The Return of the Tokist - 1000W HPS Soil GH Lucas - Afghan Kush

[Tokist]

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hola, all! i'm keeping this log short and sweet. mostly posting for those that followed my last log. this is sort of a resurrection of sorts. for you see, the clones i harvested before the last grow went south are back with a vengeance. they began as 20. space restrictions and light-hanging accidents have reduced us to a mere SIX clones left.

but, well... they aren't babies anymore...

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and some more pics right after the lights went out:

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those clones were treated like crap. we tanked em off their mothers about a week ago and tossed em in a jar of water. left em for two days before i did anything with em. they're doing better than the last batch of clones, for sure. the last batch i followed all the sterilization instructions and was super anal about everything. turns out it was all for naught.

the mothers started out in fox farm ocean forest for the first couple months of life. now they're in some cheap potting soil we got at wal-mart and we're starting them on the genhydro flora series line using the lucas formula.

and let's see how well this video i took works:

the RH hovers around 50% and the temp can get up to 80F during the day but usually stays at 75. at night it drops to 68 when the lights are off. i put them into flower on 22MAY. i think it's been about four months since they were cut. we're a bit concerned that they're going to stretch a bit after the switch, and so far, they have. if they go any higher i'll need to raise the light. ugh.

 

[KingJohnC]

subscribed. if you are running out of headroom you might want to consider super cropping your plants.

 

[Tokist]

subscribed. if you are running out of headroom you might want to consider super cropping your plants.

i AM running out of head room. as expected, once i flipped em to 12/12 they stretched a bit. didn't expect them to do it that much, but oh well. i'll have to remount the light closer towards the middle of the room (stupid vaulted cielings) to get the desired headspace. my partner suggests holding off a few days to see if they stop stretching. he anticipates the buds weighing the plants down and forcing them to lean over, which would create more headspace automatically, and if we move the raise the light now, we might have to lower it again once that happens.

so we'll see. i've flushed them out and they're going to get their first dose of flowering nutes today after work.

i'll be using the lucas formula.

in a 5GAL bucket of RO water, i'm adding 40ml of gh flora micro and 80ml of gh flora bloom.

today marks the first week in flower. half the plants have shown hairs sprouting in various places over the past few days. i imagine by day 21 or so, we'll have a better picture of things to come.

 

[Tokist]

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2nd week, 3rd day into FLOWERMODE

ok, i'm feelin kinda lazy today so im gonna just kinda throw these images up and the video at the end. sorry for the interference, but that's the price i pay for having a sweet light.

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tried to get decent photos of the hairs, but it's pretty tough to do. maybe another time right as the light is going out i'll get in there with a white cfl and get some good shots.

in about a week and a half, it'll be time to add the blossom builder.

so far, each watering they've gotten nutrients and i have yet to see any sign of nutrient burn. everyone and their brother likes to regurgitate the tried and true mantra of how you should only feed nutrients every other watering or some such.

i can only assume that this hasn't been the case for me because the tons of light allows for the plants to utilize all the nutrients they're taking in. am wondering what would happen if i just started giving them blossom builder now rather than wait....

im really hoping they stop growing vertically, already. the tallest girl grows about a half an inch a day (you could set your clock to it) and doesn't show signs of slowing. at this rate, she's gonna hit the bulb in a couple weeks.

i cant wait til they start frosting so i can rub my joint papers all over the leaves before i roll a doobie.

 

[Tokist]

so i had some shots taken without the HID light on and i was getting ready to upload them but i plugged my android into the wrong usb port and it shut my computer off (one port has a short in it, i always forget...)

upon reboot and trying again, my phone no longer connects via usb except to charge. no more usb file transfer need to find me a proper camera now

 

[KingJohnC]

so i had some shots taken without the HID light on and i was getting ready to upload them but i plugged my android into the wrong usb port and it shut my computer off (one port has a short in it, i always forget...)

upon reboot and trying again, my phone no longer connects via usb except to charge. no more usb file transfer need to find me a proper camera now

very crappy.

