Timmo
Well-Known Member
Welcome to
Timmo’s Organic Soil Grow Journal: Seedling Edition
———————————————————————
A Step-by-Step Demonstration of (Nearly) Every Mistake You Can Make
Fear not, my friends, for this is not a tale of woe, but one of joyful discovery! The learning has been worth the mistakes. Yours truly has learned much, and (so far) this story has a happy ending: My kids are kicking ass right now!
The basic facts:
The seedlings:
10 Mastodon (indica)
10 Iranian Early Flower (indica)
11 Lebanese (landrace) x Gorilla Grape bx2/Nepalese Rocket (60% indica)
2 Original White Widow (60% sativa)
3 Pure Northern Lights (indica)
Some clones that I’ve picked up along the way:
1 Green Queen (60% indica)
1 Cinex x NW Coffee (65% indica)
1 J1 (60% sativa)
1 Chemdawg
1 Black Betty
1 Lemon Kush (50/50)
And six mothers:
2 AK-47
2 Northern Lights
2 White Widow
Room: 8’ by 5’. In an old, uninsulated, very drafty barn.
Lights: 1000w MH, 400w MH, 400w HPS. The latter two share a hood.
Also in the room: A 30-gallon barrel full of water, no lid, for thermal mass and a little extra humidity. An electric oil-filled space heater, to keep the night temps from dipping too low. Two fans, one that oscillates, one that doesn’t. And as of a few days ago, my clone maker, sitting under the table with the seedlings on it.
Some of the plants got started in a closet in the house under eight 4-ft, 54w T5s, but everyone’s in the barn now.
January 28, 2016: 11 Mastodon seeds were started by soaking them in wet paper towels inside a ziplock bag set on a shelf above the T5s. Two days later, 9 sprouted. Another one the next day. I transferred all of them into starter 6-packs with seed starting mix that I scrounged out of my greenhouse and sterilized in the microwave. Rather than peel the paper towels apart and risk breaking the root or pulling hairs off (both of which I’ve done before), I cut the towels up so each seed sat inside its own little moist blanket, which I tucked into slots I made in the starting mix. The next day, 10 little green heads were poking up. I put the 6-packs under the T5s, where my mothers-in-training were.
Mistake #1: Using the paper towel method. There is only one reason to use this method: that electric feeling you get when you see that little root poke out. From the plant’s perspective, there is no benefit whatsoever. There are, however, plenty of downsides, including the aforementioned root damage and the (hereby foreshadowed) possibility of cooking the seeds. I’d already convinced myself last year that this is a bad method, and still I gave in to urge to see that root pop. Tsk, tsk.
Mistake #2: Using that seed starting mix. Assuming that it’s my normal-garden starting mix (another mistake: using something without being sure what it was), it’s equal parts peat, compost, and sand, which is too heavy for cannabis. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that this was a mistake, all of the above-listed seedlings were in it. Next time, I’m planning to use equal parts worm castings and vermiculite. I know that some people add peat to that as well, but I’d really like to break the peat moss habit, plus, there’s just something magical about EWC, and the thought of starting seeds in nothing but that and an aerator really lights me up.
Mistake #3: Putting the seedlings RIGHT NEXT TO plants that I knew had been infested with spider mites. I had sprayed those plants three times with Nuke Em, which really knocked the adult population down, but there were still lots of eggs. I could seriously almost cry thinking about how ignorant I was about spider mites just two short months ago. I just didn’t understand. I hadn’t lost my innocence yet. I have now. More on this subject to follow.
I don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures of those seedlings, but it appears that I didn’t.
Feb 2: Started the Northern Lights and White Widow seeds. Five of each. Again with the paper towels in ziplock on the shelf above the T5s. Two days later, all five NLs had sprouted, but only two WWs. The thermometer on the shelf said 90. Oops. At 10 bucks a pop, cooking three seeds is painful. I put them all in 6-packs and again set them on the shelf with the infested plants. Ugh.
