Open Pollination Project

ChocolatChunk

Well-Known Member
Good evening everyone. This is my newest journal related to open pollination. I have 2 plants that I am going to let do their things and will hopefully be a game changer like I say to my friend.
Mother was an Ice Cream Cake who was tossed in to a dumpster because she was covered in spider mites. Shoved her in a box for a day was in my trunk and then went to bushes where she was sprayed with some Dr. Bronners and some isopropyl and peroxide.
Brought inside after a frost so was withering under direct light however gave some seed after drying in the corner still in her 1 gallon pot she was chucked in.
The father was a gigantic Garlic Breath male from.in house genetics and is result of open pollination.
Yes they smell like a plant you would call Garlic Cake: sweet, sticky and garlicy. There was 2 males and now there is 1. The chosen 1 for being sharp smelling and being stickier more purple and thicker.
12 and 12 under a 400 watt hps in strawberry fields top dressed with fox farms happy frog soil acidifier peat blend.
Good things do come to those who wait.
What a better place tondo this to. I want to keep this plant the way it is hopefully the flowers are delectible as the plants smell now. Just showing pistils and balls. Feast your eyes on garlic cake prototypes.
Also showing some of my newest style in plant training... Less direct bends, but I still bend them over ;)
Been more pinching and flattening really gets them super fat and sends a good concentration of their natural stress regulating hormones and shoot those sucker up to make a good bushy plant who is very strong.
I have adopted from the African flat stemming technique and also have only just started perfecting after years of flattening stems.
Be careful when flattening to not overly pinch and open the stems to pest or diseases.
Also be sure to handle your plants with clean hands or even consider gloves.
No glove, no love.
This should be good material to come as they are only getting started and have been going for we will say a couple months at least in 12 and 12.
About 3 ft tall from seeds nurtured to maturity from a plant found in the garbage. It makes a good story and shows you to not give up seeing results like this.
This lab a friend of mine and I constructed of elbow grease, concrete stain, paint and insulation really is a nice change of scenery from all the mylar tents huh everybody?
As I go on with this journal it will be transformed into a small food factory on the side with a small scale aquaponics system consisting of an elaborate series of filters and 2 tanks 1 with a bio filter and a uv sanitizer. The bucket tower system I am going to fabricate with pvc bottom screened drains. Covered in layers of materials ranging from lava rock/screens/ gravel/ screens/sand and a bristled layer. Followed by sponges layers for solids to be removed before the sand and gravel then lava rocks to keep the filter media cleaner and running smoothly. Trickled slowly back to the holding tank which will house some of my koi and goldfish.
The plants will all be fed what goes into the system and soley rely on that and what I can add that is fish safe. Like Iron and potassium supplements which all contain an array of chelated nutrients plants love. I give my plants aqueon aquatic plant food which is a 0-0-1 but has everything your micronutrients contain but better in my opinion because they're chelated and just use 1ml to a gal so cheap too.
Good bacteria added ti the system helps concert waste in to useable food the plants.
I am probably going to grow in hydroton and have some sort of cover like foil over the surfaces to keep algae down and help retain some rhizospheric humidity.
Another thing to mention is I am going as organic as possible and making some small worm farms to convert scraps into black gold and humic juice as well as fresh fishing bait and food for all my fish I am breeding.
So we will get to it and just want to say happy gardening everybody!
Stay tuned!

20220226_222821_Burst01.jpg


20220226_212841_HDR.jpg


20220226_212818_HDR.jpg


20220226_212129.jpg


20220226_211944.jpg


20220226_201551.jpg
 
I have adopted from the African flat stemming technique and also have only just started perfecting after years of flattening stems.
Hey CC, interesting project you're doing. Can you give some details of the 'African flat stemming technique'? I'd like to know how that goes. Cheers.
 
