[MEGA]Community Growing advice, tips, tricks, & experiences Part 5 (2012-2013)

[Artificial Emotion]

I'm quite intrigued. I wonder if the purple trait is co-dominant. Is it an either or situation with purple or green individuals or is it a spectrum, with some purple, some green and some inbetween? How many have you grown out and what is the ratio of purple to green?

As for freezing seeds, you must dry them out sufficiently with silica dessicant beforehand for several days so the water crystals sont rupture the cells rendering the seeds non-viable. If it's done right, in a domestic freezer it should be in the order of years, not months. I would warn you to keep them in the freezer until you use them, because even when dry, the freeze-thaw action will kill off more and more seeds each cycle.

If they need to be stored 6 months or less your sock drawer is fine. The safest is the fridge, in air tight tupperware with silica dessicanr. For the fridge and freezer, be sure to allow it to warm up to room temperature before opening, otherwise condensation forms, damaging the seeds.

The best containers for individual seed batches are micro-centrifuge tubes. They are very small vials with lids that hold about 1.5ml. You should place a couple of dessicant crystals and use cotton wool to keep the seeds safe.

 

[justsayknow]

Out of 4 so far 1 has been green only, 1 has been dark purple and 2 have had purple calyxes ranging from dark purple to mauve. I have a pic somewhere. Not a very big population size but still a good indication that the gene is readily passed on.

 

[MikeRWK]

Anyone using florescent lights for seedlings? Should i use Cool White bulbs or Daytime? I have both right now so its just a matter of using the best.

 

[Artificial Emotion]

Always use cool white for seedlings and vegging plants. Are you using something like linear fluorescent T5s or CFLs?

 

[MikeRWK]

Im using 2 T12s to start my seedlings until i get a proepr setup.

I have another question, i have 1 brand new sylvania cool white 34w eco bulb, its color is 4200k.Would it be worth it to buy the other bulb an switch for a 100k gain?

 

[freehugs]

Im using 2 T12s to start my seedlings until i get a proepr setup.

I have another question, i have 1 brand new sylvania cool white 34w eco bulb, its color is 4200k.Would it be worth it to buy the other bulb an switch for a 100k gain?

I think two t5s should be sufficient, the other lights would add a not needed gain in lighting, especially for veg. Or do you have another question?

 

[drug_mentor]

Was wondering how often people like to feed and water their outdoor plants during veg?

I have been feeding mine about once a fortnight, occasionally maybe a little less often than that. I use a product called Charlie Carp, which has an NPK of 10-2-6 and the one I use is organic, I was hoping to increase my feeding schedule to giving them a feed once every 7-10 days, but I am a little wary of burning them. I don't use absolute full strength when I feed, but 80-90% of the recommended dose.

So far I have been feeding them maybe every third watering, was thinking I might be able to increase that to every second watering for the rest of the veg period, what do you guys think?

I tend to water my plants once or twice every 7 or 8 days, depending if it rains that week or not. I have a friend that waters his plants like 5 or 6 days a week, and it seems like his plants grow faster than mine. I am not too disappointed with my progress, but I was late planting and my plants could certainly be larger. I was always under the impression I should be letting the medium dry out pretty damn well before watering again, but am starting to think my plants might benefit from watering a little more frequently than I have been. My plants never show signs of being underwatered before I water them, but I was thinking maybe watering once every 3 days might be a good idea instead of waiting more like 4 or 5.

Just curious if experienced growers think that it would be okay to increase my feeding and watering schedule slightly as I have described, any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[justsayknow]

What you are doing sounds fine. I'm not sure what happens if you use Charlie Carp twice as often as directed? 10 days instead of 14 could be ok. I use ferts twice a week but they are designed to be used more often. Watering every 3 or 4 days seems about right for 30Lpots unless its 40C with a hot wind in which case more. I think bigger pots take a bit longer to dry out until the plant gets big and starts using all the water.

 

[drug_mentor]

Part of me wonders if the bigger pot thing is part of the reason it seems like my watering schedule is perfect but really it is off, what I mean is, if I transplant a plant into a new pot it is probably going to take a little while before its roots are in the majority of the container, so there may be a period after transplanting where the parts of the container that don't have any/many roots seem wet, but the core area where the roots are has dried up. For this reason (as well as my friends faster growth despite the fact he feeds his plants almost nothing) I am thinking I should probably water a little bit more frequently.

