2nd Grow Of 2015

[ui3ywer8y3]

I figured what the hey, I'll make a grow journal (outdoors, in the thick of the elements) this time. This is local smoke we dubbed Bastrop Pine. I know, not a legitimate strain, but it's the same piney woods smoke that's been around these parts for longer than myself, and I'm 45. There's not a whole lot to report as of yet. I just put 26 non-feminized seeds in a 2 gal. container for sprouting today (6.14.15). Only rain water will be used for this grow, of course mixed with nutes when needed. Here are shots of my choice seeds and container if you're interested. I'll update (with pics) at least weekly throughout my grow. I'm following the moon phase method, though I did beat the new moon by 2 days and I did have to wait an extra month for the gawdforsaken rain to stop. -__- Anyway, here it is, my journal start to finish.

My 2nd grow 2015 - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery

My 2nd grow 2015 - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery

 

[Pigeons420]

Hey Tokey! Glad to see you jumped right in and started a journal.

Consider checking out "creating a journal" in my signature and adding a little meet and potatoes to your information and you'll be flying along!!

Hope to see you around. Cheers mate!

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hey Tokey! Glad to see you jumped right in and started a journal.

Consider checking out "creating a journal" in my signature and adding a little meet and potatoes to your information and you'll be flying along!!

Hope to see you around. Cheers mate!

If it's not raining tomorrow I'll snap some shots of a couple of experiments from my first grow and post them along with how I screwed up royally on them so other outdoor growers won't make those same mistakes. I did the experiments based off threads on other smoke sites just to put to rest arguments for myself.

 

[madscientist9]

lol cant wait to see that

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

lol cant wait to see that

I can't say the experiments are a total loss, just not my preferred method of growing. As Pigeons420 requested, I'll throw in some meat and taters.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

I tried to post with working links, but they don't work for me today, which is strange because they worked fine yesterday.

Ok, the rain held off long enough to get a few shots of a couple of potted plants from my first grow of the year. These are 2 girls that I kept in pots because I had no safe empty ground to stick them. I'll refer to them respectively as Plant 1 and Plant 2. Part of plant 3 snuck into one of the shots, but disregard it because it went hermie from being weather stressed and got trashed and it's pot is what my 2nd grow is germinating in right now. Both seeds were sown on 1.15.15. I planted then because it's sweltering hot here (central Texas) with extreme humidity almost all year. From the middle of April until the end of May, it rarely stopped raining (weather very out of the ordinary), and that was another one of the many factors that played into the stunting of these innocent girls' growth. They got no beneficial sun. As of today they are approximately 4.5 months old according to full moons. Anyway, here are their stories...

Plant 1

Early in the grow, I ran across a thread on another site about removing all the fan leaves. The arguing back and forth was intense, so I figured what the heck, and here is the result of my chopping...

Here are some shots taken on 5.11.15 during a brief pause in the rain. I damn near wanted to cry afterward.

At that point it and #2 were 3 months and 1 week old. It was argued that removing the fan leaves would cause the plant to put more energy into bud formation because the fan leaves wouldn't be sucking away water and nutrients, while others argued the fan leaves are the solar panels that provide energy to the buds, yet neither side were able to produce shots because none had performed a side by side grow comparison.

Here's a series of shots I took this morning of Plant 1, a little over a month later. This is with a month of sunshine.

My first mistake was neglecting to transplant both plants into bigger pots. That was the #1 stunter, then the month & a half of rain, and then using a black pot for Plant 1. Cutting fan leaves killed the spots where new bud producing branches would have grown. It shut the plant down in growing taller and focused all of it's energy into what few buds it has, though as they fill out they're kinda impressive. These buds have while to go yet before harvest, still very airy. There are a few tryches, still not the frost I'm expecting. I believe they'll fatten up quite nicely in the next couple of weeks or so. All in all, this does make for bigger buds, but I believe a yield far inferior to its potential by topping appropriately and leaving all leaves on until they fall off on their own. From now own I'm going to stick with transplanting directly into the ground at least 6 ft. apart so the lateral roots have room to spread freely. If no more ground space, no more pot growing. *pun not intended, but not bad*

An observation I made is outside pests don't really care for sugar leaves at all, and boy do I have just about every pest there is, grasshoppers being the most destructive, but not one bite on a single sugar leaf. The rising THC must be too much for them to handle.


Plant 2

Here was Plant 2 on 5.11.15...