 

[Tokist]

no worries. my wife's phone still works. tomorrow i oughtta have some updated pics and maybe even some shots under white light. wish y'all could see em right now. it's like a sea of fuzzy pinecones.

did some research on the strain (afghan kush) and it turns out they're known for monster stretching when put into flower. they stop vertical growth at about week three to four from the other afghan kush logs and videos i've perused. the plus side to that is that they are harvested at 56 days on the outside. so yay!

added b'cuzz blossom builder to the mix just cuz i was bored and felt like it would be a good idea. they'll get their first taste of that tomorrow. guy at the hydro shop should have bloombastic in by friday, finally.

til tomorrow eve!

 

[Tokist]

i think the following information should have been shared in the initial post, but at the time of publishing, i was more concerned with getting the images online that i sort of glossed over the important stuff. but mostly, i left it out because i didn't think it was important enough to report on.

the clones these plants started from are from the previous failed grow: this much has been stated already. what i left out was how they were transplanted, what they were transplanted in. and what they're in now, of course.

when i pulled these clones initially, we had started with 20. i made the mistake of opening the vents on the cloner before it was time and about 25% of them didn't make it, give or take. then came the point when they were outgrowing their rockwool cubes, but i didn't have anything to put them in to. so i filled the cloning tray with dirt and they lived in that for about... two weeks. maybe three. then they went to my buddies house because i was taking a hiatus from growing. i was helpin my friend get them started up at his place and then he was gonna take over from there.

when we potted them, we only had enough closet space for seven pots and even then, there wasn't enough of the fox farms ocean forest blend to go fill all seven pots. so we improvised. we took a bunch of four inch rockwool cubes (torn into chunks) and hydroton, then filled the bottoms of the pots to near halfway. the rest was filled with dirt.

they stayed that way for about three months. at one point, a light adjustment caused the untimely death of one plant, so we were down to six. by this time, my buddy calls me up and says he can't keep em anymore, they're outgrowing his closet and starting to smell real bad (real bad as in quantity, not quality). now that i'm living in a larger abode, i give them their own 10x8 room, my buddy donates a 1000W HPS bulb, a parabolic reflector and a switchable ballast as their house-warming gift.

but we need to transplant them because they'd been in the same 3GAL pots for three months. we acquire some 5GAL buckets and THIS time, we got plenty of dirt. i found some earthgro potting soil from wal-mart for 2 bucks a bag.

wait, wait, wait. you're growing this in wal-mart dirt?

yea, wal-mart dirt. it got terrible reviews. one lady reported finding bits of bone and wood in her dirt. even some glass. i didn't see that as a negative, so i figured what the hell. at this point, i wanted these plants to just be done already and i didn't want to invest any more than i already had (from two failed grows). if my buddy hadn't have donated the 1000W light, i woulda told him to toss the plants. but... i just couldn't pass that up.

anyway, we sat the plants in the bottom of the buckets (yeah, i drilled holes in em!) and filled em with our nasty dirt. my buddy had a whole rubbermaid tote full of nutrients from "back in the day" and swore up and down that they were still viable. i suppose some of them might have been, but just barely. some were organic and said right on the bottle that the shelf life was less than a year. i tossed the lot and scrubbed my beard. what to do... what. to. do... what... should... hmmm....

i remembered i still had some genhydro nutes my grow shop guy donated on the last grow but i didn't have his custom nute regimen. the image i uploaded to the galley here was cut off so i couldn't use it. i figured, eh. nothing a quick google search cant fix. duh! that's when i discovered the lucas formula. you can read more about it here, but i'll break it down real quick.

a guy named lucas who i gather is really old and wise - from reading his posts - discovered that the genhydro 3-part flora series "grow" and "micro" had the same stuff. more specifically, what was found solely in floragrow was also in floramicro (along with whatever else is in micro). so he came up with a dirty, easy method of making a nutrient mix out of just florabloom and floramicro, eliminating the floragrow and saving you money. it also turns out that genhydro's maxibloom contains the same stuff that both floramicro and florabloom. so if you want to save even more money, you can just buy a bag of maxibloom instead of two bottles of flora series nutes.

the main difference being that if you're using RO water, you can use the flora nutes without needing to adjust the ph. maxibloom will require some ph down after you add it. since my ph pens are out of commission, i'm opting for the easy way out.

the end result is a simple, cheap nute regimen that gives the plants everything they need. lucas is kinda old-fashioned and will tell you that you do not need to use any other supplements. reason being is that if you have a proper growing environment (lights, air, temp), then supplements are a waste as they are only used to compensate for a lack of one or more environmental factors. that explanation really doesn't do him justice, you'll need to just google it. the dude's like a cannabis whisperer. sorta like what jorge cervantes pretends to be.

in the end, here's what i do. i take a 5GAL jug of RO water and add 80ML of flora bloom and 40ML of flora micro. boom. done deal. nutes for two weeks.

in summation, we've got a rootball cluttered with hydroton and rockwool surrounded by cheap dirt. washed down with the mucho ghetto lucas formula. my only consolation is the awesome results i found on youtube by people who claim to have used the same nutrient regimen (this guy's got like a huge following. people swear by this formula).

