Alien Organic Winter Greenhouse Momhunt

[LightDep530]

Hi everyone this is my experimental winter grow. Looking for some moms.
Using mostly cali connection beans because of house easy they are to get here in cali. I'm growing AlienDawg, Alien Bubba, Sour Og . I also have 3 Greenhouse seeds feminized Church. This is organic in soil, in a greenhouse with supplemental light and a woodstove. The starts are in a hydrohut tent inside of a unheated insulated growroom/dryroom. I will be moving them up and out to bigger spaces as they grow. This gives me time to work on things and save heating and light costs.

The cali connection beans popped pretty well I think 10 for 10 on AD and AB and 8/10 on the sour OG

I was going to wait to post my diary but I am having some problems already. heres the details.

Growing in Vital Earth Manna Mix. There is a link to a Soil Food Web analysis on the site, Elaine Ingham's company. I have not used this soil but it comes recommended by knowledgeable people.

Watered for first week and a half with un Ph'd well water. (6.8-7.1) then I got some batteries and broke out the meter.

watering at 6.5 and 6.5 runoff

plants showed signs of yellowing and necrosis. Knowing the coco sucks up cal and mag I gave them a dose of water with a little dolomite soaked in it. No improvement.

I got General Organic's cal mag and watered at a dose of 5ml/gal and foliar at 1-2ml/gal. Things seem to get worse.

here are some pics thanks for checking me out, I could use help and criticism. Last pic is GDP in last spring.

 

[LightDep530]

So far I'm guessing the coco in this soil is just hogging nutrients until I get enough into it? I have used Roots soil before and not had this problem.

Some coirs have been chemically treated, this is most often the case with loose pre-hydrated varieties versus compressed blocks. The treatment has been done to satisfy the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the growing media. As a refresher, “cations” are positively charged ions, such as Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, and Potassium. This means that the growing media will hold these ions in a matrix, releasing them as required by plants. There is one slight drawback to this. Until the cation exchange capacity of the growing media is filled, the growing media may hold positively charged nutrient ions, most notably calcium, in reserve, making them less available to plants. However, the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the coir media is quickly filled, and actually assists calcium absorption in the crop cycle. To ensure optimum availability of all nutrients, supply additional calcium during the first week of growth or during the hydrating process of the coconut coir. Calcium supplement products are ideal for this. Some nutrients specifically formulated for coco tend to have elevated levels of calcium and magnesium while having lower levels of nitrogen.(Coco Coir By: Erik Biksa
Courtesy of Maximum Yield Magazine)

So I guess its possible I'm having calcium,magnesium, and potassium def. Things looking a little greener this afternoon. I might see if I got appropriate with some K in it. Got lots of big jugs of organics that are smellin a little off. Its kind of sad.

The greenhouse has only tools and greens in it right now. Various mustard greens, lettuces, spinach and cabbage starts and citrus. The plywood in the back of the house is where the swamp cooler pads sit in the summer.

 

[Seamaiden]

I was thinking those babies look deficient, but I'm not familiar with your media. If it's got a good bit of coco in it, then I think you've nailed it. I'd start with the Ca/Mg portion, see if the P sorts itself out when Ca/Mg are balanced and satisfied. Also, coco performs better at lower pH values, closer to 6.0. Dropping pH may be all that's needed here, a foliar of the above would be a quick fix, drop pH for the next few feedings and see how that does them.

Nice set up.

 

[LightDep530]

Thanks Seamaiden. That batch is starting to green back up. Its a shame guess I did not expect seedlings in fresh soil to need anything other than well water. I usually start using kelp and serenade and not much else until they are a little bigger. I have not grown the chem family before with the exception of a OG Sweet tooth cross.

The deficient seedlings were only like half of the Cali beans, the church seeds and they rest of the three packs I started later. Here is some pics. I don't much care for pics of seedlings but I sure do love to watch them grow.

 

[LightDep530]

So a little update. This run is not starting out well. I kind of blew my hopes of having perfect seed moms to work with. The babies are looking a lot better. We have been having great weather so they get to hangout in the Greenhouse during the day. It is running in the 80s no problem. The growth was really slow before now because of the calmag def and the root temps were a little cold. Usually I transplant every two weeks. The first transplant is usually at about 2 1/2 weeks.

The def was turning into an all around deficiency. A trusted soil biologist who deals with this Vital Earth soil says that he buys it BECAUSE it is pretty much a soil-less mix and prefers to add his compost and worm castings. He said adding 25% high quality worm castings to this mix had been the ticket for clones and seedlings.

So I topped dressed the babies with a fine layer of worm castings and sure enough they improved. The downside is they went right into a small nitrogen toxicity and started cat-clawing. The worm castings did fix the calmag issue far better than the GO calmag.

I will take some shots tonight. Not too much to see. Except maybe what not to do.
THe girlfriend is picking up some roots organics soil today because we really liked it before. Last season we cut it with 50 % Roots Organics coco coir and a bunch of compost rock powders goodies and were pretty happy with it.