I started out normal with this one, topping above the 4th set of nodes (I should have mentioned earlier this is an indica dominant strain), blasting it heavily with Miracle Gro every 2 weeks during vegetation. It responded instantly and grew rapidly. No fan leaves were removed. Then...the rain. :/ It pretty much stopped growing/showing anything productive. When the rain shut off and the sun popped out, this girl went full blown hussy on me, spreading her branches out all over the place. Then...the unimaginable. -__- I was bending around on the main stem checking for mold and *SNAP*! I broke off the entire goshdamn middle and top sections! D;< I did cry that day. Here is what it looks like today, hardly anything left other than a few small popcorn buds.

The lesson learned here is don't be rough with your girls, they're very fragile! There were colas bigger than my flat hand. A few of the buds left should be ready within the next couple of weeks. The buds are frosty enough and full enough, but they're going the distance. The tryches are still clear. I'm very disappointed by the bud sizes. But, there is a bright side to this story. Plant 2 has started regenerating itself with loads of new baby flowers so it is going in the ground somewhere today. I think the 2nd harvest from this plant has potential yet. You can see the fan leaves near the ripening buds starting to turn yellow.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Ok, back to the grow at hand. This is 3 days after sowing. "3 days", I said!

I lost one due to Tropical Storm Bill last night.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Here it is 15 days after sow. My kiddos are still in the same pot, 20 survivors. Prepping my grow area has proven burdensome because my chainsaw quit running and I'm doing a lot of hand clearing, and still have a long way to go with the full moon only 3 days away. I am still planning on having them in the ground the day before. I'll borrow a chainsaw tomorrow and kick it in gear getting the rest cleared like I want it.

Here are what my kiddos look like now.

15 days after sow - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery

15 days after sow - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery

This is my grow area before clearing. The soil is freakin' awesome. It's already moist, mulched, and aerated by massive amounts of pill bugs. It will be perfect when I can get the all day sky opened up. I was facing East when I took this shot. I have to get that opened and a small amount on the west/southwest side. I'll show an after shot when I get it finished.

15 days after sow - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Ok, back to the grow at hand. This is 3 days after sowing. "3 days", I said!

I lost one due to Tropical Storm Bill last night.

I don't know what happened that these links didn't work, but here they are again.

 

[Teddy Edwards]

Hi TokeySmurf

If you are having problems uploading and posting photos, you'll find this useful:
Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hi TokeySmurf

If you are having problems uploading and posting photos, you'll find this useful:
Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

Thank you for the clarification, Teddy. I think I may have just forgot to use the toolbar that time. Anyway, new updates and pics coming in the next couple of days.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hello again, fellow tokers.

it has taken me a while to even want to post any updates because this has been such a sh*t year for me cultivation-wise, and I'm quite embarrassed to be honest. The weather has been so contrary, and the grow area preparations were no less than a b*tch due to my gas-powered tools ALL freakin' breakin' down on me nearly at the same time, and with many hours wasted attempting the impossible with primitive hand tools I abandoned that location altogether. It's probably for the best because out of the original 26 sprouts, I have 14 surviving pitiful specimens. They're in 1.5 gal. pales at this time (1 gal. of soil) until I sex them, which leaves me believing I'll wind up with probably no more than 4-7 girls by the time all is said and done. Once sexed they'll go into 5 gal. buckets for the duration. The one good thing that did come from of the abandoned grow area is well aerated Texas black dirt, so I'll be doing some shoveling soon. I hope to get a good harvest out of this grow, enough to last a year, because I want to take a break from growing for about 6 months.

Anyway, here is what I'm still working with. I know, pitiful. They each lost a couple of nodes. The transplanting stressed the hell out of them because I let them go too long before switching containers. I just kept having false hopes for that grow area. There may have been a slight nute incident right before trasplanting, too. *coughcough* It's okay, it ain't nothing for them to put on a few more. I'm going to hit 'em with nutes again this Friday and let them go a couple of weeks before posting new pics. I'm using mackerel-gro (hick talk) during vegetation.

Holy crap, I finally figured out how to post pics.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hello fellow tokers, it's show & tell time once again.

First the show, then the tell.

Here we are at 1 full moon old, seems like 2 with all of the troubles I've had, but this old dog learned a lot in the past few weeks alone, especially about pests, which I have just about every known pest to cannabis plants. In my last post I noted that I was going to apply nutes several days later, but something wasn't sitting right with me about doing that, so i put it off for another week. I believe if I would have fed the group at the time I said then I would have burned every one of them up because the sun kicked it in high gear, temps soared to almost 110 in the shade, and I had to cut the group back to 5 hours of direct sunlight (9 a.m.-2 p.m.), and I bought a fan that blows like a hurricane on the low setting, lined the plants up, and it cools them all well. In the back row of the group shot are my best growers. They're at least 2 ft. tall. The others are a little slow on the grow, but should yield good should they turn out to be females, no sex yet, but should within the next couple of weeks which at that time I will report back with what I have left to work with. I'm really surprised I still have all 14 left as rough as I am with them and considering the pests, even dropped one and busted the container. I transplanted it into another like container, watered, and it never phased it.

