Now for an update on the photoperiods! Strap yourselves in for a bit of a longer read. I know my posts are wordy but I’m just trying to share my experiences with as much detail as possible. I want to help, educate and be educated. If there’s anything you read that you don’t agree with I am open to discussion.
At last update I had soaked the seeds in water with a bit of Ful-Power (1tsp/1000ml) for 24hrs and planted them directly in soil. All seeds germinated successfully and sprang up with no issues.
Standard stuff here! I will say though that I keep each seed separate in its own little cup of water (I save sauce containers from take out orders, photos above) and use that water to initially soak the soil once I have the seed in place in the pot. It is my understanding and belief that each seed comes with its own beneficial bacteria locked inside. When you soak the soil with that water, it inoculates the soil and creates a ‘familiar home’ for the seed to get going. I heard this theory from Jeff Lowenfels (Teaming With Microbes) and I whole heartedly agree and believe in it. Since germinating my seeds this way I’ve been at 100% success rate in 2 years! Just sayin…
The outdoor pots needed to be chopped and dropped as the cover crop over grew in the pot’s significantly! I’ll attribute this to adding full waterings of JMS weekly for a month while the cover crop grew. It’s crucial to wake that soil up after a long winters nap and the key to this was cover crop and JMS. The cover crop grows, signalling the soil life to wake up and start exchanging exudates, kick starting the soil food web cycle, the Jadam microbial solution inoculates the soil with a large population of IMO, goes deep into the soil and starts working and bringing that soil to life!
I didn’t mind the extra growth because last year a few of my plants were deficient at the start of bloom, which is pretty much the WORST time not to have proper nutrition in your soil. If your plants don’t have what they need to take off in flower then you’re caught chasing your tail!
I really wanted to build the soil properly, which is why I incorporated that Jadam microbial solution (JMS) into my regime this year. Obviously, that’s a lot of cover crop to chop up and integrate into the soil but it didn’t go to waste. Whatever wouldn’t fit onto the top of the pots was added to a 5 gal bucket, filled with filtered water and a few handfuls of leaf mold soil to create a Jadam liquid fertilizer (JLF). I started this fertilizer in early June and it’s absolutely delicious now! I’ve been adding to it over the last few months when I defoliate the plants and clean up the lowers etc. It’s an EXCELLENT way to recycle all the growth and nutrients in the plants. I’ve started adding it to the JMS and sprouted seed teas to build nutrition as they transition and what’s better than feeding cannabis plants to cannabis plants?!
Here’s a quick re-cap of my process for bringing the soil back to life:
- Soil amended with craft blend and worm castings in early May (as seen in previous post)
- Cover crop seeds added with worm castings, watered daily to keep moist until germination
- Straw added over crop crop seeds to protect the top of the soil and maintain moisture
- JMS applied weekly (noticed huge growth spurts in cover crop once applied)
- The odd compost tea brewed and added maybe once or twice a month between May and June
- Cover crop terminated in early June, soil amended with a bit more craft blend and covered with a few inches of worm castings
- JMS continually applied in heavy waterings to allow for deep penetration of IMO
- Plants transplanted in pots on July 6th
Here’s the soil amended below with cover crop and worm castings on June 11th. The pots sat like this for a further 28 days or so to let everything break down. The 30gal pots were filled to their limits but after a month of break down the soil basically shrank down a few inches. It’s my opinion that the JMS was a major contributing factor in this breakdown of nutrients in these pots. Not only that, the soil was super fluffy! When I amended the pots in May I could hardly dig into the soil (I had to remove a few inches of solid from the top to make room for everything) but after applying the JMS the solid was light and airy.
Seedlings inside:
Hardening off:
When it came time to transplant, I cooked up a nice batch of JMS and thoroughly soaked the transplant area where the roots would sit.
Transplanted July 6th:
I saw a few Jadam farmers do this online and wanted to try it. The plants instantly took off with zero transplant shock. I couldn’t believe the vigorous growth these plants took on from transplant to one month total growing time outside. From July 6th to now they have just exploded, as you will see below. My whole thing this year was to try and create a more manageable grow and while I still think these plants are manageable, they’re a lot bigger than I anticipated.
Here they are on July 6th, freshly transplanted:
Below here is just two days later on July 8th, you can see the vigour in the Orange Gasm, standing up at attention:
This is the same plant 5 days later! on July 13th:
Explosive 5 day growth! Here are a few of the other plants all leaning hard into the sunlight on the same day:
Now we move on to a week after that to July 20th and you can see here in just two weeks of outdoor growth the plants are looking just down right Jurassic!:
Here we are on July 24th, you can see Orange Gasm is an absolute beast! Growing hard in just 18 days of outdoor sun in the second picture below:
Now we move on to July 31st where I will show similar images of Orange Sherbert on the left, CBD no. 1 on the right and Orange Gasm in the back middle in succession:
August 4th:
August 11th:
JURASSIC PARK YALLLLL!!
Three Queens on the right and Zkittles x Mendo Purps on the left, Aug 11th:
Orange Gasm on the same day:
Lastly, we have the most recent pictures as of yesterday below:
Orange Gasm
Close up you can see signs of bloom coming
That about wraps up this long overdue update. Sorry for not being more active on here lately, just life is getting busy but I have to make more of an effort.
Just to hit home on some of the explosive growth, I’d like to share a few pictures of my friends grow who I provided plants to. I sprouted some extra seeds at the same time as mine and passed them off to him at the beginning of July. A few more details for comparison, my friend literally sprinkles on some kind of miracle grow pellet amendment, waters them and that’s it.
Here are his plants currently, they have been sprouted at the same time as mine and planted outside at the same time:
I would have to say that sprouted seed teas, JMS, compost teas, LST, cover crop mulch, etc have all played a very big role here. I’ll leave it at that!
Strap in, it’s about to getting pretty interesting around here and the magic show is about to begin!!
Until next time!
I like to mark mine with a paint pen once they are dialed in. That way if they move I can put them back where they were.
