"Yes, I really do need all these plants." šŸ¤£ Autoflowers, photoperiods, bugs, breeding (journal)

Excited to follow along!

We grow very differently so it will be a lot of fun for me to watch your grows!

I pop mine fully submerged :rofl: like, some people 24h soak. Iā€™ll 3-5+ day soak. Sink or swim time!

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Nice! Looks great, love having tons of jars to chose from!

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Oh, man. You and I couldnā€™t be different @AppalachianBiscuits big respect to you! Haha doing things I just canā€™t. Iā€™ve found any longer than 24 hours and I have dampening off issues :upside_down_face: blows my mind when I see folks popping whole starts out of water or keeping em around long enough to take the shell prior to planting. Wild. Skillful work for you folks.

@RainToday the buds look really nice :pray:t2: and tasty

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Agreed! Love seeing different grow techniques, and ideas getting tried out. Means I can get new awesome ideas and donā€™t have to learn everything at the school of hard knocks. :wink:

My past seeds Iā€™ve mostly let float until they grew tails about twice the seed length, but that was in plain water, no H2O2. @DirtySlowToes Sometimes that took 3 days, and it was fine as long as they didnā€™t sink. Recently I lost a bunch in one batch to mold, but now Iā€™m sure they were just too slow from it being low 60s in the house at night. Was home seeds fortunately, so no big deal. This last set I put in some H2O2 to clean, and then they started sinking in the water after only a half day. I know they do fine growing in the ProMix so I took the least risky path for my setup by sticking them in the dirt. Iā€™d like to do some comparative germination trials, but hate the thought of composting so many seedlings. :laughing:

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Fun photos for today - hereā€™s some

home cross autoflowers of similar heritage, providing a great illustration of what stunting can do to what is either an autoflower or an auto / photo cross.

The smaller ones are actually about a week older, but they stunted badly. Looks like nutrient issues based on the leaf color. They are volunteers that sprouted in their mother plantā€™s pot, which had been invaded by the dragonfruit plant while she was vegging. Iā€™d been amending, so there are nutrients in the soil, but either something is out of balance or the dragonfruit is a really nasty neighbor. Not trying to solve this - they were volunteers I didnā€™t need, but would let grow if they managed to survive. Ph is 7 in both pots (yes lower would be better, Iā€™m working on it ;-). The stunted ones are growing in faster-draining stuff, so underwatering probably contributed to their nutrient issue. If that ones an autoflower, from past experience it should bloom pretty soon. :joy:

An interesting thing to observe is how the happy plants still have healthy green cotyledons - they havenā€™t needed to touch those reserves. Those on the other plants are long since shriveled.

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Iā€™ve seen stunting quite a bit. :sob:And yes i totally agreeā€¦ when the cotyledons shrivel in the seedling stage, you be stunted. Interesting thought for you, a 7 ph should be perfect for a live soil grow; it is the optimal pH for the microbesā€¦which help the plant gain nutrients from the soilā€¦
There is a lot of talk about lower pH being more ideal for cannabis, but I think that comes from the hydro growersā€¦I saw some data ( donā€™t remember the source) that compares growth rates in different soil pH; neutral always won. I guess my point is I donā€™t think the pH caused the stunting - after all your happy plant is in the same mix, right?

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Thank you! Iā€™ll have to look that up, I agree my general soil pH isnā€™t the issue here, but I was sure that in general it was a problem for me because of the pretty charts showing ideal pH for availability of various nutrients to the plant, but you may be right because intake is different with microbes. That would help explain why some past nutrient deficiency issues didnā€™t respond as I expected. Iā€™ve also always been stumped about how to add a bunch of calcium as they often seem to want, while maintaining some acidity. Now Iā€™m excited about a new research direction :heart_eyes:. If I had a larger grow space Iā€™d run a comparison grow with clones. Some day surelyā€¦ :grin:

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Bye-bye boys! 18 days since the seeds hit the water, and these boys are showing their first flower buds. They werenā€™t in great conditions, so are a little stressed and a little small, but all I wanted was a dwarfed plant or two of this kind. Iā€™ve got one good one left, plus two that didnā€™t start with enough light so are still tiny.


