Jay's Noob Organic Soil Grow: Green Crack, White Widow, The Purp

[adudecalledjay]

Welcome to my new journal! Feel free to join my organic indoor gardening journey growing some CKS Green Crack, CKS White Widow, and Jordan of the Islands "The Purp". I'm new to growing cannabis in soil, but not new to soil vegetable/flower grows. So far my experience gardening has worked against me as cannabis seems to follow a different set of rules than "normal" plants. I tried my hand at "The Purp" a couple of months ago and struggled with over-watering issues. In the end the beans I dropped ended up being males, so I'm starting over with some different seeds

Seeds

Crop King Seeds: Green Crack
I've grown these before under hydro and they turned out really well. The buds were all hairs and very little leaf matter. They were practically pre-trimmed -- an absolute dream to harvest. The smoke was really easy on the lungs and the high was a nice balance of relaxing and energizing. What I don't know is whether that was just the phenome I had, or if all the beans will be that way. Time will tell.

Description: " A Skunk No. 1 cross, this strain is good enough to be named by Snoop Dogg himself. Green Crack provides an intense body high guaranteed to have you coming back for more. Citrusy sweet with hints of lemon and spice, a little goes a long way with this smooth, spacey strain. Robust plants grow quickly and often require trellising. Expect an easy grow, strong yields, and flowers maturing in only 9-10 weeks. "

Indica/Sativa: 70% Indica / 30% Sativa
THC / CBD / CBN: 21.4% / .45% / .29%
Feminized?: Yes
Autoflower?: No
Yield Marketed: 300g/600g


Crop King Seeds: White Widow
I've also grown these seeds out before under hydro. The WW kicks like a horse and is good before bedtime, or when really wanting a couch lock high. I found the smoke on these to be a bit harsh as there was a ton of leaves mixed in the buds. I also didn't experience the snowy leaves like I've seen in pictures, so I want to give this strain another shot.

Description: "Our feminized White Widow is a former Cannabis Cup Winner that is high in THC and CBD. Known for white trichome crystals and orange hairs that develop at the end of its flowering stage. Easy to grow, a great yielder and perfect for cloning. Caution the high from White Widow is not for beginners."

Indica / Sativa: 60% Indica / 40% Sativa
THC / CBD / CBN: 24.10% / 0.7% / 3.0%
Feminized?: Yes
Autoflower?: No (This is old stock. I only see autoflower WW on their website now... not sure if the photoperiod ones were discontinued?)
Yield Marketed: 400g


Jordan of the Islands: The Purp
I've grown CKS Purple Kush in the past and had some nice purple show up. Now I'd like to see how "The Purp" from Jordan of the Islands compares. I grew two of these out last month and they ended up being males, so I'll take another attempt.

Description: "The Purp’s prized genetics are coveted the world over. Accept no substitutes, Jordan of the Islands retains the original genetics for this reliable strain. It will have amazing purple colours no matter what the temperature."

Indica / Sativa: Indica is all the website states
THC / CBD / CBN: Not specified
Feminized?: No
Autoflower?: Not specified -- assuming "no"
Yield Marketed: Not specified


Environment/Equipment

Tent
VIPARSPECTRA 4x4 Tent

Lights
MARS HYDRO TS 3000W

Medium
Soil Mixture as follows (scaled up or down as needed):
3200 ml coco coir (4 yogurt containers)
1600 ml clay pebbles (2 yogurt containers. only because it’s what I have on hand -- would have used perlite instead if I had some)
1600 ml perlite (2 yogurt containers)
800 ml manure compost (1 yogurt container)
1600 ml mushroom compost (2 yogurt containers)
800 ml earthworm castings (1 yogurt container)
2 tbsp bat guano (heavy feeding is 1 tbsp per gallon, so let’s 1/2 that)
4 tbsp (¼ cup) Rock Phosphate (45 ml per 4000ml of soil - same as bone meal)
8 tbsp (½ cup) Green Sand (90 ml per 4000ml of soil )
104ml (~8 tbsp) Bone Meal (45ml per 4000ml of soil or 1:89)
40 ml (~8 tsp) Kelp Meal (14.8 ml per 3790 ml of soil or 1:256)
1 tbsp per plant mycorrhizae at roots during transplant

