2400w ROLS grow

Hey guys!

Said I'd be back with a new thread this month and I'm finally about ready to get things going. I just finished cleaning the room and re-arranging things, here's how things are looking now.





I had originally wanted to run raised beds, but unfortunately I'll be unable to do so for a variety of reasons.

The main reason is because I'm not entirely sure if I'll even be living here still half way through the grow. As a result of this, I had to get something set up that would be simple and easy to move to another home if that's what things come down to. I'm not too bummed about being forced into this situation because doing things this way will be WAY cheaper, but obviously my yields aren't going to be anything insane.

As of now I'm only out $120. It cost me that much to get more amendments, compost, and 24 3g pots. I decided to go with 3g pots because they're quite easy to move and if I have to end up moving after all I can just take down the room and move the plants with ease and the least amount of stress possible.

My plant count got increased to 24, so I'm thinking I'll get the fastest results by going with 3g pots. I'll be vegging them for under a month, however long it takes them to get a foot tall or so. After that I'll hit them with 12/12.

The strain I'll be going with are some seeds from a cross I was experimenting with in California before I forgot all about it/"lost" them. It's an AK48 and Trainwreck cross that I'm pretty eager to get going again.

I'm only using 4 of my 600w lights and none of the 1000w lights. My last grow was pretty mediocre, so I feel like if I want to add more lights I should get this one right first. Granted I had a lot of things working against me last time, this time I know I may have something working against me and am planning accordingly.

I didn't end up having the money to get new soil like I was originally planning, so rather than this being a no-till this will be a ROLS grow. I'll be emptying two of the 25g pots and re-amending them with kelp/crab/neem meals as well as this.



Got myself a shelf to hold all of the stuff, more than enough room for everything



They sell this on Amazon now, roughly $26 with Prime shipping. I've heard rave reviews about Coast of Maine's products, their Lobster compost in particular. So to say I'm excited to give this a go is a complete understatement!

I'll be recycling my soil, using the same amendments, and this bag of Lobster compost. I'll be mixing the soil up tomorrow and getting my pots filled, should have seeds going by tomorrow night. Thanks for checking things out

Very Nice Brother , coming together awesome .
Question... how do you get the nutes out of the soil when re using ? Let's say pro mix .

Nice should be a fun grow. Nothing like growing your own strains I bet.

Mr Awesome said:

Very Nice Brother , coming together awesome .
Question... how do you get the nutes out of the soil when re using ? Let's say pro mix .

Click to expand...

Forgive me as I don't quite understand, but do you mean how do I get the nutes out of the soil from the last run? Believe it or not, that isn't entirely necessary. The way things work in a living organic soil is much different from how things work in a hydro/synthetic set up. The following is just my simple understanding, so if I'm misunderstanding and someone can correct me if I'm wrong I'd much appreciate it.

But typically, people will add mycorrhizae of some sort upon transplant into a living organic soil. The reason for this is because the mycorrhizae essentially act as middle-men between the roots and the living soil. The roots of your plant (whether it be cannabis, tomatoes, etc) will communicate with the mycorrhizae and the microbes living within your soil. As a result of this, (assuming your soil is properly maintained) the roots/plant are 100% in charge of the amount of nutrients it uptakes. Lets say your plant has been doing a good amount of growing, but it feels like it could grow more. The plant's roots will then proceed to signal to the microbes that it wants more nitrogen (or whichever specific nutrient it happens to need at the time) and the microbes will proceed to decompose organic matter corresponding to that particular nutrient, and then defecate the readily available nutrients near the roots where the plant can uptake them.

The reason I bring all of that up is because with a true living organic soil, you actually don't need to flush your soil or clear it out of any "residual" nutrients because it isn't like a synthetic grow. The soil will form a relationship with the plant and will communicate to it via the roots. With something like Pro-Mix, and all of living organics for that matter, it works a bit differently than synthetic nutrients. With synthetics, you read an NPK of say 5-1-1 on a bottle for example. That is the NPK that will be made readily available to your plants upon watering/feeding. Now, lets say instead of using a bottled 5-1-1 NPK product you use Neem Meal which has a 6-2-1 NPK value. This 6-2-1 NPK value isn't made readily available like with the synthetic chelated bottled nutrients, you have to wait for the microbes to munch on the neem meal in order to get the 6-2-1 NPK value. To give an example, I top dressed with crab meal in week 3-4 of flower for my last run, enough to cover the entire top of the pots. By the time I was at harvest, most of the crab meal was gone (because it had decomposed) however I still have some crab meal that is visible in my top layer of soil. The plants must not have need all of the crab meal I provided, which makes sense as it was merely provided just in case they needed it.

Forgive me for being so in-depth, I have a hard time being concise. But another good example would be with food and the nutrient content of it. With synthetics, imagine you're eating something with 20g protein. You get it immediately with synthetics. At the same time, imagine you get something like a protein shake you store in your pantry. Each serving of the protein powder has 20g protein, but you aren't having all of it at once. You're ingesting it as you see fit. Organics works kind of the same way, and this is why you'll see a lot of people recommend lighter forms of nutrients. My last grow gave me the best results, and all I used was crab/neem/kelp meal and some minerals. I don't like to use things like Blood or Bone meals (12-0-0 or 3-18-5 etc) as I prefer to top dress with lighter nutrients as I need them as opposed to simply amending with some high NPK amendment.