At last mention I was misting the leaves with tobacco tea, then the grasshoppers and leaf miner flies showed up. When I seen my solution wasn't effective I switched over to Neem oil and I'm about to slam that product, it's NOT WORTH A FUCK! As soon as I started using it my pest population more than tripled! You couldn't pay me to use that shit again! About 3 days after starting use of it the grasshoppers didn't go hungry, and I was pinching leafs off left and right due to miners. About the same time I noticed I had web worms in my pecan tree in the front yard and the cure for them has always been soapy water, so I began to think about using it on my plants. I mixed up a tiny amount of Dawn dish detergent and water in a quart size hand pump sprayer and one evening saturated the leafs, top and especially bottom because the bottom is where miner flies lay their larva. After switching to this soapy solution I haven't seen a bug on a single plant. Before the soapy water, every new set of opening leafs were immediately attacked by bud worms and I destroyed a lot of leafs trying to carefully hand pick them off to open the leafs.

I haven't topped yet. I'm waiting for 6 distinctive nodes first, which about half the plants will have in only a couple more days. Now that I've gotten the pests under control these things are sucking up the water and I had to double up on that. I water every day because it's so hot. They would never survive waiting every 2-3 days. The fan leaves, especially the upper ones, are monstrous, almost 2 times the size of one flat hand. These are the same kickASS sativa dominant strain I've grown many times before, but I think these are going to put my other grows to shame. If all times out just right, I'm looking at Christmas bud.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

I just wanted to pop in with a quick update to my last post. I decided soapy water isn't the way to go on pest control after talking with other local growers. They all advised to switching to dusting with 5% Sevin Dust. I questioned putting it on plants in flowering and they said it doesn't hurt 'em and at harvest to wash 'em clean and hang to dry with fan circulation. I never tried it, but if it works for tomatoes and other edibles, then I can't see the harm if rinsed thoroughly. I used Sevin Dust the first and only time so far 4 days ago and no pests. I sprinkled the plants, the soil, and a circle around.

I also topped yesterday (8.5.15). I'll be transplanting into 5 gal. buckets this weekend, so I have a lot of Texas black dirt to dig and a ton of buckets to wash and to drill drain holes in the bottoms. The next time you see the group I will have transplanted and sexed. I already have a good feeling the majority are females. I doubt I'll lose more than 4 plants, if that many, at sex.

See you again on New Moon.

 

[Pigeons420]

Glad you've got things sorted out! Your girls are looking fantastic!

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Glad you've got things sorted out! Your girls are looking fantastic!

Thank you, Pigeons420. I'm very excited about this grow, more so than any before. I believe this yield will surpass my expectations, though I will lose 1 girl due to a deal I made with my seed supplier.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hello again, fellow tokers.

Here we are a day after New Moon, my girls are a 1½ months old, and it's day 2 of flowering. Only 7 out of the 14 plants are females. The males got chopped immediately upon sex. Most are in 5 gallon buckets now (2 in the ground) and scattered all over the place, so rather than visit all 7 grow areas, I will showcase the closest (they all look the same). So without further ado, here she is with commentary afterward.

It has been well over 110℉ every day for the past couple of weeks. Even 5 hours of direct sunlight is stressing the hell out of them. 9a.m. is the earliest available sunlight for them. Fortunately we are supposed to be dropping into the middle 90s this coming week so there will be some relief.

I haven't had pest problems hardly at all since switching over to Sevin Dust. Their biggest threat now are 2 goats that belong to my neighbor. They keep escaping from their pin and I have to break out the BB gun.

I'll share pics of the other girls at different intervals throughout my journal. If anyone has any questions or suggestions then please feel free to post them.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

The pics finally showed.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Ok, I carried another one over to the photo booth.

You can see the heat stress on the tips of some of the closest fan leaves, even though I water morning and evening.

 

[ui3ywer8y3]

Hello fellow tokers, here are my girls at 7 weeks old/day 8 of flowering.

I'm growing au naturale, no bloom booster crap. It rained on them yesterday and gave them a good bath. I took these pics this morning before dusting again. Pests are at a minimum. As the high temps lowered into the mid 90s, I have been able to increase their direct sunlight allotment by an hour with little stress. I also put the original abandoned grow site to use after all by depositing one girl thereat (last pic).