hash bomb and power plant breeding attempt

Purchased hash bomb seeds from marijuana-seeds.nl. They were on sale and I got 5 power plant seeds for free.

I am a disabled veteran with severe back pain from a service related injury. The VA somehow saw fit to cut off my pain meds, and at first I was a little upset, but then I realized, I live in a state where medical marijuana is legal. Besides, those pain pills are pretty bad for you. It has been a good thing. I have always enjoyed gardening, but growing my medicine has been a different kind of enjoyment. It's awesome.

Anyway, that being said, I wasn't interested in growing any kind of sativa plants, and was mostly looking for pain relief. A friend of mine sold me some harlequin clones, and they're doing ok, but I'm hoping to grow my own hash bomb strain and maybe try crossing it with the harlequin and the power plant for extra good times.

Ok, so the power plant seeds popped right away, and the hash bomb has been really slow to germinate.

The larger ones are of course the power plant, and the smaller one is the hash bomb. So far, 3 out of 3 popped for the power plant and only 4 out of 10 for the hash bomb. 3 have split but don't seem to be growing and 3 haven't done anything at all. One of the hash bomb sprouts looks a little retarded. I still love it though. It's my little retarded baby plant.

Here is one more shot of one of the seedlings just barely up.

For now, everything is outdoors. My seeds are sprouting in a window and on a shelf that I built outside with a thick piece of clear plastic to shield the plants from the summer sun. I am in the process of building some soil for this project. Currently using:

• 45% - Red lava fines from landscape supply
• 45% - Compost obtained from city dump
• 10% - Mud from yard (clay)

Also adding in small amounts

• Blue granite fines
• Road base fines
• Top soil
• Ultragreen Color Blooms Flowering Plant Food (15-30-15)

The plan was to use compost tea to fertilize instead of a commercial fertilizer, but this stuff was on sale and I wanted to try it since I haven't ever used a commercial fertilizer or nutrient.

You plan on keeping them inside right? If staying outdoors your starting a little late in the season buddy

Total cost so far:

Soil

• $5 bag of potting soil (for starting seedlings)
• $15 truckload of compost
• $24 truckload of red lava fines
• $16 other soil amendments

Seeds

• $50 seeds

pH tester

• $6.50

The soil stuff isn't just for the marijuana, but whatever, so total cost is $117. Containers in current use are seed trays that my neighbor gave me. I'm making some cloth plant bags from a roll of curtain material that a local curtain factory sold me for $3. I'm pretty sure it's polyester and it's impregnated with anti-UV chemicals...hope it doesn't affect the smoke.

Eventually I'll start growing indoors. Currently researching LED's, HPS, CFL etc. Figured out how to build an LED fixture that would use around 300W and hopefully will produce as much red and blue light as a 1000W HPS at approximately the same cost in parts. It's a $250 decision.

I'm leaning towards building the LED fixture rather then just purchasing a HPS because it's more exciting. Of course, it's also cheaper power cost, lest wasted energy, less heat etc. Also, LED's would last 5 times longer then HPS. The downside is that HPS is a tried and true method. There is some risk that I'll wind up with $250 worth of worthless red and blue LED elements. It's scary because I am on a fixed income and can't afford to make a $250 mistake. The difference in power cost is negligible. ($45 per year vs $135 per year)

Here is a picture of some Moringa Oleifera that is also growing in my garden



I'm kind of excited to be able to grow all my other plants year round as well with indoor set-up. Moringa for instance is a tropical plant and would freeze here if left out for the winter. If I start some seeds now indoors, by next spring, they will be huge and probably grow to twenty feet, creating a giant wall of green in just a couple of months.

yeah. wondering about keeping them outdoors. My harlequin plants are about a foot tall and already have little buds on them. I'm wondering if I could get some seeds out of them letting them do their thing outside. The hash bomb seeds are sprouting so slow.

If it was me I would go with the hps. Light on because like you said it is tested and true I know all about the troubles of living on a fixed income since I am as well and I always go with the cheapest most reliable methods

I would recommend bringing the seedlings inside. Keeping them outside is basically a waste since the yield from them will be minimal if there is even a yield at all. Depends on the climate of where your at and they first frost dates as to whether or not they would finish on time. Hope this helps

Yeah, we got another couple of months before frost. Not really worried about getting a lot of bud. Bud is pretty cheap nowadays around here. I would like to get my breeding program going. I'm definitely leaving the power plant outside, and am still considering what to do with the hash plant. Got some time to think about it.

