Twisted Hippie's Official Medical Grow Operation, Recast!

[The Twisted One]

Long days and long nights. Story of my life. When I can’t sleep, I do silly stuff…

 

[The Twisted One]

Today was spent finishing out our second cloner. I made this one to mirror the first one, and will use the 10th hp chiller to maintain both 12 gallon reservoirs at a balmy 70-72 degrees. Increasing the circulation pump to a 396 did the trick. I love inexpensive wins! Why did I go to all this trouble? Simple. The pump in the power cloner slowly begins to warm up the reservoir, opening those tender roots up to nasty pathogens that like to rear their ugly heads when you aren’t looking. This prevents this.

Turboklone is my choice, mainly because it’s the only one I’m aware of that actually exchangers the air in the cloner 24/7.

Here’s a few shots in the R&D room. We’ll stack these tables with our Peanut Butter Pie. These 3 tables hold nearly 300 plants. I’m betting in flower these are going to be very busy tables, and if they produce, we’ll set up a full room this way. It will save a LOT of time in veg, no doubt, and each plant doesn’t require a 5 gallon space eating bucket….

 

[bluenoserjoe]

Amazing set up my friend, the ingenuity is outstanding. Go hydro or go home. Wishing you the best of luck with your endeavor.

 

[The Twisted One]

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement!

 

[The Twisted One]

Today was spent setting up the chiller for dual cloned use. I took the easy route and bumped the chiller pump from a 285 to a 396, added another tranny cooler(no pun intended) to the 2nd 144 site Turbokloner, added a few isolation valves and fired them both up, crossing my fingers that both chiller coils are flowing well enough for equal heat transfer and left to deal with other daily rituals.

I returned a little later, pleasantly pleased to see it really couldn’t possibly get any better, thanked the Gods that have been looking out for us and loaded her up with GMO Pie clones.

Tomorrow I rest!

 

[The Twisted One]

Last week we decided it was time to bring a few new strains onboard. This sounds simple, but a lot of research goes into it before selection. In doing so, I spoke to a handful of growers, then I hit pay dirt With one. I don’t have permission to use his name, so let’s just call him Bob for now. After all, there’s always a “Bob”, right?
Anyway, when you have things in common, the conversation just gets better, and this one was an answered prayer of sorts. Apparently, Bob has quite a history, is three years older than me, meaning he’s old as dirt too. Here’s where is gets interesting. Ever heard the name Ed Rosenthal? If you’re my age, grow marijuanna back in the day, you should. He was our growers bible, long before the advent of computers and Internet. Here’s mine from years ago.

Anyway, “Bob” not only knew Ed, but a lot of content in this little book came from Bob, making Bob a guru or sorts. You’ll get more on this story next week, as I’m scheduled to not only meet with Bob, but I’m picking up a few strains I never thought I’d be able to get my hands on. He’s also letting me have them in the form of cuttings, something he’s never done. I’ll also have the opportunity to go through his garden, and hopefully bring you guys some interesting pictures.

Strains. One strain I’ve been itching to get my hands back on was White Truffle. We’ve grown this strain before, but I didn’t have rights to those genetics, and didn’t keep them.
There is a very interesting story behind these genetics, and the hunting rights belong to Beleaf Genetics for hunting this rare gal. I’ve never grown buds as frosty as these were, and this is the first strain we broke the 30% THC boundary with. Well, Bob has an original cut to this gal. If I told you what a cut of this gal would have cost you say two years ago you probably wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, Monday I’ll have these genetics and own them free and clear. Thanks Bob! I won’t let you down! Expect another White Truffle run! I have two potent strains I’m thinking of crossing with the Truffle…
Moving on, for my son’s new project into growing SOG style, I’m looking at Frosted Cherry Cookies for this run. She’s a short plant genetically, and should excel in this environment. Wish us luck. Never grown this manner before. Heinous and Freedom 35 both look to be viable commercial winners. 4Dawgs has my eye as well.

 

[The Twisted One]

 

[The Twisted One]

Well, those who know me know I hate spending money if I don’t have to, and a I really hate spending more than I have to.
Case in point: Remember I had mentioned how many medical cannabis grow operations are pulling the disconnect and tossing in the towel?
Well, when it happens and you’re at the right place (or willing to drive there),

deals can be had.
Here’s our latest “deal of the day”.

We picked up 15 of these lights for a measly 100 bucks a light. These are also the very same boards that sold me in a switch to LED from HPS, and are the same basic 288 boards with the proven Samsung LM301b’s. This light seems to be a carbon copy of the HLG light, with the exception Agromax puts standoffs between the huge Meanwell 480 driver. And yes. They are all “overclockable”…

We are so much closer to being able to address one of our biggest hurtles….
Bringing another 22x40 room online. Yay!

