Captain's Log: Dispatches from Planet Milson

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Milson

Milson

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Greetings! It's Milson again.

I think it's probably time for a perpetual thread because I am growing perpetually (until my death) and at this rate things are going to be blending together in a way that makes threads going grow by grow kind of incoherent since grows will be blending together.

I am still going to finish the thread for my Cheese, Chemdog, Kali China, Sweet Zombie, Zamaldelica x Kali China grow, but after that the rest will be here until I decide to start a new thread if I do.

I have undergone the most radical developmental growth period of my life since college in the last six months, and I think this site, this hobby, and this plant have a lot to do with it. I have a tendency toward agnostic spirituality and philosophy, along with a lot of more quantitative pursuits as I bounce up and down densities of information trying to better grasp my world.

And it's my world that I am trying to grasp. Hence the title. I'm too dumb to understand the world at large in any way that doesn't make me just get frustrated and angry, so I am going to stop trying to do that and just focus on what I can grasp. Since I started doing that in May, I am down 45 pounds (coming up on college Milson!), my relationship with my wife has gotten a lot stronger, I am less angry, my cholesterol is down 100 points, my BP is down, I am making a lot more money (during flu! I work as a freelancer/self-employed/business owner working on apps, so there is a direct correlation between my productivity and how much money I make, which is nice), and in general I am just happier.

Milson and Cannabis

For those that don't know, I have a card as a medical grower to manage nerve pain stemming from some lower back issues. In high enough doses, especially when mixing multiple strains (yeah I am listening!) in edibles along with smoke and some hash, the pain melts down to just about nothing unless I have a very strong attack, and even then it gets managed a hell of a lot better. I have not been able to get a good method going for distillate, as I am stuck at the bubble hash phase for now as I get better at that...but bubble is pretty damn nice.

I am also aiming to help my father, who has Parkinson's. His initial reviews of my hash I made him were "the effects are good but I don't like smoking it." He does have my edibles though and it is helping him more than he will admit. I have made those for him with mixes and straight. Predictably, he finds the mixes better for pain too, but he hates the high if I make them too strong. I still can't get him to just get over being high for a while, but ya know. We are making progress.

Personality-wise, I am basically teetering on the edge of crazy. I think.

Anyway, that's enough background for now! Let's get to good stuff!

Thoughts on the near future of my growing and strain selection

I am going dad hunting.

I have no interest in finding a keeper mother plant and running a bunch of clones of her. Variety is useful to me and besides that, this hobby is in part showing me the flows of life, and I want to honor that by keeping the flows going and not adopting an attitude of scarcity if it is not warranted. So I think I am going to do what it looks like a lot of breeders I admire do: find a good dad and go from there. It seems like finding a good dad is the hard part that separates good breeders from people just making crosses. I don't think I will be breeding until I have more space, but I can start the process of getting a feel for identifying good dads now. First step is to just make a damn cross and grow them out, right! Let's keep things simple.

In my first effort to find a dad, I am popping 5 x Black Widow from Nirvana and 6 x ((Nevil's Haze x Original Haze) x Original Haze) from @agseedco. These are old school genetics that are still more tamed than pure landrace stuff (re the haze...obviously black widow is very tamed), so they seem like a good starter spot. I think growing the haze is going to be a huge challenge for me, but holy crap do I like a good haze. A lot of people do. They are not the best for pain relief but for daytime smoke they are great. I am pretty confident I will do okay with the black widow, so I should get some smoke out of this run regardless, and frankly I am thinking I can figure out the haze too.

My interest in going old school is, to be honest, because I can grasp it better. I just don't know what a lot of this newer stuff is and so I cannot imagine trying to breed with it. Not saying it would be bad. I just don't get it. I really like Diesel strains and so that was another consideration, but I am trying this route for now.

The Plan

The plan is to grow these out and sex them while waiting on my last round to finish their flowering. Keep clones of the dads and destroy the seed plants once the clones have rooted. Bonsai the dad clones to keep them short so I can have them legally. Try all the moms. Decide if either strain seems like a good dad (the answer will very hopefully be yes). Grow out the dads from the strain I want, collecting pollen. Pick a dad I like best watching them complete a growth cycle while growing out some fems of girls I think might be interesting (based on ideas of hybrid vigor and effect) by pollinating just one of their branches with the dad(s) I am thinking about. Smoke the girls and see which one of them I think would have the most interesting seeds. Grow those out.

And I don't know from there but that sounds like a plan.

The Goal

My project is toward the most meditative strain I can manage. I know I can already grow out plenty of different strains to manage pain and really the key is power and difference. However, I have found I need to be going in the same direction for more meditative strains. When I mix a lot of different stuff, things get a bit more cloudy. Awesome for managing a nerve pain attack. But it does make me feel more dull than sticking with the same strain all day.

In my other thread, I said I would call this eventual strain "Nachiketa", after a character who talks to death in the Katha Upanishad, which I find really meaningful and interesting. However, the idea of me ever reaching a final point on this project sounds hilariously absurd to me now, so I am just going to call this entire project my Nachiketa project. It will be ongoing until I don't need it anymore (I die).

