Late July '11, buds looking big already? wth...

Okay kids, it's late July and like I had posted in the previous months blog, like it says in the High Times calendar, if you flower your plants in late spring (quite on accident while trying to det. sex outside for a coupla weeks, hey you stick em out there for ONE WEEK and they'll start to get horny!)...they will continue to flower through the summer and not stop until now, or it's lookin like mid august at the latest.  The Sativas, unfortunately, are looking real yellow (I don't know if it was crap soil, crap nutes, or what, but I definitely stayed on top of watering and didn't OVERNUTE em... maybe a little less nutes than recommended, but I don't think soooo.... so what could be the cause of all of these yellow leaves?  I know this much, I stuck a couple of plants in trash cans, drilled out the bottom, put bags of Home depot "Organic Choice" (brown bag), and they are as green as a dead president.  I was sort of expecting bigger veg and hence a bigger harvest, but as I am growing outdoors which is technically illegal here in Cali (San Diego is a fascist medi pot County in general, worse than LA even)...but if you flower plants out in april and they have any indica in em at all, THEY WILL KEEP FLOWERING ALL THROUGH THE SUMMER!!!

 I would  recommend that if you are able to sex plants in veg, (I think very few people are, even with the biggest veggies) you do so.  Otherwise, stick em out in April, but WATCH THEM EVERY DAY!!! if they show any Bud activity AT ALL, it may be too late.  I PUT  the plants under the halide light for two straight weeks at 24/7 but I'm just glad I ordered more seeds this season because the clones I took from the plants that just started to flower (!!!) are all still clone sized, and, of course, have tiny little buds and resin glands on em.  Thin is not HT  cover shot material folks.  This is a big time  fuckup.  So I ordered a few more seeds so I could get some genetics for next year, right? Well, I don't know wtf autoflowering seeds are supposed to do but they are advertised as growing large and with decent buds (at least, OMG, this was Barney's Farm Pineapple Express).... And I germinated em right and stuck em out in the middle of summer.  Most of them lived. But they turned into 6" tall palm trees with tiny buds at the top. What gives?  I'm going to have to look this shit up cause I thought an autoflower was a good way to go if you want to go outddors all year. Most of these "Plants" are gone. Hey would you want the cops busting you for going over your plant count with bs plants like these? NO! So i ordered some more seeds.  These were the real  deal Pineapple Express which is only available from G-13 labs, which, incedentally has nothing whatsoever to do with that farm full of shitty wild growing mexican brick herb down in Mississippi.  And I got a good free white widow seed from Dinafem (again, please do yourself a favor and get your seeds from Attitude s.b....   Dr. Greenthumb is the only other  co. out there that's even close and they are a boutique outfit from CA; they have strains that no one else does,  but they cost about $15-20 apiece!  Not fem either!  So here is the pic of these in early veg, they are in my kitchen plant window, you know, the kind that juts out from the side of yo hizzy BABY, BAAABY!  okay that was a little too much drama for a picture window.  The pics look like this:

This is the whole deal, about 10 small plants including the clones I saved from May when I took em.  They will likely take a month or two to revert to veg and then we'll see.  Right now they still look like dwarf plants.  And this one:

These are (admittedly a not very good view of em, but they all look about the same at this point, some bigger than others, but three real healthy looking ones, a pineapple express, another pineapple (or purple haze, I may have mislabled (lol), and a real good looking pineapple express. Don't worry, these are all  fem so if I gotta take clones in a month, it'll all be good in tha hood! 

C ya next month.

Oh, and btw, the blueberry and purple Kush plants came in from last month.  they are dried but not cured yet so we'll see if they go into the hash 0 lator.  Later!

June

the grow is going about as well as can be expectied.  I got a couple of early bloomers that got confused in first week of may and just kept goin' ones a purple kush and the others a blueberry I think. I thought it was a PK too but it's not purple at all.  The other Blueberry i've got is like this too and I read that indicas tend to do this.  So i think the third plant is a BB.  The plant looks like this

As you can see it's still got a ways to go, mostly white pistls still and not too many red hairs on it.  Only the leaves are purp cause it's real hot outside where I live.  It says on the High times calendar that I got that plants like this will hang on unitl into august then finsih up. I sure hope so.

