ReikoX's Workshop

hope you’re not drinking those sodas - I quit a diet coke habit after finding out what aspartame does to the brain. just sayin’ :grin:

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I did drink those a long time ago. I have been trying to cut down on sodas this year. Still one of my vices though. :grin:

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The party cup hempys are doing quite well. They are about 36 days from seed. They are getting fed twice a day the Lucas formula at pH 5.8 - 6.0. Pretty easy grow. I can see doing a couple of these in bigger containers sometime.

The cover crop is doing really well. I’m having more fun with the clover than I should. I had an aloe plant die on me, so I decided to put them in the corners (decoratively) and let the soil eat them. @lotus710 Yes I debated fermenting them :grin:

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Totaly should ferment them. How did they die? Aloe is fucking hardy! I havnt watered mine in too long and if i need to take cuts i water her a day or two before and bam. Brand newXD

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I think over watered, possibly not enough light. It came with a bunch of other suculants that all died a while ago. Maybe it was the glue they used to hold down the gravel on top. Either way, I need to pick up a new one for the living room.

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They love those glued rocks huh? I had some punk glue a flower on my cacti😂

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At least they didn’t glue a flower to your Johnson. Lol

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I decided to order up a worm bin and some worms for my daughter. I am debating what to use as bedding. No Till soil? Coco fibers? Sphangum peat? Shredded news paper? I think this should handle a lot of my food scraps that I would previously throw away.

I was out hiking today and decided I wanted to dig up this small Yucca for its root. The plan is to remove the root, peel it, then mash it into a paste. I’ll probably add some LAB, molasses, and maybe a bit of water.

I’m having a hard time identifying this plant. I’ve always called it Yarrow. I was going to harvest a bit and ferment it. They are crawling with insects and have a sweet smell to them. As you can see there are quite a few of them around here. Amazing the life that can be found even in harsh environments.

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cool! the fall wildflowers are going off around here, I’ve been enjoying it too.

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i was looking at a worm bin but i don’t have a heated garage and i think they’d die in winter … whats your plan for winter??

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I plan to keep it indoors under my sink. It’s pretty small, 16"x16".

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What about odors? That won’t stink up the kitchen will it?

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I’ve only had my worm bin going for a couple of months, but smell hasn’t really been an issue. If it starts to get stinky, you either put in something you shouldn’t have, or you need to add more browns to balance out your decaying greens.

I’m probably still a couple months away from having vermicompost for use, but it seems like it’ll be an excellent addition to my setup in the end.

I’m impressed that you have any space for a bin, ReikoX: it seems like every nook and cranny in your place is actually a tiny secret grow room :laughing:

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They aren’t supposed to smell, but I jave a secret weapon against foul odors: LAB.

:laughing: That made my morning, thanks.

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The microbes told me not to wash them off. They said to cut everything up small enough to fit in the growler, add some molasses and LAB, put on the air lock, and call it a day.

Breeders Retail has some Ancestral Skunk#1 seeds available right now. These seeds were produced in an open pollination in the early 90s. Germination tests were around 10% so they are selling packs of 100 for $60. I couldn’t help but get a few packs to hunt through. As you can see these seeds are quite dirty. I grabbed about 50 seeds to work with.

Chimera was kind enough to post his protocol for popping old seeds on ICMag:

First I needed some sterile water, so I put a few cups of RO water in the bottom of the pressure cooker along with a glass jar and lid. This was cooked @15 psi for 20 minutes. I let this cool and then poured the water into the sterilized jar for later.

Next I made a 5% bleach solution with a drop of detergent. This was also sterilized in the pressure cooker @15 psi for 20 minutes.

The two jars were allowed to cool. Then, I gave them a five minute wash in luke warm tap water through a mesh strainer.

After the rinse, they were put in a glass container and washed with the bleach solution for one minute. The seeds was strained through the strainer and washed two more times. Then, the seeds were put back in the container and rinsed with the sterile water for five minutes. Again, they were strained and rinsed two more times.

Finally they were covered with sterile water and allowed to soak in the cupboard for the next 24 hours.

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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 :grin:

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.

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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.

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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).

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

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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.

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