Hope I was able to help in some way. If you have any more questions please feel free to ask and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

714steadyeddie said:

Nice should be a fun grow. Nothing like growing your own strains I bet.

Click to expand...

Hey man, thanks! Glad to have you again. I've never actually grown my own strains or even made my own before so this is all going to be new to me. I only even have the seeds because of a fuck up with one of my first few indoor grows, mainly because of the clones I got. Got a few Trainwreck cuts from someone I'd never dealt with before (I always buy seeds now when I can because of this) but they would pretty much always hermie up on me at the slightest inclination of stress. It got so bad that it managed to pollinate pretty much every plant I had, all of my Trainwreck and AK47 buds were absolutely riddled with seeds. The Trainwreck had the most unique citrus aroma to it though, and I hated to get rid of it but the hermie problem was just not worth it.

I was chatting about this with another grower friend of mine and he suggested I try growing those seeds out to make a cross out of it. I put a bunch in solo cups and flowered them out in my tent as soon as they were established. I didn't cull the males and let the girls in the solo cups produce seeds for me, got a little over a couple ounces of seeded bud that actually still had the flavor I was hoping for! However, after that harvest my landlord had informed me he was selling the house I was renting and that I had to be out in a month. I didn't even think I still had them, imagine my surprise when I found the little baggie I had full of them! I honestly have no idea if it's even a stable cross yet or not as I'm still learning about breeding, however I'm still quite hopeful!

For me, the main focus of this project is to see what I can do on a low budget. I had originally intended to get soil beds going with massive amounts of soil, however I just don't have the funds I was hoping to have at the moment. Pretty much the only thing I spent money on was amendments for recycling my soil and 24 3 gallon pots to fill. I'll be using my same equipment and my seeds, so pretty much all I need to do now is pay for the electricity. I'll be running 2,000 watts less than last time and as a result will likely be able to get away with using only one air conditioner this time around. So not only am I only down $120 so far, but I won't have any more $800-$900 electric bills.

The other reason I'm running less lights is because I was way disappointed in my results last time. I can sit here and talk about how I could have yielded more if I got to veg the 4 weeks I wanted to, but seeing as that never happened it's just merely conjecture. I barely hit the .5 GPW mark (.51gpw roughly) and until I can prove to myself that I can hit at least .75GPW I won't be turning on more lights. I'm thinking that by filling a 6ftx8ft area with 24 3g pots and 4 600w lights that I should be able to get much better yields. I'll be able to veg for much less in 3g pots than in larger pots as well.

I'll try to get some more photos going once I finally get around to mixing the soil and planting the clovers

Nice stuff, can't wait to see how it goes.

kratos015 said:

Forgive me as I don't quite understand, but do you mean how do I get the nutes out of the soil from the last run? Believe it or not, that isn't entirely necessary. The way things work in a living organic soil is much different from how things work in a hydro/synthetic set up. The following is just my simple understanding, so if I'm misunderstanding and someone can correct me if I'm wrong I'd much appreciate it.

But typically, people will add mycorrhizae of some sort upon transplant into a living organic soil. The reason for this is because the mycorrhizae essentially act as middle-men between the roots and the living soil. The roots of your plant (whether it be cannabis, tomatoes, etc) will communicate with the mycorrhizae and the microbes living within your soil. As a result of this, (assuming your soil is properly maintained) the roots/plant are 100% in charge of the amount of nutrients it uptakes. Lets say your plant has been doing a good amount of growing, but it feels like it could grow more. The plant's roots will then proceed to signal to the microbes that it wants more nitrogen (or whichever specific nutrient it happens to need at the time) and the microbes will proceed to decompose organic matter corresponding to that particular nutrient, and then defecate the readily available nutrients near the roots where the plant can uptake them.

The reason I bring all of that up is because with a true living organic soil, you actually don't need to flush your soil or clear it out of any "residual" nutrients because it isn't like a synthetic grow. The soil will form a relationship with the plant and will communicate to it via the roots. With something like Pro-Mix, and all of living organics for that matter, it works a bit differently than synthetic nutrients. With synthetics, you read an NPK of say 5-1-1 on a bottle for example. That is the NPK that will be made readily available to your plants upon watering/feeding. Now, lets say instead of using a bottled 5-1-1 NPK product you use Neem Meal which has a 6-2-1 NPK value. This 6-2-1 NPK value isn't made readily available like with the synthetic chelated bottled nutrients, you have to wait for the microbes to munch on the neem meal in order to get the 6-2-1 NPK value. To give an example, I top dressed with crab meal in week 3-4 of flower for my last run, enough to cover the entire top of the pots. By the time I was at harvest, most of the crab meal was gone (because it had decomposed) however I still have some crab meal that is visible in my top layer of soil. The plants must not have need all of the crab meal I provided, which makes sense as it was merely provided just in case they needed it.

