OldMedUsers current grow and plans

OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
r.i.kid said:
Yeah I got my t5's off Amazon at $100 a pop.. Work great as you can see. Comes with bulbs also
Click to expand...
Maybe you just need a couple of those Hortilux T-5s to take your flowering to the next level if you flower under the T-5s.

I don't claim to know everything about everything but I know shit-loads about a lot of things and even have diplomas in a couple of things. Chemistry and webmastery. :)

Just like I don't go hog wild and buy every hyped-up supplement that AN sells I did my research over the decades to make sure I get what's needed to do a good job without breaking the bank.

That pic above with all my new stuff is it, other than some epsom salts if I think I need a bit of sulfur.

I'm mixing the HP with their more organic blends because I've done a bit of it before and the plants really seem to love it. Years ago I used the old ProMix BX for my base and only added 25% coarse perlite with great results. I've been getting even better results as I explore the various mixes and additives I'm playing with.

It all seems to work so well with the addition of the right nutes at the right time. :)

BlueHeaven01.jpg

Lighting has such an incredible influence on yields that it's more than a few threads worth of discussion.

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Boo f'n Hoo!

Today I confirm my other Otto#1 is a boy as well. :(

Ottos03111602.jpg

The full size of that pic will show balls on all 4 cuttings that I took about 10 days ago and have been manually giving 12/12 light to force sex. Oddly the only two that have rooted so far are the Otto "B" cuttings which were the ones I wasn't sure about.

I really wanted to put one of those downstairs to flower with the 4 girls but the pot gods have forsaken me. Pollen from both of them will be collected and saved to make seeds with any girls I get from the last 3 beans I have to sprout ASAP.

I'm already bending the girls . . .

BentGirls02111601.jpg

BentGirls02111602.jpg

To fit into this . . .

Screen.jpg

And become something like this . . .

VScroG01.JPG

All four girls will have some lower branches pollinated with the pollen I've saved from the autoflowering males to hopefully give me autoflowering plants later.

The trip keeps getting trippier!

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Not even three full days from repotting from 2 - 4gal pots and roots are already running out the drain holes.

Roots04111601.jpg

Saw your root ball off when you re-pot folks. Your plants will love you for it!

This is just one of the 4 girls. They have all exploded since up-potting and feeding them heavy doses of nutes leaning toward Bloom to prime them for flipping this weekend.

Girls04111602.jpg

In 18L of RO water I put:

50ml each of GMB, AN's pH Perfect base nutes
8g Big Bud powder
10ml GrowTek CalMag
10ml Rhino Skin

Plants A&B got that and C&D got 20ml Bud Ignitor tossed in with the above to continue the experiment and see if it makes any difference in flower development or final yields.

They all have flower development like this and have been under 20/4 lighting since birth. Not the autos I'm after but the seeds I will get from these once pollinated with the early flowering males should autoflower when they grow out.

Girls03111603.jpg

I'm calling 3oz each if not more once they are done. I swapped out the 150W standard hps bulb and with some creative bending of my DIY light mount got a 400W SolarMax bulb in the hood to crank it up to 800W and they seem to love it!

LightMount03111601.jpg

LightMount03111602.jpg

I just love the way my digi cam can be adjusted to take natural coloured pics under any lights and then can stare right into 800 watts of light and take a pic like that. I have 2 Canon AE-1s with all sorts of filters and attachments and that light pic would likely fry the 35mm film in the camera! :lol:

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
I wrestled the girls into their corset where they will spend the rest of their lives. The screen is almost 5' wide and the hood leaves each end in the dark. I've been dying to try out my new light mover. (Light Rail AdjustaDrive 4.0® made in the U.S.A.) so I set it up and works great! It only travels 2' so I have it on a 30 sec pause at each end to try to get even coverage for the whole canopy. I used a short piece of chain and a couple "S" hooks to tilt the hood about 45 degrees so it aims all the light into the center. Flipped them to 13/11 on Nov. 10 to get them flowering and they've had two feeds of bloom formula and bloom boosters with silica.

The girls are looking a little beat up after the trauma of getting jammed through the screen but look a lot better now.

Girlslr12111602.jpg

Two days later and they're all standing up and basking in the light.

Girlslr14111602.jpg

I swapped out the veg bulb in there so now have the 2 - 400W flower bulbs going. EYE Hortilux Super HPS and the SolarMax. For shits and giggles I hung my old reflector with a 150W standard hps bulb in the back to add some red and a few more lumens. Just fits back there with about an inch to spare from the hood.

