Hi haystack,
Just bean or syb is fine, I'll answer to either :)
even though I do have a decent amount of knowledge on growing/breedings/clone only/elites and cloning, etc etc, I still find myself learning something new all the time.
I ended up being the type of grower who is like a young (early-mid twenties) well-off couple who have children very young so they can live easy/retire while they're still young.. What I mean by that is this.. I had popped seeds al my life outside and in houseplants but never had a real/complete grow, this was before the internet and it was 'just' bagseed (which i heavily regret wasting) that i never really cared about. But about a decade ago (my early 20s) I popped like 11 or 12 bagseeds from good weed right during early july, I knew they wouldn't finish and they were doing sooo well I decided I had to flower them out. It starts flowering up here (49th parallel) around mid Aug depending on how much light you get and strain.. Soooo, I literally spent like 24/7 2-3 days online, 1 day to sleep, 24/7 2-3 days back on, and so on, mostly on Overgrow and Cannabis World (RIP both sites, they rocked) just researching and researching and asking questions for about a month, my eyes were always red and dry but once i get into a hobby i can't stop until i learn/practice all aspects of the subject... so I got a 80w T12 shoplight w/ 5000kelvin bulbs (which quickly turned into 4 shoplights of mixed spectrum screwed and glued into one unit which I could convert into 2 160w setups, if need be) and vegged out the seedlings while i ordered a 400w MH/HPS ballast and sealed glass hood (with a 4" PC style fan pulling the air out of the hood) and it came with 2 bulbs (1 MH, 1 HPS) all for about $200 canadian. I then set it up in a 33"x32" (not including the shelves which were about a foot deep, where I could put the ballast high up where the heat was pulled out from, and other flower room junk) white painted closet, I even did a diary under sybarite on OverGrow. Meanwhile I was still studying/researching and getting other equip (temp/RH guage, PH meter [which i haven't used for about 5+ years, same as my ppm meter], and other CFLs and varying mounting hardware, about the time i ordered the 400w a dude gave me an old 1000w MH ballast and a phosphorus coated 3500ish kelvin bulb and my 1st clone, a BB that smelt like grape but taste so-so and didn't rilly get you high), anyways, the point is I went from 12 bagseed seedlings and not knowing much more than 12/12 light/dark is needed to flower MJ to someone with at least 25-30 strains always on the go in veg, and 10-15 dif types on the go in flower. I was on a mission for Info, Experiments/comparisons, a real skunk like those of my youth (i literally bought and grew every single seed pack with skunk in the label [except crosses] with absolutely nothing even 1/2 worthy to show for it), and the best nute system and medium for my gro/setup/enviroment.
People who know me from back then will remember how much of a sponge for new info and techs I was, and how much time i spent online asking and later challenging the "gurus" of the forums because some of thier old 'by the book' ways just didn't make sense to me and I had watched things grow/work beautifully despite using techs that were not recommended.
So anyways, back to the metaphor, it's like i went through 15-20 years of growing pains with all my comparos/experiments/and of course, mistakes. Doing so many different strains all at different times in dif size pots, vegging and flowering under all sorts of different lights, some bulbs mixed some on there own. I flowered quite alot under that 1k MH bulb, or with another HPS
Hortilux for a kind of mixed spectrum, in veg i used combos of 400-1000w MHs, sometimes with T12s, T8s, T5s, cfls on the side, or sometime just with the floros. I rooted clones every way you could imagine, even grafted successfully.. I fought Mites a handful of times until i found the best miticide, thrips, powdery DAMN mildew so much i ended up with a sulphur burner, fungus gnat larvae [the odd flyer doesn't do jack to yer plants), high temps, high humidity, low humitiy, extreme cold..
And now I'm basically retired, I just add a new tricks, do the odd side-by-side for curiousity's sake, and of course always try new clones that sound like something I would like, same with seeds.. I also have added quite a few tropical plants and have cloned and given away 100s of babies to everyone who wanted one. I saved my mum's orchid (took 6-8 months under my T5 unit) and got it to put out a new flower shoot and many new leaves, along with a baby. I was going to replace all the medium/substrate, remove the baby and give it to my mum for christmas but i decided (since they are fragile and it just put out a fresh flower shoot) to just remove a bit of the medium, leave the baby, give it to her, wait until it's finished flowering and then remove the baby, all the medium that I can possibly get off, repot it with fresh medium, prune off the lower old leaves and give it back to her or veg it until it's setttled and has a new flower shoot and give it back to her.
I am starting to research orchids, they're very beautiful plants, never need to be transplanted into a larger pot, and they are very yin/yang female/male, it's almost a sexual plant. The one i recovered for my mum has beeeauiful leaves now, they're a wicked blend of deep purple, red, and light to dark shiny green.
So yah, now growing is really a hobby for me, not work, I took alot of risks and flack trying alot of my dif methods and experiments, but it payed off in spades, I can now read a plant as soon as i see it, no need to check any FAQs or guides.
I have friends that were/are doing 10-20+ light grows for decades and now they're doing 1 light for personal and it's like they have to start from scratch.. They don't know how to keep a veg room, mothers, or how to root clones. They have the hardest time growing more than 1 strain at a time for variety, they don't know how or what to use in veg regarding floros/cfls, nor do they know what difference 24/0 makes over 16/8, etc etc..
Believe me i'm not trying to toot my own horn ^, or making fun or look down on the type of growers i just mentioned... I just know it sure is nice to walk into any empty space and know exactly what to grow and how/what equipment/nutes I'll need and how much yeild I can get to within about 15% depending on the strain.. All that stress is behind me.
I hope to visit as many threads as possible and give advice if i have any, but I have a nasty OCDish problem where I ramble on explaining EVERYthing in intricate detail, which takes time, and I don't have alot of it to search through the threads frequently, doesn't mean i won't try tho.
ANYone can PM me with any MJ related question and i will get back to you asap.
Mal, thanks for the welcome, and the BB is definately the bee's knees ;D