The White Widows:
Northern Lights:
The Mastodons at this point:
Feb 17: Started 12 Lebanese Gorilla and 11 Iranian seeds. This time just straight into the sterilized seed starting mix. And they went nowhere near the infested closet. By this time, I was ultra paranoid about the borg, so I got my main grow room cleaned really well and put these kids in there. Inside an aquarium set inside a livestock watering basin as a moat. Obviously too small for them to grow in forever, but I hoped it would protect them at least long enough to get established before The Fuckers moved in. They took about a week to sprout. All but one of each strain sprouted. I put them under the 400w MH.
I also transplanted the Mastodons, NLs, and WWs into 3.5” pots in my (at the time) standard growing mix.
54 gal base mix (equal parts peat, perlite, and compost)
1.5 c soil sweetener
16 c EWC
1.5 c bone meal
3.5 c 9-3-1 bat guano
2 c greensand
1/4 c Ful-Humix
3.5 c Azomite
1 c mycos
They were all looking very stressed. We had a few warm days where I didn’t keep on top of the temps (Mistake!), plus I’m sure the mites were really sapping them. I also released predatory mites in the closet.
Mastodon #10 didn’t pull through.
Mistake #4: Using my growing mix, which was too hot for the youngsters. They all got nute burned. At least I assume that was the problem. I've never nute-burned plants before, so I don't really know what it looks like. The new growth looked great for the first couple of weeks, but then lower leaves started dying off around March 1:
March 7, the crispification continues:
Meanwhile, the LGs and Iranians are doing well:
Feb 28:
March 6:
March 8: I repotted all of the nute-burned plants into 4” pots that I made into air pots. For the added soil, I used 50-50 worm castings and vermiculite. I figured it would give them something nice and gentle to grow into for a week or two and then I’d try repotting again in grown-up soil. The rootballs were obviously small for 5-week-old plants, but there were some decent, healthy-looking roots.
You can see one of my homemade air pots on the lower right. I'll post better pics of them and how I made them if anyone's interested.
The next day, I moved them all to the main grow room under the 400w MH.
Four days later:
By that time, I thought I had already spotted mite eggs on the Iranians and the LGs and had decided that additional measures were necessary. The puckering you can see in some of the March 6 pics only added to my paranoia. I ordered a bottle each of Spinosad (Monterey Garden Spray), SM-90, and Mighty Wash. (In hindsight, what I saw were probably actually trichomes, not eggs. I really need to get a better microscope.) I removed the moat.
Mistake #5: Waiting to transplant after the nute burn showed up. I probably should have given them some mellower soil to start growing new roots into right away.
March 12: I started a 3-round cycle of Spinosad. Once every five days, right after lights out. I initially intended to follow that with three rounds each of the other two sprays, but so far, the Spinosad appears to have done the trick, so I stopped there. Haven't seen any sign of mites, but I'm ready to hit them again if need be.
March 14: I repotted the Iranians and the LGs. Most of them went into 3.5” pots. Two Iranians and one LG went into small burlap bags and two of each went into tall 3” pots to see how the growth rates would differ. I also varied the depth at which I planted them—some only half an inch deeper than they had been, some closer to two inches. A few seedlings is obviously not enough to reach any scientifically valid conclusions, but it still seems worth trying.
These two pics show that the roots aren't doing all that well in the starting mix I used:
I normally mix my soil outside on a tarp, but it was raining so hard that day that neither I nor my co-pilot wanted to go outside, so I gave the kiddie-pool a go. Not bad, but I still prefer the tarp.
Done:
Two days later:
After a week, roots were already poking out of the burlap bags:
For the soil: All of the Iranians and five of the LGs went into 50-50 EWC-vermiculite. The other five LGs went into that blend mixed 50-50 with my new grown-up soil.