Final Container
VIVOSUN 5-Pack 10 Gallons Heavy Duty Thickened Nonwoven Fabric Pots Grow Bags with Strap Handles Tan

Exhaust Fan
VIVOSUN 6 inch Inline Duct Booster Fan 240 CFM
HONGVILLE 6 Inch Active Air Carbon Filter

Air/Humidity
Bionaire 42 Pint (20L) PureQuiet Dehumidifier
TaoTronics Cool Mist Humidifier, LED Display, 4L/1.06 Gallon Large Capacity

Sensors/Gadgets
Tent Temperature/Humidty: ECOWITT GW1000 USB Wi-Fi Gateway with Indoor Temperature Humidity Pressure 3-in-1 Sensor
Soil Moisture: ECOWITT WH51 Soil Moisture Sensor Soil Humidity Tester
pH Meter: Bluelab BLU2300E Combo Meter

 

[adudecalledjay]

June 22, 2020
Nothing special. Dropped the seeds into straight tap water.

In the mean time I started some jiffy peat pellets. I carefully poured ~4 tablespoons of a 1 to 10 worm compost tea to water mixture in each pod until it expanded. I then covered this and will let it sit until my seeds have formed tails.

 

[adudecalledjay]

June 24, 2020
After 24 hours in water I transferred the seeds to moist paper towels. After 12 more hours I saw signs of life in all 3 seeds. GC and Purp (the newest seeds) had small tails and WW (oldest seed) was just cracking and showing a bit of white.

I dropped all 3 seeds in jiffy pots about 1/2" with the root facing down.

I decided to put these 3 seeds under my full intense Mars Hydro TS 3000W lights, but at a huge distance. My PAR meter shows me that we're looking at a ppfd of ~215 at the current distance (guessing 4').

The thinking I had here is that I always experience transplant shock when moving plants from low level LED/fluorescent lights to my full lights. Consider when you plant a seed directly outdoors under the sunlight vs starting a seed indoors and moving it outside later. If it's sown directly outdoors you have no issues at all, but if you start under a light and move it outdoors, you need to very slowly introduce it in order to reduce shock. So it seems intuitively like I should opt to start them under the spectrum that they'll grow up in so that they have the best chance to adapt and thrive out of the gate. Meh, but then again I'm high... what do I know!?

 

[adudecalledjay]

June 26, 2020 (4 days since seed drop)

All 3 seedlings have broken soil. GC and The Purp have roots poking out already.

Since I'm seeing roots, I think it might be better to transplant.

I chose to go into 1 gallon fabric pots to start. My soil mix is in the first post. I haven't had a chance to test the mix out yet, so I guess we're going to find out if it's too hot. In each hole I also put 1/2 teaspoon of a Mycorrhizal Inoculant.

I had to raise the lights as much as possible. The light is still a bit stronger than I'd like. At 64" I'm getting a ppfd of 230 on my PAR meter. In the past I've had more luck around 150 um. I know the drivers on this light are adjustable, but I'm hesitant to mess with the default setting.

Anyway, here it all is right now:

I gave them all a very light watering of 100ml each plant around the transplant area and as an outside ring. The soil mix was slightly damp, but not wet enough to squeeze out water.

That's it for now... the next week will reveal a lot (lights too much, soil to hot, etc).

 

[adudecalledjay]

June 28, 2020

Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 64"
Par: Avg 230 μmol/s/m2

Watering
~110 ml of chlorine filtered water every 2 days per plant for now. Will likely reduce frequency and increase the amount (enough to achieve run-off) in a week or two when the roots have been better established.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 26C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: 63-67% Day/Night Cycle

Updates
The new seedlings got their first watering today. The soil was bone dry on top and as far down as I could get carefully prodding with my finger. The pots felt light to the touch. I watered super slowly in a 1.5 inch circle from the center of the plant. I suspect I underwatered them. I did this on purpose (doesn't mean it was smart!) as I'm not sure if the soil will be too hot for the seedlings... I figured more water means more nutrient uptake. Also, I'm hoping to keep the plants pushing out the roots in search of water.