How I Grow

The way I grow is kind of weird. I use a fusion approach that tries to capture some of the early speed of coco while also having the flowering stability of organic soil grows. So I start in peat pellets (jiffy pellets), then move to small coco containers, before ending up at a layered 3 gallon fabric pot. The goal of each of the first two stages is to develop a solid root structure that then takes hold in the layered fabric pot. The layers of the fabric pot are coco/perlite with worm castings and some Neptune's Harvest kelp meal on the top, while the bottom is a mixture of organic, nutrient rich soil (in this case, Promix BX with extra perlite) that has been further enriched with worm castings, Neptune's Harvest kelp meal, OregonismXL from Roots Organics, and Happy Frog Japanese Maple Fertilizer (4-3-4). The Happy Frog is also innoculated with myco.

For pest control, I use DE and azamax as well as yellow sticky cards.

I cook the pots for a couple weeks in a bathtub by watering with Trinity from Roots Organics. This lets the microbes really get a good population going so long as I don't let bugs also chow down. So far that has been okay.

For liquid nutes, I use the Soul line from Aurora Innovations (Roots Organics). This plays well with both coco and soil. Yay.

This is of course all subject to change.

Light

Lights are a hot topic with growing obviously. I am aiming to keep it simple while also not putting my head in the sand. Right now I am using 2 x Viparspectra P1500s, which have a pretty full range spectrum. In addition, I run an extra 15 watts of supplemental far red, and that may be going up. It seems to help with growth structure and terp production, but gods do I not feel like arguing about it. In general, if a guy or gal on the internet thinks they will be able to talk me out of believing what I observe on Planet Milson, I find that obnoxious. We don't exist in the same reality for all intents and purposes. I will happily listen to what people have to say and what they observe and see if it makes sense to me. If it doesn't, I am not going to keep pursuing it.

It does not even matter if the person is right. It does not matter if I am right.

I am only doing what makes sense to me because I am too dumb to figure out the truth of anything beyond that point and when I try I ultimately get depressed.

I also run UVB because it helps trichomes and cannabinoids on Planet Milson. I am pretty confident this is true for most people but I dunno.

This is all of course subject to change.

Looking Forward

I am tumbling forward mindlessly like a child on powdered stairs, laughing. Wanna come?

Haiku

Milson melts to smoke:
swirls and plops into wires, spots.
Comes out pixels. Pops.

IMG_20201027_110725478.jpg


It's gonna get weird, y'all.
 
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Milson

Milson

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One thing I have been thinking about and thought I'd put here is how to smoke weed. I know that sounds dumb, but I recently think I got better at it because I was being dumb before and thought I'd share.

IMG 20201027 144254435 HDR

So basically I now consume like in the pic above. That's a cured piece of a bud pulled off the stem. It's not torn up or ground in my grinder (even cleaned).

The result is I can taste the terps A LOT more.

Before I was grinding stuff when I smoked it. Even good stuff. And if I did it by hand, I'd try to get it ground up so it would burn even.

Well good pot burns even. Even my first grow stuff burns even now. And I have been trying to handle it very carefully to preserve terps only to break some of those bonds at the last moment.

With those bonds not broken, my pot tastes better!

I'm sure most people know this and I was just being blind and dumb, but I thought i'd throw it out there as a log of when I got smarter about this.
 
MIMedGrower

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Great opening posts to your thread @Milson

And i agree about the grinder. I like to cut up weed with sharp scissors if a bud is too dense or resinous to smoke evenly.

I also like to sprinkle multi- strain keif on top for stronger and more complex effects.

I collect the keif in screened trim trays during dry trimming.

I am surely tuned in here to see what you do brother. :-)
 
Milson

Milson

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Great opening posts to your thread @Milson

And i agree about the grinder. I like to cut up weed with sharp scissors if a bud is too dense or resinous to smoke evenly.

I also like to sprinkle multi- strain keif on top for stronger and more complex effects.

I collect the keif in screened trim trays during dry trimming.

I am surely tuned in here to see what you do brother. :-)
Thanks! I'm very happy to have you. I will need to try some scissors after my next run instead of grinding....

And yeah, after all that grinder use, the compartment does have a good chunk of kief left, and I actually still have the stuff I collected from my trim bin that I have not even touched yet! I tried just sprinkling some on a bowl and I think planet Milson just went deflated for a sec lol hoo boy.
 
Milson

Milson

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Seeds going into their jiffy pellets soon. I will take pics of how I do it, as I think it's a pretty solved problem and I see people struggling with seedlings pretty frequently.

Also, big update from Casa de Milson! I now have fulltime access to our 2x2 tent. This means I can keep genetics in there as bonsais....in a 2x2 space I can fit plenty of bonsais. They are tiny. No need to grow them out if I just want their pollen or maybe even seeds? Just leave them as bonsais.....

So I think I will hang onto all the girls and guys that look remotely interesting in case I do catch any freak females that I want for a mom...seems unlikely, but it might happen with a haze as the flowering spread on those is pretty wide and a lady who flowers in 12 weeks instead of 15 would be a pretty big difference that I might like to hang onto.