Forgive me for being so in-depth, I have a hard time being concise. But another good example would be with food and the nutrient content of it. With synthetics, imagine you're eating something with 20g protein. You get it immediately with synthetics. At the same time, imagine you get something like a protein shake you store in your pantry. Each serving of the protein powder has 20g protein, but you aren't having all of it at once. You're ingesting it as you see fit. Organics works kind of the same way, and this is why you'll see a lot of people recommend lighter forms of nutrients. My last grow gave me the best results, and all I used was crab/neem/kelp meal and some minerals. I don't like to use things like Blood or Bone meals (12-0-0 or 3-18-5 etc) as I prefer to top dress with lighter nutrients as I need them as opposed to simply amending with some high NPK amendment.

Hope I was able to help in some way. If you have any more questions please feel free to ask and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.




Hey man, thanks! Glad to have you again. I've never actually grown my own strains or even made my own before so this is all going to be new to me. I only even have the seeds because of a fuck up with one of my first few indoor grows, mainly because of the clones I got. Got a few Trainwreck cuts from someone I'd never dealt with before (I always buy seeds now when I can because of this) but they would pretty much always hermie up on me at the slightest inclination of stress. It got so bad that it managed to pollinate pretty much every plant I had, all of my Trainwreck and AK47 buds were absolutely riddled with seeds. The Trainwreck had the most unique citrus aroma to it though, and I hated to get rid of it but the hermie problem was just not worth it.

I was chatting about this with another grower friend of mine and he suggested I try growing those seeds out to make a cross out of it. I put a bunch in solo cups and flowered them out in my tent as soon as they were established. I didn't cull the males and let the girls in the solo cups produce seeds for me, got a little over a couple ounces of seeded bud that actually still had the flavor I was hoping for! However, after that harvest my landlord had informed me he was selling the house I was renting and that I had to be out in a month. I didn't even think I still had them, imagine my surprise when I found the little baggie I had full of them! I honestly have no idea if it's even a stable cross yet or not as I'm still learning about breeding, however I'm still quite hopeful!

For me, the main focus of this project is to see what I can do on a low budget. I had originally intended to get soil beds going with massive amounts of soil, however I just don't have the funds I was hoping to have at the moment. Pretty much the only thing I spent money on was amendments for recycling my soil and 24 3 gallon pots to fill. I'll be using my same equipment and my seeds, so pretty much all I need to do now is pay for the electricity. I'll be running 2,000 watts less than last time and as a result will likely be able to get away with using only one air conditioner this time around. So not only am I only down $120 so far, but I won't have any more $800-$900 electric bills.

The other reason I'm running less lights is because I was way disappointed in my results last time. I can sit here and talk about how I could have yielded more if I got to veg the 4 weeks I wanted to, but seeing as that never happened it's just merely conjecture. I barely hit the .5 GPW mark (.51gpw roughly) and until I can prove to myself that I can hit at least .75GPW I won't be turning on more lights. I'm thinking that by filling a 6ftx8ft area with 24 3g pots and 4 600w lights that I should be able to get much better yields. I'll be able to veg for much less in 3g pots than in larger pots as well.

I'll try to get some more photos going once I finally get around to mixing the soil and planting the clovers

Click to expand...

Wow ! You hit the nail on the head bang on ! I'm going to try this in the future .
The reason I asked was because ... a local grower told me not to reuse because of nutw burn on the clones or small plants when i transplant . But the amendments we add kind of bridge that gap . Protein shake anology was awesome btw ! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this all up . Definitely educational for me and lot of other users . One would think you have a back ground in horticulture or botany ?

REP !

Mr Awesome said:

Wow ! You hit the nail on the head bang on ! I'm going to try this in the future .
The reason I asked was because ... a local grower told me not to reuse because of nutw burn on the clones or small plants when i transplant . But the amendments we add kind of bridge that gap . Protein shake anology was awesome btw ! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this all up . Definitely educational for me and lot of other users . One would think you have a back ground in horticulture or botany ?

REP !

Click to expand...

Not even a problem at all and it's my pleasure! I'm no expert by any means, just someone that did a lot of research and had a lot of it confirmed from other more knowledgeable users on here. I have been procrastinating on reading this for a while, but apparently Teeming with Microbes is a game changing book as described by everyone I've seen that has read it. Another thing to look up for great information would be a grasscity thread by MountainOrganics (I think?) about no-till. There is an absolute wealth of information there too.

As for your local grower, for his particular soil it could in fact be too much for clones.. it really all depends what's in it and the reason I love lighter amendments so much is because you can start seedlings/clones in them no problem. In fact, if you're concerned about nutrient burn you can just cut your amendment application rate in half or even in fourths. You can always top dress if they ever tell you they need anything more.

The issue with clones/seedlings comes from things like guano and blood meal that decompose at such a quick rate that they will literally burn your plants. Compost piles can reach temps well over 150 degrees and these are the same temps your roots will be exposed to if you added too much guano/blood meal to your mix and even a 5g+ transplant can experience issues in these conditions. When adding amendments such as those to your soil there's a reason Sub lets his go 60 days, it takes a while for those amendments to break down and be readily available in the soil web. However once they've properly broken down there is no danger, I've had great results with Sub's recipe when I used it.

