Smokefrogg's Lil Apartment Grow - 250 hps

later on hermies! - may 3 2010

a friend and patient said he would like the hermed plants, so i set them all up in a different area under a weak light for the day. at the end of the day he decided it would be best to not pursue hermaphrodited plants, here is a pic before they got killed


it wasn't a total loss, i chopped a ton of leaves off of all 4 of these plants; i have since enjoyed them on salad, spaghetti with romona cheese and some basil, as well as in a tea with a dash of honey and a spot of milk. here is a picture of the bag of leaf, as well as a mason jar with some dried shake from the last harvest

bouncing back, stretching the thai out and a blue dream clone - may 5 2010

we have a change in direction on this grow, fortunately for me the thai has not had a major flowering mode growth spurt yet! so i have a little bit of time still to train her out a bit since there is so much more room now! i started yesterday, and have been able to make pretty good progress so far, i'll post a lot of different angles once it is really stretched out and flowering but for now here you can see the main stem very bent and pulled down, we're going to pull her down and kind of spiral to the right then out from there, trying to get it pretty level with a few of the nodes directly below. nodes below that are mostly being stretched around one way or another to get more light that would otherwise be covered partially by canopy, hopefully we can increase yield a bit. last thing i'm thinking, is that it may be wise to get a planter that is much wider, taking up 1/2 of the grow space just for her


here you can see 2 thai clones in the front, a white rhino from bag seed (please don't hermie!), mystery seed behind that, and the very back right plant, the tallest, is a blue dream (dj short's blueberry x haze) cut from lapcg, it is an oaksterdam nurseries cut, the top is about 1/2 inch away from the led panel, i'll start training her down for lst once she shows signs of being comfortable in her new home

wow i'm very overdue to update this on riu, here we go!

baby cabinet update, 3 26watt cfl 1 cheapo ebay led panel, it's workin' out! - may 9 2010

cabinet is 14" x 14" x 14", just for sprouts and vegging and clones, 2 26watt 2700k cfl bulbs, 1 26watt 6500k cfl bulb, 1 14watt cheapo led from ebay, a small desk fan outside of the cabinet blowing air lightly in

things seem to be working out, i'll post 2 closeups of plants that have lived their entire life in this mini grow cabinet; the first plant is from a random bag of herb and is 25 days old, no idea what kind at all, this is for fun, the next is from a bag of white rhino and is 32 days old (it did almost die when it was smaller from lack of water as i was away for a couple days, this is the only one that made when that happened, it's small but i'm fortunate it's doing great now, lol watch it turn hermie on me in the end hahaha), i grew another from that same white rhino bag out and it was a big 'ol hermaphrodited mess so who knows what will go on there


following are 2 shots of the whole cabinet, the tallest is a blue
dream clone obtained from los angeles patients and caregivers group in
west hollywood, the blue dream is an oaksterdam nurseries cut, the 2
squashed looking ones are clones from the thai in my bigger flowering
cabinet, thai was grown from seeds obtained from attitude seeds which are from the world of seeds seedbank, i'm not sure what the heck he did when my friend took the
cuttings and made clones, but they look trained super low, it sucks that
they are so low! i have had to cut a few of the lower branches as they
slowly died from hitting the dirt far too much, i have toothpicks up on
one kind of holding the lowest branches out of the way and up from the
dirt, i hope they pull through either way, there is new growth on them
so i think that they will be just fine in the end, i want one to be a
mother for thai clones!



ghetto automatic watering - may 15 2010

i've setup a basic automatic watering system, so hopefully i can leave for a few days and not have to worry about plants drying out like what happened a month ago. here's the breakdown on how i set it up

supplies:
1 electrical timer that can turn on/off to the minute, hour or 1/2 hour won't be enough ($15 @ osh)
1 small aquarium airpump, i'm using one suitable for 10 gallons or less ($12 @ fish store)
1/4" drip line ($4 / 50' @ osh)
1/4" drip line t connectors, cross connectors, extenders, this is up to you
1 gallon + jug full of you favorite water, leave an inch or so at the top of just air

the idea is this:
1 tube running to your plants is jammed into the water jug plastic so as to be airtight, this tube's opening needs to be touching the bottom of the jug at the maximum water depth.