I still have about 20 or so real nice big plants in home depot buckets but the clones aren't doing too well.  I chalk this up to cloning them when the plants started to go into flower in late april.  all of the big plants are doing real well and this looks like it's gonna be my best grow ever! in fact i went outside yesterday and dumped some of the bigger ones into huge 20 gallon trash cans so they'll just get extra big.  who knows the whole grow might end up in trash cans? 

meanwhile i still have about 15 seeds out there they arent going.  could be cause of the heat but it's not all that hot maybe 80 max and i give em plenty of water cause theyre young and i don't want em to burn.

well c you next month!

Fuckups so far...

I would not be writing this to glorify myself and to not admit mistakes.  So I will make a short list of my fuckups this year:

1)  The spring plants I had out had weak, loose, buds.  They were okay, if you are not a medical marijuana shop that only sells the best weed.  They would've kept me high all summer.  But i'm not in this to get high. II attribute this to the fact that there was a big old Metal halide lamp shining out the back of my house.  it fucked up the light cycle.  So all the plants outside went into the hash-o-lator.  Which didn't produce very much hash. 

2) My poor hash I chalk down to two things:

a) the bud was wet. I looked it up and they said you can use wet dope (just harvested) or dry (hung up in a cool dark place for a week or so). I used the just harvested dope and I got crap hash.

b) I didn't agitate the bud/ water mixutre enough.  It turns out that just pressing the buttton on one of these things and standing back won't work.  You have to get in there yourself with a wooden spoon and stir things up for a good 15 minutes. this got the best hash, but not much of it.

3)  I don't have enough clones yet and it's almost June!

This is a major fuck up.  I'm trying to play catch up with the clone situation but we'll see.  it had a lot to do with what I did late last month in order to determine the sex of my plants.  I SHOULD HAVE CLONED THE FEMININE ONES RIGHT AWAY, AS SOON AS I KNEW. BUT WE'RE TALKING A MATTER OF DAYS HERE, SO i GOT LAZY. k?

4)  i did F.i. m. on all my plants befrore I knew sex. THIS WAS STUPID.  you can do fim anytime.  but I don't think it hurt the plants.  it might have caused a couple to go hermie, though but I doubt it.  I got the usual amount of good mothers from the average seed pack.  I was just being too optomistic, too early.

FAST FORWARD TO LATE APRIL!!!

So it's May now.  I put my veg plants outside in LATE APRIL so I could tell if they were Male or Female, so I could tell which ones to clone.  I waited a little to long which is okay because a plant that is a couple of weeks into flowering won't get "stuck'", that is, if you start to bring it back in after the Fem flowers start to turn white a little you can re-veg them. 

The only thing you want to worry about at this point is Male plants.  Male plants tend to (but not always) grow straight up and down, with no bushiness.  at or near the top after a week or two you'll see what look like little palm trees with tiny little bannanas hanging of of them.  YOU DO NOT WANT THESE IN YOUR GARDEN!!!

So if you see anything that looks like this at the top of a plant (hernies I won't even go into, so good luck), Carry the plant around to the side of your house where you keep your trash, get a bag, cut the plant off at the stem, pour WD-40 or charcoal lightet all over it, and dump it!

Starting this month, (May) I noticed that the plants had started flowering.  I didn't want them to get stuck, so I went back to the old lighting pgm for a couple of weeks.  Again, I live in San Diego, so your milieage may vary.  As soon as I knew for sure that the big purple Kush plant was Female, I started cloning that shit like a motherfucker.  I'm afraid, however, that the fact that it was female probably hindered the clones. 

I made about 20 clones but only got 3 so far, it's been like 2 weeks since I  started, so I'm gonna keep checking the bottom of those cubes!  It looks like I might get about 5 more.  But I started to put a new clone in there every day to replace the ones that just died, so we'll see.

Right now, all my plants are Feminine, or they got pollinated (doubtful, but possible) and they'll have seeds in 'em.  I'll have to keep an eye on these because:

I did the F.I.M. (fuck i missed) technique on a bunch of plants all in one day.

What this involves is sqeezing the top of your plants when they are 1-2' tall so they will grow out sideways and become bushier, hence a biggger plant with more bud sites and more places to take clones.

What I did not realize was that some of the plants were Male,  so I may have unwittingly pollinated some of my Females. But I don't think so.  Remember how I said I had about 20 seedlings? Well they produced about 12 good female plants.  Which is the best you can hope for.  I ordered more seeds, Feminized this time. Most of them are "Pineapple Express", some autoflowering from Barney's farm.  for an explanation of what an autoflower is, look it up.  Some are regular Feminized from G-13, which isn't the most reliable seed co. in the world but they are the only ones with the real Pineapple Express. 