30 gal base (equal parts peat, perlite, and compost)
3/4 c soil sweetener
9 c EWC
1 c bat guano
1 c fish bone meal
2 Tbsp Ful-Humix
2 c Azomite
2 c basalt dust
2 c greensand
2 c kelp meal
2 c alfalfa meal
2 c crab meal
2 c neem seed meal
1 c mycos
3/4 c yucca powder
March 21: Comparing the roots in the three different plastic pots:
Standard 3.5" pot:
Homemade 4" air pot:
Tall 3" pot:
March 23:
March 28: Except the three in the burlap bags, I repotted everyone into 1-gal pots with the new mix, except in this batch I added 2 cups of diatomaceous earth and had run out of greensand. They all took to it very quickly. I pinched out the tops to encourage bushiness. After the repotting, I raised the light fixture and turned on the 400w HPS as well.
Once again, comparing the rootballs:
Std. 3.5":
4" air pot:
Tall 3":
Burlap bag:
I didn't repot the ones in the burlap that day because they had so much more soil to grow into to begin with. I figured they probably hadn't had much chance for the rootball to really thicken up.
Everyone looked really happy except this one:
Any ideas what's going on there? I started looking like that before the repotting and continued to get worse. A couple of its neighbors had similar puckering, but nowhere near as bad and without the paleness. You can see it on the lower right corner here (March 30):
It has since improved considerably. April 4 (lower left):
April 10: I put the three in the burlap bags into 2-gal pots. I’d had the bags sitting in some 4” square pots that are about a foot tall so they would sit upright. It would be better to have some kind of system that I could hang the bags from, so they weren’t pressed up against plastic, which defeats the air pruning purpose of the fabric. You can definitely see where the bags were touching the pots—the only spots where the roots really grew through. I resisted the urge to cut one of the bags open to see how the rootball looked, but that would have defeated the other purpose of the fabric—minimizing transplant shock.
At this point, they're a little smaller than their siblings. I'm curious to see if they catch up.
That brings us up to date.
I haven’t said anything about watering or fertilizing. I haven’t added any ferts to the water. I use either plain water or compost tea. I mist the plants with both as well. I haven’t studied up on compost tea enough to really know what I’m doing with it. I’m in the middle reading Teaming With Microbes. My skim of the chapter on ACT suggests that you can use it every time, but I get the feeling that cannabis growers don’t do that. Learning how to use it correctly is one of my goals for this grow.
Thanks for reading! More to come.
Timmo’s Organic Soil Grow Journal: Seedling Edition
———————————————————————
A Step-by-Step Demonstration of (Nearly) Every Mistake You Can Make
Fear not, my friends, for this is not a tale of woe, but one of joyful discovery! The learning has been worth the mistakes. Yours truly has learned much, and (so far) this story has a happy ending: My kids are kicking ass right now!
The basic facts:
The seedlings:
10 Mastodon (indica)
10 Iranian Early Flower (indica)
11 Lebanese (landrace) x Gorilla Grape bx2/Nepalese Rocket (60% indica)
2 Original White Widow (60% sativa)
3 Pure Northern Lights (indica)
Some clones that I’ve picked up along the way:
1 Green Queen (60% indica)
1 Cinex x NW Coffee (65% indica)
1 J1 (60% sativa)
1 Chemdawg
1 Black Betty
1 Lemon Kush (50/50)
And six mothers:
2 AK-47
2 Northern Lights
2 White Widow
Room: 8’ by 5’. In an old, uninsulated, very drafty barn.
Lights: 1000w MH, 400w MH, 400w HPS. The latter two share a hood.
Also in the room: A 30-gallon barrel full of water, no lid, for thermal mass and a little extra humidity. An electric oil-filled space heater, to keep the night temps from dipping too low. Two fans, one that oscillates, one that doesn’t. And as of a few days ago, my clone maker, sitting under the table with the seedlings on it.
Some of the plants got started in a closet in the house under eight 4-ft, 54w T5s, but everyone’s in the barn now.
January 28, 2016: 11 Mastodon seeds were started by soaking them in wet paper towels inside a ziplock bag set on a shelf above the T5s. Two days later, 9 sprouted. Another one the next day. I transferred all of them into starter 6-packs with seed starting mix that I scrounged out of my greenhouse and sterilized in the microwave. Rather than peel the paper towels apart and risk breaking the root or pulling hairs off (both of which I’ve done before), I cut the towels up so each seed sat inside its own little moist blanket, which I tucked into slots I made in the starting mix. The next day, 10 little green heads were poking up. I put the 6-packs under the T5s, where my mothers-in-training were.