1 tube running into the top of the jug where there is an inch or so of airspace, this will lead to your aquarium water pump. even though this is super safe, i still would recommend raising the airpump higher than the water jug.

when the airpump is turned on by the timer, air is pumped into the water jug, this creates pressure which slooowly forces the water out of the other hose which drips into your plants!

this will take some playing with to dial in, mine isn't dialed all the way in yet, but so far it seems like i only need my pump on for 2 minutes every day, that actually might be more than enough.

i am not using any emitters on the drip lines, just drip hose ends directly over the dirt where the plant stalk is going in, i figure there is less chance of something clogging up the line this way

here it is:



there is a timer next to the power strip on the right turning the airpump on each day at 8am and off at 8:02am, the airpump is on top of the white box in the bottom of the picture, line going out to top of arrowhead jug pushes air into the jug, a line going out from the left side of the arrowhead jug is going to a splitter, one end of the splitter leads into the flowering cabinet on the upper left of the picture, the other end is going into the white baby veg box that the airpump is sitting on top of, this splits off to the 5 small plants inside

thai and babies update - may 15 2010

auto watering worked, babies blowin' up - may 18 2010

we were gone for a few days so we got to do a real test of the auto watering system

we came home, zero flooding, plants were not dry, everything seems just fine! the only changes are, a lot less water in the reservoir, plants in the small baby box got bigger




thai 32 days flowering, 3 beer cup bagseed and blue dream 6 days, veg cab update and clones - may 26 2010

first up is the thai plant which is at 32 days into flowering with about 52~59 days remaining; following are 2 bagseed plants (1 from a bag of white rhino, the other from the mystery bag of mystery bag seeds) and 1 blue dream clone from a dispensary, all of them are at 6 days flowering and the plants from seed are beginning to show sex, mystery plant is showing mostly female parts and the white rhino is still too early to tell (please no herms!)

4th pic down is the veg cabinet, the 2 thai clones get it all to themselves for now, i can see some brownish spotting which i think is from over watering (oops!), in a couple weeks we will take clones from these clones and then move these 2 into the flowering cabinet so maybe i can get a perpetual thai harvest happening

lastly you can see an experiment in making clones, hope this works out! it's a super simple and space saving way of going about the process, cuttings were taken 6 days ago, i'm going to give them 4 more days before i check for roots






white rhino grew balls and got chopped as did it's clone, the clone had roots though so the other clones must be doing well
1 quick update! - may 27 2010

this morning i checked the small beercup plants that were from seed for balls, i do this twice a day, lo and behold we saw balls! the balls were on the white rhino from bagseed, went ahead and culled that biatch

i had 1 cutting of the white rhino, obviously it'd be lame to keep her/him/it around too, but this gave me an opportunity to open the beercup cloning biosphere and rip open the rockwool, we did indeed see roots! so the good news is that my cloning worked, i have failed twice with taking clones, with some hands on training from a friend and a few slight changes to his method i have finally produced clones! hooray!

i will leave the remaining clones in their biobeercup for a few more days and then transplant to soil. by then it should be time for me to take at least 1 more cutting, this time from one of the small thai plants in the veg cab, i really really want to keep the thai going perpetually so i can get a lot of experience with it, it's something i really enjoy and feel that there should be more of it in and around our southern california medical marijuana scene, in essence, i feel the thai is special, is this world of seeds ko'chang wild thai super special? i hope so, i'll know for sure when the big girl has flowered fully and is harvested, until then we'll do our best to keep at least 1 cutting going in veg state at all times

if it turns out that the thai is just okay, and nothing special (highly doubt that), then i'm debating trying another kind named full moon thai, i believe sensi seeds carries it

man i wish the chocolate thai i bought over a month ago had some seeds in it, i'm down to .1g left of it, perfect daytime herb, 1 toke of that chocolate thai is good for me from morning till lunch time, i'll stop rambling now and sign off

