Icemud's Breeding Projects And Motherchucking Pollination Extravaganza

Thanks for sharing that, it is really useful having the experience of others to help guide one's actions. I guess a pH meter would be a useful tool if it gave reliable readings. The flushing with RO water I will do in future if a suspected nute lockout is occurring.

I can appreciate the different nute needs between strains and have noticed that myself. This year I was probably keeping the soil more moist from being mindful of the soil biology and my now 'air pots' drying out quicker. But your's and others mention on watering to leaf sag, which reminds me that the best result I had came from a plant that was several times severely water deprived, so much I thought it had gone past the point of no return. Part of that 'greater moisture' this time around was that upon chopping last year's grow I noticed large areas of the potted container soil that was fairly dry while other parts were more OK. Also too, this year I turned my standard plastic pots into 'air pots' so I felt that any moisture excess would presumably be lost quite quickly. However, I didn't notice any leaf sag during this grow, so indicating I probably should have waited longer between waterings.

Thanks again and look forward to following your developing multi strain grow project!

Yea, PH meters are really not that accurate, at least ones I have used. I use the colored drops and they seem to be far cheaper than a PH meter and far more accurate. I haven't used my PH meter in probably 5 years because I was tired of the readings being off all the time.

Cannabis definitely prefers dry soil to wet soil from my experience. The "pick up the pots" method of feeling how moist they are is definitely a great way to check, as well as watching for leaf sag. I never try to let my leaves get fully saggy, but as you can see in my last post there were a few in the back right side of my sour grapes project that were fairly saggy and needing water. That is about the limit that I try to water them before. Its hard to do a "schedule" with so many strains which is why I have gone to a more synthetic nutrient approach than organics, because the Earth Juice I was using, although a fantastic product, has to be bubbled for about 48 hours to bring the PH up, and I found that I was either rushing feedings due to the PH being perfect, before plants needed it leaving the soil too wet, or I found that my plants would be dry and I would have to either severely PH adjust the nutrients or feed them with very low (acidic) PH and it caused a lot of issues. I love Earth Juice, don't get me wrong as it makes for some very frosty and tasty buds, but it also is very hard to use when dealing with multiple strains which all have different feeding cycle needs and times.

Definitely lean to the side of dryer soil than wetter soil and the plants will love you for it. They also will stretch out more roots and grow a larger root mass with dryer soil vs wetter which leads to overall more yield and healthier plants :)
 
Thank you everyone for the get well and kind messages for my pops. He is doing much better today and will see the messages when he is released which hopefully will be tomorrow. Thank you all!!! It is very much appreciated!
 
Nice going Icemud.
I use ph drops too, electronics fail, chemical reaction doesnt.
Glad your Ol Man is ok, best wishes.
 
Yea, PH meters are really not that accurate, at least ones I have used. I use the colored drops and they seem to be far cheaper than a PH meter and far more accurate. I haven't used my PH meter in probably 5 years because I was tired of the readings being off all the time.

Cannabis definitely prefers dry soil to wet soil from my experience. The "pick up the pots" method of feeling how moist they are is definitely a great way to check, as well as watching for leaf sag. I never try to let my leaves get fully saggy, but as you can see in my last post there were a few in the back right side of my sour grapes project that were fairly saggy and needing water. That is about the limit that I try to water them before. Its hard to do a "schedule" with so many strains which is why I have gone to a more synthetic nutrient approach than organics, because the Earth Juice I was using, although a fantastic product, has to be bubbled for about 48 hours to bring the PH up, and I found that I was either rushing feedings due to the PH being perfect, before plants needed it leaving the soil too wet, or I found that my plants would be dry and I would have to either severely PH adjust the nutrients or feed them with very low (acidic) PH and it caused a lot of issues. I love Earth Juice, don't get me wrong as it makes for some very frosty and tasty buds, but it also is very hard to use when dealing with multiple strains which all have different feeding cycle needs and times.

Definitely lean to the side of dryer soil than wetter soil and the plants will love you for it. They also will stretch out more roots and grow a larger root mass with dryer soil vs wetter which leads to overall more yield and healthier plants :)
I can appreciate with a multi strain grow like yours, how tricky it is to co-ordinate and balance the difference needs of the different plants.