Can I ask what ferts you use that are meant to be used twice a week?

 

[justsayknow]

Biocanna vega use 1-3 times a week depending on pot size they reckon. With your big pot it would probably be a bit less than me. If you feel the weight of the pot you can tell when its drying out.

http://www.biocanna.com.au/site/products.php?showpage=products_biovega

My friend uses it as well as a seaweed/compost fertiliser, seems to be going great guns.

 

[floatingaround]

I get away with feeding up to twice a week when using Thrive. I think once a week is the normal though. It amazes me how much of a difference soluble and liquid ferts makes to a plants growth.

 

[the toad]

Heres my latest project... observations, opinions, advice, and other constructive comments appreciated :D

NSFW:

Jack Herer (skunk x afghani)

Purple Cream (Purple kush x GDP)
#2

#1

#3 (i think this is a green crack clone that was sharing the tray and not actually the cream like it says... It looks nothing like the purps... Or may be something else idk lol..

And last and shortest but not least is "The White" (purple kush x pure kush x og kush) kinda considering vegging this out for 3 months then flowering it next cycle... Thoughts? Its an amazing genetic... Id like to keep her around a while and get more out of her... I got her a month or 2 respectively later than the others...

 

[drug_mentor]

So it looks like I am battling some pretty formidable pest problems and I am starting to get a little bit worried.

At first I had thrips, but a couple applications of spinosad seem to of removed them from the equation.

Since then I noticed more insect damage, and found these small (maybe 3mm, some of the smaller ones are probably 2mm) roundish insects all over my plants. They are white but with relatively large (in proportion to them of course) red spots on them and they have a sort of white fuzz that protrudes from their rear ends. They seem to like to hide on the underside of plant stems and feed on the leaves. They move fairly slowly along the plant but when I go to pinch them they often jump suddenly and can launch themselves quite a distance. I probably spend half an hour or more per day picking these things off my plants and it doesn't affect their numbers too greatly, I am sure this is preventing their population from increasing as quickly as it otherwise would but am fairly certain it is an ineffective strategy for eliminating them all together.

I got some pyrethrum based spray about a week ago, stupidly listened to the advice of the guy in the store and sprayed it all over my plant at a time when the bugs were not most active. This burned my plants a little bit but did seem to make the bugs fuck off for a few days at least, the other day though I noticed these things are back and it seems upon closer inspection they have done a bit of damage that I had attributed to pyrethrum burn in that time. A couple days ago I reapplied the pyrethrum properly, spraying directly onto insects when they were active, two days later there does seem to be less of these guys buy they are still hanging around, I am not too optimistic given last time took them less than a week to come back in force.

To make matters worse, I have seen definite white flies on my plant, I don't think I have an infestation or anything, I live in an almost rural area and there are lots of many different flies about. It seems though almost every time I approach my grow space in the evening time there is at least a few of these fuckers on my plants. Is there some kind of deterrent one can employ to thin numbers of these things?

I also think there is a chance I have fungus gnats, because I saw little black flies on my soil just before and they look a fair bit like fungus gnats, although it is hard to definitively identify tiny black flies as anything specific when one has no prior experience dealing with any kind of insect other than killing spiders. With thrips it was easy to identify the damage they were doing and find a photo guide to help me identify what kind of bug it was but in this case I am having a bit more trouble figuring out exactly what the hairy bugs on my plant are, or what kind of insect is causing the major damage, I think this is compounded by the fact there are likely a couple different types of pests wreaking havoc on my babies.

I have acquired some Eco-Neem, which is supposed to be one of the more refined neem oils you can buy. Today I gave all my plants a spray with that and will probably do so every few days or so. I also plan on watering neem into the soil on my next watering and continuing to do that once weekly until I am satisfied with the bug situation. I know neem is not an overnight fix but am hoping in the medium term it is a solution to my problem, although I do wonder what other steps I may be able to take to notice a more immediate reduction in insect numbers.

Does this sound like an okay plan and is there anything else I can do? Also, is it unrealistic to think there would be 2 or 3 different types of pests on my plants or is that perfectly plausible?