This one is a boy too, but very appealing structure, a vigorous plant and of a line I do want to breed back to each other. Going to hold on to him for the moment. @pharmerfil Steve is probably the daddy for this boy and my other Diana cross seedlings. I named him Steve because that was Wonder Womanā€™s male interest. Dana was the other epic volunteer of his generation. She had buds like rocks and a delightful smell.

Also, it was a pretty good transplant, but Iā€™m sure you can tell the plant on the right isnā€™t doing as well as the two that started in that pot. Iā€™ll cull it once Iā€™m sure one of the others is female.

Lastly, Iā€™ve learned that because of my low greenhouse temps the thrips were able to live until the new plants grew. They do seem to vastly prefer the green beans to the cannabis, so I was able to get rid of most of them by defoliating the green beans. Then I sprayed with 70% isopropyl alcohol after lights out, which is why there are fried parts on so many leaves. It was very interesting to observe that the fried parts mostly match the thrips damage, and my projected next areas of thrip damage. I think the holes from piercing the leaves to lay eggs must make them vulnerable to the alcohol. Iā€™ll be doing a rotation of murderous substances until the thrips are completely exterminated. I also planted a bunch more sacrificial green beans.

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21 days in on these, and look at this pretty girl! Home pineapple cross, rocking it in some dicey soil conditions. Planted 8 in this pot, 7 grew, and sheā€™s one of the 3 I havenā€™t culled. She may end up alone. @BeTheLight I highly recommend a similar cull ratio on those ā€œfloor beansā€ I sent you.
You can even plant them all together at first, as long as you snip some off before they get crowded.
Hereā€™s right before I removed the 4 puny ones:


And hereā€™s today:

And a close up of the lovely girl on the right:

Also, at the same 21 days old, this guy didnā€™t get enough light, and possibly didnā€™t like his soil either, so those are male flowers coming in with his 2nd set of true leaves.

Size means nothing to the fastest of the autoflowers. If theyā€™re unhappy, theyā€™re going to flower. And donā€™t underestimate the little man, :rofl: I bet he could have pollinated my greenhouse quite nicely. I have to really watch out for volunteers - once I found one like him hiding behind the lime just a day or two from dumping pollen on all my flowering girls. :scream:

Dropped two more pineapple seeds in water today, the one Iā€™ve got never really took off. I expect itā€™s a root rot issue, that seems to be what got a lot of mine this time. Iā€™m working on my soil microbes so hopefully that will improve. I donā€™t mind when my home cross seedlings fail that way, itā€™s good selection for resistance, but when I paid good money for seed and they fail and its my fault, I get grumpy.

Also bought some soil today to try out, KIS organics turns out to be local to me, going to plant at least one of the pineapple in that. I culled another plant, so Iā€™ve got an open pot for a potential side-by-side comparison, but the pineapple plants have been so variable that I donā€™t think it would be informative. Going to go look through my seeds. :face_with_monocle:

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I dig it !!!

Would a 3 or 5 gallon be to small for this type of seeding?

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Nah, go for it, just either with fewer plants or cull faster. Maybe 1 plant per gallon. Donā€™t let their leaves get closer than a couple inches of open space between plants. That should keep the roots from touching and competing. When I cull seedlings I put my fingers on the soil with the stem between, then hold the soil in place and pull the plant out with bare roots. Minimal disruption to the pot, and no roots to rot in there by the other seedlings.

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I think Iā€™ve got a Zamaldelica Express Auto F4 male! :heart_eyes:

Found today that the dropped seed is a boy, and it looks just like the other two Zam. plants. The seed I found on the floor produced a seedling with slightly different leaves which did not grow well.

Hoping stem rub will also smell the same, so far it does, with a bit of spice that is never in my others. The three Zams have a slightly different leaf shape from all the home crosses Iā€™ve got going, so Iā€™m starting to feel confident I recovered the correct seed. Which means there will be Zamaldelica Express pollen to celebrate! Woohoo! Normally I pull the boys and dump them in tiny pots, but in this case Iā€™m gonna say ā€œgrow dude grow!ā€ and let him keep the whole big bag.

Iā€™ve also got a nice looking male pineapple home cross, and the Diana cross male continues to look great. The Diana cross girls are really nice too, so I am considering doing a little side party with them. Difficult to decide. Theoretically its very possible to manage multiple male pollens, but I keep blowing it. I donā€™t mind so much with the pineapple crosses, Iā€™m not seeing anything there I wouldnā€™t be just as happy to breed with the Zamaldelica.

