KneeCap's 2nd Medical Card Grow...Crop 1

This is the second year for me having my Med Card in Michigan. Its a scary place to grow, I know, but I will assume that any evidence I put up here is in my favor. I've been growing for decades, I've done it all. I am a master grower, straight up. That's all I am saying, I want to keep a low profile. This is not about ego. Nor is this a step by step guide. If you have questions, fire them up, I can get detailed if you want or need me to.

The rule in Michigan is that you can begin cultivation 21 days after sending in your application for a card. So I begin after gripping some clones one the 21st. SPOILER ALERT: The ones that ended up making it for Crop 1 were OG Kush and Apollo 13. I will make a new Journal for each crop of my Med Card year 2. This one ended up being 10 OG Kush and 2 Apollo 13. I started the clones, made them the mothers, and then cloned the mothers. When the clones were ready to flower, I tossed the mothers in there too. So I used 10 Clones and 2 mothers. SPOILER ALERT: I rocked the SCroG Method. SPOILER ALERT: I went totally organic in buckets, using Sunshine Mix, Ocean Forrest, and the whole GH GO Line. Its awesome. Now that you know the particulars, read on if you want to see some proppa plants kicking ass.

Oh yeah, one more thing going in that you MUST know: This crop will be done growing before I even finish putting the journal entries up to today. I started this journal on my PC in August. Today is day 39 of flowering in the real world as I type this. So bare with me, I'll catch this one up before crop 2 is too far along, I'll be Sync'd back up widit.

Purchased 1 rooted clone each of the strains AK47, Apollo 13, Northern Lights, and OG Kush for $10. They were put in shitty potting soil in red cups from cloning terrariums an hour before I arrived to make the purchase. When I got them home, I put them 6” from one 20w CFL to hold them over until I got a better light. I also mixed up a solution with Age Old and MaxiCrop to do an initial feeding, which I mixed 2/3 strength and only gave each cup a shot-glass worth. I put a small desk fan directly in front of them on low, providing them with some circulation. Although not the healthiest clones I ever seen, they were all “alive” except the NL, which was beginning to droop about an hour after feeding.

Well where to begin? First off, the NL clone was droopy out of the gate. Here is what it looked like 4 and 12 hours after putting it in light and feeding it a tiny shot of water with a very small amount of nutes in it:






There was no question in my mind that it would not recover. Fortunately, the guy who sold me em is replacing it (I'm about to go get it now).


Early in the day on Day 2, I went ahead and started bending the tops on these one day old clones. Why? Because they can take it.






These clones – which, as bad news always comes in at least pairs, may not even be (strains) what this friend of a friend said they were. Let's hope like hell that is not the case. I'm from Detroit, I did my whole first card in the D. Now I live in the middle of nowhere, and I don't know anyone. Either way, they were in some super cheap, shitty potting soil that was opened and chilling out in his back yard since ten days before I even bought the clone. Also, I needed to upgrade the lighting. I picked up a 125 watt CFL with Horizontal reflector at a local grow store for around 50 bucks. Ocean forest was on sale for ½ price, so I snagged two of them.


So later on in the evening, I decided to pull the cubes away from these shitty cups filled with shit dirt and put them all in 3 gallon plant buckets with ocean forest for soil. Ocean forest feeds for 30 days, and nothing else is generally needed. Under this monster CFL, they seem to be going pretty well. I have always vegged at 24-7, so let's just do that and stick to what I always have done instead of any other method. I don't want to hear any arguments about which method is the best either, I really don't care. 24-7 has always worked great for me. I am getting a 4x4' T5 soon, this light will become an additive light in the veg closet. As I was pulling the cubes from the cups, I noticed that there were barely roots coming out of any of the plugs, and the AK-47 only had a tap root barely poking out the bottom. Then I got to the Northern Lights. As I suspected, I pulled the plug apart carefully and discovered that the stem didn't have any root hairs or even signs of future rooting, like yellowing or the bumps that form before the hairs. Wow. This guy actually was serious when he put this thing in a cup. So far, everything I seen come out of this guy's house has been screwed up in one way or another. Let's hope against hope that these clones are what he said they are. =/