Correction: the sand gravel tower I am going to build will trickle back to the tank with no fish and is going to be the sanitization tank with the uv sterilizer will help heat the system and keep free of pathogens from entering my fish tank and back to the plants. This is why aquaponics systems fail. There isn't enough control over pathogens. That is why there is listeria an other e-coli in lettuce and spinach and making people sick.
I certainly dont want to consume anything that can make me that sick I had ecoli poisoning before. You do not want that!.
 
Stunger, thanks for dropping in!
So I never really considered mentioning it but figure since theres all this talk of main lining and lolli popping I figured I would bring it up.
There wasn't really much to find when I googled it, but when I worked at a hydroponics store we set up a system and a sunflower seedlings stem was somehow almost crushed but flattened. So it resinated in me the response it had. Was super vigorous to heal and was quite funny looking with its flat stem.
So I started looking into stem flattening and had found its a tecnique used by farmers in Africa to help boost crop productivity and make stout plants.
I also noticed you can flatten the stem of the whole plant if its really lanky and will helpnit get thick but its risky because of how much it can split so what I like to do is use grafting tape its made of wax and stretches to seal tight. I seal up the bad splits and the minute ones heal fine without it usually but you can even use band aids because they are sterile and then wrap a little regular tape and it might break it when it gets thicker but you can cut it off carefully once it is healed well.
If you think about a lawn yes grass is already flat but thats why it gets so lush from getting rolled over cut and pelted with rain. Then a field of grass is whispy compared to a dense lawn. But even in a field there are deer laying on the grass and eating it then it also gets weighed down with rain. So naturally plants are doing this without assistance but to have documented what methods or styles we use to grow our plants vary and this isn't so common.
They seem to respond as less stressed and seem to keep that chi of fast growth almost like fim-ing a plant you aren't completely topping it but you are doing something to it in a way its regulating hormones and making itself bushier. Without halting growth as bad as a direct snip off the top.
Plants fed a lower diet of silicate have bent and pinched or flattened better form me than the ones who do get more. They can snap and break which sucks to have happen. But helps to soften the stem and almost like you are super cropping but without the hard bend.
Leave them to heal (up to 2 weeks depending on how much pinching., I've nearly flattened a whole trunk on a plant and it was the thickest and stoutest from that very action) new scar tissue is created and will stiffen. Once healed you can flatten other stems. Note this procedure only gets harder to do as the plants age. But find them soft spots and pinch away!.sorry for such a lengthy reply but best to get out all the points and my reasoning behind the methods to my madness.
Hey CC, interesting project you're doing. Can you give some details of the 'African flat stemming technique'? I'd like to know how that goes. Cheers.
 
Thanks for getting back CC. That's interesting, I am familiar with fluxing, quadlining, hexlining, LST and supercropping but I hadn't come across your 'flat stemming' approach before. Interesting too that it works better with a lower silica level, which makes sense if you want the plant tissue to bend/crush rather than snap.

So your plants in the above pics have their main stem flattened? Altho it's a bit hard to tell, but they do look a bit flat. Check out one of the February 'plant of the month' entries, this one by @CO Finest here. It's stem is really unusual and flat, altho I think it was random thing.
 
Thanks for getting back CC. That's interesting, I am familiar with fluxing, quadlining, hexlining, LST and supercropping but I hadn't come across your 'flat stemming' approach before. Interesting too that it works better with a lower silica level, which makes sense if you want the plant tissue to bend/crush rather than snap.