Girlslr14111601.jpg

I think I'm right on the edge of nute burn and with the dose I gave them today it might push me over but they are getting going good on the stretch so I'm figuring with all that light and plenty of fresh air coming in they will be able to use all those nutes to really start filling out all the bud sites popping out.

I only gave plants C and D the Bud Ignitor a few days before flipping and they have twice as many and larger buds starting so now they've all had full doses of the Ignitor as I don't want to miss out on any benefit on A and B which are on the left side of the four.

Looking good for 4 days after the flip I think.

GirlBuds13111601.jpg

:peace:
 
N

NEEDMMASAP

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
I wrestled the girls into their corset where they will spend the rest of their lives. The screen is almost 5' wide and the hood leaves each end in the dark. I've been dying to try out my new light mover. (Light Rail AdjustaDrive 4.0® made in the U.S.A.) so I set it up and works great! It only travels 2' so I have it on a 30 sec pause at each end to try to get even coverage for the whole canopy. I used a short piece of chain and a couple "S" hooks to tilt the hood about 45 degrees so it aims all the light into the center. Flipped them to 13/11 on Nov. 10 to get them flowering and they've had two feeds of bloom formula and bloom boosters with silica.

The girls are looking a little beat up after the trauma of getting jammed through the screen but look a lot better now.

View attachment 3831245

Two days later and they're all standing up and basking in the light.

View attachment 3831258

I swapped out the veg bulb in there so now have the 2 - 400W flower bulbs going. EYE Hortilux Super HPS and the SolarMax. For shits and giggles I hung my old reflector with a 150W standard hps bulb in the back to add some red and a few more lumens. Just fits back there with about an inch to spare from the hood.

View attachment 3831252

I think I'm right on the edge of nute burn and with the dose I gave them today it might push me over but they are getting going good on the stretch so I'm figuring with all that light and plenty of fresh air coming in they will be able to use all those nutes to really start filling out all the bud sites popping out.

I only gave plants C and D the Bud Ignitor a few days before flipping and they have twice as many and larger buds starting so now they've all had full doses of the Ignitor as I don't want to miss out on any benefit on A and B which are on the left side of the four.

Looking good for 4 days after the flip I think.

View attachment 3831254

:peace:
Click to expand...
Hi Old Man , I like your site , I will have to try the way you do your root ball also like the way you used those bottle caps to separate your silver wires , just guessing your about 70 , I am 74 but just got into the MM thing about 2 years ago , I am sure I will learn a lot by following your posts .

Are you making and taking the Oil ? I know its helping me and my wife also . Here is the way we are making it at this time . Take 14 grams of good flower , seal it in tinfoil , bake it at 240 degrees for apx one half hour , let it cool , chop it up . Put it in a mason jar add 14 tablespoons of Everclear (75% is good enough ) , let it soak for a day or two , strain it through a coffee filter . About a half hour before bed time mix one Teaspoon of your oil mixture with lemon-lime soda ( about 3 fingers ) .
 
Jimdamick

Jimdamick

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
G'day.

Thought I would start a journal so folks can see that I actually grow plants. Grew my first buds in '78 and have been growing off and on since but mostly off as I didn't live where a grow was possible.

I moved to northern Alberta from the beautiful Fraser Valley in Feb. 2001 bringing 6 hash plant clones, full of mites, with me.

Rented a old trailer in a small town and built a 12x5' grow room in a 24x24' heated garage. I insulated the walls of the grow room so didn't have to heat the whole garage. Started experimenting with DWC then and grew my first plants there under a homemade bank of T-12s. Took the guts and ends out of 4 - 4ft shop lights and mounted them on a sheet of plywood. Still using it now because buddy had my HIDs and you'll see it in a bit.

Was paying $500/mth rent so I bought that dump for 22G and paid a $350 mortgage instead. :) A year later got an inheritance and bought this place out on the highway. 80x16' ,1990 winterized mobile with a connected 18x37' shop. My own 12x15x10' man cave off the hallway to the shop too. :) Sitting on 7.5 acres and I got the whole shebang for 50G. Go shooting in my back yard like at that damn hawk today trying to get our chickens! Missed but sure I saw a couple of breast feathers floating down when he dodged that 16 gauge load of #4 shot. lol

Big selling feature of this place was the cold storage room the old guy had built in the basement. More like a giant concrete box under the shop/trailer for storage and for the water system/conditioner/distiller. We get out house water from an 80x50m/yd dugout in my yard that's about 12' deep. A week after moving in I gutted most of the shelves out of the cold room and started setting up with the plants still at the old place in town.

There was already 4" inlet and outlet pipes built in so I rigged up a fan from a microwave that was 5" and used two steel corner brackets to mount the fan with a 5"-4" adaptor. Tricky little job but it worked fine.

