santb
Well-Known Member
Howdy, Y'all!
After months of threatening, I have finally decided to make an honest member of myself, and start my first Grow Journal. I have been a member for a little while now, and a lurker for much longer. I have learned a lot here, so now I guess it's only fair that I try to pass on whatever tiny amounts of worthwhile knowledge I have gleaned, or at least have my mistakes corrected by those who know better!
This is actually harder than I thought it would be: I have been writing in my head for ages but all my entertaining banter; the quick-witted quips, the hilarious jokes, all that great material in my head has evaporated. Oh well.
In this Journal, there may be some swearing, some opinionated rants, some total silliness; there maybe (hopefully!) some friendly off-topic banter between other members and myself but I will type the letters MJ often enough to keep the Mods happy...
Speaking of Mods, I would like to preemptively brown-nose one of them by saying: Mr Robert Celt, you do a fantastic job on the newsletter; I read most of it every time, and am always thrilled to see you include at least one Australian story (sometimes 2 or 3) which I would probably otherwise not read, so thanks. Sincerely.
Oh yeah; I'm in Australia, in a State that is quite hard on MJ growing and use. Totally illegal. Things ARE changing here, slowly but surely. It's coming into winter here, which is good. Should make growing in my small cabinet a bit easier. Plus, our winters are very mild; 5 degrees celcius is about as cold as it get where I live, but with a daytime max of around 17-22C it is barely cold at all.
Oh yeah; sorry Americans, but as a representative of The Rest Of The World, I will be sticking mostly to the Decimal System. Litres, Metres, mm, etc is much easier. Well, for me it is...
OK; for our growing pleasure, we have 4 strains here, and they are as follows:
Rare Dankness: Scotts OG + Ghost Train Haze #1. (SOG + GTH)
Bomb Seeds: Atomic. (ATM/ATOM)
Humboldt Seed Organization: Chocolate Mint OG. (CHMOG) All fem seeds.
They have all been above ground about 5 weeks today, with the RD SOG and GTH being the obvious best seeds: they both cracked in hours and were above ground in about 3 days! CHMOG was a day later, ATM a day later again. All in all, good seeds. Paper towel method in 2 plates, distilled water only for the first week. Popped seeds were placed in straight coco in tiny seedling pots, and, 5 weeks and 4 upcans later, are now in 20Ltr homemade cloth pots (Yes, guys; I can sew and am not ashamed to admit it. Sorry ladies, I'm off the market), which are filled with an organic/coco mix, described here in a post I made today on Weaselcrackers Hexapus thread, which I will now copy and paste and edit..
I use a lot of Coco. Many use Coco as a soil-less hydro type media, and use specific coco nutes.. It can hold a high percentage of it's own weight in water, yet is free-draining, simultaneously able to hold a lot of air(esp. with help of some perlite, rice hulls, bentonite whatever)..
I make a mix up of coco (approx 60-70% of total mix) with some home-made compost, EWC, hand-fulls of rock dust, lime, gypsum, blood and bone; tablespoons of seaweed/kelp, epsom salts, oven-baked eggshell powder and small amounts powdered store-bought organic pellets, some perlite and some bentonite. Let this sit in a warm spot for 3-4 weeks minimum...I also recycle my old potting mixes as you'll (apparently) get 3-5 uses out of coco. This also allows the rock dust and eggshell chance to actually breakdown enough to be useful, although how quickly this happens is debatable. I choose to use rock dust and eggshell because they're natural, and I assume that at least SOME of the fine dust must be relatively quickly available in the soil. Your finished moist mix should crush together in your hand when you make a fist, and puff back out on release.
I turn my coco into soil (sort-off) doing this mostly to avoid having to measure nutes etc. I also allow the plants to dry out quite a bit between waterings to encourage root growth so in a 20-odd-litre container I mite only need to water every 4-6 days. (Be careful, tho - on its own,esp. in smaller pots, coco can dry out quickly also, esp. if you usually water in small amounts. I water till it's soaked, then let dry out..) Coco can be forgiving like that; there is always a little bit of moisture in there somewhere... Could buy you an extra day or even two if you're away longer than expected.. From there I treat it like any other valuable, fast-growing houseplant.. I keep an eye out, train as I like and every 3-4th watering I add weak-solution organic nutes just to make sure; usually powdered pellets in water or fish-based organic liquid ferts.
Water is usually aerated tap water or rain water; sometimes straight from the tap. I have a cheap, inaccurate pH meter, which I rarely use. The hardest part for me is to just leave the plants alone... I'm a fiddler.