So your plants in the above pics have their main stem flattened? Altho it's a bit hard to tell, but they do look a bit flat. Check out one of the February 'plant of the month' entries, this one by @CO Finest here. It's stem is really unusual and flat, altho I think it was random thing.
Yw, I havent heard of quadlining or flucing.. Well I heard the word flux before. And Im willing to bet a quadlining is laying 4 branches down to 90 degrees and the hex is if you have 6 shoots you can bend hard?
Most of my plants I try to bend and flatten as much as possible sometimes they swell to round repairs but thats ok for me.
Above just the Garlic Cake is getting some flattening as much as I can.. I have to go check her today so Im gonna do a little more on her but only really photographed what you can somewhat tell was some flattening. I will be sure to show you after 2 days how these plants look Im willing to say she is saluting the light and perked right up today.
I have found sugar supplements are good ways to increase flexibility and speed up stress like heat stress or repair stress... After all they are making sugar all day naturally but with some added simple or complex sugars they respond fast.
Bought a 2 lb carboload dry powder at a store near me for 20$ will probably last me another 5 yrs at least big difference in getting complex sugars and really feeding it to them before flower, in the transition and well into flower I am probably going to begin cutting after the 2nd week in swell phase from now on and the plants who are going to be in aquaponicds... Well Im only gonna be foliar sugar dosing in the veg states and transition states. No sugar in your fishes water
 
that is quite the flat stem there! Its almost like how the polyploids look when they get older.
Do they make widened plugs to clone such wide plants jkjk LOL
Speaking of cloning... I am considering doing a side by side with clonex or rootech or both and a cpl natural methods like the damp paper towel wrapped around the cutting after being rolled in cinnamon.
Then there is this other recipe on youtube where you use aloe vera gel and cinnamon and some honey.
I bought a "cloning gel" that was actually formulated here in western New York from a rural PHD in plant science. It is 99 percent honey then soy oil and a special fungus that encohrages prolific rooting and will live in the plant like mykorizahl fungi and provide a more stronger host defense to fungal attacks and defends well against powder mildews in particular.
Beauvaria Bassiana or something like that is this new strain of beneficial fungi.
So I might stretch my dollar and go with that in the aloe gell or just a dab of it at least.
Its really only been studied as a bio-insectice.
Found this on it when I look it up.
Beauveria bassiana is a fungus that grows naturally in soils throughout the world and acts as a parasite on various arthropod species, causing white muscardine disease; it thus belongs to the entomopathogenic fungi. Wikipedia
 
interesting to know anyone considered in areas suffering from aphids or white flies and scale or mealy bugs leaf miners and other chewer and sucker like mites even too possibly? ... So basically anyone can benefit from this newly researched strain of naturally occuring soil microorganism.
 
Well I heard the word flux before. And Im willing to bet a quadlining is laying 4 branches down to 90 degrees and the hex is if you have 6 shoots you can bend hard?
Yes that's right. Hex is leaving 3 nodes on and laying out 6 branches. Whereas Fluxing is just laying out 2.
that is quite the flat stem there! Its almost like how the polyploids look when they get older.
I thought it looked like an electrical computer ribbon.
Beauveria bassiana is a fungus that grows naturally in soils throughout the world and acts as a parasite on various arthropod species, causing white muscardine disease; it thus belongs to the entomopathogenic fungi. Wikipedia
That's sounds interesting, but where I am, a lot of that stuff is probably years away from being available. However, I grow in soil and I include Neem meal and Chitin sources which are supposed to offer some strengthening of the plant against insect attacks.
 
Yes that's right. Hex is leaving 3 nodes on and laying out 6 branches. Whereas Fluxing is just laying out 2.

I thought it looked like an electrical computer ribbon.

That's sounds interesting, but where I am, a lot of that stuff is probably years away from being available. However, I grow in soil and I include Neem meal and Chitin sources which are supposed to offer some strengthening of the plant against insect attacks.
Stunger, I like to use chitosans as well I can see the differences it is much like having a potassium silicate. Theres a new product from the makers of hygrozyme called Hy-shield and is a very clean form of chito and has some thickness.. Believe it or not it is actually a clear formula.. Crystal clear and is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of silica. I bought a quart for 20$ off amazon. I used GH's chi and that was a good product not particulate free like hy-shield but good none the less.
Im gonna take a stab at guessing where you live and say either Ireland or you are in the UK or Australia lol I could be way off
You make me way to say Indis because I hear neem meal.
I used neem meal before and had good results with it very good for the soil.
 
