Prey for Mantis

Good Morning everyone.

I’ve been hanging around here for about a year now, and thought it well past time I start up a thread.

A long time toker, I began growing for medicine and head stash early last year. The first couple of cycles I grew with some lights hanging in the corner of my basement. I really wanted to see how I could do without a tent/complete enclosure. Two rounds of photos, one round of autos, and now the need for my plants to be a little more discreet(as well as less light pollution during their dark period) has led me to find a better space.

I will be building my own “tent” to best suit the awkwardly sized space I’m using (aprox 3’ x 7.5’). I’ll be using panda film and likely some 1x2s to build the frame down from the floor joists. I’ll detail everything here as I go. Hoping to build that out after Thanksgiving.

While I’m getting back up and running, I thought it would be fun to start a thread and get some feet wet posting about the plants I have grown already, smoke reports etc. I didn’t document very well, but do have some pics and information to share that hopefully folks will find entertaining or helpful. I am still trying to figure out nice pictures on the phone, I love photography but used to shoot with a (not digital) SLR……I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Anyways , the quality of some of the photos is really frustrating to me, but I’m working through it.

My goal is to try and post something new of substance here twice a week. Thanks for stopping by.

38 Likes

I love DIY shows so please show the Construction process. Are you thinking HID or LED for lights?

5 Likes

What kind of phone are you shooting on? Any thought of moving into the digital SLR world? Mirrorless is pretty damn cool as the hot new’ish thing.

3 Likes

@PetalPowerseed

LED for sure. I may do a build on those in the future, but so far I have used some cheap 4ft LED strips off of Amazon. The brand is Kihung and I use a mix of their cool spectrum shop lights and warm spectrum grow lights. I’ve been pretty happy with them so far.

I also supplement with a single CFL style reptile UVA+B bulb.

@anon90741032

iPhone 6S plus. And currently have no interest in upgrading my phone. There are some photos I have I took on a newer iPhone with a broken screen that someone gave me. I forget what model it is, but the camera is substantially better and that’s what I’ll be using most for now.

Would love to move over to digital SLR, I don’t shoot enough these days to warrant dropping the cash on one at the moment. Next year maybe.

10 Likes

I saw the title and was like man what is goin on with mantis ?
Then I clicked on the link. This is much better then having to pray for you lol

My old pentax 35mm will always hold a special place in my heart. When photography took skill lol Much like what djing use to be like compared to now haha

6 Likes

When shots on a roll and knowing how to beat match actually mattered. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Surely Mantis Toboggan uses mantisbufferednutrients.com

For anyone else who misunderstood the title :wink: He/she showed up at my front door eating a wasp a couple months ago. Its abdomen pulses and contracts like its breathing. It was awesome.
I wish we could upload videos.

12 Likes

I came here thinking he was eating @ blank… I’m bad.
I was wrong, just a bee.
Every Bud Makes Us Better!

3 Likes

So…… I’ve been falling way short of my goal to update this thread regularly.

I have not started building my updated grow space yet, I have however begun growing myself into a corner. Hopefully that will help push me to get this done. I’ve been slowly gathering materials and finalizing plans, I tend to tinker until the last second. I’ll start building some time this week.

The plants currently going are 3 MDS (check out the MDS repro thread for an update on those as of a few days ago), 2 Lemon Thai F5s, and a Durban Poison from a reproduction of Dutch Passion stock.

They are accompanied by 2 autos, 1 each Zamaldelica Express and Strawberry Nuggets. Each of these is getting reversed, the Zam is pretty stunted from some early root damage and just got it’s first spray of STS 2 days ago. SN is just starting to show a couple pistols as of last night and will likely get its first spray today.

I’m going to attempt to get a few S1s off each of these (reversing the tops, leaving the satellite branches to express female) as well as a next gen(I think F5 for both) of each to 2 other females.

Seeds have been popped for those pollinations as well as a few other things.

Like I said, growing myself into a corner to get shit done.

7 Likes

Not regularly updating here is unacceptable. You clearly do not need magnum condoms for your magnum dong…

1 Like

@anon60559124
Definitely don’t need the magnums…… usually I’ll get by ok with some finger cots I swipe from the kitchen

An update is long overdue…….life has been what life is….one thing after another. On the bright side, after beginning to grow myself into a corner, I finally began building my space.

I’ve got 16 light strips in total. These are LED t5 equivalent type strips. The are offset to be able to fit and fully cover my space, which is a nook on the side of my furnace room. Approximately 94”x40”.