View attachment 3811064

It's controlled with the RH/heat controller that I later added a DIY speed controller to and use now with the 6" inline fan I use now. I'm making another unit with all 3 on a flat metal tool box now for a grow tent soon to be parked outside the current grow room. It will have it's exhaust go into the grow room and the air in the grow room gets shot outside under the shop. Time to start thinking about using my CO2 tank. :)

View attachment 3811081

Enough of that and on to what's up today.

Slowed down on growing the last couple years due to illness and a bit of burnout too. A small stroke 3 years ago March spun me down into a depression like I haven't had in 20 years. A couple of lung collapses and worsening arthritis didn't help either. (whine, snivel, complain) :)

I planted 9 beans in early June. Three Otto#1 very high CBD with only 1% THC max. Only two came up but all 6 of the others did. The other 6 are a strain of my own I call Northern Mist. It's Kali Mist x Northern Lights #5 both purchased originally from Marc Emery's seed bank about 2002. The Kali alone gave me anxiety attacks if I had just a bit too much so I bred it with the NL and the right pheno from that is the bomb! Lifts my mood right out of the hole and puts a smile on my face. Good for joint pain too.

These ones have been crossed with an auto and I'm trying to develop the pheno I like as an auto so I can grow outdoors way up north here. The auto is called Purple Jem. Mazar x LowRyder.

Grew them in the bedroom closet under some CFLs. Near the end of July had to take off to BC to help my 89 yo mom move into a 5th wheel from a beautiful house overlooking Okanagan lake in Peachland. Knew I'd be gone for at least a month so I pruned the plants back drastically so they wouldn't grow too fast and the wife would just have to water them and keep them alive as I put them in worm castings, real soil and promix that had bone meal added. They survived but didn't look so great and I had two males in full flower.

The security recaptcha thing is relentless so I have to call it quits for now. I can post in other threads fine but even after logging off and back on again it won't leave me alone trying to post this.

:peace:
Click to expand...
Luv ya bro. Keep on trucking!!!
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
NEEDMMASAP said:
Hi Old Man , I like your site , I will have to try the way you do your root ball also like the way you used those bottle caps to separate your silver wires , just guessing your about 70 , I am 74 but just got into the MM thing about 2 years ago , I am sure I will learn a lot by following your posts .

Are you making and taking the Oil ? I know its helping me and my wife also . Here is the way we are making it at this time . Take 14 grams of good flower , seal it in tinfoil , bake it at 240 degrees for apx one half hour , let it cool , chop it up . Put it in a mason jar add 14 tablespoons of Everclear (75% is good enough ) , let it soak for a day or two , strain it through a coffee filter . About a half hour before bed time mix one Teaspoon of your oil mixture with lemon-lime soda ( about 3 fingers ) .
Click to expand...
High NEEDMMASAP

Just turned 62 in Oct. so you got a few years on me yet. :)

Thanks for the kind words. I'm lucky in that I've always been good at coming up with solutions that may not always look great but get the job done when I don't have the means to just buy what I need. Being mechanically inclined and having a shop full of tools helps too. :)

With pot plants I've experimented a lot and things like cutting off the root ball likely came from reading about reducing the root ball with mother plants to refresh the soil in the same pot when keeping one going for years. I do that at each re-potting and the plants seem to respond well and there's never any roots wound around inside the pots when I examine them after cropping. Just lots of fine root hairs all through the root ball and I have to hammer the crap out of it to break it apart to toss it in the compost.

It's a good plan to seal up the pot in tinfoil when decarbing in the oven so any essential oils and terpenes are preserved and it cuts down on the stink in the house too. If the aim is just to get the medicinal value from the pot then larger doses can be taken without getting too high by making your tincture without decarbing. Everything I've been reading about it says that it's just as effective for things like fighting cancer in it's natural state. I like my booze too much so I'm staying away from tinctures as it seems every time I get a bottle of Everclear most of it goes to a piss-up instead of a tincture. :D

I'm going to make two 200ml batches of my cocobudder with one being decarbed and the other not to see what kind of difference there is in the high and the perceived therapeutic effect. Everything will be done exactly the same except the temp will be kept lower with one so it doesn't decarb. I've got a few cans of sugar trim laying around so might as well use them for something other than hash tho I'll be making some of that as well.

When I have made tinctures in the past I'd let them sit in the cupboard for a month before filtering so maybe a longer soaking time would be better tho I'm sure most of the oils will dissolve in the alcohol within a day or two. A water bath that brings the alcohol up to it's simmering point for a few hours would be an easy way to speed up the process tho not something that has to be done.

