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

[RainToday]

The Miss Piggy moms, survivors of the horrid root munching and pollinated fully from day 1 of preflower, are just about done. This weekend I’m cleaning the greenhouse up for the electrical work on Monday, so this is there farewell shot. If a lot of seeds need more time I’ll give it to them, but I think they’re pretty finished.

The pumpkins are getting delightfully ridiculous!

And the first few of my Asian pears are ripe. I’m utterly delighted to find that Hamese is the kind I was hoping it was. I grafted a couple cuttings onto my tree two springs ago, after reading up. I had bought some asian pears at the grocery store the fall before which were pear shaped instead of apple shaped, and they had the sweetest, crispest, juiciest flesh, with no mealyness. Simply epic. I grafted 2 pear-shaped varieties onto my tree in hopes one would be “the one”, and it is! There’s another branch just like this one on the other side of the tree.

[luxton]

Wow!! Everything is looking so good!! Right on

You need to get the electrical work, and an inspection, right? I bet that’s gonna feel good when it’s done!

[BudLarfy]

@RainToday

grafted

Neato! That’s serious horticulture

[RainToday]

Fingers crossed, hoping it goes smoothly since this house is such an old one. We do have a wood stove for backup and cozy times, but it will be great to have a functional furnace again before winter, and remove an extension cord strung across the room once the new circuit is in place. I’m sure I’ll love having my grow room clean again too.

[luxton]

Outta likes, doh!

I used to live in a lil farm house, the original 100 year old house on the property. It did have a propane furnace, but that cost me $500+ a month to run (it was the first time I saw our lovely carbon tax added after our other provincial and federal taxes had already been calculated in, an illegal tax on a tax, gah), so I relied on the lil wood stove in the basement… Lemme tell ya, the mornings I forgot to put a final piece of wood on, and I had to get that lil wood stove going from below zero temps… Well, that didn’t happen often, hahaha.

[RainToday]

Here’s my grow room panorama pic, electric work finished and inspected Friday, so I’m ready to move on.

I helped my brother out with something, so he bought me some new soil, and all new grow bags and start pots. Fresh start should get rid of the flea beetles and sal bugs. Going to carefully retrieve some worms and springtails from my outside compost for the new soil.

I’ll be using up the things on the shelf as well as some other stuff. I’ll make a post for that when I do it. New plans for awesomeness.

That’s a tray seeded with a cover crop mix as bait for the brown scale, thrips, and spider mites no doubt still in the grow room hiding and waiting for new plants. I plan to start a new one every 3 days for a week or two, and compost each 3 days after they sprout. That’s enough time for the bad bugs to arrive and lay eggs, but not enough time for the eggs to hatch. Life cycle breaking time baby.

I’m also going to go ahead with my baby cannabis soon, and treat them with rotating insect killers every 3 days until they are too large for that to be practical. They’ll be a seed run, so I don’t have to worry about affecting bud.

Sh*tty news on Thursday, mom is admitted to the drug trial because they did find amyloid stuff which means she has early stage Alzheimer’s. I sure hope their study drug works, and that she’s among the majority of participants and gets the drug. I woke up with a cold Thursday too, so I’m pretty derailed, upset and overwhelmed. Spent all of yesterday shut down and re-watching a Chinese a historical drama on YouTube.

Glad the electric is done, the cold is mostly over, now today I have to catch up a work project. Then I can have brother help me set up the new soil in the greenhouse, and catch up on mailing seeds.

[MyrtleGrounds]

Your new area is awesome. I can image how it’s gonna look after you get going in there.
Bad news about your mom, but hopefully she will respond well and have a good outcome.

[luxton]

I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, I really hope she gets a ton of benefits from the trial!!

Worst case, you can do what I plan on doing… Buying a bunch of superhero costumes (noone that flies though, no need to test anything from the roof, lol) and my Mrs is going to rotate them through my closet .

WICKED news about the electrical being all done and inspected! Now it’s all about grow-baby-grow . That’s gotta feel soooo good.

I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think I’ve beat the thrip infestation I had. Those Nematodes really did a fantastic job, the key was putting them in every week for a bunch of week. And the swirski ultra-mites I got seem to have taken care of the parents! And it’s about time too, I’ve gotta flip to budding today or my tent will be, lol, overgrown.

[420noob]

Awesome set up man can’t wait to see it rolling! Are you trying to do a seedmans grow log? Sorry about your mom hopefully trial is helpful good vibes your way!

[Carty]

Nice setup bro… wow. Had no idea you were going so big. I cannot wait to see you fill that with goodness.

Awesome.

[MyrtleGrounds]

I thought of you when I saw this……

[Igor]

Just catching up on threads. Your grow room is looking good, sounds like all the electrics are sorted now, that’s good.