As far as LED's go, check out slinger's 300W purple cadillac/grand AK grow journal

With LED's, I can grow three times as much...that pretty much settles it. heh.

Oh, hey, how do you change your avatar?

nevermind. figured it out. Thanks for the help

a picture of one of the harlequins

Harlequin outside has gone into bloom. Not surprising except that they're such small plants (around 1' tall).

Ok, so final count of sprouts. From 10 Hash bomb seeds, 4 are alive and growing. Two of them barely split off the hard shell and then didn't grow at all. 4 didn't even split. Checked the pH of the water and it's 7.5. Wondering if that had any effect. Hopefully at least one male and one female for breeding. Hoping to be able to grow this strain on a regular basis.

From 3 Power plant seeds, all three sprouted and burst into growth. Very cool, except that I'm not interested in growing sativa. It will be good practice though and I can experiment on them. muah ha ha haaaa.

Ok, so had the plants outside and wanted to bring them inside. Built an LED fixture using .5W 5-chip elements from china. Uses 36 watts total.\



Installed, it puts down about 200 fcd. Not bad. Not particularly useful for much more then sprouting seeds and rooting cuttings, but still a successful experiment. The problem with these is light density. While they are the most efficient way to generate light and deliver it to a plant, it is just impossible to get enough elements onto a board with enough density to produce the 1500 or so fcd that are necessary to get really good growth.

Ran the panel all day long and the elements were barely warm without any heat sink. Switching power supply (12V 3A) was a little warm. Will probably use this panel in the kitchen or something instead of for growing.

Repotted Powerplant and two of the 4 hashplant seedlings. You can see the red fines there. Makes a strange clicking sound as the water trickles down through the medium. Two of the hashplant seedlings fell over when I watered them, so will wait a couple of days before transplanting. All are under artificial light indoors now.

These seedlings were started in Scott's potting soil and are very light colored. Am hoping that they will darken up a little with the addition of fresh compost from the garden. The two seeds that weren't transplanted were started in pure compost and have a nice dark color, but have been growing fairly slowly.

I know it doesn't have a lot to do with growing MMJ, but here is a pic of some Moringa Oleifera being pollinated by a bee.

I was so happy to see the little pollinator at work. Ran inside to get camera. I didn't even expect to get flowers, let alone bees! Stoked.

Did you go with LEDs in the end?

Here is my current setup:



3 powerplant seedlings, 4 hashbomb seedlings and some cuttings from a moringa plant.

Will be adding some CFL spots soon. Only getting around 200 footcandles right now. The lights are on all the time right now.



switching to 18/6 soon. Just using plain water right now, will be adding some compost tea every third day.

LED's are just too expensive for me right now. That light panel cost around $50, and although it's super efficient, I would need to double the density of elements on the panel to make a useful light, so it works out to $100 per square foot of grow space for LED's, and $5.50 per square foot of grow space for CFL's. The CFL's last for roughly 400 growing days, the LED's last for closer to 8000 growing days.



So the CFL's last for about 8 grow cycles, the LED's last for 160 growing cycles and save a little money on energy (around $2.00 per year over CFL). Over the entire life of an LED setup (which I will build eventually), CFL's would cost approximately the same, and are not really very good for the environment. I grow things other then ganja, so that is a purchase that makes sense for me. My main problem with a larger setup is that the switching power supplies for larger wattages are super expensive. I'll probably just use a computer power supply, which isn't the most efficient power supply available, but it's $20 instead of $300 (yowzer).

I know nobody asked, but my backpain has been getting way better since I've been eating Moringa Oleifera on a regular basis. I am using all these ninja marijuana growing techniques (cloning, indoor growing etc.) to grow Moringa. It's fricking awesome.



Here is one that has red stems. Heh. Am doing some breeding as well. Learning so much on this website and from ebooks about growing mary jane. awesome. thanks guys. totally awesome.