Tokists' Soil Afghan Kush Grow HPS vs. CFL

[JB42]

hahaha noooo, I dont just add that to my soil, thats just my compost tea.

This is my soil mix,

Seedling Soil Mix

The Blue Mystic all germinated in a glass of water in 24hrs! Quite impressed as they all germed the same time. I have put them into some small pots maybe 4-6inch pots with,
- 50% John Innes
- 30% Manure Compost
- 20% Perlite
+ 1 tsp Mycorrhizal Fungi
+ 1 tbsp Bone Meal (3.12.0)

Super Soil Mix

The 45L Super Soil Mix is:
- 11L John Innes No2
- 11L John Innes No2 strong mix, also with coco
- 11L Horse Manure Compost
- 10L Perlite
- 400g Worm Castings
- 300g Fish, Bone, Blood Meal (4.7.4)
- 50g Garden Lime
- 50g Sea Bird Guano (1.12.1) + Micro elements
- 75g Mycorrhizal Fungi
- 1 Tbsp Epsom Salts
- 1 Tbsp Calcium Carbonate

This is a quite mellow mix as you can see. Apparently not all strains like a super soil and as I couldnt get all the needed ingredients anyway, here is my mix and if it needs anything added down the line we can add it to the next.

Compost tea mix 1 Gallon .

Veg Mix:
- 1/2 Cup John Innes Compost
- 1 Tbsp Worm Castings
- 1 Tsp Molasses

Flower Mix:
- 1/2 Cup John Innes Compost
- 1 Tbsp Sea Bird Guano
- 1 Tbsp Bone Meal (3.12.0)
- 1 Tbsp Molasses

 

[Tokist]

ok, so i found this sweet link at hightimes about organics. it seems to mirror some of the information in cervantes growers bible (waste of money, btw).

it basically says the same thing. make a good soil and just water with ctea and diluted liquid seaweed. add guano tea during flowering and bazinga.

that... that just sounds too easy. i feel like if i dont spend the fifty bucks on that gallon of fox farms nutes that im messing up.

not sure if we can link to outside links or not... i think we can't. so just google "high times organics for beginners". its a article by ddanko. should be the first search result. i've seen his soil recipe all over the place.

 

[Tokist]

gotcha! now i think we are on the same wavelength.

i dont know that i'll go with your soil mix. not sure that i'll be able to find all that stuff locally. in fact, just googled john innes no 2 and i dont think i can even get that in the states!

i'll have to amend it with stuff i can get at the local feed store but i'll try to stick to it as close as possible. it might be cheaper to just go to the hydro shop and buy another bag of fox farm and add a few things to it. either way, i've got a much clearer picture of what's going on now.

so let's go haze it up real quick with a bowl

 

[JB42]

Yeah that was a great read from that link, I found it. liked the predator mites part

Yeh we'll give this ago and can compare results.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Hey mate, you should measure the dimensions of your grow space and report them. You said space would be an issue, and you have 5 plants. Also, how close are you keeping your CFL's to the plants? They seem to have stretched quite a bit in their early days, so much so that any signs of them being indica dominant (which afghani kush is supposed to be) have been erased.

Since space is an issue, topping won't effectively solve your problem, vertical height can be severely limited through training techniques that are instilled early as possible, before the stalks take up a woody characteristic. Check out my first little indoor experiment, and first journal in the link my signature, you may find it interesting, as I am also trying to grow fine product while spending minimal money/work.

PS: What are the other plants that are occupying space in your grow area? They will certainly be using up CO2 that naturally exists in the air surrounding the medicinal plants, that they could be using.

Best of Luck!

 

[Tokist]

Hey mate, you should measure the dimensions of your grow space and report them. You said space would be an issue, and you have 5 plants. Also, how close are you keeping your CFL's to the plants? They seem to have stretched quite a bit in their early days, so much so that any signs of them being indica dominant (which afghani kush is supposed to be) have been erased.

Since space is an issue, topping won't effectively solve your problem, vertical height can be severely limited through training techniques that are instilled early as possible, before the stalks take up a woody characteristic. Check out my first little indoor experiment, and first journal in the link my signature, you may find it interesting, as I am also trying to grow fine product while spending minimal money/work.

PS: What are the other plants that are occupying space in your grow area? They will certainly be using up CO2 that naturally exists in the air surrounding the medicinal plants, that they could be using.