Maybe the Autoflowering ones (from Barney's farm, btw) will turn out better thatn the G-13 ones..  I doubt it but you never know.

anyway here is a picture of all of my adult plants. I have about 20 right now and they will only get bigger and bigger as the summer goes on.  I hope some of em get so big i gotta stick em in trash cans...

   I know it doesn't look like 20 plants but it's only May, gimme a break.  Plus I got the seedlings, but you already know what those look like.  The count looks like this:

2 Purple Kush

2 Blueberry

2 Cherry OG

1 Chem Dawg

1 Grapefruit

1 Bubblegum

1 Purple Morrocan

8 OGx Skunk (I don't know if these are really og, but there were like 5 differrent skunk crosses in the shipment and I got confused.  All of the strains were OG based, anyway (L.A. confidential, etc.).

6-7 "Pineapple Express" autoflower fem.  I really hope I get at least one good plant out of these, because then I can clone and grow year round.  Autoflower basically means a smaller plant that will grow and bud and be ready for harvest within 90 days, regardless of the light cycle, as long as you live south of Alaska.

1 Barney's Farm Tangerine Dream

1 Purple Haze.

So right now the name of the game is clone, clone clone.  Because I do not want to have just 18 plants come August. something more like twice that would be cool.

when to stick your plants out in SPRING AND SUMMER!

so mojo, what gives, you already said you got some big plants outside?

That's cause they took me about 3-4 months to grow inside AND OUTSIDE and then I put them out when the month was right:

1) If you're plants are big enough, and are long flowering Sativas, I would recommend putting them out at the end of January, latest first week of February, for a spring harvest.   This is because the days will be getting longer, from 11-13-14 hours by the time June rolls around.  What you want is 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness, so if your neighbor likes to have raves or shines a big old 1000w mh light out his window like I do, get your plants outta the way of all that ngihtitime light. 

2) If youre plants are strong like mine you will get a harvest in mid-April at the latest.  i will show you when my plants are done what to look for.  If they are Indica dominant, then

3) put them out mid februaary if they are a foot tall.  if they aren't that big yet, the latest you have to get them big is March. If they aren't a foot tall by March (and you will probably thank yourself for this later), keep them under the 18 hour schedule until they are like 3' tall.  then turn off the HID light inside (when ever you have about 50 tall plants, which by this time you will be hopping up and down for joy about)... And just put the plants outside during the day, take them in at night. and put them in a brightly lit room.  This will keep them from going into flowering during late spring, which is NOT what you want to happen. 

4) Remember these simple rules and you will be okay.

Sativas: big and outside by late January.

Indicas: big and outside by mid February.

OTHERWISE:

keep all plants under an 18 hour a day schedule until they get big.  Then keep them under at least 18 hours/ day of light (IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW BIG THE LIGHT IS, REMEMBER YOUR PLANTS ARE ALREADY GROWN, RIGHT? until June 1st, then it's on like a time bomb. 

If you don't want to haul 40 or 50 plants inside at night, consider making a hoop greenhouse and adjusting the photoperiod that way using visqueen, a black plastic.  this is also time consuming and you have to be out there at the same time every day in the morning to lift the top off.

or just bring the plants next to a window where they'll get some light at night. (I hope you kind of have a big house)

Remember, I started my clones back in January and theyre barely rooted.  So if you want big plants, either take your clones early , take them from good plants, or all three. you can take a clone in April and put it out in June, (no shit, what do you think I bought the seeds for?), but make sure it is getting at least 15 hrs day of daylight or it will start to flower, resulting in a stuck plant come summertime.

2/20/11 cLONES, SEEDLINGS, AND ARTIFICIAL LIGHT

Okay, as I said before this is my light set up, 1000w mn. I have an Hps light too but i stopped fucking around with flowering indoors when I realized the lights were costing me enough to run without having to settle for small plants in a hot, unvenitlated bedroom (you have to drill a 10" hole in the side of your house to bring in fresh air, and an air conditioner if you want it under 87 degrees or so in the summer, and the whole thing represents an awful big investment if you don't know what youre doing.  so make your bones outdoors first, and then try indoors.  I KNOW IT LOOKS TEMPTING WITH ALL THOSE PICS IN HT WITH THE HUGE GROWROOMS FULL OF WALL-TO WALL BUDS.  But until you can get those kind of plants outdoors, you will never get them indoors. trust me.