Are you growing or getting your pot elsewhere? I think if I had the money I'd buy what I need as my motivation ebbs and flows according to my mental state tho with all the new gear I got recently I really need some good flow to kick in and get me motivated to take advantage of it. :)

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Update time!

The girls seem to have liked the heavy feeding they got 3 days ago and I could find no signs of nute burn or any other adverse effects so rather than just plain water for their next time they are going to get another fairly heavy dose of everything. The two plants that got the initial dose of Bud Ignitor seem to still be ahead in bud sites and flower production so I'll be trying a similar experiment on the next round of plants. If the same thing happens I'll be making Bud Ignitor a regular part of my nutrient line-up.

This is typical of the tops on the earlier dosed pair with the others being about half as developed.

Girlslr17111603.jpg

All of them are standing up tall and soaking up the light with some serious growth going on everywhere.

Girlslr17111601.jpg

Girlslr17111602.jpg

I chopped a couple of branches off each of my two male Otto, hi-CBD plants and put them in a mug of RO water in the bedroom closet under 1 - 40W 2700K CFL to flower out and drop their pollen on foil so I can hopefully use it to pollinate any girls from the yet un-sprouted 3 seeds I have left of that strain. The father plants will be cut back to stubs but kept alive for now to make sure I have a source of that pollen should anything happen to the stuff I collect in the closet.

It only took a few hours before they were standing up reaching for the light after being re-housed.

Boys17111601.jpg

T-t-t-that's all folks! :hump:

:peace:
 
N

NEEDMMASAP

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
High NEEDMMASAP


Are you growing or getting your pot elsewhere? I think if I had the money I'd buy what I need as my motivation ebbs and flows according to my mental state tho with all the new gear I got recently I really need some good flow to kick in and get me motivated to take advantage of it. :)

:peace:
Click to expand...
I am sure your right about the longer soak , I found that when using one tablespoon of Everclear to one gram it cant get all of the oil , so I mix it 14 grams to 14 tablespoon , soak for about 2 days then filter it then put the filtered flower back in the jar and add another 14 teaspoons , filter it again then use that for the next batch . works pretty good .

I see some of your fan leafs have a portion of the tips cut off , is there something about that I need to know ? For light reasons ?

I am in Florida and even tho they just passed a law to make it legal we still cant grow our own , cant afford to buy it here ( just to damn expensive ) so I do what I have to do . I love growing plants .

I like the way you think , I had a brother-in law that was a long haul driver , always thought he had a cool job.
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
A rinsing soak ought to do the trick for sure.

I have taken a few brown tips off some of the leaves. They got burnt from the lights a while ago. Some leaves got damaged dragging the branches thru the screen when I was setting them up but no branches got snapped off in the process. I often roll the stems between my fingers to soften them up so the tops fall over to keep the canopy leveler.

Florida eh. We're damn near at opposite ends of the continent. I'm way up in northern Alberta just a few hours south of the territories. Think Ft. MacMurray and go west 100 miles. :)

Driving truck isn't such a cool job when you're lying in the mud trying to get your chains on to get your SuperB up a big hill. Most of my driving up here was hauling water for rigs or spraying down cat trails in the bush building ice roads. Pounding down an ice road in a white-out blizzard when you can't even see the bulldog on the end of your hood is no fun either. Sitting in a freezing truck for 6 hours waiting for rescue when it's -40 and your fuel has turned to jello and shut you down is something I'd rather not repeat either. :D

I went back to school in my 30s and got a diploma in chemistry just so I wouldn't have to do stuff like that but it didn't pay worth a shit so after moving up here in '01 the oil patch was where the money was. That's gone to hell now so I sit on my ass on a measly gov't disability allowance and hope a lotto ticket pays off some day. :)

:peace:
 
N

NEEDMMASAP

Well-Known Member
[QUOTE="

I went back to school in my 30s and got a diploma in chemistry just so I wouldn't have to do stuff like that but it didn't pay worth a shit so after moving up here in '01 the oil patch was where the money was. That's gone to hell now so I sit on my ass on a measly gov't disability allowance and hope a lotto ticket pays off some day. :)

:peace:[/QUOTE]
No that does not sound cool at all , my wife and I watch that TV show Ice Road Truckers and every time I think about how bad that job would suck . My brother-in - law would bring a load down here to Florida and then stay for a few days while he was waiting for a load to go back up north . I guess I was just seeing the best of the truck driving world.

My wife plays the Lotto a lot , one time she missed a 20 MIL pay-out by one number , she still won 5,000 , that was nice .

