My first grow

[kolah]

looking great! are you gonna leave them in pots? they will do best in the ground. what el. are you at? that is gonna be some superb smoke there! makes the MMj shops stuff look silly. but seriously a simple amended soil or raised bed in that greenhouse will give you some monsters. i can suggest alot of really cheap organic amendments. wish i had me a greenhouse this year!

They'll stay in the buckets due to cost restraints. I will fertilize them with General Organics Bloom. I am at 9300 ft above sea level and the natural ground here in the Rocky Mts is hard and clayish with a very low pH due to all the pine trees.

BUT, for next years grow I will pick ax and dig down 2 foot into the dirt and fill it with mulch and Happy Frog soil (or Root Organics soil). The 2x12's that make my beds are about another foot high so I will have a soil depth of about 3 feet. I started my seeds in late June, (way to late IMO) so next year I will start my seeds in April. The 3 clones that I bought were cloned off in April and they are way ahead of my late June beans.

This grow is all organic. As a newbie and first grow I am trying to keep it simple as possible. I inspect them 2-3 times per day (checking for bugs, deficiencies, hermies, etc). I did not buy any MJ grow books but instead gathered all my information from THC Farmer forum and also had some help form some of the experienced growers here.

And yes since the CO law states only 6 plants per redcard license I hope to grow 6 fucking monster plants next year. Next year I want to grow some Super Skunk for sure and some Barneys Farm LSD.

 

[Seamaiden]

Kolah, you may not have to pick down to the subsoil. I'm gonna put up a picture of a girl who literally slipped through the cracks. The cracks between the boards of our back deck, that is. She's growing in our native 'soil', which in the Sierra foothills is a red clay filled with rocks. If there's soil, it's on the surface and it's very thin and generally only found under stands of manzanita (this is on our property only, I haven't lived here long enough or worked the land long enough to speak about anything else). This little lady got no water before I discovered her, and afterwards has gotten peed on twice and watered three or four times, less now that no plants are up on the deck for their water to dribble down on her.

I really like that long shot of the GH. It looks absolutely idyllic there right now. Come November? Maybe not so much.

I should have checked my clones more closely, discovered that they have spider mites, too. Good thing I've got me plenty of tomato leaves!

 

[kolah]

SM, thats pretty cool how she grows so well in hard soil but I believe you are right as plants are so adaptive in certain cicumstances.

I have one plant in the greenhouse that I buried directly in the ground just to see how it would go. It didn't show up in the pictures I posted as it is in the far corner. I'll take a pic of it. Its very lanky, thick stemmed and has these hugeass fan leaves. It has hardly any bud growth and shes a real oddball. Its a Deep hash/ EC Sour Diesel strain.

 

[Seamaiden]

It's not just the hard 'soil' (and I use that term very loosely here, it is truly rocks in-filled with clay), it's the lack of direct sunlight until afternoon that's blowing me away. She hasn't stretched to hell, and she's setting bud. She looks better than anything else I have going right now, too!

Took me a while to figure out who she is, but I'm pretty certain she's a Northern Lights #5.

 

[kolah]

Yeah she looks good and healthy. NL should do very well outdoors. I bought a NL clone but she died 3 days after I bought it. Grrrrrrr. :)

 

[Seamaiden]

After this year you won't need to buy clones again. I predict.

 

[kolah]

Here is the only one I planted in the ground inside the GH. It is very tall and lanky, has lots of superbig leaves and very few sprouts. I doubt it will yeild much of anything but ya never know. It is a female but I am watching it closely to make sure it doesn't become a Dickzy Chick. (ONE huge advantage I noticed is that this girl rearely needs watering) I'd bet the roots are so deeply established and picking up water from the ground supply. My potted plants get watered twice day...as they dry out quickly.

 

[kolah]

My Elephant Bud and Skunk 1 has some funky lower leaves. 3 days ago I used some General Organics Bloom fertilizer. The bottle label stated:
=======================================================
BioThrive® Bloom provides flowering and fruiting plants with essential nutrients, perfectly balanced for superior blooms and bountiful harvests. Specially designed to maximize flower, fruit, and seed production, this unique formulation will give you bigger, more nutritious and delicious yields. BioThrive® Bloom benefits all kinds of plants during the flowering and fruiting phases of growth.