Okay, now weve got some seedlings and some clones.  what are we gonna do?  give em light, and lots of it!  I think my 1000 watter is running a bit low because the bulb is old so I just put all the seedlings under there and they made it through the night without burning up so I guess they'll be okay.

Anyway, with seedlings as i said before, until they turn into real plants you want to be careful with them.  too long out on a hot spring day will burn em up and youll be out youre daddys 130 (Lol) and do you really think he wont notice a second time if the same kind of order appears on his statement?  Plus all that nail biting wondering if your seeds are coming (they are)...

So you want to give your seedlings clones about 18 hrs a day of light.  if they are clones, stick them all under the mh light as close to the light as they will fit, giving the tops of your plants at least 3-4' of clearance from the bulb, and you will want a pretty big fan to blow through the plants to keep things cool.  a 1000w light should be able to cover a circle about 5' in radius.  so mark a spot directly below your light.   Make an imaginary 5' circle around your floor.  Anything within that ciircle is good.  You can pull some of the plants out from the middle and rotate them to the outside and vice versa.

So what I do is I set the timer to go on at 7pm, and off at 7 am.  around this area of the country that gives the plants about 15 hrs or so of light, if you happen to be fortuneate enough to be facing a big window that is on the South side of your house.  Otherwise, wake up early (or don't) take the plants outside.  leave them out all day, or at least unitl 3:30.  do the math

12 at night
+ 6 daylight hours=

18 hours of light.. 

the afternoon sun after 3:30 or so really weakens so if youre planning on going out or hitting it for the day, just take your plants in at 3:30 and leave them until the timer comes on again. 

Once again you'll want to watch the seedlings closely for any kind of heat reaction or burn.  If they get too hot, they will fry.  take them to a cfl (flourescent lamp) and leave them under there for a while until they look okay agian.  then do the three hour at a time thing. only stick the seedlings under the HID lamp or the outside sun for three hours at a time, watering with the spray bottle before and after.

As far as the clones go, at this point they cannot get too much light.  You can test em the first day by setting them outside for 3 hours and then just go hell bent for leather.  there's more where those came from anyway.

where I'm sitting FEb 20th

anway this is the way it's stacking up:
in flower 3-4 WEEKS
2 unidentified sativas
1 skunk x kushberry
1 chem dog.
1 SSH
IN VEG
7 skunk x kushberry clones
2 chem dog clones
2 cherry og clones

EARLY VEG::
11 Blueberry seedlings (M/f)
5   Purple Kush seedlings (M/f)
3   Seedlings, (grapefruit, bubblegum, purple morrocan), from the "feminized" seed company or tab from attitude seeds (don't ask me, they were free)!

HOW TO DO SEEDS RIGHT!!! SEEDS TO THE RESCUE.

Good genetics early will ensure that you are a happy man come harvest time.  First of all, you can't go wrong with a good seed.  A buddy can give you a clone, and say it's the bomb but even if you got it from a dispensary they have ulterior motives and I doubt they would give you a clone off a fat ass humbolt tree.
So what do I mean by good genetics' I mean the kind of bud that wins the cannabis cup. It caN BE YOURS MY FRIEND IF YOU DO THINGS RIGHT.

   what we are basically looking for with seeds are GOOD MOTHER PLANTS. IN EVERY PACK OF 10 SEEDS, IF THEY AREN'T FEM, (m/F), THERE WILL BE MAYBE 2 PLANTS IN THERE WORTH MOTHERING.  THESE ARE THE KIND OF PLANTS THAT GO FROM SEED TO 3' IN MAYBE TWO MONTHS.  OR THREE..  AS LONG AS THEY GET BIG AND YOUVE GOT THE TIME TO WATCH EM GROW (OF COURSE, THE QUICKER, THE BETTER.

   yOU WILL WANT TO TAKE CUTTINGS, OR BABY PLANTS, FROM THESE "MOTHERS" ( see post on "cloning")  WHY? BECAUSE CUTTINGS, ALSO CALLED CLONES, WILL TAKE ON THE CHARACTERISITICS OF THE MOTHER PLANTS.  THAT IS WHY YOU ARE LABELING EVERYTHING LIKE A OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE CHEMIST.  ONCE YOU KNOW WHAT BIG PLANTS ARE WHERE, THAT IS THE TIME TO GO TO BUSINESS.  START TAKING CUTTINGS SO YOU WILL HAVE MULITIPLE GOOD, BIG PLANTS OUT IN THE YARD OR IN YOUR GROWROOM COME HARVEST TIME.  YOU KNOW THOSE HIGH TIMES PICTURES YOU DROOL OVER OF GROWROOMS FULL OF GREAT LOOKING PLANTS THAT ALL LOOK THE SAME? THIS IS HOW THEY DID THAT.

you didn't think they got all those plants from seeds they ordered from the seed bank, do ya? HA!