Re pH, I have been also thinking similar on pH test strip paper, because I am growing outdoors and if I get a pH pen it will be unused for many months until I do next year's outdoor grow. Some folk are saying their pens may only last a year or three, which is somewhat off putting especially if the pH pen is expensive. With ph test strip paper or drops I just have to find out whether there exists an accurate measurement range for cannabis, i.e. I don't really care about the extremes in pH but I would like to get drops or test strip paper that gives a sensitive enough reading that provides an indication of pH within a single point so that it is not just one color, say, between pH6 and pH7, I don't know if that sort of sensitivity exists in drops or paper over a pH range of 5 to 8.

Re letting soil dry out a bit, yes I will go back to letting the plants get a bit more water stressed next time. Your's and other's thoughts on that remind me how the most water stressed plant I grew was also the one that provided the most intense resin. Last grow I probably thought a little too much on nurturing the organic living soil rather than giving the plants a bit more water stress.

To Icemud's Dad, I hope you are feeling a lot better now you are out of hospital, take it easy and know there are a community of people here that embrace the planet who are batting for you, I'm in New Zealand. Enjoy reading the many many great postings on this website as I am certainly doing, and do your best to avoid taking risks with your balance :)
 
Hey everyone. I want to sincerely thank you for all of the warm wishes of health and healing for my pops. He is finally home from the hospital and has been getting better every day. Today he texted me and got a chance to see all of your wishes and responses and he very much appreciates the love and wishes! He still has a while for full recovery from his concussion but he is home, feeling much better and on the road to being back to his normal self again. Thank you all for taking the time to reach out and put some good vibes his way! He appreciates it whole heartily! Love ya Pops!
 
Hey Everyone, Quick update...

I checked my sour Grapes tent last night and we have pollen. In total, out of 7 sour grapes plants, 4 are female and 3 are male, so not too bad of a ratio.

One of the females is much taller than the other females, and still really hasn't shown any flowering, where all of the others are in full flowering now which is kind of odd. I'm wondering it is may have some potential hermie traits, or maybe it is just expressing some kind of late flowering... unsure as most strains seem to all want to flower right around the same time. I definitely will be keeping a close watch on her.

In terms of the males, they all have nice sets of pollen sacks already forming and as of last night I noticed 1 of the 3 males had spilled over some pollen onto its leaves. I took each male and carefully tilted the sacks over my other plants and gave it a good shake. Only 1 of the 3 gave a good "poof" of pollen, the other 2 no pollen yet. 2 of the males are about the same size and 1 of the males is about 10" taller than the other 2. One of the shorter ones is the one who already is leaking pollen.

Anyhow I just wanted to give a brief update. I will most likely take photos this upcomming weekend and post them. So far all is well and the plants are looking extremely happy :)
 
Hope the tall girl plays nice for you.

I hope so too. I've never seen this before as generally all strains seem to flower within a day or 2 of each other, but this one wasn't showing balls or the 2 white hairs, so it was really odd. Even now where all the others have had flowers set, this one still is hardly pushing pistils. Definitely she is being watched closely.
 
Hey everyone.... Quick photo update of the Sour Grapes seed and pollen chuckin project on Day 14 of flowering (from the flip).


I did a little defoliation of all the girls, taking all the small leaves, branches and stuff that really would not amount to any buds or seeds off the plants, so the plants can focus on producing some nice thick buds with healthy mature seeds as well as to allow some better airflow in the canopy.

Other than that I gave the girls a nice watering of a blend of organic and synthetic bloom nutrients to really give them a nice early flowering push :). With the taller girls and smaller pots, I am watering about 1x every 3-4 days as some of the plants in that time are bone dry and really sucking up water fast.

Anyhow, not much else as of now to share so here are some photos.

All the sour grapes are to the right on the photos

Full Tent View before defoliation:






Full Tent View after Defoliation




Sour grapes Female flowering






Sour grapes male studs






The mystery plant that sort of has female parts, but also has not reached a full flowering set yet...


 
Hey all,

Here is just a quick update on the Bangi Haze F9 project. The little plants are definitely happy and thriving in their soil. For F9's they seem to be fairly uniform in shape, size, expression but there are a couple that are leaning to being taller and 1 much shorter one.

Anyhow here are the pics




 
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