Vernal's Basement Follies

[vernal]

Hello. I’m vernal. Long time listener, first time caller. I’ve been doing this off and on for a while now, but I’m now settled in a place of my own in a Great Lakes legal state. Everything in compliance with the laws (which are pretty reasonable). I grow plants for fun, to supply personal medicine, and I make seeds (bit of a seed junky). The original Overgrow era was slightly before my time; I was more into ICmag, though I just lurked.

Here’s the modest setup: Two 4x4 tents, the vegetative tent is on the left and has a 315 CMH 3100K bulb. The flower tent on the right is an air-cooled 1K HPS with a Hortilux bulb. Magnetic ballast, the old way. No worries about fires or radio interference. Both use a 6" Hyper Fan w/ carbon filter.

These are all the bottles I use:

I used to be a Maxi Series user, but the water is far too hard here for a 6% calcium nutrient. And, to be quite honest, liquid is easier to work with. I prefer to keep things simple, consistent, and effective with DynaGro. I like the Cyco pH down because it’s just phosphoric acid and pretty cheap. The Grow More Jump Start is a lot like Floralicious Plus, it’s very concentrated and is a general supplement: aminos, vitamins, humic, fulvic, kelp, etc., plus significant amounts of triacontanol. If you want to buy one catch-all supplement, this is it. No microbes, beneficials, fermented this or thats, or compost teas.

Here’s the seedlings. In cubes for 5 days, almost everything is “up” and shedding their shells:

This round it’s:
11 x NDNguy’s '79 Christmas Bud Afghani IBL via Farmer Joe
6 x [Ohio Deathstar x '79 Christmas Bud] via Jay T
5 x Soraya (Mr. Dank’s Afkansastan x Snow Lotus) via Bodhi
3 x [Triangle Kush x '88 G13/HP] via Farmer Joe

The plan is to find 2 Christmas Bud males and 2 females. I have some of the Hazeman Christmas Bud (erroneously labelled Pine Tar Kush, from same original stock) if I don’t find what I’m looking for. It’s an IBL, so once the runts are culled everything should be fairly uniform. The plan is to make some more Christmas Bud seeds, and try to find female broadleafs to cross to the Christmas Bud male(s). M current goal is to establish a piney, pungent, and powerful broadleaf hashplant line. There won’t be any seeds this round, we’re just looking for P1 plants for now.

Updates to follow as they develop.

[Northern_Loki]

Hi @vernal Welcome to the OverGrow…

Good post!

[beacher]

Good stuff! I’m really interested to see the Xmas bud in action. I’ve read a bit about it, it’s a really cool strain… might have herm tendencies though

[ReikoX]

Thanks for sharing, on with the show!

[oleskool830]

Welcome @vernal! Sounds like you’re gonna fit right in with this remarkable group of growers. Come on in, light one up, teach, learn and have some fun.

[vernal]

I just love the new OG forums as they seem to be the hangout for the “true hobbyist”. “True hobbyist” for me means someone who cares about the plant and wants others to have success in growing. I taught myself to grow by reading about other people’s endeavors and I really want to do the same for others. New growers seem to have an “overload of information” thrown at them and I’d love to standardize the methods I use (that I learned from better men) to grow simply and efficiently, like tomato/pepper growers. I used to post on THCfarmer under “juniper” when I was out in Colorado.

[Palindrome]

Welcome Vernal, nice into post and basement.
Love the give back approach, giving back what we once was given too.

[oleskool830]

[GrowHard]

@vernal Its about god damn time you show up here. Hope to see more updates here than on IG, and I can stop the neverending texts to you. Welcome brother!!!

[vernal]

@GrowHard Can’t rightly post with nothin’ to show off! Germination looks like 25/25, only had to perform surgery on 2 so far.

[SkyDog]

Interested in following these follies.

[vernal]

Ever-so-exciting veg updates. I know, please contain yourselves:

25/25 confirmed! The Deathstar x Christmas Bud are the most vigorous of the bunch so far, a day ahead of everything else. The Christmas Bud are the slowest, but they’re an inbred Afghani line, so that’s to be expected.

My seed germination technique is pretty simple. I soak the seeds in slightly warm plain chlorinated tap water 12-24 hours, then plant directly in media of choice or cubes. Within two weeks, the tent will be crowded, so I plan to eliminate the weakest five plants as soon as possible.