The only concern I have is that the GC's cotyledon's are pointing down, but not the Purp or WW. Hopefully it's just because they were extra dry? The GC is growing the fastest, followed by Purp and then WW (same order that the seeds germinated).

Here they are today:

Happy growing!!

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 3, 2020 (Day 5 - VEG)

Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 64"
Par: Avg 230 μmol/s/m2

Watering
Up to ~200 ml every two days with a very light compost tea.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 27C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: 63-71% Day/Night Cycle

Dates
Seed Drop: June 22, 2020
Veg Start: June 28, 2020

Updates
I've been keeping daily logs on how much the plants weigh and how much I've been watering them. It's interesting as you can really see how water consumption increases a little bit each day.

I started watering with a very weakly diluted compost tea. For my vegetable gardens I use about 1 cup of worm castings, 1/4 cup of worm bin leachate, 1 tbsp kelp meal and 1 tbsp molasses bubbled for 24 hours in 5 gallons of filtered water. For the 3 cannabis seedlings I've been using about 20 ml of the tea diluted into 180 ml of filtered water. I'll likely increase the concentration as the plants get a bit bigger. I have the Fox Farm trio on hand if required later on, but after reading the bottles I'm not sure if they're considered organic (Grow Big, Big Bloom, and Tiger Bloom), so I'm holding off. I'm also not sure on water soluble potash or epsom salts either, so I'm planning on avoiding all of that until I've done more research.

Here are some pictures as of the girls this morning, VEG Day 5. They are all doing well. In terms of water consumption WW and Purp are both consuming/evaporating ~135ml of water per day and the GC ~96ml of water per day. Not sure if that has anything to do with the fact that WW and Purp have the water sensors in them?

Well that's it for now. Hopefully everything continues smoothly!

 

[GrowUpJr]

June 26, 2020 (4 days since seed drop)

All 3 seedlings have broken soil. GC and The Purp have roots poking out already.

Since I'm seeing roots, I think it might be better to transplant.

I chose to go into 1 gallon fabric pots to start. My soil mix is in the first post. I haven't had a chance to test the mix out yet, so I guess we're going to find out if it's too hot. In each hole I also put 1/2 teaspoon of a Mycorrhizal Inoculant.

I had to raise the lights as much as possible. The light is still a bit stronger than I'd like. At 64" I'm getting a ppfd of 230 on my PAR meter. In the past I've had more luck around 150 um. I know the drivers on this light are adjustable, but I'm hesitant to mess with the default setting.

Anyway, here it all is right now:

I gave them all a very light watering of 100ml each plant around the transplant area and as an outside ring. The soil mix was slightly damp, but not wet enough to squeeze out water.

That's it for now... the next week will reveal a lot (lights too much, soil to hot, etc).

Impressive setup and soil mixing. I buy out of the bag or ready to use stuff. All the mixing seemed like it was going to be too expensive for my budget.

 

[adudecalledjay]

Thanks for taking a look at my journal @GrowUpJr! I've kind of slowly collected a bunch of stuff over the years, so it doesn't seem expensive, but I think if I bought it all at once it certainly would!

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 4, 2020 (Day 6 VEG)

I did a complete saturation of the soil today with a 1/10 dilution of worm compost tea. Each plant received about 600 ml. I suspect it will be 3+ days before we completely dry out again. All plants are looking good to me. They are at the point now where you can really see changes every day. All 3 plants are now on their third node. Node spacing is super tight... I know lots of people aim for this -- I'd actually prefer a bit more spacing, but we'll see how it turns out in the end.

That's it for today! Time to fire up the volcano...

