Welcome to the @DonkeyDick contribution to the Official 420 Magazine’s Girl Scout Cookies Comparative Grow!
With seeds provided by 420 Magazine sponsor Weed Seeds Express this is our first collective international comparative cultivation event. The scale of this project is a testament to the success of 420 Magazine. Over forty gardeners all over the world will be demonstrating different techniques on the same seed stock.
What a great idea. One that’s been germinating for some time, no doubt.
@420 Rob for everything.Here in the deep south in Aotearoa, New Zealand we have the cultural and culinary phenomenon we call Girl Guide Biscuits. If the flowers of WSE GSC taste anything like these we may have to lay the foundations for a new food pyramid.
The WSE page on feminised Girl Scout Cookies photoperiod seeds says it grows everywhere from polar to equatorial regions, low or high altitude. You can’t say fairer than that. It also asserts a claim to usefulness regarding pain and sleep. This is of interest to me as I get more of one than the other.
Thanks to @Weed Seeds Express for the expense and effort they have given to make this happen.
Other 420 Magazine sponsors who will feature in this photojournal are Mars Hydro and Geoflora & Earth Alive.
Mars Hydro because I use their FC3000 in my flower room. My flower room is 4’ by 4’ for which the FC3000 is under rated, and over performing for me, so I’ve been lucky. Lucky enough, for example, to have been gifted this light through a @Mars Hydro promotion here on 420 Magazine. I am very grateful.
Geoflora & Earth Alive because they contacted me and asked for delivery details so that they can sponsor my garden. The biosecurity curtain around NZ is proudly maintained by underpaid vigilance. They sound like terrific products, but I expect them to be bumped on their myco content. I just wanted to give them a shout-out here because they must be going to considerable lengths to sponsor more than forty of our 420 Magazine gardens. So thanks @GeoFlora Nutrients
Girl Scout Cookies in the Stable
I grow in soil. I recycle it and I’ve been lucky so far. I sift it and treat it with enzymes between runs, then treat it with mycorrhizae and let it sit before using it again.
I just want to remind all the gardeners out there to use a mask whenever you handle soil and take all necessary protections against legionnaires disease. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again it rarely happens, but it really happens. It happened to a mate of mine. Your covid mask should suffice. Please remember to wear it.
I do use new, sterile soil for seed propagation.
5 cups, 200ml R.O. H2O.
After the tricky two week seedling stage they will all spend at least four weeks in the vegetative stage. From seedling to the end of veg the light cycle will be 18/6. I expect to stagger their transitions to flowering. This is one of the ways I optimise my spaces.
They will transition to 20 litre pots for flowering.
The first to flower will be in early June for a harvest late in August.
I will number them 1-5 as they show above ground and they may as well stay in that sequence.
The first I will leave untopped and untrained. It isn’t my growing style, but we’ll see what she looks like xmas tree-style with a central cola and a subcanopy of satellites. GSC 2 through 5 will be topped and trained to varying degrees.
If there are phenotypic varieties displayed in this group of 5 my intention is to take clones of each to choose a keeper and for my wife @Sugarleaf to do the same.
At harvest I strip plants of fans one branch at a time and pluck/trim anything I don’t want to keep. If flowers are sufficiently fluffy and showing a heavy density of trichomes I will collect this material separately from a close trim. This gets air-dried on cookie racks.
All flowers (still on branches cut to a manageable size) are then washed and rinsed in a series of buckets then hung to dry overnight. The next morning flowers are stripped from their stalks and placed in a refrigerator for 10-14 days.
They are then cured in jars for at least two weeks to “gas off” the ammonia and CO2 which occur as chlorophyll naturally breaks down. If you get it right.
These techniques, not just for cultivation but for washing, the low and slow dry, the cure... and many, many ways to weaponise cannabis as medicine in my war against chronic pain... were all learned as news to me since joining 420 Magazine scarcely two years ago.
We will stay on topic, but context is everything (yeronner!) I will be succinct. These have been two years which, without 420 Magazine, I would not have expected. Thanks again, Rob. ‘Nuff said.
Bring on the med’s!
Day 0.0
Seeds soaking and soil prepped on a heat mat.
In less than 24 hrs all five seeds were showing tails.
I zoom in like this using my phone to see what is happening close to.
I didn’t touch the seeds from packet to soil.
Day 0.1
Day 0.2
It’s a privilege to be growing flora on these fora. It’s an honour to be growing alongside some of the very best cannabis cultivators in the world.
Mugs away. We’ll have another cup of tea then send a runner to the publishers with the proofs. Stay tuned for the progress of this GSC garden in the next monthly instalment of the weekly rag we call the donkey dailies.
Thanks for reading.
hey 
Ha! All good. 
coincidentally 
