Keffkas Seedsman Comparative: Purple Ghost Candy

I contemplated just building one but it would’ve taken me longer than I wanted, and it wouldn’t have made me happy until I modified it a bunch so this saves me time and misery lol.



The book I showed the images from was Teaming With Bacteria. The other teaming with books helped reinforce a lot of organic topics, the bacteria one blew me away with stuff I hadn’t heard before



It’s a wild ride. I love it because you can stay as simple as you’d like or you can go molecular-level complexity if you’d like. The stuff I’ve learned about our planet is really cool too. Good luck on your journey, it’s exhilarating in the beginning!
So true it is your choice on how deep you go, and that's the beauty of it. It is no one way to do things, You can put your twist on things which is key for me. I need to keep my hands busy.
 
Just before lights off Day 2. Praying and greening up. This is a vigorous growing strain. I have an oscillating fan set to level 2 blowing directly on the sprouts to strengthen their stems and provide good airflow

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The sativa traits are strong in this plant so humidity is going to be fairly important for this grow. With that being said, currently my larger humidifier is struggling to keep my rh above 50 since I am warming the room so aggressively. I will be pulling out the 2nd humidifier today and will be running both. Hopefully I’ll be able to run them less than max so I’m not changing water every 12 hours
 
I’ve been spraying the top layer every time I see it dry. A few of the cups will need a full watering tonight which will be done in two parts. One full watering with plain pure water and one full watering with myco water. Every time I water I water twice to prevent dry pockets and ensure the entire container is moist. Since I use extra perlite and have air holes in my containers, overwatering isn’t an issue.

@Melville Hobbes youll be happy to know I have found a strong argument for fabric pots. When plant roots begin to circle this causes multiple issues. One of the big ones being transplant shock and reset time. Once a plants roots begin to circle, that is now their pattern. It becomes almost impossible to break them out of this pattern without strong intervention, hence the old methods of scoring the roots or literally physically ripping them apart. This circular root growth is part of transplant shock. The plant is not able to branch out into its new container because its hormones are driving it to circle its roots.

Fabric pots cause roots to branch instead of circle due to the air pruning. This means that when you transplant a plant that has branching roots instead of circling, they will drop right into the container and keep it moving like nothing happened.

This would explain why when I transplant from the solo cups with air holes or before the plant can circle its roots I don’t see transplant shock or recovery time but when I transplant with circling roots or from a solid container I have recovery time. I originally thought this was mycos work but it’s a matter of transplanting before your plants roots can begin to circle on themselves.

I heard this from William Evans on the KIS podcast episode 18 talking about containers. There’s some fascinating stuff in that episode. Obviously I have to refine this knowledge a bit more because I’m cherry picking from memory but I was so excited when I heard it I thought immediately about our conversation and had to write it down lol

One other fascinating bit that I think @Gee64 may have picked up on is, plants grow terrestrial roots or water roots. It is much easier for a plant to transition from terrestrial roots to water roots than it is to transition from water roots to terrestrial roots. This would explain why Gees plants from the aero cloner take to the swicks and SIPs so well, they’re already primed for water roots. This is useful information for the cloners. Use a system that will ease your transplanting
 
One other fascinating bit that I think @Gee64 may have picked up on is, plants grow terrestrial roots or water roots. It is much easier for a plant to transition from terrestrial roots to water roots than it is to transition from water roots to terrestrial roots. This would explain why Gees plants from the aero cloner take to the swicks and SIPs so well, they’re already primed for water roots. This is useful information for the cloners. Use a system that will ease your transplanting
What I'm about to say is hearsay, and I have nothing at all to back it up, but I read somewhere that the main difference between water roots and soil roots is that water roots form a coating of some sort that helps to limit the amount of water taken up.
If that's true, it would be easier for them to form a coating, rather than remove it.
 
A shot before the lights went off. They’re taking off.
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Let’s talk bacteria. Bacteria are a cannabis growers best friends. Did you know your roots will NOT grow root hairs unless rhizophagy bacteria are in your medium? This process that plays out starts with the seed. Every single cannabis strain has certain bacteria they prefer over others. These bacteria live in and on the seed. This is why I am so against germinating anywhere other than where your plant will be, because you lose literally millions of years worth of carefully selected bacteria the very moment the seed initiates germination. This isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact.

Now, you obviously don’t lose ALL the bacteria, or those who germinate elsewhere and/or sterilize their seeds would never be able to grow. However what they are doing is breaking down the genetics. They are making weaker plants. You can’t turn this around. Many breeders will tell you stories about plants that started outdoors but can now no longer survive anywhere but indoors on synthetic nutrients. They’ll tell you about genetics they thought were strong, breaking down over time and lines being almost unworkable. This can almost always be traced right back to the seeds and methods of germination.

Back to the bacteria. This rhizophagy process that occurs provides up to 30% of a plants total nitrogen requirement. Read that again. This completely natural process that is responsible for root hair growth, can provide as much as 30% of a plants total nitrogen requirement. You don’t even need to provide N for this to happen, the bacteria take it right out of the air!

Not only that, during the process the bacteria are stripped of their cell walls which the plant again is able to take up the nutrients from that. I haven’t even touched on trichome and bacteria relationships yet and how to provide a very unique and high quality flower worthy of the word terroir. We’ll chat about that too, don’t worry.

These endophytes are why a coco grower can use a myco product like Great White and still see fantastic results. The bacteria in the great white enable the plant to build root hairs it wouldn’t otherwise be capable of building. This of course means greater water and nutrient uptake which leads to better plants. So those who are still skeptical about my myco claims can now understand why even though I said it wouldn’t work, they’re still seeing results. This also reinforces my point that it’s much more beneficial for synthetic growers to spend that myco money on bacteria specific products. You will get vastly more value from a bacteria product than a myco bacteria mix.

That’s a lot of information to hit some people with so we will break there to let it digest. As always, I have sources for those interested in more and am always open to questions and discussions!
 
Day 5

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Right about this time is when I start seeing the beginnings of Mg deficiency. New growth is extra bright, slight serration rising, and as soon as a second set of leaves establishes interveinal chlorosis hits. Since Mg is super important to photosynthesis but doesn’t play well in the starter soil I will use an epsom salt foliar spray at lights off to handle the issue. It should be enough to keep the plants happy until they can hit their next containers.

Aside from that the sprouts are happy. Laying flat and catching light.
 
I will be watering this entire grow with 50 ppm water. The only time this will change is if I use Hydrolyzed fish or if I have to go with the prescription blend. I am trying my hardest to get enough soil together that I can just run these plants normal water only with some light top dressing

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I will be watering this entire grow with 50 ppm water. The only time this will change is if I use Hydrolyzed fish or if I have to go with the prescription blend. I am trying my hardest to get enough soil together that I can just run these plants normal water only with some light top dressing

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50 ppm, is that city water ppm or a mix you made?
 
50 ppm, is that city water ppm or a mix you made?

Mix.. City Water comes out at 140 ppm, 203 uS and .2 mS these days and we’ve been having flooding these past few years making the water content really unpredictable. So I switched us over to RO a while back for that and many other reasons.

I will use calcium carbonate and magnesium sulfate in the beginning to reach the 50 ppms from pure, and as they get bigger I will begin aerating dolomite lime.
 
Here is an example of the dolomite lime water recipe we’ll be using this grow

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This can be found in the new 3rd edition of TLO. I’ll be dropping excerpts and interesting stuff I read as we go along

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So for this grow I’m not using this technique since they’re feminized, but on my previous grow I did use it, and it worked. @Gee64 @Azimuth and @StoneOtter have also used this method successfully

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