 

[GrowUpJr]

Wow, looking good, especially in such a short time. I guess I need to learn how to make the tea. I've seen it mentioned on posts before but I don't know how to make it. Must be that soil mixture too. Happy 4th.

 

[adudecalledjay]

Wow, looking good, especially in such a short time. I guess I need to learn how to make the tea. I've seen it mentioned on posts before but I don't know how to make it. Must be that soil mixture too. Happy 4th.

I wish I could take credit... these plants just seem ready to go. Fingers crossed that I don't get in their way!

 

[GrowUpJr]

I wish I could take credit... these plants just seem ready to go. Fingers crossed that I don't get in their way!

Lol, that's how I feel. Sometimes I think to myself, "these things grow in the wild without all the tents, lights, ferts, etc, I should just stick it in the backyard and let nature do it's thing."

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 8, 2020 (VEG Day 11)
Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 64"
Par: Avg 230 μmol/s/m2

Watering
~600 ml every 4-5 days with a compost tea and very light nutrient mix (see journal entry below for details). EC 0.8 (filtered tap water coming in at 0.5) and pH of 6.5.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 27C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: 63-71% Day/Night Cycle
Enclosure: 4x4 Tent

Dates
Seed Drop: June 22, 2020
Veg Start: June 28, 2020

Updates

Watered today with some extremely light nutrients. The EC of my tap water is a whopping 0.5, which makes me seriously consider putting together an RO system.

Light Nutrient Mix:

• Both ground up in a coffee grinder and added to 1 gallon of filtered tap water
  • 1g bone meal
  • 10g kelp meal (just under 1 tbsp)
• 10% Compost Tea
  • 1 Gallon H2O, ½ cup of worm bin Leachate, 1 tsp kelp meal, 1 tbsp bat guano, and 1 tsp molasses all bubbled in water for 48 hours
• White vinegar to reduce pH to 6.5.

The plants probably don’t need nutrients yet (especially N), but at a 1-0-2 for the kelp meal and a 0-14-0 for the bone meal, I don’t feel like it’s pushing them too much. I’ll be watching them extra closely this week, though, for burnt tips.

That’s it until next week!

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 12, 2020 (VEG Day 15)

Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 64"
Par: Avg 230 μmol/s/m2

Watering
~700 ml every 4 days. This watering I used a light custom nutrient mix. Details in the updates below. Watered to a bit of run-off -- since this is an organic mix I don’t want to wash out the microbes.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 28C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: 63-80% Day/Night Cycle

Dates
Seed Drop: June 22, 2020
Veg Start: June 28, 2020

Updates

This week I added in my first real nutrient mix. I ground up the following ingredients in a coffee grinder and added them to 1 gallon of filtered water. I then bubbled them like a compost tea for 24 hours:

WEEK 2 - VEG	Grams
Earthworm Castings	4
Bat Guano	5
Mineralized Phosphate (Not delivered in time)	1.7
Bone Meal (doubled to replace phosphate)	1.25 2.5
Kelp Meal	10
Potash	0.33
Epsom Salt	3
Worm Casting Juice (leachate)	68

I also had to add a few teaspoons vinegar to move the nutrient mix pH down from 8.2 to 6.5. TDS was 840 ppm.

I probably won’t add any nutrients next week as the soil is amended and should have plenty of umph still.

I'm likely to top them in the next week. I'll wait until I see if I've overdone the ferts, though. Likely I'll let them dry out completely, top, then water with a mild compost tea.

Here's some pictures. Everything is looking great for being only 2 weeks old!