 I just spent all last week germinating and rooting these.  FIRST I WILL TELL YOU MY SECRET TO GROWING FROM SEED SO LISTEN UP! 

GET YOU SEEDS FROM http://www.attitude.com/   This is the only seed bank I have ever used.  They have a killer selection (if they don't have it, it might not exist).  Attitude is an outfit in england that warehouses strains from California, Amsterdam, Spain, Canada, etc.  Some good companies that they carry include BC Bud Depot (expensive but good), DNA Genetics, Reserva Privada, Barney's Farm, G-13 (unreliable but they have some good strains), Dr. Greenthumb, Mandala, and the Cali Connection. I have learned the hard way that the seeds that cost $20 a pack cost that much for a reason.  They suck.  So plan on spending at least $40 on a pack of 5 feminized seeds.  Go ahead and get 10 or so because they'll throw in a few free ones, and these are fem too so they're likely to be as good as anything.  If you are new to this, don't get mixed seeds, even though a lot of bomb strains come in only mixed.  You don't want the headache.

FIRST, BE VERY CAREFUL WITH SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS.  THEY ARE EXPENSIVE, SMALL, AND DELICATE.  IF A PACKAGE LOOKS TOUGH TO OPEN, DO IT GENTLY AND FIGURE IT OUT. DON'T JUST RIP IT OPEN.

SOAK ALL SEEDS IN APPROPRIATELY MARKED SMALL JARS.  I LIKE TO TAPE THE BREEDER PACK TO THE SIDE OF THE JAR.
1) dO THE paper towel thing (SEE SEED BANK SITE..  keep the paper towel moist but not soggy.  All the seeds you will get will come within 5 days. Be sure to keep track of which strain is which,  at aNY FUTURE JUNCTION IF YOU FAIL TO LABEL THESE YOU WILL GET CONFUSED.  tHIS MEANS WHEN YOU PUT THEM IN CUPS, PLANTERS, PAILS, ETC.

2( wHEN YOU SEE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A SEED WITH A 1/2-1" WHITE TAIL COMING OUT OF IT, TAKE SOME TWEEZERS OR YOUR FINGERS (BE CAREFUL and wash your hands,especially if you took a dump that day and forgot lol).  iNSERT THE SEED WITH THE SEED ON TOP IN A ROCKWOOL PLANT PLUG.  THESE ARE CYLINDRICAL IN SHAPE, ARE ABOUT 2" HIGH, AND MADE OF ROCKWOOL BUT ARE NOT ROCKWOOL CUBES.  THEY ARE DIFFERENT.  THEY ARE SLIT UP THE SIDE SO BURY THE SEEDLING IN THERE NICE AND SNUG.

3) PUT IT RIGHT UNDER A BATHROOM LIGHT (100W COOL FLOURESCENT) AND SPRAY IT WITH WATER GENEROUSLY TWICE A DAY. Meanwhile keep checking the paper towels for popped seeds just like these.  remember to keep the paper towels moist.

4) IN ABOUT 24 HOURS THE SEEDLING WILL BE SHOOTITNG STRAIGHT UP LIKE AN ARROW OUT OF THE ROCKWOOL TUBE.  THE SEED SHELL MAY HAVE COME OFF BY NOW, EXPOSING THE BABY LEAVES.  THIS IS NORMAL.  IF THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED, IT WILL. DON'T WORRY.  when the seedling looks like this, TAKE IT OUT VERY GENTLY FROM THE ROCKWOOL TUBE.  SOME OF THE ROOT MAY HAVE GROWN INTO THE SIDE OF THE TUBE.  JUST GENTLY TEAR THE ROCKWOOL AROUND THE ROOT AND TRY TO FIND THE TIP OF THE ROOT.  WHEN YOU THINK YOU CAN RIP OUT THE TIP WITHOUT BREAKING IT OFF, DO SO.  TRY NOT TO BREAK THE ROOT IN HALF. YOU WILL RUIN YOUR SEED. 