pollinating thai with lowryder #2 - may 28 2010

pollen from a lowryder #2 male plant has been applied to one of the lower buds of this world of seeds wild thai girl, will we have some thai ryder in the near future? this makes me think of a dog breeder crossing a small terrier with a great dane, quite curious, i do not claim to be a breeder of any real magnitude, this is in fact my first time pollinating anything, this is a test, this is only a test. i turned the fan off in the cabinet, i put my finger into the container that containing the pollen, i then put my finger all over the lower bud being sure to get all up in the hairs, i did this a few times, then i grabbed one of the pollen sacks and held it over the bud lightly shaking for a bit. after all of this i carefully placed a plastic grocery bag over the bud and it's length of stem, i taped it around the stem not too tight and not too loose, i will leave the bag on for a few days, i am hoping this will keep the pollen only on the bud which i applied it to, we shall see!

id love to check that bud out in a few days to see the results. even better would be the thai ryder seeds. come up with some cool name for that one lol.

clones moved to dirt, pollen bag taken off the thai - may 30 2010

i moved the clones into dirt today, they were happy in their sealed little cups, when i took them out the quickly began drooping, there are roots growing, but the clones just don't look good, i hope they work out!


here is the thai bud that was pollinated, i took the bag off of it, hoping to get a seed or 2


here is the thai, in this shot it's easy to see the bend from training the main stalk


here's another angle


group shot


blue dream


mystery bag seed plant, we're trying some fan leaf pruning to see how it works out

clones kicking ass! - may 31 2010

the clones looked really bad yesterday, after a couple hours of being out the 2 blue dream clones started perking up, when i peaked in this morning all 4 clones were looking much more vibrant and alive!

some fan leaf and tiny popcorn junk trimming - june 1 2010

i did quite a bit of pruning, getting rid of little popcorn tiny flower pieces that are too low to ever get a real chance to grow.

i also thinned out quite a bit of fan leafery in order to allow more light to pass down and through the plant, i had done some reading and discovered several folks that were chopping most fan leaves off once the bud sites began to show their own leaf growth, the book i've been reading advises against this, i went ahead and gave it a try on one of the thai branches a few days back, today i noticed that the trimmed branche's bud sites were growing noticeably quicker than the other non trimmed branches, so i went ahead and applied the technique all over the thai, a little bit on the blue dream, and you can definitely see that i did this a few days back on the mystery plant too. in addition i am training the main cola of the thai again, it seems only 1 side of it gets a fair amount of light no matter how i rotate the thai plant, so we're training it down a bit to hopefully correct this issue.



in the bottom left you can see 4 small pots of soil, they each have 1 bean in them, a fellow patient gave me seeds that he claims are feminized and either bubba or og, either one i'd be more than happy to create a little bit more room for



this was taken with flash turned on


to the right you can see one of the clones i took, it is a clone of the oaksterdam blue dream which is in the flower cabinet, she's reaching for the light and happy to be alive, so glad my cloning process worked out, i feel very confident in cloning now and will take my own thai clones in a couple days

3rd gen thai clones, og or bubba popping, defoliated thai @ 6 weeks - june 5 2010

there are 2 clones of the thai sitting in my vegetating box, one of them had enough growth for me to take some clones, hooray! these clones are the 3rd generation, their mom being a clone, and that mom coming from seed, spread the thai goodness!



here is the mother, one clone came from topping her, another came from the stub remaining on the lower left


here are the clones in their new home for the next 5-7 days


a patient had given me about 16 seeds the other day, he said, "these are feminized, they are from a medical grower, they are some og seeds, as well as some bubba", wow guy, thanks! 3 have popped so far, if i get 1 og and 1 bubba out of it i sure would be happy, although having either one of those strains i'd be happy about too, can't wait to see how these develop


here's the whole cabinet



lastly lets take a look at the main thai plant, defoliated quite a bit, she is bare but i swear those bud sites are bulking up, it is a slow process but it seems like defoliation really is helping, she has been flowering for 42 days, exactly 6 weeks so far, i am at the half way point in the flowering process for her, this strain of thai is supposed to be a 12 weeks strain

