ReikoX's Workshop

[ReikoX]

After a soak for 24 hours, all.of the seeds sank. Three or four were cracked already.

The seeds will go in my new no-till bed. The cover crop is already come in nicely. The cracked ones were carefully placed in the middle under the COBs. The rest were scattered randomly about and slightly covered. They were the watered in with a little bit of B1.

The Jilly Bean plants are doing well. Both are nice quality, I am going to run both again (without the thrips) before making my final decision.

Jilly Bean #2 is my favorite this run. She has the smell of tangerines and candy on the stem rub. This sis the smell I was lookimg for when i bought the seeds. She is a little more lanky and has pinecone shaped buds. It reminds me of the way an OG grows.

‘Fascination’ clone. So… many… leaves! Are there even any cylax in there?

Mainlined version. One of those branches got apical dominance.

Jilly Bean #4 deserves another run. She smells like orange popsicles on the stem rub. Her buds are more leafy. Both are starting to pack on the frost.

Clone is looking like it needed a lot more veg time. Then again, they are a week or two behind.

Mainlined version. Nice and even canopy

The PC seeds are 7/10 up. Two seeds cracked and rotted without sprouting a tail, and one is nowhere to be seen. I did drop the second one, so still holding out hope she will pop up sometime. The Crystal Candy got a light feeding and a spray of CS last night. I am going to make a fresh batch tonight.

[ReikoX]

A couple of days ago, I picked a peck of prickly pears. Yesterday I sat down at my desk and they smelled sooooo good. I decided to pick some more. I only took fruits that were on the ground, so they were all pretty ripe. I brought home and weighed them. I did not wash off the microbes before I cut them up into pieces big enough to fit into the growler. Then I weighed an equal amount of brown sugar and slowly mixed it in with the fruit. I have always used molasses and water for my fermentation. In some KNF papers (thanks @lotus710) , I was reading about how they use brown sugar and no water. The idea is that the sugar will pull the moisture from the fermentables due to osmotic pressure. I didn’t realize how fast that would happen. As I started to stir and mix it turned into an awesome smelling jam texture. This was added to the growler, a bit of LAB was added, and the air lock was put on.

I got a new oscillating fan for my cab. It is perfect for the small size of this cabinet. I’m still trying to control the temperature better in the cabinet right now too. It’s running a little cooler than I would like at 66-72F. I know this will need to be adjusted when I increase the light level.

The only problem with the fan is it has some blue LEDs behind the buttons. That’s OK, time to get out the drill and destroy those LEDs. See the holes? It’s not like I can’t tell that the fan is on or oscillating without them.

[HalfBee]

@ReikoX

A couple of days ago, I picked a peck of prickly pears.

Your’s were much riper than the ones I used (and more of them)
mine were still on the green side but large. Only used 4 and it
was a small test run netting about a cup of juice at the end.

Not sure of it’s input - been giving it to the aloe and begonias
and to the root plants (ginger turmeric).

[ReikoX]

My boss was telling me some people make wine with them, that’s what made me decide to ferment them.

[ReikoX]

Got to spend some time in the garden this weekend. The first thing I did was trim my mother plants. They have gotten larger than I normally would because I was trying to get rid of some bugs and wanted the extra foliage as a store of energy. Now that they are healthy, they can be hacked back. This is what they looked like before.

I hacked them all back and took clones of everything. This is how they looked after. Here you can see the mom in the background, some rooted clones in the middle, and micro clones up front.

[ReikoX]

I was reading up on biochar and how to make it. I saw videos of people making it with huge 55 gal drums. A few more videos and I heard about “rocket stoves”. My dad made a small one of those! So I grabbed a stick from the yard waste and broke them in about six inch pieces, then stuffed them all in the stove.

A small fire was started at the top, and burns down. As it burns, it heats the wood until it out gasses and then that gas is burned. It’s very efficient and clean burning.