5) IF YOU STILL KNOW WHAT KIND OF SEED IT IS (SEE I TOLD YOU!), TAKE A LARGE COFFEE CUP AND FILL IT WITH GOOD SOIL, ABOUT 1/4 PERLITE.  SOAK THE SOIL WITH WATER AND POKE A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM WITH WHATEVER PEN YOU HAVE.  THEN WRITE THE STRAIN ON THE SIDE OF THE CUP AND BURY THE SEEDLING ABOUT 1/2 WAY DOWN INTO THE DIRT.  (THE TOP INCH OR SO OF THE SEEDLING SHOULD BE STICKING OUT.)

6) IF IT IS SPRINGTIME WEATHER WHERE YOU LIVE. YOU MAY PUT THE SEEDS OUT ALL DAY.  JUST TO BE SAFE THOUGH, YOU SHOULD HARDEN OFF THE SEEDS BY GETTING THEM USED TO SUNLIGHT. ONLY 3 HRS AT A TIME FOR THE FIRST COUPLE OF DAYS. THEN GO FOR IT.  MAKE SURE THEY GET AT LEAST 18 HRS OF LIGHT A DAY, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO USE A 100W CFL TUBE BULB OR THE BATHROOM AGAIN AT NIGHT.

7) YOU NOW HAVE SEVERAL BABY MARIJUANA PLANTS. spray them with water using fine spray mister twice a day at least, and again if they are going out in the sun or have been there for over 3 hrs.  THESE ARE NOT TOUGH PLANTS YET AND WILL DIE IF YOU DON'T TAKE REAL GOOD CARE OF THEM!  CONGRATULATIONS!   STAY TUNED TO THIS BLOG TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS...  OR GO TO THE PART ABOUT CLONES. THEY ARE NOTHING BUT GROWN UP SEEDLINGS THAT ARE CALLED CLONES BECAUSE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BEHAVE LIKE A MOTHER PLANT.  YOU SEE WHY I TOOK CUTTINGS FROM THAT TALL, BIG GREEN SKUNK PLANT IN THE MIDDLE?  BECAUSE I WANTED A BUNCH OF PLANTS LIKE THAT. 

BUT not too many.   one strain makes for a boring garden, unless you are strictly in it for the cash.  Anyway I spent 130 on my dad's credit card and bought 25 seeds. 20 of 'em germinated. I ripped one seedling in half (dang that coulda been the one lol!)  so now I have about 2-3 purple kush if I'm lucky,

The expensive ones were like $70,00, Blueberry M/F from BC Bud Depot.  I heard on another blog that if you order direct from them yeah you get your seeds but they take like 2 weeks later.  Attitude ships in a week always.  So I wanted Purps but Attutude was out of stock. So I just got blueberry, it's more of a straight indica anyway (80/20). Next were Purple Kush, from Reeferman seeds.  These were cheap and I got what I paid for, only half of em popped.  But the bright side is that you get 3 fem seeds free with your order and all of those popped.  Grapefruit, Bubblegum, and a Purple Moroccan strain that sounds pretty exotic but you never know.  Anyway I am now stocked up for genetics.  I know it's early to plant but if these turn out good (not if but when) ha ha, but if these turn out good I want plenlty of time for summer clones.  my springtime clones look a little slow getting there so I might have to keep em in veg and carry em out to flower in summer.  That's been the plan all along.

cloning

These are my two clone domes under the one 100w CFL in the Bathroom.  It usually seems to work okay unless I fuck something up.  I use a powder for a rooting hormone, i know it's cheap but it works.  And I spray the cuttings with 1L water mixed with a capful of clonex (this stuff is indespensable, it really helps roots to form.  But as I am working with limited lighting I cant put in all the cuttings I want to hence the lack of plants.  I want to get something like this:



So to do a clone (take cuttings from a mother plant, so you have many big plants instead of just the few you got from your seeds, dickface!

1)  Make sure your plant is the kind you want to clone.  Iif it is Male, don't clone it! But if it is one of those bushes in Humbolt, that is the kind of plant you want to clone.  If it is 3' talll and growing and a known good strain, clone it just for shits and giggles.  If it is like my skunk plant, CLONE THE FUCKER!  In short, you'll have to wait a while before you know for sure if your plant is clone worthy.  if you have the space, or a clone machine, by all means take all the clones you can.  but if space is limited, you only want 5-10 cuttings from the best plants you have.  otherwise you take up space and plant count and, well, ,it's your garden, but i would rather have 50 plants of the finest Og or bubba kush than 40 kind plants and 30 shitty ones. 