BioThrive® Bloom Vegan Plant Food has a minimum guaranteed NPK analysis of 2-4-4 and is derived from: alfalfa meal, cane sugar, copper sulphate, glacial rock powder, iron sulphate, kieserite, manganese sulphate, molasses, plant extracts, potassium sulphate, rock phosphate, sodium borate, sodium molybdenate, soybean meal, and zinc sulphate. Also contains seaweed and humic acids.

This product works best with soils that contain calcium. When using depleted soil, coir, perlite, rock wool, or any sterile media, for best results, we recommend that you supplement this product with CaMg+.

General Organics® BioThrive® Bloom is available in 32 ounce and 1 gallon bottles. Use between 1 and 2 teaspoons per quart of water.
=================================================

What are they deficient in? possibly CaMg? (notice the burnt tips on the bigger leaf)

 

[kolah]

((bump))

 

[Seamaiden]

That's not interveinal chlorosis, that's chlorosis OF the veins. I think they need food (N). Not Ca and not Mg.

Doing a little more reading up on veinal chlorosis (not as much written about that) and the consensus is: Root zone temperatures being either too hot or too cold, root zone upset of some sort (pH or physical issues) and a possible Fe deficiency. However, I believe Fe deficiencies present as newer leaves going yellow, not lower leaves showing chlorosis of leaf veins.

 

[kolah]

Thank you SM. Daytime temps are 80-90 and nights are 50..sometimes 48 or so. Maybe the cold nights are kinda stressful for them.

Before using the liquid fertilizer I did quite a lot of reading about it. It was stated in one article that some MMJ strains LOVE heavy fertilizer and others can only take 1/4 of the recommended dosage. I guess plants are much like humans as we all act different to nutritional needs, pharma medication and their dosages and calorie intakes. So, I gave them a light feeding 4 days ago and another one yesterday. I gave a bit less mixture/dosage than indicated on the bottle directions. I may transplant that EB plant in the ground or put dirt around the outsides of the pot to keep her roots warmer. I noticed the Elephant Bud has stopped growing considerably.....although she is in he flowering stage for sure.

How long before I see a change? I do not want to over fertilize them.

 

[Seamaiden]

I'd give a week or so to note responses.

 

[kolah]

Roger that, Over. <click> :)

 

[kolah]

I got a little antsy over my Elephant Bud plant. She was going downhill fast. I bought a big bag of Happy Frog, dug a 2 foot hole in the ground (inside the GH), filled it with HP and transplanted her out of the 5 gallon pail.

Getting her out of a 5 gallon bucket was a huge task by myself. I gently scraped the sides of the bucket, totally wetted down the soil and held the 5 gallon bucket upside down with one hand (not an easy task). With my left hand I gave the bucket a few raps and shakes and she came free. I then gently (and luckily) flipped her upright placed her in the new soil and gave her a drink. I should have videotaped it because it was a bit tricky to handle for one person. The key was getting the soil just right, not too dry or too wet so it stayed together while I took it out....and I had to be careful not to break off any branches in the process. I am headed out to check on here now.

 

[kolah]

My Elephant Bud transplanted into the ground from a 5 gallon pail

 

[kolah]

My Skunk #1 looking nice and hearty:

 

[kolah]

DJ's Blueberry looking good too, a lil lanky but thats ok, lots of buds on this sweetie-pie. So far so good!

 

[Seamaiden]

Nice, kolah! I almost popped a bunch of Skunk #1 seeds this year, but like every year I have to cull the herd or things will get out of hand. Would you mind showing some close-up shots of the Blueberry? I'm interested in leaf structure and internodal spacing. See, I'm doing some F2s this year of something that was given to me as Cali Blue--Cali O x Blueberry. I LOVED the sample I'd been given and so the fellow who shared sent me the seeds. Thing is, the description of Orange Krush matches my experience with this plant exactly. So I've been able to nail down what expressions are matching up with Cali O momma, but not able to figure out if it was DJ Short's Blueberry who was the daddy of these Cali Blues or just some random Blueberry Daddy.

Does that make sense?

 

[kolah]

I will try and take some better pictures of the DJ BB for you...but my camera takes shitty close-up shots. The DJ is starting to stretch out a bit. I wished it would stay more compact but hey shes still got a long way to go.

 

[kolah]

Trichomes are popping...yeah baby. Elephant Bud and Skunk 1