Best of Luck!

thanks for droppin by, leester!

the lights have been no more than six inches from the plants at all times except for the beginning. sometimes as close as four. except for the beginning. it was more like a foot. i'd read about stretching before, i was trying to mitigate it as much as possible. i'm starting to think this plant isn't afghan kush at all. i think my dad walked into the dispensary, said "hey, i need some of your best seeds. its a christmas present for my son" and they just gave him the most expensive product, most likely. and then he said, "hey, gimme your strongest shit right now" and they gave him the half oz of afghan kush because he's a cheap bastard and didn't wanna spring for the pineapple thai, lol.

he says he paid fifty bucks for five of em.

the other plants were green onions and chia (salvia hispanica). i put the chia in there to add to the humidity a bit. before they were in there, the humidity would drop to 30%. now it stays at a nice 50%. spikes to 60% once in awhile, but eh.

either way, i've since removed them both because they were taking up too much real estate. these damn plants are growing out, not up. i dont want them to get any taller than three feet, and i certainly dont want them to get any wider. i want one of those nice long stalks that has bud growin all the way up it. i guess that's genetics, tho....

i didnt even consider that the other plants would be stealing CO2!

my grow space is tentatively going to be my daughters old pack n' play. for those without children, it's one of those portable cribs you can fold up and take with you to grandmas house. it's 3x2x2.

i figure i can fit five plants in there easily enough. i'll hang the lights off the ceiling right over the crib and bobs you're uncle. i would much rather have my grow take place in a closet but since i've had my daughter, neither me nor my wife have a closet any more.

 

[Tokist]

Yeah that was a great read from that link, I found it. liked the predator mites part

Yeh we'll give this ago and can compare results.

ditto. i almost hope i get an infestation just so i can watch that go down. then maybe i could get it on camera and we can all enjoy a good show.

 

[Tokist]

god is perfect, man is not. man made beer, god made pot!

​

ahoyhoy! welcome to another update! i don't usually do two days back to back any more because, well... it's a pain in the ass to take pics and upload them. my favorite part is making the actual log, i just hate plugging my phone in, and all that jive.

the reason i'm bringing this update is because i did something naughty!

i turned this sexy beast:

​

into this skinny little bitch:

​

and then... well... i found out that i really enjoyed it. and so did my princess. so i did the rest of the princesses.

​

few more close-ups of my trim job. the first one's the runt. i supercropped her ass right at the base there and kissed it better with some scotch tape. i figure maybe this'll help her catch up to the rest of them.

​

i want the tall stalk with bud from top to bottom, i figure this is a good way to do it. all those axillary shoots will make good clone candidates once they get big enough.

biggest improvement is that now all those axillary buds will get more light. some of them are completely off balance with one side being huge and the other barely existing because of poor light distribution.

we'll check on them tomorrow and see how it goes. i've heard of people getting hermies where they would make cuts at but then i see other videos of dudes chopping off a pound of leaves from one plant in one go and have great success.

i noticed as soon as i made the cuttings, the cannabis smell disappeared almost instantly and they started to smell like fresh cut dandelion stems.

thanks for reading!

 

[greensmurf]

now thats what I call a defoil.

 

[Tokist]

now thats what I call a defoil.

lmao!

i just hope i wasnt overzealous.

 

[Tokist]

quick update. couldn't resist.

i heard that foliar spraying ctea helps prevent disease and sickness. using that logic, i figured it might help the cut wounds from their defoil heal a bit faster. so i gave them a nice ctea bath and a little refill in their glasses. that oughtta help em sleep real nice.

say goodnight, gracie!

​

 

[JB42]

Nice and green tokist.

I need to ask this mate, I think there a slight confusion is all this defoil. Not slating your defoil , I just want more info on it.

Right so, when we grow inside our light doesnt move across the tent like the sun in the sky, so we have to trim here and there to expose bud sites. I have been using this method for a few years now and defo see the bud sites benefit from direct light!!

But on the plants side, these are its main solar panels and main source of light uptake and we put loads of light in our tents to maximize the size of our plants. This light needs pan leafs to catch and take into the plant.

IMO if the plant is small and young like yours there is no need for defoil as they are its life lines at that point and all our reflective materiel cover most of the plant anyway as we trap our light inside boxes and bounce it everywhere. I know when you got a mad bushy plant , you NEED to strip it qiute a lot to expose these bud sites. But on the same hand the plant still needs these for its own health or it wouldn't produce them.

I mean plants were doing just fine for billions of years before we messed with them. Now they are actually struggling in our human built world.

My point is, I defoil when they are bushy and I want light penetration but I think this whole defoil method is going just a little too far maybe and people aren't fully understanding it. Like if you was meaning to expose your bottom branches then wouldn't it be the top pans you would remove to let light in , not the bottom ones which are just passing nutes and energy.