Stunger, I like to use chitosans as well I can see the differences it is much like having a potassium silicate. Theres a new product from the makers of hygrozyme called Hy-shield and is a very clean form of chito and has some thickness.. Believe it or not it is actually a clear formula.. Crystal clear and is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of silica. I bought a quart for 20$ off amazon. I used GH's chi and that was a good product not particulate free like hy-shield but good none the less.
Im gonna take a stab at guessing where you live and say either Ireland or you are in the UK or Australia lol I could be way off
You make me way to say Indis because I hear neem meal.
I used neem meal before and had good results with it very good for the soil.
Hey CC, I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, NZ.
As a silica amendment, I added Diatomaceous Earth after reading a study that found it useful as it is all Silica. For Chitin I added a cup of dried washed shrimp to each pot that I bought from an Asian food store, I let it cook in the soil for a few months in the 'outdoor off season', altho I recently added about a 1/3 of a cup during a topdressing as my plants hit flowering. I also added Diastatic Malted Barley for the enzyme activity especially Chitinase.
 
Hey CC, I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, NZ.
As a silica amendment, I added Diatomaceous Earth after reading a study that found it useful as it is all Silica. For Chitin I added a cup of dried

Hey CC, I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, NZ.
As a silica amendment, I added Diatomaceous Earth after reading a study that found it useful as it is all Silica. For Chitin I added a cup of dried washed shrimp to each pot that I bought from an Asian food store, I let it cook in the soil for a few months in the 'outdoor off season', altho I recently added about a 1/3 of a cup during a topdressing as my plants hit flowering. I also added Diastatic Malted Barley for the enzyme activity especially Chitinase.
Stunger good to hear back from you and New Zealand huh? That must be nice I wish I lived remote except grow supplies would be tricky to coms by however theres probably something else you can get cheaper than DE for better silica uptake and it's a form of zeolite that is non carcinogenic. Clineptilolite and is used to freshen horse stalls.. Does not break down or compact like clay and is supposed to increase silica uptake I bought a 25lb bag from local tractor supply/ feed store and have been top dressing to help kill off my gnat problem.
I just receieved a sample from Neptune's Harvest of their crushed lobster shell. But have just started also adding a fresh lobster compost from Coast of Maine it is very dark and just what my mix needed.
But look into stall refresher is is a good additive with silicate stone I particularly like to add a layer no more than an inch bc its expensive of silicate stone in the bottom of the pots the roots love to wrap around and holds extra water incase you miss a. Watering.. I have used non clumping fragrance free clay unscented kitty litter from the dollar store to the same effect but over time it adds to the compaction of the blend so a little is good but too much is bad.
Over there Im sure traditionally a seaweed is also amended to your beds or compost?
Im sure you have some heavy heavy sticky buds with that trick there using shrimp.
Also the barley quite an interesting fact that it makes that. So that is an enzyme form of chitosan it Im guessing is due to a bacteria in the rice itself responsible making chitinase?

20220301_002635_HDR.jpg


20220301_002415_HDR.jpg
 
It does look like a computer ribbon that's a good comparison. Very paculiar and funny to see that happen do you still have this particular strain or what even was that from lol very curious

Lol a computer ribbon is exactly what it looks like. I could not find a way to clone that branch. It only grew like that on one main branch all the others grew normal. It is almost done flowering now just hit week 9. The bud it is growing on that ribbon it about five inches round and 7-8 inches long. Check her out I did not touch her let her grow completely natural.
5.jpg
7.jpg
8.jpg
10.jpg
11.jpg
12.jpg
14.jpg
 
The clineptilolite is also OMRI stamped heres a picture of the brand I currently am using and how it looks and how I applied it Im going to actually mix half sand and maybe some fine pumice stone for succulents with it. Just to cut the mix bc it is rather fine and somewhat dense still porous though but good that does not compact and is proven beneficial to enhance the silicate mobility with the DE would also br e a good cut for these super stone substances we will call them.. I consider sand like a super stone but is more of a grain that helps with a lot.
Theres an article from an organic hydroponics rooftop garden that dutch bucketed a mixture of a lot of sand and other organic amendments I will share my findings and probably incorporate the method in with my aquaculture system once it's up and running with layers to keep it from jamming me pumps bc I been thinking what to grow them in... The plants on the sides of pond and creeks seem to be fine growing from rocks and sand in good old mother nature.
 