This is why I'm cautious against compost teas now too though. I used to be all about my teas and would awkwardly go to my local pharmacy and buy a grip of nylon pantyhose, it was fucking awkward as shit buying 20+ pairs of pantyhose at a time but I had to brew my teas! I'd load em up with EWC, alaskan humus, and molasses.. which all by themselves aren't too big of a deal because they don't have much nutrient content. The problem would arise when I added alfalfa meals and guano. My plants straight got burned. "But there's no way!" I thought, the Rev is all about compost teas and is a way better grower than I am. Well, myself as well as others tend to disagree with him on the need for teas like his. It's one thing to make an EWC or compost tea to re-inoculate your soil, but to throw alfalfa and guano into the mix is likely to cause problems. The thing about adding organic amendments like those to teas, is that the teas produce microbes at a much faster rate than they would in your soil because of all the oxygen. If you only have EWC or compost, this is a great thing. The problem is that if you add alfalfa/guano/etc to the mix the microbes will process ALL of it and once you pour it into your soil every last bit of it will be readily available, not over time like normal but instantly.. so if your plant isn't ready to handle that many nutrients then you will burn it.

Rrog has a thread on here called ROLS that also has great information in it as well

https://www.rollitup.org/t/recycled-organic-living-soil-rols-and-no-till-thread.636057/

He has a great metaphor for how the entire living organic soil process works and compares it to a warehouse. Organic amendments being introduced into your soil would be like a warehouse receiving a truckload full of various goods. These organic amendments are then processed by the warehouse employees (microbes) and stored within the warehouse (soil) to wait for the plant to "order" whatever specific nutrient it wants. Eventually the plants will place an order via the roots for whatever specific nutrient that it wants, the microbes will either provide what is already stored in the warehouse (soil) or will simply process more and immediately provide it to the plant.

Sorry for being so long winded, I'll stop now

Whew, sorry guys but I've been crazy busy lately and with work picking up more it'll probably get worse. I got my seeds planted around 3 days ago, soil was re-amended with the usual crab/kelp/neem meals and the Coast of Maine lobster compost and some leftover perlite I had on hand. I mixed the remains of the roots and plants into the mix as well. I'm thinking within another 2-5 days I'll have seedlings up.





I am SO much happier with this set up and wish I could have just done things this way in the first place. The hoods I had were pretty junk in the sense that they had little cracks between where the glass meets the hoods, so my A/C and CO2 generators both had to work harder than normal. It wasn't just because of the hoods either, my ducting job was total shit as well. I had to stray from my original plan and my ducting was definitely a weak link. My A/C is perfectly maintaining my temps now, there used to be a 10 degree difference in high and low but now it's around 2-3 degrees, granted I'm running my lights at 50% right now but even at 100% I anticipate this also being the case. So not only is my A/C not leaking through my ducting anymore but now I have fans blowing on the bulbs to disperse the heat instead of allowing it to remain stagnant.

This grow is going to come out so much better though for a variety of reasons. For one, you'll notice my light coverage is much better than the last time around. I've got all 4 lights covering 3.5x4 sqft a piece for a total of 7x8 sqft, all of which is completely covered by light either directly or indirectly. My climate control is also going to be a LOT more consistent considering I'm only using half of the shed now instead of all of it. My A/C is 15k BTUs of cooling; my lights produce 8400 BTUs of heat (2400w * 3.5BTU/watt=8400) my various equipment in the room totals around 400w generating 1400BTU and the room requires 5000 BTU of cooling just on it's own. I'll have plenty of cooling power until my CO2 generator comes on, however since the room is much better sealed now the CO2 generator won't be running for nearly as long. Check this out.



This was my reading after burning one and working for a good 30 minutes or so in the room, CO2 levels were around 450-500 when I came in and the 1010 you're seeing was from a mere 30 minutes of being in there. All I did was get the medium moist enough for the seedlings and smoked a smallish joint and my ppm's rose that much. This never ever happened when I had my inline fans and ducting. The above picture has me realizing that my room wasn't exactly as sealed as I had thought. My CO2 levels would rise to 450 at the highest without my generator running before, now it gets over 900 easy if I stay in the room for too long. Granted there are no plants to absorb the CO2 yet, which may be the only reason the reading gets that high. But still, this never happened when my inline fans and ducting was set up. That has me thinking my air conditioning and humidifiers were also running inefficiently the entire time as well. The last 3 days I've monitored things my temps/humidity have been absolutely perfect. Constant 75-77 degrees, no more no less. And humidity is at 55-70% at the moment. Once the seedlings get old enough to get CO2 I'll fill my propane tank up and raise the temps to 81-83 and run the same humidity. Can't wait to see what starts happening as things start growing.