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 15, 2020 (VEG Day 18 - Week 2)

Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 64"
Par: Avg 230 μmol/s/m2

Watering
~750 ml every 3.5 days. Last watering (today) was with just pH’d compost tea. Water from the tap is 280 tds, compost tea (¼ tsp kelp meal, 1 tbsp mushroom compost, 1 tsp worm compost, ½ tsp molasses, 1 gallon filtered tap water) came out to 310 tds. I pH’d this down from 7.6 to 6.5 with about half a cap of white vinegar.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 28C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: 61-77% Day/Night Cycle

Dates
Seed Drop: June 22, 2020
Veg Start: June 28, 2020

Updates

The plants are drying out at 3.5 days now instead of 4 full days. Once it gets down to 1 day, or once I see signs of nutrient deficiency I’ll up-pot. Right now things seem to be ticking along fine, so I’ll hold off. I may actually end up up-potting the WW and GC to their final 10 gallon pot sooner than the Purp as I’d like to see an indication that The Purp is a female before committing 10 gallons of my best soil mix to “her”. I might move The Purp up to a 3 gallon fabric pot, though.

For the fun of it I took a timelapse of the grow from VEG day 4 until today. I need to figure out how to put the date on the screen without having to actually edit the footage. Just trimming out the 8 hour light out period each day was bad enough! Sorry for the weird angles, I was trying to fin the best one.

And some pics. As you can see they are all now topped (as of yesterday):

 

[adudecalledjay]

July 18 (VEG Day 21)
Cotyledons are turning yellow. Bottom leaves are looking just a bit washed out. Assuming we need nutrients, so did a full Week 2 nutrient feeding (pH 6.5 and TDS of 1490):

WEEK 2 - VEG	Grams
Earthworm Castings	4
Bat Guano	5
Mineralized Phosphate	1.7
Bone Meal	1.25
Kelp Meal	10
Potash	0.33
Epsom Salt	3
Worm Casting Juice	68

July 20, 2020 (VEG Day 23)
Lights
Type: Mars Hydro TS 3000W
Light Schedule: 18/6
Distance from Lights: 54-57"
Par: Avg 250-280 μmol/s/m2

Watering
Transplanted to new pots and watered with 1 gallon mixture of: 1 tsp of humax and 1ml of superthrive diluted into one gallon of filtered water. The water was naturally 7.0 pH with these additions so I left it alone.

Soil
See first post.

Environment
Temperature: 28C Day Cycle / 20C Night Cycle
Relative Humidity: Upped to 70-80% Day/Night Cycle

Dates
Seed Drop: June 22, 2020
Veg Start: June 28, 2020

Updates
I noticed that the bottom leaves and cotyledons are slowly fading and that overall growth is slowing down significantly. I’m assuming it’s time for a transplant (could also just be shock from topping them). Since I don’t have any indication from the Purp whether or not it’s a female I’m just going to up-pot everything to 3 gallon pots (final pots to be 10 gallons) for a few weeks.

Since I moved up in pots they are all a little closer to the lights. My PAR meter is giving me ~250 μmol/s/m2 on the smaller plant and ~280 μmol/s/m2 on the larger plant.

I noticed some strange marks on the the leaves on The Purp. I will just monitor for now -- my guess is I dropped nutrients there last time and they got burnt. If they continue to develop I'll know there's an issue.

Here’s timelapse from VEG Day 18-22:

Here they are after the timelapse in their new 3 gallon pots.

 

[r0am1ng st0ner]

looking good how do you do your timelapses?

 

[adudecalledjay]

looking good how do you do your timelapses?

Thanks for popping in... it was getting a little lonely in here! I used a Go Pro knock-off and set to 1 minute intervals in video/timelapse mode. I then processed with VirtualDub at 250 fps to speed it up even more. Then edited in Movie Maker 10 (the free one from Microsoft, not the top pick in Google) and finally compress with HandBrake. All free stuff (except the camera )

 

[r0am1ng st0ner]

so the camera had a timelapse setting on it? I see everyone with things that lets you see the plant moving and always looks so amazing

 

[adudecalledjay]

so the camera had a timelapse setting on it? I see everyone with things that lets you see the plant moving and always looks so amazing

Yeah... in fact the one I got only does 1 minute intervals or less and stops after 3 days. I wish I had gotten one that would do longer intervals over a longer time-span, so I wouldn't need to do any post-processing at all.