I hope your mum is ok.

[RainToday]

yes, that’s definitely me. It even looks a bit like me when I was a little kid. Thank you for the warm fuzzy feeling.
I have this one on my wall now - between the two, I think I’m well described.

@Igor yes, the electric is all fixed up now, the issues were worse than expected but stayed within the price estimate. We are very relieved to have it all fixed, and feel rather lucky our house never caught fire.

Mom had her first study drug treatment last week. It was kind of awful, but it’s only every 6 weeks (or maybe every 12 weeks?) and it ought to be easier next time. We’re very grateful to be in the study.

I’ve made a list of whom I need to send seeds to, its 11 people long, and that’s tomorrow’s job.

Greenhouse update coming next, but first, here are my Atlantic giant pumpkins, doing their thing fairly well in spite of the local summer so far being composed of Juneuary, July, and Augtember. (That’s a very cold June, normal July, and an August that felt like fall had started. It’s warm again now.)

[RainToday]

Grow room update -

I’m finally getting it up and running again. My brother was available today, and with his help I was able to set up all the big planters with fresh soil and new grow bags. The “trap” seedling tray have sprouted in spite of my neglect. Today after setup I planted just a few of some sort of bean cover crop seed in all of the planters. They’ll be sacrificed as pest traps, and also will help the life in the soil get going. I think I’ll throw down some “trap” NOID cannabis seeds tomorrow too. I’m determined to get rid of the pests this time.

Here is the new setup. I got this awesome metal frame on Amazon, the reviews said it was a little bit flimsy, which meant it was perfect because it had to bend a little bit to fit in the space.

Now I have a soil base under all my pots, which I think will be awesome. Once the bad bugs are defeated I plan to grow beans or peas in it and also let my cannabis reach roots down into it.

I used up a bunch of stuff I had laying around in order to fill the planter and all the bags. My brother was rather amazed how many bags of stuff it took. LOL

I used:
A ton of peat moss. Quite a bit of KISS organics living soil with biochar, some Miracle Grow organic raised bed soil. Also, I put in coir bricks, alfalfa pellets, and hardwood pellets all unexpanded. It’s my plan for combatting the problem where soil always sinks down once its in place and watered, leaving the containers less than well filled. This way, the soil will still sink but the coco coir and the pellets will expand to replace the lost volume.
Also in it are humic acid, worm castings, sand, pumice, langbeinite, bone meal, “light warrior” mix from Happy Frog because I didn’t like it for my seedlings, some random bits of various amendments, Mykos, molasses, an acid-loving soil mix and some acidifier, and in the big pots and bed a small amount of composted cow manure with straw that smelt terrible and needed to be used up (fortunately I was able to bury it deep in the middle)

Tomorrow I’m going to carefully pick some worms and springtails from the outside compost and add them. I’ll order some beneficial mites one more time once I have some plants growing for a bit, since mine all went out with the soil, and I’ll order those soil nematodes @luxton recommended. There are plenty of little spiders left.

I’ve hosed down half the grow room today, the other half will be tomorrow, making sure there’s no active pollen around from the last run.

My mum won’t be smoking any time soon, so I’m going to be breeding and making seeds and more seeds. I’m going to plan out a few of the experiments I have had in mind also.

Next up will be filling a bunch of little containers to go on the shelves for seedlings and starting a very large number of test seedlings from the Miss Piggy party that just finished.

[Kasper0909]

Looking absolutely stupendous!! Loving that grow room!
Those pumpkins are simply amazing!!

[RainToday]

Thanks! I’m really happy, although reading your recent post about biochar reminded me I meant to add some ash and coals from our wood stove to the soil mix I made.

I’ll just mix them in on top I burnt a bunch of the cannabis stems and bud remains from seed extraction along with some regular wood, and thought that would be especially nice for amending.

[Kasper0909]

Sweet! Ya biochar seems to be the organic growers best friend!! I ordered a couple 12lb bags and been using it in my new soil mix. We shall see.

[LzBoy]

WOWZA! Incredibly cool setup Rain!
I’d love to do something like that on my balcony but I’m afraid it might be to heavy. Good luck. But I doubt you’ll need it

[Mrgreenthumb]

New set up is looking great @RainToday, hope it functions better also. Do you use lime in your soil mix?

[RainToday]

I don’t, I use tap water and it’s pH 7ish here, so usually my pH gradually gets too high. Builds up too much iron too. Haven’t figured out what to do about that yet.

I try to add acidifiers instead of lime, though I do find the plants seem happier when I also add calcium. I used crushed oyster shells in the past, the kind they sell for chickens, but I must have run out and forgotten to buy more - thanks for the reminder