Yes they bounce back and the small bud leaves do become sort of pan leaves again. But isnt that just the plant repairing itself and replacing what it actually needs, which is some decent size solar panels and places to pick and pass nutes.

Not slating defoil methods as I do it indoors and a little outdoors, but I still think you can take too much and actually slow the plant not benefit it. IMO anyway , what does everyone else think??

 

[Tokist]

Nice and green tokist.

I need to ask this mate, I think there a slight confusion is all this defoil. Not slating your defoil , I just want more info on it.

Right so, when we grow inside our light doesnt move across the tent like the sun in the sky, so we have to trim here and there to expose bud sites. I have been using this method for a few years now and defo see the bud sites benefit from direct light!!

But on the plants side, these are its main solar panels and main source of light uptake and we put loads of light in our tents to maximize the size of our plants. This light needs pan leafs to catch and take into the plant.

IMO if the plant is small and young like yours there is no need for defoil as they are its life lines at that point and all our reflective materiel cover most of the plant anyway as we trap our light inside boxes and bounce it everywhere. I know when you got a mad bushy plant , you NEED to strip it qiute a lot to expose these bud sites. But on the same hand the plant still needs these for its own health or it wouldn't produce them.

I mean plants were doing just fine for billions of years before we messed with them. Now they are actually struggling in our human built world.

My point is, I defoil when they are bushy and I want light penetration but I think this whole defoil method is going just a little too far maybe and people aren't fully understanding it. Like if you was meaning to expose your bottom branches then wouldn't it be the top pans you would remove to let light in , not the bottom ones which are just passing nutes and energy.

Yes they bounce back and the small bud leaves do become sort of pan leaves again. But isnt that just the plant repairing itself and replacing what it actually needs, which is some decent size solar panels and places to pick and pass nutes.

Not slating defoil methods as I do it indoors and a little outdoors, but I still think you can take too much and actually slow the plant not benefit it. IMO anyway , what does everyone else think??

no worries, brother! i had the same concerns. a wise, old man even said the same thing you did "these plants have been around forever before we got here and did just fine". and you know what... i was totally gonna leave it at that and let my plants explode all by themselves.

then i read another post on these forums called "what the good growers already know" and it pretty much made the choice for me.

you saw how crowded my grow space was getting prior to the defoil, right? well... any longer and those babies would have been stealing light from one another in a bad way. it had to be done.

i know the fan leaves generate energy and feed the plant, but so do the other leaves. i figure they have enough axillary growth to support its life energy, especially considering the bottom two sets of leaves were starting to decay from lack of light yet the plants were obviously thriving. plus, once it rebounds from the missing fan leaves, it'll dedicate the energy for the fan leaves into new growth.

another thing fan leaves are used for is storing of nutrients. nutes your plants arent using are buffered in the leaves. that's why we get nute burn when we over feed. the leaves are the first to take the hit so the rest of the plant will stay unscathed. in fact, i daresay leaves buffer more than just nute burn as they seem to be the first place to show signs of anything positive or negative. knowing this, i can imagine that hydro growers need to be extra careful when taking this step.

you know, dogs were doing just fine for millions of years before humans came along and domesticated them.

are they better off for it?

are our plants?

i think so.

 

[greensmurf]

I love this.... this is why we have journals, so we can see what works and what doesn't. raise and praise our babies that grow
well and learn from the mistakes we make on the way. we get help from fellow growers and apply new techniques. I wouldn't
say it was a bad thing to defol like that I would just say lets wait and see. I personally used one plant to experiment on and
compare it to the rest. were all here for you!

 

[JB42]

another thing fan leaves are used for is storing of nutrients. nutes your plants arent using are buffered in the leaves. that's why we get nute burn when we over feed. the leaves are the first to take the hit so the rest of the plant will stay unscathed.

Well thats sort of my point mate. If you have any problems now its the main new growth that will take the hit as the bigger pans arent there too look after it.

I think a good way is to wait until flower after the stretch as that will sort most of it anyway. Either way its good to experiment , we'l see.

 

[Lester Freeman]

another thing fan leaves are used for is storing of nutrients

I respectfully disagree. Nutrients are quickly metabolized by the organism, not just "stored away in the fan leaves". The leaves will show signs of either salt lockout, or salt build up, which would tell you something is wrong, that salt build up is most easily notable through the leaves ( off color vs. green ). Salts are the only way to get the chemical fertilizers can be put into a soluble medium, and then dissociated later by the application of water.