Lol a computer ribbon is exactly what it looks like. I could not find a way to clone that branch. It only grew like that on one main branch all the others grew normal. It is almost done flowering now just hit week 9. The bud it is growing on that ribbon it about five inches round and 7-8 inches long. Check her out I did not touch her let her grow completely natural.
5.jpg
7.jpg
8.jpg
10.jpg
11.jpg
12.jpg
14.jpg
CO Finest that is AMAZING! Very gnarly to see how she grew that way lol we wish we know how some our plants will grow to reverse them or have a cut before they start doing all these crazy things we werent expecting LOL big kick to the balls if you were hoping to have something different from everyone else too.
 
Stunger good to hear back from you and New Zealand huh? That must be nice I wish I lived remote except grow supplies would be tricky to coms by however theres probably something else you can get cheaper than DE for better silica uptake and it's a form of zeolite that is non carcinogenic. Clineptilolite and is used to freshen horse stalls.. Does not break down or compact like clay and is supposed to increase silica uptake I bought a 25lb bag from local tractor supply/ feed store and have been top dressing to help kill off my gnat problem.
Cheers CC. In 'normal' times it seemed good, but these days who knows. Thanks for the tip on Clineptilolite, I only gave a couple of tablespoons of DE to each container, and I saw it as an amendment similar to rock dust, that will keep on giving. I didn't use it last year and the grow seemed reasonable, and being the same soil this time I thought better to just add a modest amount rather than over do it.
I just receieved a sample from Neptune's Harvest of their crushed lobster shell. But have just started also adding a fresh lobster compost from Coast of Maine it is very dark and just what my mix needed.
That looks nice.
Over there Im sure traditionally a seaweed is also amended to your beds or compost?
I couldn't really say a tradition, but many do, my father did, and I think my grandfathers too.
Im sure you have some heavy heavy sticky buds with that trick there using shrimp.
I used it last year and it seemed supportive of the grow. So amended and top dressed more for the current grow.
Also the barley quite an interesting fact that it makes that. So that is an enzyme form of chitosan it Im guessing is due to a bacteria in the rice itself responsible making chitinase?
The malting/sprouting of the barley releases the enzymes which for bread makers, they want the ones that turned starch into sugars for the yeast, similar to the brewers, for us gardeners we like the Chitinase, the enzyme that breaks down Chitin (hard insect shells, crab/lobster shells, shrimp etc). The plant then apparently readies itself for hard insect attack and is more protected for it. I am relaxing on some chewed decarbed bud so hope this make a little sense.
 
Very interesting I love it and by the way heres the pictures I said I would share had to interrupt the dark Ijust planted this Blue dream into a 10 gallon and have a pebble pie male next to it to open pollinate these girls O have in there is a purple diesel and a french macaron and theres an underdawg thats pretty bad shape just not pulling through for me sadly even in the corner I flushed my plants and regret taking my purple diesel in broke and split so many branches including the main trunk so Im starting to see I need to be more gentle on them. I should transplant this french macaron in a 2 gal to a 5 bc she drinks so much. Very much regret moving my bush to flush her bc she took quite some abuse from me and sad to sad I broke her back in the tent shaking my head LOL
Lucky for me her sister is 7ft tall in the tent next to her so idgaf really I am mad but am happy she is still alive I have 3 branches I had to cut off her and another big one :'(
:)

20220301_200532.jpg


20220301_200446.jpg


20220301_200432.jpg


20220301_200424.jpg


20220301_200357.jpg


20220228_141104.jpg


20220228_140954.jpg


20220228_135748_HDR.jpg


20220228_135506_HDR.jpg


20220228_135421_HDR.jpg
 
Back
Top Bottom