8 are 6000k color temp and 8 are 3500k and marketed as the brands “grow” light. Before purchasing these I dug around best I could, and for the cheap strips like this these won out both on price and spectrum. I’ve used the 3500ks in conjunction with different 5000k lights for my previous grows as well as for other gardening and I’ve been happy with them.

I may swap some of the 6000ks out for more 3500s at some point and will have another small 30”x46” area for veg set up shortly.

I assembled my lighting rig from some1x2s and attached the light strips. As I attached the pulleys, raised the rig into place and switch it on, Ms Paula Jean Harvey was playing in my head

You can see 2/3 of the Mexican Death Sativas I have going there, as well as a peek at one of the 5000k led strips I was using previously cause I was sloppy framing the photo.

8 Likes

And because I am way behind on some nice plant photos, here is a shot of one of the fans leaves from the 3rd MDS not pictured above. Big gnarly Jurassic looking leaves with deep serrations and overlapping fingers as they progress.

And due to my lack of plant photos, to share here is a fun lizard photo I took while picking up some kitty litter the other day

12 Likes

You can get your negatives scanned these days… :wink:
Highly recommend Harmanlab for that.
They’re connected to Ilford. :nerd_face:

2 Likes

Finger cots slip right off of me. :pensive:

2 Likes

So, while I have been occupied with the rest of life, I have still not finished off my space. I’ve got to get my ass in gear though because all 3 MDS are sexually mature and way ready to go into flower. 3 lovely ladies, but I definitely have a favorite.

One of the lemon Thai turned out a male, as a seedling it shot way way up real fast, I then buried the stem, it’s was still really lanky, and really picky and generally hard to keep happy for a while. I was going to keep it around, but then space got tight and I got busy and I decided to get rid of it. I popped a bananastan to join the party and she is all caught up.

These girls all will be getting one last trim and then I need to get off my ass and get them enclosed so I can flower cleanly. A week at most, otherwise things will get out of control. As is they will be quite large. I’ll post photos of them later tonight.(edit:tomorrow, I missed lights out.)

Strawberry Nuggets (xx auto from Mephisto) and Zamaldelica Express(xx auto from Night Owl, acquired in a trade with @HolyAngel) have both been reversed, and 2 of each seeded with their respective matching pollen.

Not sure the Nuggets was successful. It put out plenty of male flowers, but not too much pollen. At first I thought it was viable, because the pistils browned and receded shortly after being introduced to the pollen. It still doesn’t look obviously seeded though, so I’m getting a little nervous.

I had to reverse a 2nd Zamaldelica, as the first one didn’t put out many male parts, and if there was any pollen it wasn’t much . I used the sts ratios Sebring listed on his site, but they were really slow to put out
male parts. I upped the ratio a bit (can’t remember if it was 1.5x or 2x, really wish I would have written that down)and a 2nd Zam put out pollen like a charm.

Here are some earlier photos(edit:my cat just clicked the post button on me) of the Reversed Zam top and the other seeded Zam. That’ll be some F5s and F4 S1s. I’ve got two of these F4s left, which I’ll use to try for a larger seed increase at some point in the future here. More recent photos to come with the MDS and Lemon Thai updates.

11 Likes

Good evening OG, it’s me MantisTobogganMD.

Life has been a roller coaster lately, and my phone failed(broke) in spectacular fashion the other day. I thought I had most everything backed up, but am finding out that was most certainly not the case and am now without access to lots of things, including my OG account and the email I had used to set it up. I made another account to log back in and try to address this as well as reach out to a few folks who I had pending things going with.

@LemonadeJoe @TeamOG I am going to try a few more passwords to try to get back into my other account. If there is anything else you can do to assist that would be much appreciated, and if I should be going about this differently please let me know. Again, I do not currently have access to the email I set my previous account up with.

6 Likes

@Upstate I can’t DM on this account yet, but as soon as I can I will reach out so we can get that Corinto running on schedule. Sorry for the absence this last week or so.

@Pigeonman life has been crazy and I haven’t placed that order yet. Sorry for dragging so long on that. I’ll also reach out to you as soon as I can DM again and get us all squared away.

Hope everyone has been well.

6 Likes

Ill.wait for @LemonadeJoe to help you better… I can’t help with passwords or anything like that… good to have ya back

6 Likes

No stress here growmie!
:fist_right: :fist_left:

You, the HUMAN, are more important than any order :+1:
Take care of yourself bud. :hugs:

4 Likes