PeeJay's Neophyte Breeding Adventure

You're doing a decent job of documenting how beneficial neglect is to growing happy cannabis plants. Interesting PeeJay. They do love a good greenhouse environment, don't they? Just oozing lusciousness.
 
It is a sad world when responsible whole food nutrition is equated with neglect.

Neglect doesn't always have to be in a negative context.
 
It was a poor choice of words, Sue. Do my plants look neglected? Semantics aside, what I do is really simple. I would fire up a bowl of my produce with the best kit growers on the site with no fear of them spitting it out.
 
Sort of like your dad and the orchids, Rado... It might have looked like neglect to those who thrashed around trying to manipulate things but what he was doing was never neglect.
 
lol Canna. Mom is doing ok. Mostly just working on reducing the fear factor. I will need to be away three or four days a week for weeks yet. It is really good to have the opportunity to go and be there. I'm blessed in that regard. Plus it is staggeringly beautiful where she lives and that blunts the obligation.

The last two weeks I've trundled her into the car and taken her adventuring. It has brightened her mood so much! She brags to her friends about how I take her places she's never seen and that I know all the "secrets."

Things will continue to cool down nicely here at this altitude. There may be a few more periods of high pressure that cause some heat issues but that will only get better until we hit prime flowering conditions for the second half of flower. Flowering Mom is every bit as good as flowering cannabis. I don't mind dividing my attention in the least.
 
That's good to hear PeeJay. :)
I am so lucky in that my parents live within a few short miles of me. I have to be the caregiver and helper as well, but I don't have to leave home for so long.

I sure hope that our long heat wave and humidity issues are coming to an end. This has been the hottest summer I can recall in years here.
I have a high respect for you that you can do it every year where you are!

:circle-of-love:
 
The ladies look amazing PJ!! I'm a firm believer the more you try to tinker with the way a plant naturally grows the more that can go wrong. There's a reason the plant's nickname is weed. Weeds usually will grow without any intervention for outside sources to to grow. We as hobbyists I think have forgotten that in our list for incredible yields.

Glad to hear you're mum is doing well!
 
Hey PJ, could you point me to where exactly you layout your soil mix? For some reason I thought you were just running a CC mix that is diluted, but I don't know if that is correct.

I got this PeeJay

Here you go CC. He was kind enough to share it with us on the soil discussions thread.

Building a Better Soil - Demonstrations & Discussions of Organic Soil Recipes


Edit if you read back through this journal (the one we're in now) he mentions eliminating the middle mix, so now he's only using seedling and finish. Might want to clear that up.
 
I got this PeeJay

Here you go CC. He was kind enough to share it with us on the soil discussions thread.

Building a Better Soil - Demonstrations & Discussions of Organic Soil Recipes


Edit if you read back through this journal (the one we're in now) he mentions eliminating the middle mix, so now he's only using seedling and finish. Might want to clear that up.

The last two summers I've found myself moving up into big pots of flower soil weeks before the plants were ready to flower. This year it was a good six weeks early. I haven't noticed any problems. When I mixed PJ v2.01 my friend needed 60 gallons of flowering soil for three 20 gallon outdoor plants and I knew that the breeding plants would need to go straight into flowering soil. I decided to drop the guanos from the mix and replace them with crab meal. The mix is basically the same. The flower and veg soils only differed in that there was soft rock phosphate in the flower soil only. Flower soil had a small amount of high phosphorous sea bird guano and veg had a little high nitrogen bat guano. This crop of plants is all in the original mix except for the breeders who are in v2.01.

There are some other minor changes to v2.01. Excellerite, the panca clay I was using as a mineralising agent is no longer available retail and I didn't want to pay shipping on a 50 pound bag. It was replaced with Cascade Minerals basalt dust and glacial rock dust.

As a base this time I used 1 compressed 3.5 cubic foot bale of Sunshine #4 and one compressed bale of Klasmann-Deilmann K-1 plus perlite. The Klasmann is a European white peat that is milled to exacting specifications so that it's fiber sizes are uniform and there is very little "peat flour" or dust in it. Peat is great because it does not degrade too fast but it does degrade. A uniform peat composition allegedly maintains an ideal porosity to hold water when wet and air as the medium dries out. Small fibers and dust fill the pockets and limit water retention and air flow. I have to say I was impressed with the product. It is silky smooth and feels amazing. The jury is out on if it is worth the extra expense since it costs about 4x as much as standard peat moss and half again as much as Sunshine #4 or Pro-Mix costs.