Once the stove begins to smolder, I soaked the stove down with the garden hose and dumped out the charcoal. I will soak it in fish fertilizer and let it dry back out before storing it.

I am already fermenting a yucca plant, so I decided to try some other methods of extraction. First I removed the outer skin from the root. For this I took a page from Bubbleman’s book and used my zester to separate the root from the fibers. Now it is drying on parchment paper in a pizza box. I still have more root, I am going to let it dry and save it for later.

[ReikoX]

I got my new CMH bulb today. It came in a comically large box with a bunch of packing peanuts. The difference in spectrum is just what I was looking for.

The Bubba Kush S1 clones are back on track. Here is a close up of the best looking one. This is about a week after I cut all the damaged fan leaves off.

So I wanted to see if my yucca extract was going to work, so I dropped a few chunks in a jug of RO water and shook it up. Not only did it foam, but this is what it looked like about ten minutes after I shook it up. I watered about half a gallon of this in the no-till bed.

I gathered up about 2/3 of a gallon sized bag of charcoal and added about 1/3 gallon of nutrient mix of 10 ml/gal each of CalPhos, Grow, and Fish. I’ll let it soak until tomorrow, then strain it and let it dry.

[Viva_Mexico]

I just got my cmh and they are crazy white!! Congrats!

[ReikoX]

They are both CMH there 3000K Phillip’s on the left, 4200K GE on the right.

[Viva_Mexico]

I have all 4200 at the moment because i only plan on using these in veg. I am super impressed with these.

[Muleskinner]

@ReikoX

They are both CMH there 3000K Phillip’s on the left, 4200K GE on the right.

cool! How many watts? 315’s?

[ReikoX]

Nah, 150-watt.

[oranje]

@ReikoX

Nah, 150-watt.

There’s 150W CMH? I’ve got to look into that I lovelovelove my 315W CMH I’ve got in my flower tent. I’ve been debating going COB for veg tent, but if I can get a baby CMH… that changes things.

[ReikoX]

I would go COB. They run off 150-watt pulse start ballasts. I got three of them free from an old aquarium light.

[Muleskinner]

@oranje

There’s 150W CMH? I’ve got to look into that

agree, I think the reliability is probably rock-solid with the smaller ones too as they’ve been around for years for industrial/commercial use

[ReikoX]

Not much going on in the PC. I’ve been spraying the Crystal Candy with CS nightly. She doesn’t seem to be too happy about it, but it is a form of chemical stress. She’s trying to flower, but I can see the pistils drying up and turning brown from the treatment.

They are getting the DrBudGreenGenes treatment. That means they get fed by submersion; the whole pot is dropped in the feeding solution until the top of the pot is wet. They are being fed every other day with 4 drops of Superthrive, 2 full droppers of Shultz 10-15-10, and 15 ml of fish fertilizer per gallon of water.

My worms for my bin came today. They are in my basement where they will not be disturbed too much. I had to rig a light up over them to keep them from escaping. My daughter is pretty excited about it. She got upset because I put one of the escaped worms in the yard.

We followed the directions and soaked the coco in water for a couple hours. Then we added some torn up newspaper and cardboard. Next we added some soil, some pumice, and some glacial rock dust. We added the worms, then buried a over ripe banana in the upper right corner.

[lotus710]

You should setup a seperate worm bin for yourself with a smart pot and only add good thermal compost, good composted manure, and carbon. Lots of carbon. Use that for your plants. Leave this one for outdoor gardens and for composting kitchen scraps:)

[ReikoX]

Hehe designer vermicompost… I threw a couple hanfulls of worms in my no-till bed.

[LED_Seedz]

Just spent quite a while going through the thread and wanted to say hats off for a great job. Truly a passion for the plant that I can certainly appreciate.

Carry on!

[oranje]

I wish I could keep my plants as happy as my worms My red wrigglers really like green beans, for what it’s worth. About to make mine a banana peel, egg shell, and egg carton salad.