy and lightweight. I added a few lazy coats of mildew paint to protect the otherwise untreated wood from humidity. The frame may be ugly but it’s form serves unintended purpose. The protrusions at the corners allow the frame to be set down by the edges and even tilted back and forth while providing the delicate LED strips ample clearance from any mechanical damage.
Going by the initial eyeball measurements the strips should have fit perfectly but upon closer inspection the mounting holes were about 6cm short of being useful. I took advantage of the fine joint work on the corners of the frame to suck in the edges so the mounting holes are centred within the edge faces. The cross bar has also been modified with a back saw to accomodate the new dimensions.
The strips are mounted to the frame using a bunch of brass standoffs scavenged from years of PC upgrades and repairs. I have little faith in either the soft wood or the machine threads of the standoffs, so each standoff is additionally secured with superglue. The various coloured sharpie markings indicate I’m a measure thrice cut twice kind of craftsman.
Larger standoffs are used at the edges and in the middle of the frame to allow the LED array to be set down on or leaned against hard surfaces without damaging the diodes.
Screw in eyelets and two equal length pieces of hardware wire allow the frame to hang from rope pulleys.
Each LED strip is wired in series to the next using some solid copper wire salvaged from an old flourescent ballast. Most of the rest of the wire I have only said 300V on the side and I didn’t want to tempt fate with substandard wire.
The toolless input sockets for the wiring are a nice touch, although I would probably just solder the leads next time instead of meticulously bending three dozen little jumpers.
A 6-slot terminal block connects the strip wiring to the driver DCV Output, and also the ACV Input to an IEC power socket for mains voltage. I realize that is a panel mount socket and that it looks haphazard, but under the tape each lead is properly crimped and insulated.
I used a short input cord deliberately to double as an emergency cut-off in the event that the mounting hardware should fail. I don’t want all the exposed solder points falling on any part of my body, and especially not when they are coursing with 330VDC and I am grounded to my bathtub. I also insulated all of the exposed solder points with pieces of electrical tape.
For the 3-in-1 dimming leads I attached some banana plugs. This gives me the option of easily changing or removing the dimming source, and did not require me to warm up the soldering iron. I have completed setting up a PWM dimming controller which I intend to install sometime in the forseeable future.
That’s about it, happy growing.
23 Likes
Nice work! I have so many light parts around that I need to get on building!
3 Likes
Love the dimmer wiring!!
That’s a great light build. Great job on the recycle.
Cheers
G
6 Likes
Half-baked guide to automation
I see a lot of nice turn-key automation setups, along with some really slick custom automation setups.
I have neither. I do however have an embedded PC, some I2C sensors, and the will to make due with what I have.
Reading a sensor can be achieved using the linux sysfs tree without any special software
#!/bin/bash
function readsensor {
local loghost="10.10.10.10"
local logport="420"
local facility="local0.info"
## I2C addresses for BMP280 is either 0x76 or 0x77
for x in 76, 77; do
local device="/sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-2/2-00${x}/iio:device1"
local sensor=$(cat "${device}/name")
## If you're going to get fancy with sed, make notes about what it is you wrote
local temp=$(cat "${device}/in_temp_input" | sed -e 's/\(..\)\(..\).*/\1.\2/' -)
local address=$x
logger -n "${loghost}" -P "${logport}" -p "${facility}" -t "$sensor-$address" "$temp"
done
}
readsensor
#EOF
Automating sensor readings is as simple as adding such a bash script to your crontab.
* * * * * /usr/local/bin/logtemp.sh > /dev/null
But where does this data go, and how is it stored, a fancy resource intensive SQL database? Absolutely not.
Let the system logger deal with it. I just use the built in syslog software, which is already running in the background of 99% of linux distros. Log rotation, compression, and backup are all handled by the logger already. No forgotten SQL credentials, no intricate backup procedures, no worries.
In my case I just make a custom rsyslog configuration to handle local and UDP logging.
# /etc/rsyslog.d/10-temperature.conf
input(type="imudp" port="420" ruleset="templogData")
ruleset(name="templogData") {
action(type="omfile" dynaFile="templogTemplate" template="templogFormat")
action(type="omfile" file="/dev/tty2" template="ttylogFormat")
stop
}
Logging is not limited to local devices either. With UDP logging I can send data from a battery powered ESP-01 with a BMP280 over network for months on a single charge. For robustness I don’t even bother sending timestamps with environmental data, I use the recieve time on the logging machine as the timestamp. This also cuts reliance on local or external NTP services.
What to do with all this data? Here’s some remote log data:
2021-04-04T06:30:26.972864-04:00 logger BMP280 26.22 68074.22
2021-04-04T06:30:31.972951-04:00 logger BMP280 26.22 68074.22
How about the highest value? The lowest?
cat remotelogs/esp_183da3.local.domain-BMP280.log-20210405 | cut -d' ' -f4 | sort -u | head -n1
26.22
cat remotelogs/esp_183da3.local.domain-BMP280.log-20210405 | cut -d' ' -f4 | sort -u | tail -n1
23.73
Certainly you can use your imagination in this department. Data can be parsed in nearly limitless ways and periodic cronjobs can be used for analysis and email alerts.