/end_ramble

just had to share.

 

[Tokist]

day 22 - 3 weeks 1 day

whatever glitch there was on my android that prevented me from data transfers seems to have resolved itself so i now bring you some updated pics! i'm feeling rather lazy so i'm just gonna throw em all on here. there's a couple of night pics that i took a few days back but they aren't much to look at. i'll try to take a few more tonight.

some of the pics show what appears to be the beginning of trichome production, but i cannot see it with the naked eye. had i not turned the flash on, we might not have seen them at all. from the other AK logs i've read and watched, they should have a nice helping of frosting all over the buds and fan leaves by day 28.

the day before yesterday, when i gave them a bit of food, a bunch of gnat looking bugs flew up from the dirt soon as the water hit. only two plants were infected with whatever this was, but for preventive measures i applied a healthy dose of sevin dust all over the soil on every plant. i let it sit for two days and the bugs are all gone. i removed as much of the sevin dust as possible by hand before feeding them again. the directions say not to use sevin dust too soon before harvest. it gave a table for all manner of fruits and vegetables with number of days ranging from 3 - 21. mysteriously, cannabis was not among the plants. im hoping this doesn't have an adverse affect on taste. especially since it's going to be well over thirty days before i even think about harvesting. maybe i'll throw some molasses in with the next feed.

anyways, on to the pics!

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i'm so stoked. this is the farthest i've ever gotten in a grow before

i've been lazy in putting the clones under a decent light, i should probably go do that....

 

[Tokist]

after i uploaded the last batch of photos, i wrote the claim that i had seen evidence of trichome production in the them but upon looking back on the uploaded result, you cannot really see what i was talking about. so i loaded a random photo in ms paint (yea, i know) and i cropped a nice section of the bud and uploaded just that. let's see how it turned out:

oh yea, that's what i'm talkin about! based only on knowledge gleaned from the internets and a small handful of books, i am right on schedule. so i assume the nutrient regimen i've got my girls on is doing the trick.

as promised (for once), here are some night shots. i tried to take a night video but it failed miserably. i guess i should fork over the dough for a real camera.... anyways, i'm just gonna dump em on here. i deleted the super bad ones, but some might consider all of these to be bad: and i would agree. but others might find it interesting, so here we go:

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perhaps later i'll go through some of these and get some more zoomed in shots. it's an extra step though, so i can't promise to do it all the time

g'night!

 

[CA215]

Afrooos! Very nice looking plants Tokist, mind if I take a seat and watch everything button up? CA

 

[Tokist]

aw, thanks brother! and you don't have to ask, all are welcome

 

[Tokist]

nothing much to report. the girls have gotten a little hairier and things have filled in just a tad bit more than they were yesterday. they must be responding to the blossom builder. as this is my first succesful (so far, knock on wood) grow, i have nothing to compare it to. oh well. i suppose this is the lull in the log everyone experiences. i could do daily pictures but what's the point? i think we can all agree it's best to wait at least a few days between photos. easier to see the difference in growth.

so i was thinking earlier today while slaving away at work....

i think we can all agree that organically grown produce, such as that found at places like Whole Foods, Sprouts, or Trader Joes, is far better in quality than the plastic-tasting vegetables you find at Wal-Mart, or whatever other mass grocery chain you have access to.

so why is there debate in the cannabis cultivation world as to whether organically grown cannabis is better than chemically grown cannabis?

i know there's tons of variables. like, is it even fair to compare mass produce plastic tomatoes to lovingly grown cannabis using general hydroponics?

just thinking out loud. wish i had had the resources to do this grow organic, but you gotta go with what you got. so far, i'm pleased with the results of my cheap chemicals.

 

[CA215]

just thinking out loud. wish i had had the resources to do this grow organic, but you gotta go with what you got. so far, i'm pleased with the results of my cheap chemicals.

