Northern Lights Autos: FoNz's Fabulous First Grow

[Emilya Green]

I have not personally used this method but it sounds like the result is similar/same to the species I am familiar with. Do you happen to have information on said serum in your threads? I would be very intrigued to take a look.

Making your own Lactobacillus Serum

The deeper I get into my studies of organic gardening, the more I find that we can do in our home gardens to greatly enhance our end results. Many of us know about compost teas, and have developed recipes for seedlings and clones, vegging plants, flowering plants and late flowering plants. We...

www.420magazine.com

 

[FoNz]

Thank you for linking that, I just went through it and find it fascinating. If I can acquire the resources at the university, I would love to do a curiosity experiment to figure out exactly which bacteria are remaining through that process. It would be quite simple using basic quadrant streaking to isolate and culture colonies, followed by various staining methods to ID the species. There is a BSL2 lab that I might be able to use if you don't mind me doing some further testing on your procedure!

Considering it is your experimentation and procedure that is the ground work, I'd only proceed with your blessing of course!

 

[Mr. Magoo]

 

[FoNz]

So able to confirm an earlier guess, there are 3 phenos so far. One pheno has more prominent internodal spacing, one pheno is much more compact, final pheno is of course the mutant Runty.

All doing well and Runty is finally starting to move into some more internodal and secondary growth.

 

[Emilya Green]

Thank you for linking that, I just went through it and find it fascinating. If I can acquire the resources at the university, I would love to do a curiosity experiment to figure out exactly which bacteria are remaining through that process. It would be quite simple using basic quadrant streaking to isolate and culture colonies, followed by various staining methods to ID the species. There is a BSL2 lab that I might be able to use if you don't mind me doing some further testing on your procedure!

Considering it is your experimentation and procedure that is the ground work, I'd only proceed with your blessing of course!

That would be very cool... I would be curious what you find. Because they are in milk, very little other life will thrive other than lactobacillus, but I would be curious about variations and density.

 

[FoNz]

While lactobacillus bacterias do outcompete many types of bacteria due to their ability to break down lactose, they aren't alone in that capacity. One example that comes to mind is Escherichia coli which can thrive in milk for the same reason. Also worth noting that there are hundreds of strains of E. coli, many of which are not pathogenic. Propionibacterium is another genus that could be one of the top competitors in such a culture. What a culture would consist of would be specific to what bacterium the substrate was exposed to.

Though even if we limit the scope to lactobacillus species only, the diversity within that genus is significant. I would not be surprised to find the culture consists of a multitude of species, with greater concentrations of some and less of others depending on where in the liquid the culture is taken from. All named bacteria in this post so far could grow in the middle of the liquid considering.

 

[FoNz]

So far no additional Septoria colonies have popped up, I was expecting 1 or 2 but it looks like the microbial treatment may have been very effective.

 

[Mr. Magoo]

That’s great news FoNz!

 

[FoNz]

While making sure my plants environment is perfectly suited to success, I seem to have gotten a pathogenic infection myself.
Luckily I typically set a fast fever and recover quickly when I get sick, so I shouldn't be down for long. I probably will be a bit inactive here on the forums for a bit while I try to hydrate and sleep through most of it.
Funny how if I invested as much time and energy into my own body as I do into my plants I'd probably be super healthy (not that I'm not healthy overall now... but just imagine!).

 

[Emilya Green]

While making sure my plants environment is perfectly suited to success, I seem to have gotten a pathogenic infection myself.
Luckily I typically set a fast fever and recover quickly when I get sick, so I shouldn't be down for long. I probably will be a bit inactive here on the forums for a bit while I try to hydrate and sleep through most of it.
Funny how if I invested as much time and energy into my own body as I do into my plants I'd probably be super healthy (not that I'm not healthy overall now... but just imagine!).

Get well soon Fonz... hydration and sleep... sounds like good medicine to me.

 

[Amy Gardner]

Rest well man

 

[StoneOtter]

While making sure my plants environment is perfectly suited to success, I seem to have gotten a pathogenic infection myself.
Luckily I typically set a fast fever and recover quickly when I get sick, so I shouldn't be down for long. I probably will be a bit inactive here on the forums for a bit while I try to hydrate and sleep through most of it.
Funny how if I invested as much time and energy into my own body as I do into my plants I'd probably be super healthy (not that I'm not healthy overall now... but just imagine!).

Feel better FoNz.

 

[FoNz]

I think my recent cold-like symptoms are a testament to how profoundly being overworked can effect your immune system. Last week was super busy and now I am recovering from it!

But in other news, those of you following my grow from the start might know that it is the 3rd weekiversary of the seeds going into soil!