smokefrogg's economical and small cloning solution
my cloning technique is really simple, here is a list of ingredients needed:
1 lime
ro water
16oz. plastic party/beer cups
plastic wrap if the cuttings are short, a clear plastic sandwich bag if the cuttings are taller
rubber band large enough to go around the top of the 16oz. cup
container large enough to put rockwool cubes in and have them completely covered with water
rockwool cubes
rooting hormone
steril razor blade

the procedure:
1) fill a container with ro water, add enough water so that rockwool cubes will be completely covered
2) slice the lime and squeeze half of it into the container with the water, i eyeball this and don't really have any true measurement, i am using small key limes, and only used half, although i am only taking 2 cuttings, the point of this is just to raise the acidity level, make sure to stir up the solution well
3) place rockwool cubes into the lime/water solution, let them sit there for a few minutes
4) get your rooting hormone out and sprinkle some out into the lid
5) now it's time to take cuttings, get the razor blade out and slice off the pieces you want to become clones, you may want to slice off some of the lower leaves on this cutting so the stem portion is a bit long
6) i like to slice diagonally on the bottom of the cutting, so the cutting's stem goes into a V shape, this exposes more of the inner portion of the stem allowing for greater surface area to root
7) roll the bottom of the cutting into the rooting hormone, get it all over the bottom and the sliced V shape part
take the rockwool cube out of the water and stab the cutting into it, get it a good 1/2" - 1" or more deep into the rockwool (i don't like using the premade hole in the rockwool, i feel the cutting is too loose in the hole, stabbing it in makes certain that rockwool is directly touching the cutting stem)
9) place the rockwool cube with the cutting into the 16oz. cup, i like to fit 2 side by side per cup as it keeps them elevated from the bottom about 1", with just 1 the rockwool sits on the bottom and can become far too damp
10) add a little bit of water into the cup, make sure that the water is not high enough to be touching the bottom of the rockwool, leave about 1/4" - 1/2" of air space between the bottom of the rockwool and the water
11) place the bag or saran wrap over the cup, use the rubber band to keep the bag on tightly
12) place this now self contained clone bio cup into your grow area, i like to keep direct light off of the clones, i have been placing mine in a flowering cabinet with a 12/12 light cycle and they have been doing great!
13) after about 5-7 days your clones should be good to go! they may look a bit wilted after a couple hours of leaving their high humidity bio cup, they will perk back up again after a day or 2. it is good to put them under a somewhat low intensity light during this time, i take mine out of the room with the hps, they sit under a small led panel and a couple of cfl bulbs instead

happy cloning!

why beercups? why such a small number of clones? here's some background:
i started using the plastic cup method after visiting several garden and hydro stores. all of the cloning stations that i saw were large, i just don't have much room to work with, and am only doing a small number of clones when i need them, so none of the existing commercial solutions really fit my particular needs. with 2 clones per cup, and each cup being it's own separate portable environment, it has worked out very well for the small level of growing that i am doing.

thai and blue dream clones, thai flowering @ 7 weeks - june 12 2010

i took 2 sets of 2 clones today, blue dream, world of seeds wild thai, here they are in their new home for the next 5~7 days


they will stay in the main cabinet, with their grandmother the large flowering thai, i have brought in 2 plants from the vegetative cabinet into the flower cab as well, the blue dream and thai mothers of the newly cut clones


here are some closeup shots of the thai buds, we are at 7 weeks, 49 days, as of today

and here is our blue dream from oaksterdam nurseries, we are at 23 days into flowering for her


next up is the vegetating cabinet, the plant in the front is a cut from the mystery plant in flower, you can see sprouts to the right, they are either og or bubba, to the right of that are newly planted thai clones, their mother is to the far far right on and not really visible in this shot

thai @ 8 weeks, flower chamber getting crowded, more thai and blue dream clones - june 19 2010