Graphing can also be automated with tools like gnuplot, either to a fixed dashboard display or by periodically pumping out SVG or PNG graphs for display on a web page.
Please note, when it comes to graphing I will never be satisfied. This type of flexibility opens a pandora’s box of possibilities and can consume a lot of valuable time. Do you really need gradients and transparent historical data behind your plot line? I wish I could share some gnuplot scripts with you here, but it feels like an unfinished masterpiece
Couldn’t you just use MQTT for your IOT setup? Sure, if you want to install, maintain, and secure a bunch of extra network services. There are also 3rd party IOT MQTT services one can use if you have absolutely no regard for sending private data out on the internet, and are 100% confident that you will never suffer network connectivity issues. I realize this is a major technology implemented in industrial automation systems, chat programs, and more but the protocol and tools just seem so longwinded to me. Half the time you have to roll your own publisher or subscriber daemons anyways, it’s just another middleman.
11 Likes
nice and simple man! I gotta rely on guys like you to write that code, then I just edit to suit my situation…
But at least I understand everything you said 
lol and that makes me dangerous… Like I said on another thread, I am always learning something new here for sure!
8 Likes
What have I done?
Things have been progressing well, at least until I repotted into fabric pots. I used the exact same batch of soil to fill the new pots as I had used to fill the last pots. Shortly after transplanting two of the plants started to yellow to more of a lime greenish colour, then they got a bit darker but with yellowing leaf edges.
My first instinct was to try everything, which I had to fight the urge to act upon. My next instinct was to not pick at things, so as not to make anything worse. I spent a few minutes adjusting the brightness and whitebalancing on my camera to grab a true colour representation close up photo. That’s how it looks to me in person at any rate.
After a bit of reading, the most common suggestion given to others was “check your pH”. Why not? I’m already in my lavatory- err, laboratory. I grabbed a soil test kit, dug deep for a bit of root dirt, and ran a couple pH tests. Perhaps the test solution was spoiled, or maybe I did it wrong many times in succession. At any rate the results were inconclusive.
Not to be discouraged I moved on to the next round of testing. Water comes out of my tap at about 7 as far as I can discern. After watering I checked the runoff which I measured to be 6-6.5.
I gave the plants a nice epsom salt foliar spray at lights out a few days ago and again last night. Looking this morning the plants are looking better than a few days ago, but I’m still a bit confused. Maybe the plants were just stressed. Maybe I’m just stressed? It’s really the two Skywalker Kush x JLO that look the most angry, perhaps it takes a mighty gardener to tame such beasts.
My lights are at 18", environmental readings at 24°C/55% RH (surprisingly consistent this time of year).
The soil mix is made of sea compost, earthworm castings, peat moss, and perlite, amended with Gaia Green 4-4-4, kelp meal, and dolomitic lime. The same mix is doing great for my vegetables and house plants, but that doesn’t elevate it above criticism.
I don’t enjoy posting pictures of unhappy plants. It’s like getting pantsed in gym class, only to have the school photographer rush in and take a bunch of colour photos to be posted on every locker.
Fingers crossed the plants will mend without my intervention, but I’m open to suggestion.
11 Likes
The little auto that wasn’t (Part 2) - That’s a man, baby!
That’s a funny looking female. Despite all of my questions and uncertainty, all of my concerns have been allayed. What was once a pressing matter is now resolved.
8 Likes
Lmaoo, you’re gonna be making more seeds already??! 
5 Likes
I’m afraid Lola here is getting the chop. Already lied to me about being an auto, and now about being feminized. Next thing I know my wallet will be missing along with my car.
16 Likes
Hey bro, how are the plants doing now?
Hope all is well with you my friend 
4 Likes
I sense a great disturbance
While basking in the serenity of my garden something caught me off guard. Now where have I seen these before?
Looks like the Skywalker Kush x JLO are out of the running much to my disappointment but I’m sure the jedi will return…
Moving along
With Mrs. Doubtfire and his friend out of the garden it’s time to move forward. Two new contenders have appeared.
From left to right (and in chronological order):
- Dragon Milk x Tangie, courtesy of @catapult. This selection sounds exquisite, I truly appreciate it. Thank you.
- Peyote Cookies x Shaman, courtesy of @Oldtimerunderground. Your thoughtfulness and outdoor growing prowess is a shining example to us all. Thank you.
Here’s hoping I can see these girls through to flower. There’s a first time for everything.
9 Likes
I haven’t seen anyone get a female yet. I know the Lowryder2 I used produces about 60% males in a lot of his offspring. He was a manly man.
5 Likes
This sounds like a challenge. I’ve got some goals now.
Never tell me the odds.
5 Likes
Nice, I’m about to be using my not spare bathroom as a temporary veg room. at least now I have a reason to clean it 
3 Likes
You know these things do grow in dirt 
5 Likes