Mistake #1: Using the paper towel method. There is only one reason to use this method: that electric feeling you get when you see that little root poke out. From the plant’s perspective, there is no benefit whatsoever. There are, however, plenty of downsides, including the aforementioned root damage and the (hereby foreshadowed) possibility of cooking the seeds. I’d already convinced myself last year that this is a bad method, and still I gave in to urge to see that root pop. Tsk, tsk.
Mistake #2: Using that seed starting mix. Assuming that it’s my normal-garden starting mix (another mistake: using something without being sure what it was), it’s equal parts peat, compost, and sand, which is too heavy for cannabis. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that this was a mistake, all of the above-listed seedlings were in it. Next time, I’m planning to use equal parts worm castings and vermiculite. I know that some people add peat to that as well, but I’d really like to break the peat moss habit, plus, there’s just something magical about EWC, and the thought of starting seeds in nothing but that and an aerator really lights me up.
Mistake #3: Putting the seedlings RIGHT NEXT TO plants that I knew had been infested with spider mites. I had sprayed those plants three times with Nuke Em, which really knocked the adult population down, but there were still lots of eggs. I could seriously almost cry thinking about how ignorant I was about spider mites just two short months ago. I just didn’t understand. I hadn’t lost my innocence yet. I have now. More on this subject to follow.
I don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures of those seedlings, but it appears that I didn’t.
Feb 2: Started the Northern Lights and White Widow seeds. Five of each. Again with the paper towels in ziplock on the shelf above the T5s. Two days later, all five NLs had sprouted, but only two WWs. The thermometer on the shelf said 90. Oops. At 10 bucks a pop, cooking three seeds is painful. I put them all in 6-packs and again set them on the shelf with the infested plants. Ugh.
The White Widows:
Northern Lights:
The Mastodons at this point:
Feb 17: Started 12 Lebanese Gorilla and 11 Iranian seeds. This time just straight into the sterilized seed starting mix. And they went nowhere near the infested closet. By this time, I was ultra paranoid about the borg, so I got my main grow room cleaned really well and put these kids in there. Inside an aquarium set inside a livestock watering basin as a moat. Obviously too small for them to grow in forever, but I hoped it would protect them at least long enough to get established before The Fuckers moved in. They took about a week to sprout. All but one of each strain sprouted. I put them under the 400w MH.
I also transplanted the Mastodons, NLs, and WWs into 3.5” pots in my (at the time) standard growing mix.
54 gal base mix (equal parts peat, perlite, and compost)
1.5 c soil sweetener
16 c EWC
1.5 c bone meal
3.5 c 9-3-1 bat guano
2 c greensand
1/4 c Ful-Humix
3.5 c Azomite
1 c mycos
They were all looking very stressed. We had a few warm days where I didn’t keep on top of the temps (Mistake!), plus I’m sure the mites were really sapping them. I also released predatory mites in the closet.
Mastodon #10 didn’t pull through.
Mistake #4: Using my growing mix, which was too hot for the youngsters. They all got nute burned. At least I assume that was the problem. I've never nute-burned plants before, so I don't really know what it looks like. The new growth looked great for the first couple of weeks, but then lower leaves started dying off around March 1:
March 7, the crispification continues:
Meanwhile, the LGs and Iranians are doing well:
Feb 28:
March 6:
March 8: I repotted all of the nute-burned plants into 4” pots that I made into air pots. For the added soil, I used 50-50 worm castings and vermiculite. I figured it would give them something nice and gentle to grow into for a week or two and then I’d try repotting again in grown-up soil. The rootballs were obviously small for 5-week-old plants, but there were some decent, healthy-looking roots.
You can see one of my homemade air pots on the lower right. I'll post better pics of them and how I made them if anyone's interested.
The next day, I moved them all to the main grow room under the 400w MH.