thai is at 8 weeks flowering today, only 3~4 more to go! the 3rd generation thai clones were ready to be put into soil, so i had to make room in the veg chamber, 2 of the plants pulled from veg and put into the flowering chamber have only vegetated for 6 days! so i will have a mini thai and a mini blue dream coming my way in a couple/few months

i defoliated the thai a bit today, pulled off a few handfuls of crystally sticky leafage! here's the before picture


and here is the after shot


some bud shots of the thai

oaksterdam nurseries blue dream (17 days veg, 30 days into flowering)

a bud shot of the myster-e bag seed plant's top cola (30 days flowering)


here we have a thai in the front (clone, 6 days veg, 1 day in flowering), a myster-e plant clone (19 days in veg, 1 day in flowering), and in the back is blue dream (13 days veg, 7 days flowering), poking it's head in on the right you can see a lower bud from the big thai plant


this thai clone just got a haircut to allow light through, defoliation really works, keep trimming! she was vegged for 38 days in the tiny veg box i put together, comparing this to how big the first thai got under 250watt hps in just 31 days

wow what a difference the hid makes compared to the veg boxes crappy $34 cheapy ebay led panel, i need to put the cash down for something at least halfway decent like a sunshine systems glowpanel 45 or maybe a bloomboss 45, i don't like the ufo style ones, a square makes more sense as far as space planning, plus you can hang them vertically it seems! the ufo wouldn't be easy vertically, maybe there is a way to set it up that way in a stable manner but i don't know of one; my idea is to have a panel or 2 in the flower cabinet too! have them actually hanging off of the hid hood at a slight angle angling down (so light doesn't accidentally hit the underside of leaves), it would provide side lighting to supplement the 250watt hps but add minimal heat (if any)


i am keeping 1 thai in the veg chamber as a mother, she's going to be
ready for pulling 6 or so clones off of in about a week i think, i keep
her in the far corner furthest away from the cfl bulbs and mostly under
the low powered led as it stays nice and cool, for keeping a mother thai
plant it seems to do well as long as i keep training her low

the new clone all the way in the back is having a hard time, the 3 other clones i popped in yesterday seem to be doing well in their new home

thai @ 63 days, blue dream @ 37 days, and more update - june 27, 2010

the big thai plant is @ 9 weeks flowering, 63 days! i checked trichomes today and it's about 1/2 clear 1/2 cloudy, we're beginning the flush tomorrow, harvest in 3 weeks most likely




the most mature blue dream is @ only 37 days flowering, it's trichomes are getting amber already though! 1/4 amber, 1/4 clear, 1/2 cloudy, so i am going to begin flushing for 2 weeks tomorrow, no more nutrients in the water, probably harvest in 2 weeks at this rate

the myster-e plant is also @ 37 days flowering, it is 3/4 cloudy and 1/4 clear


here's the veg cabinet, everything in here that is large enough was defoliated 2 days ago


this is my thai mother, she's 59 days old, going to take 6 or so cuts off of her tomorrow

this is from seed a friend gave me, the best looking one out of the bunch, it is either og or bubba


i cut 2 real low buds as samples, these were not going to get much light and get big no matter how i trained it or what leaves i prune, a thai and a blue dream, using a magnifying glass balanced just right these should be dry in about 2 hours so i can have a sample


here is my friend, hashyfrogg

thai @ 69 days flowering
blue dream @ 43 days flowering
myster-e? plant @ 43 days flowering

12/12 light schedule, on @ 8am, off @ 8pm

today my timer malfunctioned.

lights did not turn on until i got home at 4pm, and manually turned them on

i thought the plug was messed up, i set it to another plug on the strip and the light came on as it should've at that time of day

i leave and eat, come back at midnight and the light is still on!

do you think this will stress my plants out? if i get the light cycle back on track starting tomorrow morning do you think this 1 day of messed up light cycle will still mess them up?

i guess my point is, crap, should i just pull an early harvest with these? i'm doing a lot of reading and researching right now, trying to find out what has happened to others in this case

any input is appreciated, thank you!