I also added a little oyster shell flour this time. Ha ha. I guess there are quite a few differences after all.

1 5.0 cu ft bale Klasmann Deilmann K-1 with 15 % perlite by volume
1 3.5 cu ft bale of Sunshine #4 (yellow label)

The compressed bales break down into roughly double the volume so there was ~ 17 cubic feet of base material.

3.0 cu ft Fox Farms Ocean Forest
3.0 cu ft Chunky Perlite
2.5 cu ft Roots premium worm castings
5.0 Gallons Yum-Yum Mix
2.0 qts Crab Meal
4 # Cascade Minerals Basalt
2.5 # Glacial Rock Powder
2.5 # Soft Rock Phosphate
1.0 # Oyster Shell Four
2 cups granulated mixed mycos

While mixing the dirt we used a sprayer to moisten it and the water in the sprayer had 2 tsp/gallon of 2-3-1 cold processed fish emulsion, 1/2 tsp a gallon of Sea Com PGR 0-5-5 cold water kelp extract and 2 tsp/ gallon of liquid mixed mycos. We used 10 gallons water total.

This produced about a yard of dirt (27 cu/ft) There are 7.5 gallons in a cubic foot so there was ~200 gallons of dirt. The total cost was ~ $215.00. It costs me about ten bucks for a 10 gallon container.

The current big plants are in the original mix and have been in the ten gallon pots since the second week in June. They get a weekly treat. Week 1 topdress with a mixture of 1 part castings, 1 part Yum-Yum, 1 part flower soil.
Week 2 drench with 2-3-1 fishy ferts @ 2 tsp a gallon. The 10 gallon pots usually take around 2.5 gallons of drench each.
Week 3 foliar feeding with the Sea Com PGR 0-5-5

Repeat.

I'm only feeding treats because the plants are quite large and have been in the soil for a long time now ~ 8 weeks. For more modest sized indoor plants in 10 gallon containers the treats might be overkill.

newdirt.jpg
 
:passitleft: High PJ.... Got a question please Sir.... For my autos... that I would like to go from baby soil to final home... with what I have been making is there a recipe that I could make that would just have a baby/seedling soil and the final soil...:confused: I love the 3 steps for the regular babies but for autos I'm still a bit confused..... I also need to know how to top dress the WWxMK that I potted up in the veg soil but I now need to throw her in the bloom tent but she is already in her final home with the veg soil... don't know what I was thinking...:blushsmile:... Thanks for all your help PJ.....:circle-of-love:
 
For the autos go right from seedling into the flowering mix. Like 21 days in seedling.

For the bigger plant in it's final home you want to boost the potassium. I'm not sure what you have on hand... Oh! You have some of the high potassium guano around probably? Top dress with 3 cups of flower soil, a cup of worm castings, 1/2 cup of Yum Yum and 1 Table Spoon of the high P guano every two weeks. Try to scratch it into the top inch or two of the existing soil. It may feel like you are damaging a few roots when you scratch it in but you won't be doing any harm.

I also really like the Sea Com PGR for a foliar and the plants like it too. If you can get some then foliar spray them at 1/2 tsp a gallon once every two to three weeks.
 
Are you saying your big plants have been in the veg or flower soil for 10 weeks?

Also have you had any problems with the consistency of the sunshine mix? Reading around some people have said it can be a little inconsistent and sometimes acidic (around 5). It seems like you aren't having any issues, or at least you mix it with enough other ingredients that you could buffer it.

I hadn't taken too close f a look at yum yum mix, but it seems like an excellent amendment. I may have to consider using that in tandem with glacial rock dust instead of the CC mix.
 
I haven't had any problem with the Sunshine Mix. Yum Yum is well balanced and folks in the know around here use it for everything. Shipping is a killer but if you can find it locally it is not bad, about $1.50 a pound. Sunshine is kind of nice because it contains a percentage of coco coir and it does not break down and get dusty as quick as peat but you could use straight peat (in which case you need to add some dolomite or other buffer.) Or you could use promix HP.

The big plants have been in flower soil for ten weeks with between 6 and 10 weeks still to go depending on the plant. They have had almost nothing but water.
 
Back
Top Bottom