 

[The Twisted One]

As promised, heres what went down today, meeting with my new friend, “Bob”, however, I now have permission to use his name and share his story and a bit of mine. First off, a quick recap on my story, which bad as it was pales in comparison to my friend, Will Foster.
In the summer of 1980, right out of high school graduation, I had a summer in Tulsa to enjoy in my 1972 Camaro before heading off to college, which was already booked, classes and all.
I got my tender 18 year old world rocked, and it cost me dearly. It was me, my girlfriend, her girlfriend and boyriend, all three 17. The 17 year old guy in backseat had some marijuanna. I didn’t. He sold some in my car while I was off chatting. The guy and his fat girlfriend smoked a joint in my car, bought some and left. No big deal, right?
10 or 15 minutes later we left, headed towards Brookside from Woodward Park, and BAM! Cops from all sides, guns drawn and my world was forever changed. I’m 61 now, and maybe someday I’ll share my entire story, but for now, this isn’t about me, with the exception of why I was hell bent on growing commercial medical marijuana in Oklahoma. When it went legal, I knew I had to be there. So did Will, and for the exact same reasons.
Anyway, moving forward to today, and why I chose to share this story. Many might not realize a lot of us have been self medicating long before it was popular, much less legal. Will is one such person. So am I.
Before I get into Will’s story, I have to first say “Thank you for serving, Will Foster! Your country and folks like me thank you, and appreciate the sacrifice you made”.
Will’s world got rocked for growing cannabis and for self medicating probably the worst form of degenerative arthritis known. That was in the 90’s. I’ve seen his hands today, and if cannabis helps relieve the obvious pain, I’m not one to stand in judgement, however, the City of Tulsa was. And they rocked his world. What separated Will from the pack? He refused to fold and instead, chose to fight a battle on a stacked deck, and he knew it.
Will was convicted and sentenced to serve 98 years, in spite of his friend and our very own cannabis guru, Ed Rosenthal himself showing up at the trial. Ed Rosenthal and his wife took Will’s daughter Anna in, allowing her to finish high school while Will was serving time. So Ed was even more of a hero than most of us knew him to already be. Wow.
Moving on, anyone who been around cannabis and Oklahoma long has already heard the name “Norma Sapp”. If not, you should. Without her we’d have probably never seen 788 in Oklahoma, much less the reform we are beginning to see. She took up Will’s cause in the 90’s, and never missed a court date Will had. She too is a hero, and in my book, Will Foster is one as well. He’s one of my hero’s, no doubt.
Even after what Oklahoma did to him, more than once, his daughter and son in law talked him into returning to Tulsa from California where he had been growing legally for years, and continue doing what his passion led him to do-grow marijuana and provide the best medicine he can, in Oklahoma and do it legally.
Here’s the link to the story:SOONER JUSTICE - The Will Foster Story: From a 93-year Prison Sentence to Growing Norma’s Dream - Ounce Magazine

Hope you enjoyed the story, and next up is revealing the 6 new genetics we acquired from Will and his company, Herblix! Thanks Will!

 

[The Twisted One]

Man I love being in the garden. The smells simply can’t be described In the English language.

The only time we can get decent pictures is with the lights off, so photo shoots have to be coordinated. Enjoy!

 

[The Twisted One]

We were making sales at a dispensary today and the guy had a small section with clones for sale.
Two of them caused me to perform a double take.
This gal is called “Freakshow” by Humboldt Seeds. Looks like a shrub plant to me! Very odd looking gal
If anyone has grown this gal chime in!

 

[Bill284]

We were making sales at a dispensary today and the guy had a small section with clones for sale.
Two of them caused me to perform a double take.
This gal is called “Freakshow” by Humboldt Seeds. Looks like a shrub plant to me! Very odd looking gal
If anyone has grown this gal chime in!

Freakshow is pretty cool.
Hard to find up here.
Lucky Duck.
Should be interesting, very distinctive plant.
Happy growing Amigo




#VIVOSUN #Love What You Grow
Bill284

 

[The Twisted One]

Quick update while I have a chance. We kicked my son’s SOG experiment into flower yesterday. I’ve never flowered ladies this young. I’m also looking at the fact I can damn near take them from the power cloner directly into flower. If this proves to be a viable option, it will take over 1000 of these gals to fill a room normally occupied by around 130 very large ladies which average around 1/2 pound of dried, cured bud per plant. We have two flood tables, each with 98 plants. so I’m betting this is going to be a wild looking grow. Each table is timed 10 days apart from one another, then put into flower. The room is a sealed room with co2 being maintained at 600 ppm. In two weeks, I’ll kick it up to around 1000 ppm and maintain between 800-1000 ppm for the remainder.