Looks great! I'm interested to see how the plants do in 3 gals. I was told to always plant in 10 gals or more with organic soil. I think that has something to do with moisture though, its harder for the soil to totally dried out in a 10 gal than in a 3 gal. I'm assuming if you keep the soil nice and moist the microbes will be happy in any sized pot. Oh and com is great stuff, I use it all the time.

dubekoms said:

Looks great! I'm interested to see how the plants do in 3 gals. I was told to always plant in 10 gals or more with organic soil. I think that has something to do with moisture though, its harder for the soil to totally dried out in a 10 gal than in a 3 gal. I'm assuming if you keep the soil nice and moist the microbes will be happy in any sized pot. Oh and com is great stuff, I use it all the time.

Click to expand...

Growing in larger pots is definitely the way to go if you're able to pull it off. Last grow I had to go with a 2 week veg time and my 2g pots performed way better than my 25-30g pots. If I had A) smaller pots, B) more plants in the larger pots/soil masses, or C) a longer veg time then I would have had much better results.

I was originally wanting to get a 4x8 raised bed for this area and fill it up with soil and plant all 24 plants straight into the 4x8 raised bed. Problem is my door is 3ft wide and once I build a raised bed it's going to pretty much stay there. I don't know how permanent my living situation is going to be at this point in time and that's the main reason I went with the 3g pots. If I have to move in another month or two then I can easily move 3g pots with minimal stress, moving 25-30g pots would have been tricky and stressful at best and moving a raised bed would just be impractical.

But yes, a larger mass of soil is always the better option. From what I've read there are certain microbes that don't even develop until you get over 1ft deep into the soil as they only like to live that deep in the medium. Take a 4x8x1 raised bed (which is around 200g I think?) for example. It would be much better to plant a bunch of plants in the single 200g raised bed as opposed to planting them separately in 20 10g pots or 40 5g pots. If we remember and consider the fact that a living soil is an entire ecosystem then that explains why larger pots/masses of soil are better (albeit at the expense of a learning curve and dialing it in), because the larger the mass of living soil the more microbiology within them. And not just in numbers, but in diversity as well.

You can definitely get good results using recycled soil in containers below 10g, it will still be a living soil and it will still provide you with great results for sure. It's just that you don't get the added benefits of a larger mass of soil is all.

Hey guys, just wanted to drop a quick update because I know it's been a while. Every time I try to take a picture my damn phone dies, I was only able to snap these two before it died at 70%! I'll be grabbing a new battery sometime soon because this is just silly.

Anyway, here's where I'm at right now.





Already going way better than my last run for a variety of reasons. Humidity has been a constant 40-70%, temps are consistently between 70-72 room temp and 77-81 canopy temps with 1500ppm CO2. It's been since 9/30 that I sowed the seeds and this is where they're at 19 days later.. WAY better than my last grow so far.

They're anywhere between 3-5 inches now and they just keep growing and growing, once they get rootbound it's over. I'll probably top them within the next week and grow them out until they're around 12 inches tall then I'll trigger flower.

What's tripping me out is how different so many of these plants look despite them being the same type of seeds. I'll be getting a mother room going at some point because something tells me that I'm going to have at least one keeper out of the 24 I have now. The one closest to the humidifier in the first picture and the one in the bottom left corner in the second picture are looking like winners to me so far, but we'll see!

Just mainly trying to let you guys know the girls aren't dead and things are going well, if my phone is the only thing consistently dying then I'd say I'm doing pretty good

Hey guys, not quite sure how to downsize the pictures so I'm only able to upload at a time since they take forever! Here's where I'm at now though.





Pretty standard stuff, so far so good! I'll be switching to 12/12 in another week or so once they've doubled in size again. I top dressed with some kelp, neem, and crab in preparation of the new 12/12 cycle to help get them readied up for flower in a week. I only added enough neem to provide me with IPM, don't really want the NPK from it come flower. I prefer the Neptune's Harvest crab shell over Down to Earth because the npk is 2-3-0 instead of 4-3-0, the downside being Neptune's stuff comes in chunks and the DTE is ground up nice and fine. I'll be top dressing with more lobster compost in another day or two to really kick things off.

Hey guys, lots of stuff going on so I've been too busy to do much with this journal unfortunately. I'm charging my phone as I type this and plan on trying to get at least one photo of how things are looking right now.

I didn't end up getting to flower until 11/11 because I was troubleshooting some issues I was having that were totally stumping me for a good 4-5 days straight and that put me off schedule. The plants would just droop nonstop for those days until I figured out what the issue was. I suspected overwatering at first and gave it a few days for the pots to dry out but still droopy plants. So I let them dry out more, but still droopy. It wasn't over or underwatering for a fact, so I was stumped after that. Lights were well over 2 feet overhead, so that wasn't the issue, and the prior drainage/aeration issue I had was an impossibility as well because this ROLS mix has damn near 50% perlite in it by itself. I had thought to suspect the CO2 for a bit thinking maybe the 1000ppm was too high for them, but then I realized they've had between 600-1000ppm since they first broke the soil and this was never an issue. I kept scratching my head over it, somewhat doubtful that it could be CO2 poisoning, yet I was still so unsure that I was doing google searches for CO2 burn because I'm still new with using CO2. Not only did I find out that I 100% for sure did not have CO2 burn, but I found something rather interesting.