Here are some pictures, can anyone tell exactly what kind of bug(s) would be doing this?

 

[the toad]

^ Whiteflies? I get some also... I keep lots of flypaper in the grow room to keep tgem away from the plants... Theres lots of other methods suggested in the link also.

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7401.html

I dont really know anything about gnats cept that i get more of them on the flypaper than any other bug by a large margin... Its always mostly gnats, a couple mosquitos and whiteflies and other night insects that seek the light and sometimes a housefly or two but mostly gnats on the stickypaper :D

 

[Artificial Emotion]

One of the best cures for fungus gnats infesting your compost is to dust some permethrin-based ant killer powder on the surface of the soil and water in. After one or two applications they should all be dead, but it has the advantage of being absolutely safe and breaks down before you harvest your buds and doesn't taint them.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a total hypochondriac with insane health anxiety, so I would never do anything like this if I didn't know it was completely safe.

Mulching the compost surface with salt-free sand works, but the ant killer is far better.

To monitor the infestation put a potato core into the compost and pull out. If it's clear, your infestation is gone.

As for whitefly, use something like an insecticidal soap. Savona brand works well. That stuff is one tool that should be in every growers arsenal of must-haves. Also, definitely invest in some garlic spray. You can either make it yourself or buy it at the garden centre. I would do the latter.

 

[drug_mentor]

Start of flowering period wouldn't be too late in the grow to do that would it? A couple of my plants are throwing up pistils and it would not surprise me if the rest are showing sex by the time I get paid and can obtain permethrin. It sounds like something I would be interested in if I was sure it wouldn't affect the final product at this stage in my grow. It seems much more affordable than continuing with neem. I have done several neem soaks and while it certainly reduces their numbers for a short while it does not finish them. I can only afford to do this so often as to flush all my plants costs upwards of 20 bucks on neem oil alone each time.

I just cut a bunch of potatos in half and have placed them on the soil earlier today, I read that a lot of the larvae will go up into the potato and I can remove them like that. Don't anticipate it will put an end to them but hopefully slows the fuckers down.

Thanks for the input guys!

 

[Whosajiggawaaa]

Help me sex my plants pls

These plants are fairly young. Only going to be ready to harvest around April maybe later.

My question's are: which plants are male/female/herm/too young to tell ?

1>)

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2>)
B.)
3.)

Excuse my stupid numbering am really hoigh.

 

[Jibult]

Technically, this is an ID thread. Against BLUA and all that.



I also think those plants are fairly young to determine the sex, with a terrible picture quality for the kind of precision detail a photograph would have to capture for anyone to accurately sex. I don't even want to guess on it as that's all it would be, but I can tell you that, in the pictures you show, I don't see any telltale signs of a male plant. It's up in the air, though, as I don't see any pictures of where branches meet the main stem, and that's pretty much the place I've been taught is best to look for signs of a male pollen sac.



I'm not an expert here, though. I smoke the stuff, haven't put in much of an effort to grow.




[EDIT: For reference, here's a picture, in NSFW tags because of the picture size, of a hermaphroditic plant with both male and female "genitalia" (lol, I don't know what to call it on plants) clearly labelled:

NSFW:

]

 

[Whosajiggawaaa]

Definitely no trace of male sacks visible to me either between the stems. Only 2 tenticles that go straight up into points that are found as 2 on each side on pretty much all the plants wherever the 2 stems meet if you know what I mean. But I do remember reading ages ago that this is not a conclusive indicator though a few months ago.

Basically do I have a reasonable expectation of at least one female plant in the hypothetical question that is this thread ?

 

[Jibult]

I mean, I'd say the expectation would be reasonable. Even without feminized seeds, you've got about a 50/50 chance for Male and Female (generic probability, I'm really not sure if there's a specific ratio to male:female plants other than 1:1), so yeah, I'd say the expectation is reasonable.

Definitely not a sure thing, though.

Also, again, I'm no expert. I'm well-read on the subject but firsthand experience triumphs over booksmarts any day. We've got quite a few amazing gardeners on this forum, though, and I have no doubt that someone I do consider an expert will find this thread soon enough.


In the meantime, just keep an eye out for those nodes/pollen sacs to start to form. If you see something that doesn't look quite right for a female, chances are that it's not.