After months of threatening, I have finally decided to make an honest member of myself, and start my first Grow Journal. I have been a member for a little while now, and a lurker for much longer. I have learned a lot here, so now I guess it's only fair that I try to pass on whatever tiny amounts of worthwhile knowledge I have gleaned, or at least have my mistakes corrected by those who know better!
This is actually harder than I thought it would be: I have been writing in my head for ages but all my entertaining banter; the quick-witted quips, the hilarious jokes, all that great material in my head has evaporated. Oh well.
In this Journal, there may be some swearing, some opinionated rants, some total silliness; there maybe (hopefully!) some friendly off-topic banter between other members and myself but I will type the letters MJ often enough to keep the Mods happy...
Speaking of Mods, I would like to preemptively brown-nose one of them by saying: Mr Robert Celt, you do a fantastic job on the newsletter; I read most of it every time, and am always thrilled to see you include at least one Australian story (sometimes 2 or 3) which I would probably otherwise not read, so thanks. Sincerely.
Oh yeah; I'm in Australia, in a State that is quite hard on MJ growing and use. Totally illegal. Things ARE changing here, slowly but surely. It's coming into winter here, which is good. Should make growing in my small cabinet a bit easier. Plus, our winters are very mild; 5 degrees celcius is about as cold as it get where I live, but with a daytime max of around 17-22C it is barely cold at all.
Oh yeah; sorry Americans, but as a representative of The Rest Of The World, I will be sticking mostly to the Decimal System. Litres, Metres, mm, etc is much easier. Well, for me it is...
OK; for our growing pleasure, we have 4 strains here, and they are as follows:
Rare Dankness: Scotts OG + Ghost Train Haze #1. (SOG + GTH)
Bomb Seeds: Atomic. (ATM/ATOM)
Humboldt Seed Organization: Chocolate Mint OG. (CHMOG) All fem seeds.
They have all been above ground about 5 weeks today, with the RD SOG and GTH being the obvious best seeds: they both cracked in hours and were above ground in about 3 days! CHMOG was a day later, ATM a day later again. All in all, good seeds. Paper towel method in 2 plates, distilled water only for the first week. Popped seeds were placed in straight coco in tiny seedling pots, and, 5 weeks and 4 upcans later, are now in 20Ltr homemade cloth pots (Yes, guys; I can sew and am not ashamed to admit it. Sorry ladies, I'm off the market), which are filled with an organic/coco mix, described here in a post I made today on Weaselcrackers Hexapus thread, which I will now copy and paste and edit..
I use a lot of Coco. Many use Coco as a soil-less hydro type media, and use specific coco nutes.. It can hold a high percentage of it's own weight in water, yet is free-draining, simultaneously able to hold a lot of air(esp. with help of some perlite, rice hulls, bentonite whatever)..
I make a mix up of coco (approx 60-70% of total mix) with some home-made compost, EWC, hand-fulls of rock dust, lime, gypsum, blood and bone; tablespoons of seaweed/kelp, epsom salts, oven-baked eggshell powder and small amounts powdered store-bought organic pellets, some perlite and some bentonite. Let this sit in a warm spot for 3-4 weeks minimum...I also recycle my old potting mixes as you'll (apparently) get 3-5 uses out of coco. This also allows the rock dust and eggshell chance to actually breakdown enough to be useful, although how quickly this happens is debatable. I choose to use rock dust and eggshell because they're natural, and I assume that at least SOME of the fine dust must be relatively quickly available in the soil. Your finished moist mix should crush together in your hand when you make a fist, and puff back out on release.
I turn my coco into soil (sort-off) doing this mostly to avoid having to measure nutes etc. I also allow the plants to dry out quite a bit between waterings to encourage root growth so in a 20-odd-litre container I mite only need to water every 4-6 days. (Be careful, tho - on its own,esp. in smaller pots, coco can dry out quickly also, esp. if you usually water in small amounts. I water till it's soaked, then let dry out..) Coco can be forgiving like that; there is always a little bit of moisture in there somewhere... Could buy you an extra day or even two if you're away longer than expected.. From there I treat it like any other valuable, fast-growing houseplant.. I keep an eye out, train as I like and every 3-4th watering I add weak-solution organic nutes just to make sure; usually powdered pellets in water or fish-based organic liquid ferts.
Water is usually aerated tap water or rain water; sometimes straight from the tap. I have a cheap, inaccurate pH meter, which I rarely use. The hardest part for me is to just leave the plants alone... I'm a fiddler.