"While stressed plants deficient in nitrogen or phosphorus do not show signs of carbohydrate loading in the leaves, crops growing in very bright sunlight for long periods may have an increasing demand for Mg and K. To support critical sugar translocation through the plant, plants may need higher amounts of Mg and K during their reproductive growth stages to maintain maximum photosynthetic activity and avoid photo-oxidation damage."

Source:"http://www.cropnutrition.com/potass...hotosynthesis-and-photo-oxidative-leaf-damage"

Interesting, I'd say 2400 watts counts as very bright sunlight wouldn't you? I read that an immediately knew it was my problem as it immediately made me think of my last grow and the Mg deficiency I was pretty much battling through the entire grow.

But it wasn't just the bright sunlight that was causing a need for extra Mg and K. More CO2 = more photosynthesis so long as you have the extra water, nutrients, light, and so forth to compensate for the extra CO2. If you research what K and Mg are responsible for like I did after reading this you will find that plants use a lot of K and Mg as part of photosynthesis. From what my girls were telling me, they were severely lacking in both and from what I could tell my plants couldn't even go through photosynthesis as they didn't have any K or Mg to use! I dumped 1tbsp of Epsom salts and 30ml of Pro-Tekt (for potassium and of course silica to help with the stress) into my Chapin and got to spraying, religiously pretty much every 30 minutes I was checking. They slowly started to perk back up until lights out, the next day during lights on I was greeted with some of the happiest looking plants I've ever seen. I spent 4-5 days troubleshooting everything else and all I needed to do was foliar feed some Mg and K xD I'm rather cautious about adding anything as I always harp on about how it's easier to add something than to take it out. It just astonished me that the issue was with K and Mg deficiencies, I mean, I know Mg deficiencies are common but K deficiencies too? Just goes to show that I truly will never stop learning.

Aside from all of that, I've been experimenting with vegetables and fruit and will be updating the journal with photos of that as well. I'm not really expecting all too much out of it, just kind of trying to see what I can make happen.

I only recycled 50g out of the 150g I had total, so I pretty much just direct sowed some veggie seeds into the 4 spare 25g pots and they are all kicking ass and taking names. I've never had such healthy looking veggie plants, ever. They started budding rather quick too, and within a few weeks I'll likely have some spaghetti squash, tomatillos, tomatoes, and cucumbers going. I also built myself a 4x8 raised bed and will be using that as an experiment to see if I can make a good soil mix with what I have. I've been reading so many of the organic gurus go on about "use what's local" or "use what's readily available" and kept thinking "I live out in the desert in the middle of freaking nowhere, nothing is local or readily available". But eventually, I decided I would take a shovel to the dirt I have out here and see what it looks like. After seeing what the dirt at my place looked like and studying it, I'd be able to determine what it needs to function and go from there.

Upon digging, half of the dirt was just straight rock, but the other half was some surprisingly very usable dirt that had that familiar pleasant earthy smell we've all come to recognize. I took out all of the large rocks, but left the smaller ones in with the dirt. I figured that since the dirt out here is pretty much just minerals, rocks, clay, and some dirt that all I really needed to do was add some Peat Moss and Compost and some organic amendments and the soil should be decent enough to grow something in. I grabbed some Dr Earth 5-5-5 mix, some peat moss, and some compost from my place in conjunction with online. I bought a single bag of perlite, but really didn't need much as I figure the rocks and sand will help me with drainage and the peat moss will provide me with extra aeration in conjuction with the perlite, sand, and rocks. I got some everbearing strawberry plants going in there already that I just transplanted a couple of days ago. I also direct sowed some edamame, spinach, lettuce, and green beans. Got myself some jalapenos, habaneros, marconi and hot wax peppers, cherry and roma tomatoes, and more cucumbers.

The reason I'm attempting to try growing veggies is because of what I've seen organic soil do in terms of terpene production. One day I was recalling a cucumber I had harvested from a 7g pot of Sub's Supersoil and this cucumber smelled so powerful that it made the entire house stink when you cut it up. Then I derped and realize that it was terpenes, much like with a strain of cannabis. It got me thinking, if living soil grows me the best smelling/tasting cannabis then why wouldn't it grow me the best smelling and tasting fruits and vegetables? Not only would I be able to grow some incredible quality produce, but once the plants get rocking and rolling I'll have more food than I know what to do with.

I have a rather radical goal in terms of where I want to be in 5+ years and what I want to do with my life, and it's mainly been inspired with my growing success throughout the last few years. I've been thinking, we only have to go to work to get money to provide essentials for living right? Well, what if you didn't need money to provide essentials for living? What if you had 5+ acres of land, with livestock for meat and produce for fruits and veggies. Bam, food is taken care of. Get yourself a well and start collecting rain-water and now water is taken care of. I want to look into solar or even creating my own Tesla battery (tons of DIY videos about it on youtube, check it out!) to provide my own power. I could learn to process leather and wool from my livestock and use those things to create clothing. If I can provide myself with food, water, clothing, shelter, and electricity with 5 acres of land.. what do I need to have a job for? At least that's what I'm hoping to find out haha!