But Diana didnā€™t make very many seeds, and to get 3 lovely girls and an outstanding boy really tempts me to breed them. Iā€™m eager to see if her epic rock hard buds return in her grandchildren. Maybe her children will have them, but 3rd gen is where you get to see it if theyā€™re recessive traitsā€¦

Maybe Iā€™ll move them all into the bathroom and just not try to get any bud from them at all. Go seeds only. That would be faster too. Could probably pollinate with the Diana male, get some new growth, pollinate again and get some Zam cross seeds off them also. Hmmm. Diana cross family photo:


Just gave everyone a light foliar feed with kelp stuff and silica from Bloom City. Feel like many arenā€™t hitting their full potential, and pretty sure its my sketchy nutrient administration.

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Scarlet Grapes landed, thanks @blowdout2269 and @Going2fast
I dropped 3 right in some water :heart_eyes: no pop yet, but they sank so I bet there will be rootlets for planting tomorrow. :grin:


The replacement babies are all up - 3 of someone elseā€™s cross of Mephistoā€™s Mango Smile with Grape Crinkle, and two pineapple. The second pineapple barely made it above ground, and I had to pull the seed coat off, but itā€™s alive.

I culled all the home cross plants that didnā€™t look like they were growing fabulously well, and a couple from bought seeds. Thatā€™s why there was room for more.

Next up, a piece of fantastic good luck! One of the two Zamaldelica Express Auto F4 plants I have from the seeds I didnā€™t drop on the floor & am 100% sure are Zam, is also a boy. It happened to be under not quite enough light up until a few days ago so its not chonky, but itā€™s filling right out now that I turned the light up. The girl is fabulous. Iā€™m super pleased and excited for their progeny! The dropped seed male isnā€™t impressive, so the plan is to chop him and roll on with the other two.

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Sweet!
Glad they finally made it bud.
:grinning:

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Iā€™m wondering if these two are photoperiod plants :rofl:
They are without a doubt the lushest plants in the grow room, with the largest leaves. Just over 4 weeks old and no gender, which all those that are for sure autos have shown.

On the one hand, autos were the plan. On the other hand, hereā€™s my notes on the seed packet of what pollen was around back then. The only photoperiod on there is Woodrose Remedy, my Humboldt heirloom, which would make them a photo/auto cross that Iā€™m interested to grow out and breed.


The heart means the mother plant had a particular fantastic smell Iā€™m tracking. The star means she was a really outstanding plant.

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Some ā€œlow stressā€ canopy management today. Thought you might enjoy seeing some different techniques I like.


I also found this very strange fluffy plant growing in a lower grow bed. The bed used to have cat grass planted in it, so maybe thatā€™s why this odd fluffy weed appeared :thinking::face_with_monocle::rofl:

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My complements on some tough plants and apologies for mistreating them to @Going2fast & @blowdout2269 . The 3 scarlet grapes I had soaking all germinated nicely showing tiny tails in a day, I chose a large seed, a medium, and the smallest one. I left them in to grow just a little bigger, but unfortunately my mother came down with Covid, and amidst the busy and worry I forgot I hadnā€™t planted them. :cry:

One of the poor things dried out. The other two just kept on growing. I tucked them in the soil at last, and the big one popped right out the next day. Day 2 of in soil I dug up the smaller baby and found it had not gotten going well. I popped the seed coat off fully and tucked the little rootlet in with yellow cotyledons above ground. Today its perked up and looks like itā€™s going to live. Thatā€™s pretty impressive, I donā€™t get a great survival rate on those kind of rescues. Thanks again, looking forward to seeing how they grow!

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Now we get to see if you have indica or sativa leaners!

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Cleanersā€¦

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Went through my old photos looking for Woodrose Remedy (modern heirloom version). Thought those with the cross seeds like @OnePassionateGrower might enjoy seeing them. :slight_smile:
The Grapefruit daddy theyā€™re mostly crossed with was a very plain bright green plant with modest leaves, so thereā€™s a big difference. :grin:
I was less organized then, but here are the photos I could be sure are Woodrose Remedy. Also in the baby ones, there are others there too, but many of the Woodrose labels can be seen.
Also, first two pics are them grown outside in our friendsā€™ garden -


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