 

[monkey5]

LightDep530, Nice greenhouse! Sorry to see that happen to those seedlings! Those Cali. Connection strains will make excellent mothers! I would try to nurse them back with a little compost tea, one of the Rev's tea recipe's, and very small dose off maxi crop seaweed! Small dose of fish emolshn in the tea i think he says...those plants for moms..hummm...I'd try to bring them back! That is the Rev. from Skunk mag.,that is who i'm referring to, his tea recipe's are sweet! We like them here! Earthworm castings are great too! Hope i have helped you out..we always use a seed starter planting mix, wormcasting, my own compost. Thank you for posting this thread! monkey5

 

[Seamaiden]

Oh jeez! So you go with that product thinking it's a soil mix and it's soilless? That would absolutely explain it. I'm with monkey, a tea would make them quite happy (as long as roots are warm enough).

I keep forgetting to buy worm castings. Today is the day!

 

[LightDep530]

So here is a couple more pics. Root temps are good now. Weather has been good and I switched to the MH for night in the hydrohut.
Looking better though. Worm castings greened things up but I've got this leaf tip burn. That tip necrosis looked a little worse this morning. I took the pics yesterday. I think these are really potent worm castings and they girls might be shocking on the nitrogen content. Any opinions?
I'm not used to babying my starts like this. I'm not aiming for a soil-less style grow. I prefer to topdress, use compost tea and give them a some liquid nutes from time to time or as needed. Last spring I had nice green spotless babies headed down the road to friends.
I'm going to get some cuts this week to get a good inventory. GDP came out like topshelf indoor under the sun last spring I'm going to get some of those and maybe some OG's. My friend's out here pretty much quit growing OG because we are all out and greenhouse growers and they can't keep the mildew under control. I have not had much problems. But we'll see. Anyone got a cut recommendation?

 

[Seamaiden]

I'm currently trying out a new systemic, Excel LG. Gotta go downstairs and check, have a much more difficult time controlling the PM indoors than out, that's for sure. I can easily see why a GH would offer the same problems. I probably should have purchased an atomizer/mister as well, but I didn't.

 

[LightDep530]

Thats interesting a salt based phosphoric systemic fungicide. Excel LG. Ever seen that film Idiocracy? They used Gatorade to water the crops. Monopotassium Phosphate. Beastie Bloomz. I vote gatorade as the best post apocalyptic bloom formula.

 

[Seamaiden]

I have not seen that flick yet, but I hear you either love it or hate it. On the surface it sort of reminds me of Harrison Bergeron (flick based on the Kurt Vonnegut book).

I'll likely end up going with the Eagle 20 to use on vegging girls. I just get sofaking tired of putting on the suit, the gloves, the respirator, covering my hair and shoes, then we get to spraying. You don't have those worries working with the Excel or Greencure.

 

[LightDep530]

For powder mildew prevention I use a lot of probiotics. I use Oregonism XL and another endo inoculant at transplant. I foliar with Serenade about once a week. I was adding serenade to my AACT last year. The azatrol/azamax gets out there once in a while. I also use MycoTrol for insect control and I think it helps a little with PM as well. If i have not used any oil products in a while I fire up the sulphur burner for a little while sometimes. But that kills all my foliar beneficials. If you foliar with a high PH water it keeps the PM at bay as well.

The brown "burned spots" I got are the other part of the Coco thievery. Along with the Calcium and Magnesium, Potassium is another Cation or positively charged salt. I'm pretty sure that is Potassium def. So I foliared with some Mycsa soluble kelp. I also made a compost extract.

I bubbled my water a little first but I did not really make AACT. I put Baseline granular humate, compost, fish hydrolysate, Mycsa kelp, endo incoculant, and just a tiny bit of 9-3-1 guano in a paint strainer sack and kneeded it in water for about 10 minutes then used it as a root drench. We'll see how the girls like it. Most of them are transplanted into 1 gal bags in a Roots soil mixture.

 

[LightDep530]

Sorry yall I have not gotten back to this thread, I've been busy and had a rough start on these gals, figured there was not much to show off!.
I applied a little more heat to the situation and am using 50/50 RO and well water. I can get this to PH at 6.4-6.5 without any additives.
Everyone is looking good. There is some big fat hands in there. I got some back up cuts of GDP, Platinum Bubba, Purple Kush and Chemdog #4. They are doing pretty well. The Platinum Bubba and PK are nice and vigorous.
They have been getting topdressed with compost, guano, dry humate, rock dust. Then dosed with "dormant" 10 minute tea.
The new soil mix is 1/2 bag FFOF, 1 Bag Roots org. 16 cups worm castings, 8 cups fungal dom compost, 1 cup kelp meal. Seems like they like it.

I'm doing a little LST work on the plants that are liking it. Trying to get some more consistent sized terminal buds. I think it would be ideal if I got nothing less than the size of a quarter. Good luck right?
The feminized church seeds just turned out to be all males, probably because i pissed them off. The looked like real males though not intersex plants. Still waiting on a few plants to sex out, its getting kind of confusing in there, i put a couple of flags in the plants that are on sex watch. I have not been pheno guessing very much, I don't have an eye for it and I'm just taking what comes.
If anyone is interested I can label some of the photos next time.
I got a new outdoor thing for the spring so I will be starting some plants for that. There will be Dream Kush ( blue dream x sugar kush) that I found as a bag seed. Not sure what else I'm going to do. Maybe Headband or some of the Platinum Bubbas. Probably going to try and put them in rows and tarp them to beat the rush this fall. I need to get a jump on those gals, I'm a little behind. I might use some of the gals in the greenhouse.