Agreed & agreed! I totally feel that Tokist! I kind of started my first grow with the intentions of doing everything organically, and when it came down to it, I was so far off it was a smack in the back of the head LOL. I picked up a book that was brought up in my journal called, TLO True Living Organics by The Rev from High Times. It explains the processes of TLO, pretty self explanatory in the title My mind has been blown since I started digging my nose into the pages, really wish we could both get a complete organic grow one day, i'm sure the difference in meds would be amazing... Good day to you Tokist, stay irie CA

 

[Tokist]

it wasnt necessarily the lack of resources that kept us from doing this organically, it was more from lack of preparation and planning. we've both already agreed that when we do the next grow, it's going to be hydroponic (easier to automate daily tasks) so organic is right out. not that it isn't possible, it's just easier to go with what we know for now.

as i understand it though, organic is the way to grow! perhaps one day, brother, we will have our organic dream garden

 

[KingJohnC]

when i first started growing cannabis i wanted to do everything organically as that is what i was taught when i was a child. where i currently live i do not have the room for all the necessities to do that. General hydroponics has done a lot of testing under different growing conditions on crop foods. i settled on using General Hydroponics Flora series nutrients as they can be used for soil, soiless and hydroponics.

 

[CA215]

it's just easier to go with what we know for now.

Spot on, for now. Always room for new info and experience.

as i understand it though, organic is the way to grow! perhaps one day, brother, we will have our organic dream garden

Right on, plan, prepare, attack. Will prove for some killer ganja As you said though, veggies and mmj alike all in their own organic forest, sounds damn appetizing to me CA

 

[Tokist]

flower day 25 - 3 weeks 4 days

i knew i said i would wait about a week between updates but today i was able to really see the trichomes with my naked eyes, and well... i had to share it. but, i found that i had a ton of free time while doing so, so i got some really good pics AND i took an HD video which is currently in the process of being encoded. at the rate it's going, i reckon it'll take a good hour or so. then when i upload it to youtube, they gotta re-encode it again to their own specific standards. so it's gonna be awhile til you get to see it.

which means im also not going to upload all the photos right now, y'all are gonna have to wait til i do it all at once.

aw, c'mon, tokist!! pleeeaaase? with vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and cherries on top?! PRETTY PLEASE?!

no.

i'll suck yo' dick!

sigh, you drive a... hard bargain! tell you what i'll do. i'll post this right here for now:

that should hold y'all til this video is done processing.

i took that a couple of hours ago, so it's pretty fresh. go ahead, smell it.

i've added molasses to the feedings - starting today - at a ratio of 1 tablespoon per gallon of fluid. i've heard tell it's sposed to help flavor among other things. can't hurt, i spose.

that's it for now!

STAY TUNED! VIDEO AND PHOTOS COMING SOON!​

EDIT: in the time it took to type this post the photos have uploaded to the gallery. if you really wanna see em, you can check em out there. otherwise, wait til i post the video

 

[Tokist]

ok, so it turns out things got done way faster than i thought! i went out to light the charcoal and come back to youtube already done uploading and processing. i guess since i encoded it myself, youtube didn't have to. shibby!

pics first, in no particular order. to see the full size images, click on em! the first two are zoomed in images of the next two pics. i'm pretty proud of my girls so far

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and now the video. i took the time to add a soundtrack and put some edits in. windows movie maker ftw! fyi: my videos are unlisted. you cannot find them without a direct link. your eyes only!

CLICK THE GEAR ICON (SETTINGS) TO CHANGE QUALITY. I UPLOADED UP TO 1080P!​

 

[Tokist]

when i first started growing cannabis i wanted to do everything organically as that is what i was taught when i was a child. where i currently live i do not have the room for all the necessities to do that. General hydroponics has done a lot of testing under different growing conditions on crop foods. i settled on using General Hydroponics Flora series nutrients as they can be used for soil, soiless and hydroponics.

yea, i grew up the same way. my grandmother subscribes to local CSA's and shops only at co-ops where organic, locally grown produce is sold. i tried an organic grow and it wasn't all that hard. i could probably do it again, i just don't want to invest the time in prep. i'm quite happy with my genhydro results, as you said. they've got more than what we need! when i get my own land and a bigger house, then i'll try organic again.