The mother room has been a busy place preparing the ladies for flowering, which for them is in 2 weeks respectively. By the time these gals hit the flower room, the trellis must go up the same day, with another day spent training, attempting to fill up all the rental locations…

Moving onto the flower room, we are just two weeks (or less) away from another harvest, this one being our Peanut Butter Pie. This gal scored almost 36% THC on the last run. This run, using EXACTLY the same growing regime, I added Terpinator into the mix, adding 30ml per gallon into the mix.
We will have the very same lab perform our testing, using the very same equipment for as close as replicating the process using the exact same equipment, and yes, they are in the loop as to why I need to be sure the very same testing equipment is used on both batches. You may wonder why I’m so anal about this, and I’ll tell you. Different labs. Different results. Every time. No exception. I can take two identical samples from the very same plant (not batch, plant) and have two independent labs test. The results? Not as accurate as you’d like to think. Anyway, if the terpene and THC numbers drift, be it north or south, I’ll know, so if Terpinator is listening, I’ll have your results, fair and honest.

Now, onto a subject I won’t debate, only give you my opinion on. Here are a few pictures of what many call “snarf”, and remove it all when trimming legs. I’ve done it both ways, but after building our bud sorter, and going through seeking the results, we’re all now in firm agreement with the Twisted One, (me) that leaving the “snarf” and removing light blocking water leaves enables all that lower “snarf” to become very salable buds. They are what we call “smalls and mediums“, and seem to be a hit at local dispensaries.

These little dank-danks will end up around 1/2” to 3/4” in cured diameter, and are the size many dispensaries have on their shelves. The trick is clearing the canopy, meaning the girls get raped twice during the flowering process. The reason I believe I can get away with it where others may not is my method of feeding, which my girls eat or have the ability to eat 24 hrs a day. The only notable difference I have seen (other than a lot more product) is the dehumidification requirements went up some.

 

[The Twisted One]

Here’s what they look like after de-snarfing, my way. This photo is all the way to the bottom.

Here’s a few close ups of the lower buds at 6 weeks.

I also have to give credit to Samsung and their amazing LM-301x series of LED diodes. It’s that chipset that caused us to move away from HPS and into LED. The PAR meter proved it, and penetration well beyond the canopy is far better than I ever ever achieved using any other artificial lighting, HPS included.

 

[The Twisted One]

We are about 7 days out from final flush and about 14 days out from another harvest. Tric’s are mostly cloudy with around 20% or so still clear. This gal is an 8 week finisher, if not a bit sooner. Trichomes define harvest. I’m just trying to sync this winding down of the season.

This weekend, I begin to simulate the season winding down with both a change of room temps and I also begin decreasing the canopy PAR enough so the plants not only feel the artificial temperature change, but the girls see it as well. This seems to bring out their desperation, kicking it into high gear. Their last 48 hrs is spent in total darkness. The jury is still out on that on though…

Once harvested, we have two days to clean and flip the room, this time an entire room of Peanut Butter Pie as well as our test room full of 200 Peanut Butter Pie’s we just flipped into flower 2 days ago.Gonna have Peanut Butter Pie up to my ear balls!
Of those two tables, one table is getting suggested doses of Fish Sh*t along with my regular Jack’s recipe while the other is getting my normal Jack’s recipe only. I love testing products on fair side by side testing. Either way it goes, I’ll be convinced one way or another! The boys at Fish Sh*t have been begging for this side by side test. Here ya go fellas!
I’m rooting for that nasty smelling poo!

 

[The Twisted One]

Picked up three more TurboKloners and two more RO-1000 reverse osmosis systems, with a few changes of those rather ridiculous priced membranes to go with them. Yes. Pricey but they work, and it takes a workhorse to keep up with almost 700 gallons of RO water in reserves, and these units do just that. Paired with a Tallboy you have the fixings for a lot of really clean, low ppm water. And what a deal we made not even looking for it! The reason for the road-trip was three 99 site Turbokloners. Problem is I have ran out of room in the mother room and we need more clones. Literally. Time to go up…dare I say.
The solution? Build cloning stations that are vertical. If I stacked the cloners…..Hmmm.
Guess I’ll stack the two 144 site Turbokloners and stack the three 99 site units on a roll around station. However, being “semetric” in the head, I’m leaning towards one more 144 site Turbokloners, and build a three stack 144 set as well, take up no more space and give me the ability to take well over 600 clones at a time. I’ll highlight this build and the plumbing involved to tie into the chiller. I never imagined ever needing to capability to create this many clones at once, but here we are, living that dream!