The organism is concentrating on storing energy, in this case it will start off with the photosynthetic product ( glucose), which is essentially the "juice" that runs through it's veins, transporting energy (ATP) to different sites on the plant. As it grows, it links each glucose molecule into a subunits creating a polymer chain of glucose molecules called "Cellulose". The cellulose is stored as a woody, fiber found in the stem/stalk of the organism. Upon acid hydrolysis, this material can be broken down to access a LARGE amount of energy upon demand.

The more cellulose that is built up and stored away, is more energy the plant has to fight against ridding itself of excess salt build ups, or will help its immune system deal with a lack of nutrients if that's the case. I would say the main stem/ stalk has more of a role of dealing with the nutrient uptake, but the leaves are the things that tell us something is up.

To add, the abundance of stored up cellulose will aid LATER during flowering, when an immense amount of energy is required to form sex cells and furthermore for the biosynthetic process that forms the medical compounds we are all looking for. After all, it
takes a lot of energy to synthesize a molecule with a molecular weight of 314 grams/mole.

Hope I didn't confuse you all, and sorry if I went off topic!
Good Day

 

[Tokist]

well, there is yet another reason why you should not quote any thing you hear in these forums as fact, no matter how many different people say it. im usually good about that! now i'm the guilty party. thanks for those details.

i have always heard that leaves store excess energy and dole it out to the plant as needed. hydro growers will say this all the time.

in any case, that's what we're here for. to learn!

meanwhile...​

my plants are doing quite well. shortly after i gave them their ctea bath last night, they got a little droopy. im assuming from the oversaturation. i also watered them with the ctea too. overkill? nope!

the ctea seems to have done the trick though. the cut wounds are all closed up and are little black dots. they've all got a bit of new growth and are perkier than ever. even the runt, and i damn near broke her ass in two last night trying to supercrop!

lester, go as off topic as you want here, man. i'm here to learn and bounce ideas back and forth, as we all are. no sense in censoring what we can and cannot put in this thread! keep em coming!

i'll have pics to show tonight. i dont feel like unhooking my laptop from the tv.

 

[Lester Freeman]

well, there is yet another reason why you should not quote any thing you hear in these forums as fact, no matter how many different people say it.

Our job as humans in the universe (IMHO) is to decipher the difference between truth (fact), and illogical misconceptions (not true or just flat out BS). These forums are certainly not the only place this battle exists. The real world is full of different people and they all have different ways of thinking. There are many logical fallacies that exist, that are used all the time in the world. For instance, a person could have a completely logical premise leading from A---->B------>C, whereas the opposing party responds emotionally with no real logical input. We just have to separate what is valid in someones opinion, and what is a sound argument based off facts.

On a greener note, IMO, you'll have a big space issue with that many plants in that small amount of space. ESPECIALLY if they were let go vertically. I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news mate, if you truly wish to contain such a life form in a vessel of a such a size, you will need to immediately begin LST, and go with the bonzai defoliation approach. My first OG kush plant grown outdoors was let go vertically, no toppings or LST at all, and it just about reached 8 feet.. that ain't gonna happen in a baby's crib, to say the least, lol.

Here is a link that may help you get the most out of a limited space
LST How to do

 

[JB42]

Great posts leester!

lester, go as off topic as you want here, man. i'm here to learn and bounce ideas back and forth, as we all are. no sense in censoring what we can and cannot put in this thread! keep em coming!

Yeh thats what its all about. I hate seeing a journal or grow that obviously has problems (not saying yours has mate at all) and most people are just like "Yeah looks great mate". Help the guy! Thats why we are all on here isnt it. To learn from the more experienced and the help the less experienced.

Keep debates and photo proof coming.

 

[Tokist]

Great posts leester!

Yeh thats what its all about. I hate seeing a journal or grow that obviously has problems (not saying yours has mate at all) and most people are just like "Yeah looks great mate". Help the guy! Thats why we are all on here isnt it. To learn from the more experienced and the help the less experienced.

Keep debates and photo proof coming.

yea, y'know... that's one thing about a grow i had awhile back. towards the end, after i had raised the white flag, one guy said something to the effect of, "yea, bro. i had a feeling this would happen but i didnt have the heart to tell you".

most of the times, when these jokers blindly say, "looks great, bro" it's because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. those same cats will turn around and start a huge debate on something they have no personal experience with because they're just quoting off of grow logs. nine times out of ten, the grow log they're quoting is some other noobs grow log and he's quoting some OTHER noob... from two years ago.

"yeah, dude. i heard if you piss on your plants, it helps them grow better cuz of the nitrogen."​

there's a lot of misinformation that gets disseminated amongst this population because the majority of people don't really know better. and nobody corrects them, so... you know. vicious cycle and all that.

im so glad you guys are subbed! i can tell we're going to learn a shit load from each other.