Florida is okay but it sure gets hot , I would like to be a Snowbird , 6 months here for the winter and then 6 months in Mich or Ohio for the other 6 months , I got me a 30 year old motor home about 3 months ago so I am a little closer to making it work , now if we can luck out and win some money I would have it made , but for the time being I will stay happy growing my plants and making my oil .Good luck on winning your ticket .
 
N

NEEDMMASAP

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
Update time!

The girls seem to have liked the heavy feeding they got 3 days ago and I could find no signs of nute burn or any other adverse effects so rather than just plain water for their next time they are going to get another fairly heavy dose of everything. The two plants that got the initial dose of Bud Ignitor seem to still be ahead in bud sites and flower production so I'll be trying a similar experiment on the next round of plants. If the same thing happens I'll be making Bud Ignitor a regular part of my nutrient line-up.

This is typical of the tops on the earlier dosed pair with the others being about half as developed.

View attachment 3833131

All of them are standing up tall and soaking up the light with some serious growth going on everywhere.

View attachment 3833132

View attachment 3833133

I chopped a couple of branches off each of my two male Otto, hi-CBD plants and put them in a mug of RO water in the bedroom closet under 1 - 40W 2700K CFL to flower out and drop their pollen on foil so I can hopefully use it to pollinate any girls from the yet un-sprouted 3 seeds I have left of that strain. The father plants will be cut back to stubs but kept alive for now to make sure I have a source of that pollen should anything happen to the stuff I collect in the closet.

It only took a few hours before they were standing up reaching for the light after being re-housed.

View attachment 3833141

T-t-t-that's all folks! :hump:

:peace:
Click to expand...
once you collect the pollen how do you store it , do you freeze it ? and how long will it keep ?
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
After Screening thru a 180 micron mesh to remove ant plant bits it goes into a vial that I put open in a sealed jar with some colour-changing desiccating crystals called Drierite for a week or more to make sure it's bone dry then seal the vial and keep it in there for storage. Do the same with my seeds. Seems to keep at room temp for about 6 months.

Beans28101601.jpg

:peace:
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
I knew some Schofields back in Richmond when I grew up but never knew many people working in the patch well enough to know their last names. Ran water truck up in Ft. Mac for a week once but never worked in Red Earth. Spent a lot more time at BlackRock or deep down the Chinchaga road almost to BC. Wherever the rigs worked, so did I. :)

I'm actually more like 240 miles west of Ft. Mac about the same distance north.

:peace:
 
N

NEEDMMASAP

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
After Screening thru a 180 micron mesh to remove ant plant bits it goes into a vial that I put open in a sealed jar with some colour-changing desiccating crystals called Drierite for a week or more to make sure it's bone dry then seal the vial and keep it in there for storage. Do the same with my seeds. Seems to keep at room temp for about 6 months.

View attachment 3835610

:peace:
Click to expand...
100 Pack of 2 Gram "Pillow Paks" Blue to Pink Indicating Silica Gel Packets Desiccants and Dehumidifers
Found these on Amazon , they change color , do you think they would work okay ?
Also do you know of any mail order seed co that are in Canada ? want to get some Auto seeds .
 
haulinbass

haulinbass

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
I knew some Schofields back in Richmond when I grew up but never knew many people working in the patch well enough to know their last names. Ran water truck up in Ft. Mac for a week once but never worked in Red Earth. Spent a lot more time at BlackRock or deep down the Chinchaga road almost to BC. Wherever the rigs worked, so did I. :)

I'm actually more like 240 miles west of Ft. Mac about the same distance north.

:peace:
Click to expand...
Ah I'm a little south of you around gp area. also used to drive truck but just a small bed to stand 400s small world.
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
NEEDMMASAP said:
100 Pack of 2 Gram "Pillow Paks" Blue to Pink Indicating Silica Gel Packets Desiccants and Dehumidifers
Found these on Amazon , they change color , do you think they would work okay ?
Also do you know of any mail order seed co that are in Canada ? want to get some Auto seeds .
Click to expand...
They should work fine. I used to be a chemist at a hazardous waste disposal facility in the Vancouver area and got all sorts of lab chemicals in for disposal. Some made their way home with me and a big jar of that Drierite was one of them. Lots of glassware too that they tossed rather than clean out but with all the crap at my disposal I'd clean it at work.

As it gets moist it turns pink and then can be re-dried in the oven to turn it blue again for reuse. Even rice can be used to dry out stuff. Microwave it for a while or dry well in the oven, let it cool and keep in a sealed jar. Won't change colour but absorbs moisture really well. They sell those big packs to keep in your RV when parked to keep moisture down that would work too.

:peace:
 
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