This last week I decided to remove low leaves that were frequently in contact with the ground. While my beneficial microbes should be keeping the soil nice and healthy, physical particles from frequent contact could still cause issues.

A day after removing some low lying items (that weren't getting much light anyways), I decided to remove leaves that had scars from the fungal infection. These leaves were still so minimally effected that removing them wasn't necessary, but to be completely honest I just wanted the vibrant pretty leaves left. There also could have been spores left in the dead Septoria colonies so removing them was a little bit of a hygiene call too.

I watched carefully looking for signs of stress from the plants, sudden loss of turgidity being the easiest and fastest to spot. Nothing. After seeing how resilient the plants were I decided to do something to one of the plants that seems rather taboo in the autoflower world. I removed low foliage and blocked lateral buds (future popcorn nug sites at best). This was done on only one plant and it was the plant that was already lankier and easier to work with than others (hence easier to work with).

With these changes from the plants environment as well as small differences in genetics, we have 5 plants with at least 4 distinct phenotypes (note that phenotype is how an organism appears and therefor is product of genetics and environmental factors, not to be confused with genotype which is the organisms genetic material).

I was going to name them, but I think the four that don't have names yet should be named by my friends here. Pick a number and give a name! One name per person, while supplies last.



And of course my little gal Runty is already named and doing well!


Side note: The LSTs were all just adjusted and I didn't give em a couple hours to adjust before shooting the photos like normal. This makes some of their tops looks a little tighter than normal in the photos but also allows a look at all the underbits.

Week 4, START!

Plant #1: Connie the Barbarian - @stoneotter
Plant #3: Chachi - @Mr. Magoo

 

[FoNz]

I got a question for a few of the senseis following this thread, how long before flower do you usually see pre-flower pistils develop (for an auto)? Obviously this will change based on environment and the plants genetics but in your experience what is the average?

If possible, I'd like to use it as a bio-marker to get a feel for the plants life cycle.

 

[StoneOtter]

They are beautiful especially Runty. Why did I think of Connie for # 1. short for Connie The Barbarian, ruler of all who move vertically.

 

[Mr. Magoo]

How about #3 .... Chachi!

The medium I grow in makes the autos start a bit slower in my brief experience with them, so I wouldn’t be able to give the best answer probably. Lol

 

[FoNz]

They are beautiful especially Runty. Why did I think of Connie for # 1. short for Connie The Barbarian, ruler of all who move vertically.

Thanks! I'm very happy with how Runty is coming along. Connie the Barbarian it is!

How about #3 .... Chachi!

The medium I grow in makes the autos start a bit slower in my brief experience with them, so I wouldn’t be able to give the best answer probably. Lol

No problem Mr. Magoo, your content's been a great help so far regardless. I can always start keeping track of such things starting with this grow. Chachi it is!

 

[FoNz]

It seems the plants may be about to hit a bit of a growth spurt and they are getting far more thirsty. I've been used to a 3-3.5 day watering cycle but now it's down to a 2 day or less watering cycle.

It seems bizarre to me that they could grow faster than they have been, but I've seen 'adolescent explosions' happen in other plants preceded by the same signs.

 

[Emilya Green]

congratulations! These are weeds. And you are growing autos, which are crazy even by weed standards, they just don't stop growing. In an auto, their entire life is a growth spurt. Soon your expanding roots will have become strong enough to drain the containers in 1 day or less, and you could even start seeing signs of complaint in the lower leaves. This will be the perfect time to up-pot... 3x bigger gives you fresh soil all around and plenty of room for further growth, and solid control over the wet/dry cycle. The very first time you see the plants drain the container in 24 hours... don't hesitate. It will be time.

 

[FoNz]

congratulations! These are weeds. And you are growing autos, which are crazy even by weed standards, they just don't stop growing. In an auto, their entire life is a growth spurt. Soon your expanding roots will have become strong enough to drain the containers in 1 day or less, and you could even start seeing signs of complaint in the lower leaves. This will be the perfect time to up-pot... 3x bigger gives you fresh soil all around and plenty of room for further growth, and solid control over the wet/dry cycle. The very first time you see the plants drain the container in 24 hours... don't hesitate. It will be time.

Hmm, an up-pot to 3x the size would be 15 gallon pots, would take a considerable amount of mix to fill 50 extra gallons of space. Not sure if that would even fit in the tent. Max size would be 27" diameter pots, I'll take a look.

There is the part where this auto strain has an average 8 week life cycle, but given that I am less than halfway through that would leave a long time that they could benefit from more medium. Much to consider for pro's and con's including budget.