The media I currently use is 35% coco, 40% perlite, and 25% rockwool mini-cubes. I’d love to use pure rockwool, but it’d be prohibitively expensive. Coco by itself does weird things with nutrients and pH, perlite by itself has too high of a pH initially, but almost zero CEC compared to coco. As a blend, it’s cheap and is pretty much pH stable “out of the bag”, and with 40% perlite, it’s impossible to over-water. I like to hydrate dry brick coco with very hot water to kill any potential pathogens. You can achieve the same results with 50/50 coco/perlite, but I just really like rockwool and had an extra sack of mini-cubes laying around.

[GrowHard]

you going looking for any studs this run? or are you on a bud run?

[vernal]

@GrowHard I’m looking for 1-2 Christmas Bud males, and whatever females I can find. Hoping for 1-3 standouts. If I can find a winner Deathstar x Christmas Bud, I’m in an easy position to make Christmas Bud bx1. Over the next two rounds, I’ll germinate the 7 TK x G13HP, 6 Soraya, 11 Cherry Hashplant, 10 NL#5, and if there’s any space left, some of the Sinai, Tajik, or Yunnan. All broadleaf for next 7 months. Of those plants, there has to be a stellar few females to establish a broadleaf line.

[vernal]

A week later, everything’s growing right along.

The slowest/weakest nine plants were culled, mostly the Christmas Bud (low vigor in IBLs is to be expected). Of what’s left, we have: five '79 Christmas Bud, five Deathstar x '79 Christmas Bud, four Soraya, and two TK x '88 G13/HP.

I also started some tomatoes for outside. Should have those in a big container outside next month after the danger of frost passes. I collected the tomato seeds from a plant I found growing outside my old apartment complex. Who knows what kind of fruits they’ll produce. The plants were indeterminate, normal-leaved, and had medium-small red fruits.

As soon as plants show sex (3 weeks) I’ll take clones of each female (and 1-2 Christmas Bud males), and transplant the seed mothers to 5 gallon hempy buckets. Two weeks later, when the seed mothers are big enough, I’ll initiate flowering. So, flowering by May 13th is the goal, with a new round of germination around the 7th.

[oleskool830]

Looking fine my man! Good Growin ‘ Respect!

[vernal]

The people demand veg updates, I have to acquiesce.

Everything is going smoothly. Most plants have been topped, except a few Soraya who were a couple days behind the rest. The tomato seedlings are growing well. All these years growing “tomatoes” and now I’m growing real ones. Go figure.

I bought and filled a 200 gallon fabric pot outside for the 'maters. About 20% of the volume is coco/perlite, the rest is my rather-sandy native soil. I’d have loved to do soilless, but 200 gallons of coco/perlite adds up quick, and I had to dispose of a couple hundred gallons of soil anyway, so here we are. Our guaranteed last frost date is, like, late May here in West Michigan, so it’ll be another 4 weeks before these see sun.

I also cracked 4 of JD Short’s (Second Generation Genetics) Whitaker Blues. Hard not to crack seeds when you have so gosh dang many! I have always loved the blue family of plants, though I think the blue family works best as a breeding tool/in crosses rather than as a standalone plant. That being said, the Colorado Flo Cut is a very lovely clone. Whitaker Blues is Eugene, Oregon Afghani “Quimby Cut” x Blueberry F4. The Quimby cut looks like '98 Bubba Kush but is unrelated. Probably just another old Afghan sport with similar morphology.

[vernal]

Everything is moving right along. Now that they are beginning to show alternating growth, they should show sex within a week or so. 4 Whitaker Blues doing splendid. I also put a couple of seeds in rockwool cubes yesterday, some of @cabbagepaps on IG’s Mordida, which is Bodhi’s Acapulco Gold x Bodhi’s Zipolite Oaxacan, just to keep things interesting.

[oleskool830]

@vernal

Bodhi’s Acapulco Gold x Bodhi’s Zipolite Oaxacan, just to keep things

Wow! Is this cross available? Sounds like oleskool Texas!

[vernal]

Hit up @cabbagepaps on Instagram. He has a lot of neat stuff. He may very well have more available. Somewhere down the line I’d like to pair the Acapulco Gold x Zipolite to ACE’s Honduras to create a Central American narrowleaf line.