Four days later:
By that time, I thought I had already spotted mite eggs on the Iranians and the LGs and had decided that additional measures were necessary. The puckering you can see in some of the March 6 pics only added to my paranoia. I ordered a bottle each of Spinosad (Monterey Garden Spray), SM-90, and Mighty Wash. (In hindsight, what I saw were probably actually trichomes, not eggs. I really need to get a better microscope.) I removed the moat.
Mistake #5: Waiting to transplant after the nute burn showed up. I probably should have given them some mellower soil to start growing new roots into right away.
March 12: I started a 3-round cycle of Spinosad. Once every five days, right after lights out. I initially intended to follow that with three rounds each of the other two sprays, but so far, the Spinosad appears to have done the trick, so I stopped there. Haven't seen any sign of mites, but I'm ready to hit them again if need be.
March 14: I repotted the Iranians and the LGs. Most of them went into 3.5” pots. Two Iranians and one LG went into small burlap bags and two of each went into tall 3” pots to see how the growth rates would differ. I also varied the depth at which I planted them—some only half an inch deeper than they had been, some closer to two inches. A few seedlings is obviously not enough to reach any scientifically valid conclusions, but it still seems worth trying.
These two pics show that the roots aren't doing all that well in the starting mix I used:
I normally mix my soil outside on a tarp, but it was raining so hard that day that neither I nor my co-pilot wanted to go outside, so I gave the kiddie-pool a go. Not bad, but I still prefer the tarp.
Done:
Two days later:
After a week, roots were already poking out of the burlap bags:
For the soil: All of the Iranians and five of the LGs went into 50-50 EWC-vermiculite. The other five LGs went into that blend mixed 50-50 with my new grown-up soil.
30 gal base (equal parts peat, perlite, and compost)
3/4 c soil sweetener
9 c EWC
1 c bat guano
1 c fish bone meal
2 Tbsp Ful-Humix
2 c Azomite
2 c basalt dust
2 c greensand
2 c kelp meal
2 c alfalfa meal
2 c crab meal
2 c neem seed meal
1 c mycos
3/4 c yucca powder
March 21: Comparing the roots in the three different plastic pots:
Standard 3.5" pot:
Homemade 4" air pot:
Tall 3" pot:
March 23:
March 28: Except the three in the burlap bags, I repotted everyone into 1-gal pots with the new mix, except in this batch I added 2 cups of diatomaceous earth and had run out of greensand. They all took to it very quickly. I pinched out the tops to encourage bushiness. After the repotting, I raised the light fixture and turned on the 400w HPS as well.
Once again, comparing the rootballs:
Std. 3.5":
4" air pot:
Tall 3":
Burlap bag:
I didn't repot the ones in the burlap that day because they had so much more soil to grow into to begin with. I figured they probably hadn't had much chance for the rootball to really thicken up.
Everyone looked really happy except this one:
Any ideas what's going on there? I started looking like that before the repotting and continued to get worse. A couple of its neighbors had similar puckering, but nowhere near as bad and without the paleness. You can see it on the lower right corner here (March 30):
It has since improved considerably. April 4 (lower left):
April 10: I put the three in the burlap bags into 2-gal pots. I’d had the bags sitting in some 4” square pots that are about a foot tall so they would sit upright. It would be better to have some kind of system that I could hang the bags from, so they weren’t pressed up against plastic, which defeats the air pruning purpose of the fabric. You can definitely see where the bags were touching the pots—the only spots where the roots really grew through. I resisted the urge to cut one of the bags open to see how the rootball looked, but that would have defeated the other purpose of the fabric—minimizing transplant shock.
At this point, they're a little smaller than their siblings. I'm curious to see if they catch up.
That brings us up to date.
I haven’t said anything about watering or fertilizing. I haven’t added any ferts to the water. I use either plain water or compost tea. I mist the plants with both as well. I haven’t studied up on compost tea enough to really know what I’m doing with it. I’m in the middle reading Teaming With Microbes. My skim of the chapter on ACT suggests that you can use it every time, but I get the feeling that cannabis growers don’t do that. Learning how to use it correctly is one of my goals for this grow.
Thanks for reading! More to come.