If it is May and you still don't have a good plant count, TAKE ALL THE CLONES YOU CAN FROM YOUR BEST PLANTS.  Just by using the shotgun approach chances are that if something is wrong, you'll at least get 3 clones out of every 10 cuttings. Remember now that these are going to go right outside, You don't have to worry about fitting them under that lamp. You will be taking more cuttings than getting succesful clones anyway, so Plan for this eventuality.  You won't be a Jedi clone master of the clone wars your first year.

2) make your cuttings.  I will take a picture of this.  Make a cutting of a branch that looks like a small plant. Try to cut the branch off at a 45 degree angle and leave enought end on the stalk so you can stick it into a rockwool cube.  Take maybe five cuttings and put them one by one into a glass of water.

EXAMPLE OF A GOOD CUTTING:

 
The cutting on the right is the kind of thing you want.  It looks like a small plant, get it?  The cutting on the left is just a pot leaf. It's a good pot leaf, but it won't last long if you stick it into rockwool and try to make a plant out of it.

3)  take 5 or so cuttings from the same plant inside to the bathroom or wherever.  Get some small rockwool cubes, the smallest you can get.  Rockwool is a very specialized product and chances are that if you don't have a hydro store that specializes in Growing Cannabis then you will be shit out of luck and will have to go on the internet.  Rockwool is not rocks. Rockwool is not wool.  It is Rockwool and if you go to a nursery and the guy just looks at you funny tell him to fuck off (no, don't do this) but just say 'thanks" and go home and go onto your pc.

4) get some rooting hormone.  They come in a powder or a gel.  The gel is more expensive but probably worth it.  get some clonex (it comes in a big liter of black liquid)  Add a capful of the clonex to a liter of water in a spray bottle.  make sure that the spray bottle is clean, as in you bought it at the fucking store yesterday.

5) soak the rockwool cubes in water for about 5 minutes.

6)  then go out and take more cuttings because you forgot to do this before.

7)  take a large nail and poke a hole in the rockwool where the small hole already is (after squeezing out  most of the water).  Write what kind of plant it is on the side of the rock wool. I REPEAT, WRITE DOWN WHAT KIND OF PLANT IT IS ON THE SIDE OF THE ROCKWOOL CUBE. Sometimes this works with a Sharpie and sometimes it doesn't, so you might want to have an alternative way of labeling your clones, i.e. put them into rows, etc.
 
8) Make sure you have at least a good 2" of branch to work with, strip any side leaves that do not have to be there (see photo).DIP THE CUTTING IN SOME WATER. THEN TRY TO GET AS MUCH ROOTING POWDER OR HORMONE ON IT AS YOU CAN!  JUST COAT THAT BITCH!

9)  Stick the cutting in the cube. about as far down as it'll go without coming out the other side. 

10) lightly spray the cuttings about twice a day.  In about 1.5 weeks, you should start looking at the bottom of the rockwool cubes for little white hairy roots.  in about 2-3 weeks, these roots should appear.  WHEN THEY DO, YOU HAVE ABOUT A 24 HOUR WINDOW TO PLANT THAT SUCKER. OR THE ROOTS WILL DIE.  SO GO GET AN 8" POT, FILL IT WITH DIRT, AND SOAK IT WITH WATER,  DIG OUT ABOUT TWO HANDFULLS OF DIRT, AND PLANT THE CLONE IN THE POT.  USING THE TWO HANDFULLS OF DIRT YOU TOOK OUT, BACK FILL THE CLONE AND PLANT IT NICE AND DEEP. 

11) iF YOU HAVE ANY CUTTINGS THAT HAVE NOT ROOTED AFTER ABOUT 3 WEEKS, THEY PROBABLY LOOK AS SHITTY AS THEY ARE.  THROW THESE OUT. AND TRY, TRY AGAIN. IT'S A DIFFICULT PROCESS BUT THIS IS THE SECRET TO A GREAT, BIG GARDEN LIKE THEY HAVE IN HIGH TIMES!  YOU DON'T THING THEY ORDERED ALL OF THOSE PLANTS FROM THE BC BUD DEPOT DO YA?

12) THESE CLONES SHOULD BE WATERED ABOUT 2-3 TIMES PER WEEK.  ANY MORE AND YOU WILL RISK BUGS AND ROOT ROT.  YOU CAN GO DOWN TO ONCE A WEEK BUT I WOULDN'T ADVISE IT.  2-3 TIMES A WEEK IS PERFECT.  WHEN THE CLONES GET ABOUT 6" TALL, START A small FEEDING PROGRAM.  JUST A QUARTER OF WHAT THE BOTTLE SAYS AND WORK YOUR WAY UP.  IF YOU HAVE ANY $$$ AT ALL, GO TO A HYDRO STORE AND GET ONE OF THE GOOD FERTILIZERS, MARKED "GROW" AND "FLOWER".  THEY WILL COST YOU ABOUT $30-$40 EACH BUT WILL LAST A WHOLE SEASON AND PUT MIRACLE GRO TO SHAME.

13) SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

I would order a clone machine, that way I could be sure of guarantieed good clones every time but I spend enough $$$ on this shit.  maybe when i start selling some of this fucking schwag.  re invest the capital u know.

my set up, lighting indoors.

This is a 1000 w MH lamp I use for vegging clones.  The white thing in front is a fan that is big enough to keep everything cool enough for a few plants for veg.  I've noticed that air and heat problems, as long as kept to a miminum, aren't a big deal in veg.  it's when the flowers start to develop that you have to start worrying about cool air, recirculation, co2 etc. so I started a half indoors half outdoors pgm which I'm sure many of you are familiaar with.  Just put plants under the light all night for 12 hrs and then when you wake up in the morning (My window faces south so they get the morning sun after the light shuts off.) around 9 am put your plants outside for some fresh air and sunshine.  This should get you at LEAST 18 hours and 20 if your on your game.  The old speakers I just use to prop the light up I wish I had an extra room with a couple of chains but it ain't happenin this year.

SHIT CLONES

EXcept for the one that looks okay in the middle, which is another one of the skunk x kushberrys, the rest of these are just clones I took from an undentified strain I had out there.  It's a really shitty plant, The buds are about 4 weeks along and they don't even have any trichomes on em.  They all have major Nitrogen nutrient uptake problems cause that's the way the strain is.  The mom is half yellow and she had mites all over her before she got big and strong (ahem)... anyway I figured I'd maybe flower a few of these for hash but I don't even know if theyre good enough for that.  I'll probably toss em but as i don't think i'll reach the limit this spring fuck it maybe I'll have something to go into the hash 0 lator. lator.

Genetics problems.

So these are my clones I've got going now.  Seven skunk x kushberry, 2 chem dogs, 2 cherry og's, one of which seems to be growing.  As I said, not much for a guy that wants to grow 50 plants plus this summer. and wanted to grow 25 plants this spring.  ALL I CAN SAY IS: START EARLY TO COVER UP FUCKUPS IN YOUR PROGRAM.  DISEASES, CLONING PROBLEMS, PLAN FOR THE INEVITABLE AND YOU WONT HAVE TO PLAY CATCH- UP



My good plant

fe This is a DNA genetics x Kushberry one I got from a lucky seed I ordered from Attitude (don't order from anywhere else, why pay more for inflated Canadian prices unless you live up there or something? Attitude is the bomb and they always have almost everything I'm looking for in stock.  If I can't find it, there'll be something just as good at around  the same price.  And they always give away a few good free seeds.  Anwway this one is in the third week of flower.  Nutes are Iquana Juice Grow, Advanced Nutes Big Bud, and a little Bat Guano (I only use half the dose).  I am growing in soil, usually a combo of whatever's left over from last year, some inexpensive organic stuff I get from the "Hippie nursery" in the city, and some real good Fox Farm shit I get from the Hydro store out by the beach.  So I figure the good will balance out the bad and I throw in 1/4 measure of Perlite as well. 

Big plants from last Fall

Last summer before the plants went into flower I of course cloned the big ones that I had.  The clones grew, but too slow, so by Dec. I was scrambling to get clones and my cloning program kinda sucked.  I would make mistakes, like spraying the clones with pesticides and shit.  Anyway these are the big plants I have right now for spring, they been growin' for months now ever since I took the clones from them last summer.

(Rear l-r) - Unidentified mostly sativa strain,  DNA genetics Power Skunk x Kushberry, Unidentified sativa strain, a stocky Chem Dog.
(foreground) A small Super Silver Sour Diesel Haze

First coupla weeks, Feb 15th-March 1st

It seems like my big problem when getting a grow op from mediocre to big is planning.  iN THIS BLOG I WILL ATTEMPT TO DO EXACTLY THAT.  I never have any good moms I can take clones off of when it's time to start.  My cloning techinique has improved over the years as has my seed germination technique but I can't afford any fancy gadgets and you really shouldn't need any if you got your shit down.  So this time I decided to start early.  Well, plants don't come from nothing, so the next couple of entries should get you started.