This morning, we began flushing the current crop of our Peanut Butter Pie. These gals look like they have been dipped in sugar! The last crop of Peanut Butter Pie gave us a THC of 35.86 and a terpene ratio of 1.72.
I realize the higher the THC the lower the terpene content, but I am obsessed with improving this number, so this crop received Terpinator from around the 4 week mark of flowering. Should have used it sooner, but the gals seem to be stacking on pretty nice. Trics are mostly cloudy, with a few amber beginning to show. This is where I begin flushing. In 7 to 10 days, we should be around 20% amber, then 48 hrs of darkness.

Night time temps have been reduced by a solid 10 deg, so the girls are feeling the end of the season. Next week, she’ll start showing some purple and violet shades. In a few days, I’ll reduce the canopy PAR just enough so the girls not only feel the change, they see it as well. This usually amounts to a reduction of around 100 watts per light. I also tighten up the room humidity a good 5% of so for the last two weeks. I’m looking forward to playing around with some UV spectrum in this department. Looks like some promising results in those far out there spectrums!

 

[bluter]

Picked up three more TurboKloners and two more RO-1000 reverse osmosis systems, with a few changes of those rather ridiculous priced membranes to go with them. Yes. Pricey but they work, and it takes a workhorse to keep up with almost 700 gallons of RO water in reserves, and these units do just that.

RO is the only way to run hydro stable. you can do it on some tap, but you have to get really lucky with supply.

 

[The Twisted One]

RO is the only way to run hydro stable. you can do it on some tap, but you have to get really lucky with supply.

Indeed. I’ve tried. Where we are, in my ever so humble opinion, our municipal water isn’t fit to drink or bath in. Heck. My dogs get filtered water. And my plants need the kind of water that isn’t ruined by man. R.O. seems the answer.

 

[The Twisted One]

Good news for us in the SOG department, which we are now in the process of designing an entire room to this method of growing. The biggest hurtle was vegging as many clones as this method requires given the lack of space available without tapping into the upstairs, which we are saving for another day.

Anyway, what I learned and confirmed is we can take clones directly from the power cloner directly into flower.….with a twist. We purchased a few Mars Hydro 6 bar strip lights. I can remove the light bars and relocate them wherever I wish.

The plan is to take the three 96 site TurboKloners, build a roll around cart, stack them three high and equip each cloner with two of the 6 light bars per cloner. Yes. I realize this seems like severe overkill, but follow along.

What I did on the last batch of clones in the 144 site cloner was to do what I always did, except this last time as soon as roots began to explode, I dialed the two 144 LED boards from around 25 watts per board and doubled it. I then increased the PPM’s to just under 400 ppm. I’ve never done this before, and truly never really wanted them to explode on the cloner anyway due to limited space between the clones.
This has allowed me to extend the cloning process to right at two weeks, and yes they get crowded in the cloner, however as soon as we transplanted them into 5” net baskets in expanded clay, within a day those little ladies unfolded and looked like they picked up 3 or 4 days in growth overnight. They didn’t of course, but when they opened up they sure looked like it. What this did for me was confirm what I didn’t think would ever work. I was wrong. It worked and did so flawlessly. Truth told, the two tables we vegged for a week before kicking into flower vegged about a week too long if you can believe that.

Two weeks in the power cloner. One week to create roots. One week to veg, then off to Flower Room ll. I’m digging this so much, I’m thinking of stacking our two 144 site cloners, buying one more 144 and taking this second Mars Hydro light and do the very same thing.

Now, for me the 30 dollar question. Can growing SOG style in 4x8 flood tables totaling around 1200 clones outperform my 128 plant room of the very same square foot? My little Lowe’s 5 gallon buckets create a half to a full pound of dried cured bud depending upon the strain and does so like clockwork. Anyone care to chime in on who they think the overall winner running identical strains from the identical mothers will be?
Bucket grow or SOG? The race is on! What say you?

.

 

[bluenoserjoe]

Morning @The Twisted One . Awesome set up you have going on there. Full time work for someone I am sure. As for out put my money is on the five gallon pots. Reason being ,I grow in a home made hydro set up designed to grow four plants. Average harvest is about three quarters of a lb. If I only grow one plant in the same system under the same light foot print then my average harvest increases to about one lb. I believe the extra room to stretch out increases the vigorousness of the plant. Maybe lack of competition for food and or light, not sure. Best of luck to you in your endeavor.

WW week seven 2 (2).jpg

• bluenoserjoe
• May 14, 2023