Well, when I got there, he had two terrariums and the one on the right was “for sure” Northern Lights. I looked at about ten of them before I found one with hairs poking through the bottom of the cube. It was almost the biggest cloned plant part I ever seen. About 8 and a half inches or more, this thing did look perky, until I tossed it in my plant bucket full or Ocean Forrest and watered it. Moments later, it went limp. Well, at least I know this one will come back instead of do whatever because there were roots – a lot more than the other three plants, so I ain't too worried about it. He also gave me the one in the dixie cup which is also a Northern Lights, but all it had was a taproot. Oh well, it'll either survive and be a nice plant or it'll die trying to develop more roots. I predict a slow start, but a rapid grower once it gets going. Judging from all of the other shit I have witnessed so far from this guy, I have to wonder a lot of things about how these clones came to be about, what they are all about, if they are the strains he said they were, and if they don't have any of the spider mites that annihilated his flowering room in em. Here they are limp... hopefully in a couple hours, I can post the “perky” pics. Otherwise, this is it for day 3...


This thing was do-or-die with just a tap-root. NL.


This ginormous ass clone actually had a really nice porcupine looking rootball built into a netted peat ball. Hope it comes back because the rest of his clones looked like they weren't gonna pull through. AK-47.

So the NL made it and I gave that cup to a friend to grow it. I'll get a copy off of it later. The AK died because it was broke between the rooting part of the stem and the stem, below where I could see it to do anything about it. Hopefully, someone had better luck with the AK-47 strain somewhere in town because that would be nice. Meanwhile, here is what the OG Kush and the Apollo 13 looked like 2 weeks after getting light and Ocean Forest.


Apollo 13


OG Kush

Little side note: I started this Grop with nothing. Everything I did use was on a shoestring budget but still passed 2 g's. I'm not trying to learn too much these days, but the Screen of Green is new to me. This was my fist real Scrog. I normally pride myself on my SOG techniques, Scroggin is different, and it is fun. I hope to hone my Scrog skills down as I make the transition this year to bubble buckets. Also this year, I do hope to get more patients by summer.

The Picture above shows the OG Kush on the left and the Apollo 13 on the right - just hours before cloning both plants. In front is a tray of some pure Indica seeds I stumbled across. For bending, I used steel wire I shaped into hooks. These plants made it half way around the full circumference of the pots they're in and have several tops that were side sprouts with two or three branches growing off of each.


The Cloning Procedure: Starting my Own CloneRx 50 Bubble Cloner










Never-before-used DIY Bubble Cloner with 50 sites. Cost was around 50 bones. The res is deep so the temp of the water stays the temperature I start it at for longer. I might also use a heating device later on if the temp is no t satisfactory (73-77 degrees). Here are some before pics of the mother plants:


OG Kush, 3.5 weeks old.


Apollo 13, 3.5 weeks old.


OG Kush (24 cuttings)


Apollo 13 (26 cuttings)


OG Kush Mother after cloning


Here is a shot of the fully loaded CloneRx 50:




I finished loading the clone box at 11:00 p.m. Notice how they are limping in this shot. An hour later, they were all really flat and basically laying on the lid of the bin. The water temp of the bin is 77 degrees. This ended up being a little too high, light leaks were also an issue...

The pure Indica seeds that I started haven't been reported enough in this journal yet, so I'll try to bring this up to speed as I haven't updated in a while and a lot has happened. It's actually the 18[SUP]th[/SUP] of October right now, and there is another update from 10/5 till present. All of this can be done due to the fact that I was still taking pictures when crucial things were done, almost always. If I don't have a picture, you'll just have to take my word for it. For a primer on pure indica strains, I recommend looking at this picture only journal that shows the growth cycle from seed germination to harvest on an outdoor strain from Spain known as Legends Ultimate Indica:


http://www.hempcity.net/travelreports/11strains2003/legendsultimateindica/


As you might note, the flowering time looked to be about 8 to 9 weeks. Pure Indica strains are plentiful, every region on the planet has their own “legendary” pure strains, the northern or colder climate indigenous ones being the purples that flower early and have shorter flowering times and the warmer, closer to the equator ones being the “hash plant” types, typically having a longer veg time and flowering time, producing huge plants with thick, sticky buds. Both are desired in the Medical Marijuana world because of the pain relieving qualities, as well as sleep aid and, more over, the anti-depressant effects that could replace everything from Prozac to Xanax in your medicine cabinet. Don't throw away the Adaral just yet because Indica will NOT give you the uplifting ambitious feeling that sativa will. Growing Bag Seeds is a long tradition that no one will ever know when it started. If that makes sense, then you will also realize that sometimes, every once in a while, someone grows some Bag Seed from a bag of what they thought was exceptional regular commercial weed and ended up with some super potent Indica. Chances are, that bud came from a pure indica strain that was so covered in THC crystals the grower didn't manicure the buds at all after bail or hang drying and curing in a barn. Somehow, the weed still retained enough potency to pass as above-average commercial Mexican green weed, and that lucky person that grew a seed from it ended up with the equivalent of Hash Plant or Purps or something somewhere in the middle. Kentucky “BlueGrass” or KY Kush as it is often called, is an example of a place inbetween the regions that separate the Purps from the Sticky Icky. On the other side, there is Afghan and Colombian versions of the same thing. Some mountainous regions offer two growing seasons for Indica strains, a regular and short season. Pure Sativa strains are generally really dank and don't usually end up in bags sold as regular commercial weed. Most Skunk strains are pure sativa or a cross with just a small bit of the indica traits.