What's up guys?

Been way busy these last few weeks and haven't had much time to take pictures let alone post on my journal. Finally got a day off so I can show you guys where I'm at now








These photos were taken at the beginning of week 3 of 12/12 and are actually a few days old now and they're even bigger than these photos show. Come 12/1 I'll be in week 4. That lanky one I have just keeps cracking me up every time I look at it. In this picture it's 3.5 ft tall, however last night when I checked on them it was already 4 ft tall a mere 3 days later. The lanky one just has me tripping because it's so much different than the other ones. From what things look like, there are two predominant phenos for my seeds; the short, stout, and bushy indica dominant looking ones and the large christmas tree sativa looking ones. These seeds are a cross of AK48 and Trainwreck, my guess is the short bushy ones take more after the AK48 (growing just like the Northern Lights it has in it's lineage) and then the christmas tree looking ones are likely taking more after the Trainwreck.. although both are just guesses until they've been in the jars for a little while.

The lanky one is just kind of tripping me out right now because it's looking like it will either be a colossal failure, or it's gonna grow some of the biggest buds I've ever seen in my life. It straight looks retarded.. but looking closer it seems like it's throwing out pistils the hardest and it has the largest and thickest stem, so we'll see I guess. I've taken a clone just in case it actually turns out amazing. Looking at it now, it's totally impractical to run it indoors but imagining how it would do outside is just too tantalizing to pass up.

And I'm not sure if anyone happened to notice, but there are in fact less plants in there now. I started with 24 plants and 9 of them turned out to be males. I mean, even with the 15 I have now I should still get a good yield, but losing the 9 hurts for sure. No possible way I can ever hope to hit the GPW figure unless 100% of my light footprint is being used by the plants. The plants on the left hand side make up an even 3x6 sized canopy under a total of 1410 watts (1000w dialed down to 750 and a 600w on super lumens) and the canopy is anywhere between 2-3 feet tall. The plants on the right side has a smaller sized canopy at 5.5x2.5 ft under 1320 watts (2 600w on super lumens) and the canopy is also the same 2-3 feet tall. Looking like I'll pull 2-3 oz per plant based on plants I've had this size before, but only time will tell. I only think this because the last grow I did in here I had a couple of plants in 2g pots, the picture below is my Critical + 2.0 and it gave me a little over 3 ounces from a 2g pot.. and that was with some neglect even as I didn't care for it as much as the 25g girls xD



I'll be honest guys, I legit was not expecting these kind of results 3.5 weeks in. I've had to relearn quite a bit of things about growing when I started adding CO2 to the equation, but it's absolutely game changing when used in conjunction with a well balanced living organic soil. The only thing special I'm doing with this grow is CO2, running things at 1750ppms currently and they seem to be enjoying it. Had things at the standard 1500ppm but the girls really responded when I push 1700. Other than that, the soil is just my soil I recycled from my last run. I added some Coast of Maine Lobster compost, some neem/crab/kelp meal, and more perlite and just remixed and repotted. The only products I use is just coconut water+aloe vera once a week and use fish emulsion in veg and fish hydrolysate in flower.. in conjunction with top dresses of course (same amendments top dressed, then covered with more compost). Actually, I realized I'm not using the pure fish hydrolysate anymore but rather the Tomato & Veg product from King Neptune. It's pretty much the Hydrolysate combined with their seaweed and molasses and so forth, seems to be working quite nicely so far.

I also use Grower's Recharge instead of brewing compost teas, I use that once a week and apply via my Chapin sprayer. Not really anything special or fancy by any means, but the results I'm getting so far sure are for me! I realize this may come off as bragging or even advertising, but I'm just trying to demonstrate that living organics really is simple once you get the hang of it. Perfect for a simpleton like myself! xD This method of growing is perfect for someone like me, I'm definitely not someone who can optimize hydroponics and some of those people are straight artists for sure. If you're looking for a simple yet effective growing method to provide your own meds and even produce, then living organic soil is definitely the way.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Since I had to cull 9 of the plants, that meant that I was able to order myself some seeds! Those should be here within the week. Finally got around to grabbing some OG Ghost Train seeds and I'm way stoked about those. They had a special where they throw 3 Grape Ox strains when you buy a pack of Rare Dankness seeds so I jumped on that. Also grabbed myself a couple Strawberry Banana seeds from Reserva Privada because I've heard great things about it's terpene potential.

I'll be throwing those into the 9 empty pots I have as soon as they get here and throw them into my tent to veg until it's harvest time. I'm trying to keep my plant count in mind, so I'll be vegging the 9 while I finish flowering the 15 I currently have. I'll be going with a combination of 1 plant per light SCRoG and SOG grows to optimize my plant count. I'm finally going to optimize my canopy and strive to not only hit the GPW mark, but exceed it. Just goes to show that things on paper don't always turn out that way and you have to be ready and able to account for anything.