This does mean killing more viable plants, but that's life. Running from that seems like when my mother told me everyone dies, including her and me. I was 7 and I cried on the living room couch for about 3 hours. Which is to say....cmon Milson, be an adult.
 
Milson

Milson

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K so this is just what I do. Not trying to start an argument lol.

Soak pellets. These are smaller than I have used in the past, but I think they will be fine. Just want to get the first couple days to get them into coco after that. The only thing I'm worried about maximizing is roots here.

IMG 20201028 154450960

Then I have this really fancy seed station I found at the grocery store. I think it cost multiple dollars?

IMG 20201028 155706420
IMG 20201028 155659655

The clear plastic at the bottom helps me see roots and get them to the next stage. It also gives them some not smush room. With bigger pellets I would water from the bottom, but with these I can't imagine needing to.
IMG 20201028 163249515
IMG 20201028 163242488

I put them in this deep.
IMG 20201028 163914568 HDR

Here they are!
IMG 20201028 163649220

That's haze.
IMG 20201028 163645996

This is black widow.
IMG 20201028 170302849

Humidity domes! I will pull those off as soon as I see a sprout. They are getting about 700lux from a bulb over a yard away and ambient light. Once they sprout and have cotyledons going I will double that and go from there. There is a vivo sun heat mat underneath that has not malfunctioned on me. I am watchful.

Hopefully they are through those pellets within 72-96 hours and then I will put them into coco in very small pots. Get them through those and we are cooking!
 
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Milson

Milson

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Gonna have to really pay attention to this one. Thanks. :-)

🙂

When they went into limonene and its antidepressive/anxiety properties and I thought about how my best friend loves the sprite syrup tasting nyc diesel for its low anxiety, my brain was like an engine in the red that needed to switch gears lol it was like omg I need to take notes.

Found that channel through @Dirtbag . It's amazing.
 
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Milson

Milson

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I like your style. Great idea on the cupcake tins too. Clever :)
Thank you! Glad to have you along.

The cupcake tins were an emergent thing lol I went to the store looking for those aluminium baking tins you use to make like a banana bread or something but they were out (I would use those with river rocks with a similar idea). I, being stoned (I am literally sun up to sun down high almost every day..), looked for another tool to accomplish the same task and...things clicked.

I see no reason it won't work. But really the reason I call seedlings "solved" is jiffy pellets are just crazy easy to water and manage compared to little seedlings in bigger pots. Both work of course. But if somehow the seedling does get screwed up in its first few days it can take some time to recover to the extent it does. I know because I stunted the absolute crap out of my seedlings on my first grow by not watering them properly lol. (I continued this practice until about week 3 of flower.....I was so terrified of overwatering that I underwatered drastically). So I really try to watch the roots carefully early because that's where the action is for the first 10 days or so and I have screwed it up badly before.

You didn't ask for all that with your reply, but there you go :-) Thanks again for stopping by and the note.
 
amekins

amekins

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Thank you! Glad to have you along.

The cupcake tins were an emergent thing lol I went to the store looking for those aluminium baking tins you use to make like a banana bread or something but they were out (I would use those with river rocks with a similar idea). I, being stoned (I am literally sun up to sun down high almost every day..), looked for another tool to accomplish the same task and...things clicked.

I see no reason it won't work. But really the reason I call seedlings "solved" is jiffy pellets are just crazy easy to water and manage compared to little seedlings in bigger pots. Both work of course. But if somehow the seedling does get screwed up in its first few days it can take some time to recover to the extent it does. I know because I stunted the absolute crap out of my seedlings on my first grow by not watering them properly lol. (I continued this practice until about week 3 of flower.....I was so terrified of overwatering that I underwatered drastically). So I really try to watch the roots carefully early because that's where the action is for the first 10 days or so and I have screwed it up badly before.

You didn't ask for all that with your reply, but there you go :-) Thanks again for stopping by and the note.
My first ever peat pellets arrived yesterday. I had to put one in water to 1) see how quickly it expands, and 2) be able to play with it and feel it’s texture. I’d love to feel confident approaching both germination and cloning.
 
Milson

Milson

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My first ever peat pellets arrived yesterday. I had to put one in water to 1) see how quickly it expands, and 2) be able to play with it and feel it’s texture. I’d love to feel confident approaching both germination and cloning.
If you let it soak and then squeeze it so roughly 1 tsp-1tbsp of water comes out, you are set :-) I use these things for all kinds of seeds. My wife has basically lost her mind in the best way when it comes to propagation (we have gone literally from 0 to 60 plants in the condo in six months...many are succulents but still), so I know they work with a variety of cuttings. I imagine they will work for cannabis cuttings too. I am going to find out for sure in a few weeks though :-)

The key I use with peat pellets is to mist the top and sides and really get the majority of the moisture in there via the bottom. That way the roots go down to find the moisture. In my experience, if I do it right, a seedling should be through the bottom in just a few days.
 

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