I originally put the germinated indica seeds into the cups on 09/11/2011.

Above they are wrapped around the OG Kush. This was taken just before I added the 4' by 4 bulb T5. The shoebox tray underneath is to catch water and make it easier to access all plants at once. See the roundness of the leaves on indica plants in white pots. Below is a closer look at the bending of one of the indicas.


The next picture shows them on 10/14, four weeks after putting them in dirt. The two in the back were re-potted into those gallon and a half hanging baskets. They are now under the T5 in this pic.


Okay, enough about those Indica plants, hopefully the dice roll will prove to be a potent strain on those. I will continue to experiment with good rego bag seeds until I find a super bad ass indica I can call my own

Last leave off point of the CloneRx 50, I was getting detailed about the process. The first picture shows the leftovers of the first planting session, which took place on October 5[SUP]th[/SUP]. The rooted clones were mostly OG Kush, in fact, only one of them was an Apollo 13, so most of the ones left are Apollo 13, as indicated on the diagram placard:


Here they are right after they were planted in cups of Ocean Forrest. 10/05/2011:


Ocean Forrest proved to be adequate to grow these two strains all the way through the veg phase, as indicated by the photos later on of the mother plants after taking a second run of clones off of them. Seven weeks total without adding any nutes or beneficials.

First clone planted from the CloneRx50 of OG Kush. Planted in Ocean Forrest on 10/05/2011.


First clone planted from the CloneRx50 of Apollo 13. Planted in Ocean Forrest on 10/05/2011.


OG Kush mother after being cloned once with a recovery period of about 2 weeks.


Apollo 13 mother after being cloned once with a recovery period of about 2 weeks.

50 total clones were originally taken off of the two mother plants. After five more days, I decided to cut my loses, realizing that I should have kept better track of the reservoir temperature. There might even have been some pinholes of light getting through with the first set of plugs. The next pic is of the survivors of the first run of the CloneRx50. Most of them are Apollo 13. The good news is that one of them is a Northern Lights copy from the plant my friend had and then had to eventually destroy.


The front row is OG Kush, NL, and Apollo 13.

Overall, as of the 15[SUP]th[/SUP], there were 17/50 clones that were either planted on 10/5 or 10/10.
On 10/14/2011, I bent all of the clones that were started on 10/05/2011.



Also around that time, I staked the two mother plants to train the growth outwards.


OG Kush mother after being staked with bamboo sticks.


Apollo 13 mother after being staked with bamboo sticks.

Many improvements were made to the CloneRx50 after Run #1...

Built straps and they lock with Velcro to secure the front of the tub
Remade a lot of the plugs so they were one unit instead of glued together pieces
Shielded where the clear tubes go into the tub on top so absolutely no light gets into the basin
The numbering system moved from the individual plugs to the side of the holes that they go in
All activity is now recorded in paint marker on the actual clone box itself.

For the last 5 years I have kept many seeds from the marigold plants I grow. I have 3 tall kinds but don't remember the varity, two of the types are luminacent, one an orange and the other a yellow. I have picked and dried them and get enough to fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of dried seeds. What I do is take and toss them about in my gardens and come up what may. I just thin them out whre I want to plant crops. This the second year now I have had NO aphids and other bad bugs in the garden. I roto-till the plants into the soil in the fall so it seems to be working. They are very beautiful still. This year I kept more seeds than in the past.

On 10/16/2011, I cut 29 clones from the Apollo 13 and 21 from the OG Kush mother plants...


Apollo 13 cuttings...




Fully loaded 50 site homemade bubbleponic cloner sitting on top of the dryer in the laundry room.

Here is a look under the hood of the CloneRx 50...