LOL I realized that I totally forgot all about this journal. My sincerest apologies, this time of year is incredibly busy for me and I barely have enough time to play a game of Leagues let alone post anything on here :/

This grow was an absolute failure in terms of yield, but a complete success in terms of the seeds I used.

Just to recap, I used some seeds from a good 4-5 years ago that I completely forgot about. A Trainwreck cut I got 4-5 years ago happens to be well known for being finicky and finding about any excuse to throw out bananas, it proceeded to pollinate itself and the AK48 (Nirvana seeds) plants I had growing at the time. I took a huge risk with these seeds and paid the consequences in terms of yield, but reaped rewards in terms of both quality and phenotype selection.

I flowered from week 3-6 with 2 600w HPS lights, however at the end of week 6 one of my 600w ballasts died on me and had to be replaced. Rather than spend $100 on a new ballast I simply spent $170 on a complete 1000w DE HPS fixture I picked up on Amazon, seems it was a limited deal because I can't seem to find them for cheaper than $200 now. Anyway, I yielded a little over 1lb of quality nugs and just shy of 3/4 lb of completely seeded bud. And I mean WAYYY seeded, there would be no buds left if I sat there and picked out all of the seeds. Fortunately there's still some decent resin on them and I can salvage it by turning it into concentrates and edibles. I made some QWISO with the worst of it as part of a test and the shit is incredibly. The return on yield was shitty, as is expected of seeded bud, but damn is it good. Bubbles up real nice and has an incredible flavor and a little bit goes a long way. I used 1200 watts for the first 6 weeks, switching to the single 1000w DE HPS for the last 2-3 weeks (phenotype dependent) so while my yield was pretty mediocre it could have been much worse!

While the yields were atrocious, I'm still pretty stoked about this for a variety of reasons. For one, the 1lb I got is absolutely incredible and is easily the best stuff I've grown to this point. For two, I ended up finding 4 various phenotypes that all had a handful of seeds that I'll be able to continue to refine into something unique. I had 15 plants, 7 of them ended up being so full of seeds that I legit can't do anything but turn them into wax/edibles. However the other 8 produced some incredibly quality bud and I seem to have 4 unique phenotypes. While these 8 plants did in fact have some seeds in them, it wasn't nearly as bad as the other 7. It's just enough seeds to continue to grow with, but not so many that the buds are unsmokable.

So, the risk I took with these seeds did end up fucking me because of the yields.. however I've got some that didn't seed/hermie nearly as bad as the rest.. so naturally those are the seeds I'll be keeping. Eventually, with enough care and time I'll be able to refine them into something similar to Blueberry. True Blueberry is an absolute delight in every aspect, but it can be a nightmare to grow and will show you just how truly dialed in you are. I have a feeling that the seeds from these 4 phenos will show less trains of hermaphoditism, and after a good 2-3 cycles I'll be able to reliably grow them in a dialed in grow room. For anyone that's interested, the following 4 phenotypes are of interest to me and I'll be refining them as the months go by.

Pheno 1: Pure unadulterated Trainwreck. The same as what it was when I first grew it, has an orange/citrus+cleaner smell to it and is incredible. Gives you a brief rush of euphoria and alertness until suddenly you become stupid and suddenly can't finish sentences anymore. Legit hits you like a train.

Pheno 2: Pure haze/sativa. This one went the longest, 70 days in 12/12 before it was done. Has the most amazing haze scent to it (Think Blue Dream but without the Blue xD) and has a nice uppity/speedy high. The smell alone makes it worth keeping around, but it's a great daytime smoke if you don't overdo it.

Pheno 3: This one seems to take more after the Afghani lineage of both the Trainwreck and AK48, as both strains have Afghani in them. This pheno reminds me of Northern Lights (also Afghani based) because the buds are enormous, yet it has a very subtle sweet smell to it. Not very stinky when compared to the others, which is what made it remind me of Northern Lights in the first place. Very mellow smoke and not quite as potent as the rest, but the buds are enormous and while the smell may be subtle it has a unique sweetness to it.

Pheno 4: Only had a single plant that exhibited these traits and I've called it Lanky ever since seeing it. It was the tallest plant, but it only produced a handful of solid/dense buds. It had less buds/bud sites than the other plants but still managed to outyield the rest. This one actually seems to be a perfect cross of the Trainwreck and AK48 because it exhibits traits of all of the above phenotypes. Lanky has the same buds as Pheno 3, but the smell is like a potpourri of the above 3 phenotypes. The predominate smell is the citrus cleaner smell from Pheno 1 with undertones of haze and afghani from phenos 2 and 3.

With the exception of Pheno 3, these phenos are some of the best I've personally smoked in years. Absolutely shits on anything I had from my last grow and anything before hand really, I never expected the quality to be nearly this good.

I'll be posting another journal here in another month or so once things start calming down and I get going again. Gotta take everything out of the shed, bleach/sanitize it, and make some transplants. Got some new clones/seedlings I'll be running in the shed, but I'll also be using my grow tent to refine some of these phenotypes until I'm able to get a stable mother out of them.

My apologies for the lame ending and the lack of responses. Just thought that I'd at least let you all know that I'm done with this one

As always, thanks for stopping by.