Hard to see, but this beauty produces A LOT of bubbles. Those stems don't even have to be within 3 inches of the top of the water. Some are actually touching the water on this run, but that shouldn't matter. I anticipate a lot better results from my DYI bubble cloner this time because I am actually taking a more proactive approach to it, checking it daily, making sure the temp is proper inside the res and watching for death on the topside. Dead leaves on cuttings seemed to slow down or limit root production last run, or maybe not, either way, I see this thing every time I go to the refrigerator (lol), which, with the amount of munchies I go for, is a lot (haha).


Clone my munchies Uncle B.


Perky devils NEVER went limp this time


A good diagonal view of the cuttings.

Close up taken a couple days after the application of Bend number one to an OG Kush clone.


OG clone Kush bent once. This is 5 days after planting.


Apollo 13 clone bent once.


Pure Indica seed plants week 5:




These mother plants below were originally potted on 08/27/ 2011, producing 100 clones in 9 weeks.




Finally, I watered everything before ending this update just before midnight turning the 18[SUP]th[/SUP] to the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] of October. The mother plants FINALLY got a feed, for the first time, at the first hint of needing it as indicated by slight discoloration in the body of the leaves two levels from the new growth. I used ½ ounce of Age Old Organics fertilizer and ½ ounce of Maxicrop Seaweed extract for beneficials. Hopefully, they wont explode because they are already ahead of my schedule for the trigger size of motherplants that had two good clone runs. That is also my limit, whenever possible, for clone runs, 2. Any more than that and the plant is so bonzied out that only small popcorn buds seem to develop. This isn't always true, but my ceiling isn't 15 feet tall either. The plan (which I hate making plans, but so far everything has fell into place on planned timelines) is to SCROG these two mothers in 5 gallon pots under their own 600 watt light. The ten other plants for Crop 1 will be under their own 600 watt light. They will have about half the veg time as the two mothers.

I got a new light for the clones, but I had to cover the plugs with foil because the light leaked through them quite easily. There's a pic below that shows the light and the foil job. Some clones were lost because the foil cut them. There are still a lot of Apollo 13 clones left, which is my goal, to get a run of mostly Apollo 13 for the second crop. Crop one will consist of 10 OG Kush and 2 Apollo 13s.

Transplanting is one of those moments in weed growing that you do, then you step back and look at it and say, “that kicked ass.” The first thing to do was to transplant the clones that were started on 10/05 in redcups. There were 9 OG Kush and only 1 Apollo 13. All of the plants had tight root balls, with a nice cluster at the bottom, still healthy and white, ready to take off in the 3 gal buckets I decided on using for the first crop. Without naming any name brands, I picked up some agro mix, worm castings, and some organic potting soil to make a basic mix.


OG Kush root “plug”


Apollo 13 root “plug”


Pure Indica Rooted Plugs.


1 through 6, the Apollo 13 is the one in the front center. The rest are OG Kush. These plants are almost 3 weeks old.


7 through 10, all OG Kush.


The T5 puts out about 200 watts while the CFL is 125 watts. Together, they really light the closet up.


I also installed a 26 watt clip light over there in the corner. That is the two indica plants that were bend-trained in the white buckets on the floor.


The other two indica plants, freshly transplanted, into the long planter box. These two were not bend-trained.


The two original mother plants, OG Kush on the left and Apollo 13 on the right. Those girls are 2 Months old at Midnight, Happy Birthday ladies!

The awesome thing is that they all fit back into the closet, with the 10/10/2011 clones in cups floating on top, and the closet doors DO shut. So far, the smell isn't super dank. It is the hint of what is to come. The store I hit was a new grow shop in the small town I live in. I think there are four or five of them now. I grabbed some Super B+. I mixed it proper and gave each transplant about a half a liter of the mix each. The mothers are now 2 months old and 3 feet tall. When I flower them, I will be using a net to SCRoG them out under 1 600 watt light. The other ten plants will be under their own 600 watt light.

In the black bucket: Apollo 13 final bends. The red one is an Apollo 13 also.


Here's an OG Kush with the final bends. Most of the ten plants had three main branches that were bent.


This soon-to-be motherplant of Northern Lights in the redcup with three bends looking really good.

Everything got started on the new schedule of water-every-day. The 6 in the redcups needed food, so I mixed up some quarter-strength Age Old veg food and Maxicrop seaweed. They've been in these small red cups for 17 days :/

Total of 30 out of 50 clones were planted from run number 2 on the DIY Cloner. Most of the dead ones died when I was installing the foil. The other casualties were just because I didn't like the amount of root development, and simply tossed em. Unless I can find a way to get rid of the extras, they might not even make it to buckets. I learned something I only suspected last run: Cutting the “bark” off the tip of the stem didn't do anything to help roots grow, in fact, it was the main cause of the slime that developed and probably prevented roots from growing or developing to their fullest extent. So, lesson learned. All the root hairs ALWAYS started on the “bark” and never grew from the area where I shaved the tip.



Notice that no roots grew where I shaved the stems, the shoots come out above the shaved portion of the stem



Lady bug looking dude just hanging out(?)



One of the OG Kush babies being born.



One of them Apollo 13 homies with lateral root shoots.



The Dirty 30. I maintain that I took more Apollo 13 than OG Kush this time, because the first grow was 10/2 OG Kush to Apollo 13.

I was going to take step by step pics of it coming together, but I was already multitasking. So you don't get the cool .gif video. I will say that it was the easiest tent I ever set up in my life. Two days later, in goes the SCRoG nets and Veg lights and Crop 1! YEAH! Also on the 5[SUP]th[/SUP] of November, I transplanted all of the “extra” plants and the supposed Northern Lights plant. Although I didn't focus in on them, you can see them in the pic below. I gave one OG Kush and one Apollo 13 to a homie, leaving me with 2 extra Apollo 13 and an extra OG Kush plant that are now in 3 gal buckets.



Can't get the whole thing in one pic.


This is basically it only without the green lining.


The 2 Mothers under the 125 watt CFL. On the right side is the 3 extra plants plus the NL mother.


9 OG Kush and an Apollo 13 under the T5. Yeah, that is only 10 plants.


It's hunting season (pretty much year around somewhere in Michigan) but Deer Gun season was when I was looking through the 2011 Michigan Hunting and Trapping Digest and I stumbled upon this gem:


I doubt there would be anything left out there but scraggly looking brown garbage by now. The weed hunting police need your help to find those crops! Sounds pretty stupid to me. Most hunting occurs statewide between October 1[SUP]st[/SUP] and December 20. I doubt you'll run into too many plants in that window, but by and large, the hunting exodus of the lower half of the state to the north is between Nov. 15 and Nov 30. Nice typo by the way... what was that #@%&3r smoking?

Sweet, I got the nutes and beneficials today. The lights will be here tomorrow. I've been manually moving the T5 and Horizontal CFL around the thinner areas of the canopy. Around 6:00 p.m., I gave all of Crop 1 some Cal Mg+, Black Diamond, and Sensizym in ¾ strength amounts. There should be enough Nitrogen to not worry about adding any at this point. That includes the larger 2 buckets, due to the worm castings and extra Ocean Forrest I added not long ago. Looks like tomorrow, 11/11/11, I will begin to flower Crop 1. In final preparation, I will be doing a lot of work to the plants underneath the trellis to fill everything in better.


My first go-around with the GO line. This is the Bloomer:




This is the Cal Mg+. I just found out that the Cal Mg I usually use is far from organic. This liter was relatively the same price.

Next we have the humic acid. The write up on the label made it sound so cool, I had to get it. This was exceptionally MORE expensive than the Wal Mart jump off...


Below is the bloom enhancer. These products make me wish I had my bubbleponic shit together! But like I said, I am working on a shoestring budget here... and trying to keep it organic!




Advanced Nutrients Sensizym is what I went with.

While veggin, I was using Age Old Organics and Maxicrop here and there...





GUARANTEED MINIMUM ANALYSIS
Total Nitrogen (N).............................. 12%
3.0% Water Soluble Organic Nitrogen
9.0% Water Insoluble Nitrogen
Available Phosphate (P2O5)............... 6%
Soluble Potash (K2O)......................... 6%
MICRONUTRIENTS EXPRESSED AS ELEMENTS
Boron (B)........................ 0.02%
Copper (C)...................... 0.05%
Iron (FE).......................... 0.10%
Manganese (MN)............ 0.05%
Molybdenum (MO)...... 0.0005%
Zinc (ZN).......................... 0.05%
Primary nutrients derived from: Fish Solubles, Feather meal & Colloidal Phosphates.
Micronutrients derived from: seaweed extracts, Borax, and complex sugars of
Glucoheptonate of Copper, Manganese, Molybdenum, and Zinc.

Yummy.