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It's time to clear away some of my seeds from my massive stockpile. Since I don't consume THC-dominant strains anymore, I needed to get rid of a bunch. I already sent out a bunch to friends, but I can't get rid of them fast enough. So...I'll grow a few in small 16oz cups!
We did a large 16oz cup grow last year with pretty good results, although they were all autoflowering cultivars. This time, they are all photoperiodic varieties!
This will be the first test of my new grow setup: A 2x4 tent, with a new AC Infinity Ionboard S24 I managed to get on sale plus a coupon for a total of 30% off. We'll also be utilizing side lighting with a bunch of 3ft LED T5 light tubes.
Some of these seeds are old, and I don't expect them all to crack open, but we'll see how it goes.
I started by cutting slits in the bottom of all 29 plastic cups, and filling them up with recycled soil, mixed with some mushroom compost and earthworm castings.
Then, I placed each seed between two cotton make-up pads, placed the sandwiches on top of the soil of each cup, and, using a syringe, soaked each of them with water that I generously added some B.t. to.
Finally, I put them outside of my lung room, where the exhaust fans exhale hot humid air, inside a couple plastic storage totes with their lids on loosely.
I prefer them to be outside of my lungroom while the B.t. goes to action, just to safeguard against any fungus gnats entering my other growing spaces. Also, I need them out of the way, as we still didn't hang the new lighting in the 2x4 tent. So, I'll go install that lighting equipment now, and check back on them later today to see if they need to be moistened some more.
Edit, 48 hours later:
So, it's been 48h since they've been incubating in cotton pads. Let's have a look to see who the winners and losers are. In the process, I found out we forgot to include 1 cultivar: Kannabia Seed Company - Monkey Grease, so I edited the list of strains for this diary to include her.
Out of 29 old seeds, 24 have radicles protruding after 48 hours. The losers that we won't be growing are:
Seedsman - Peyote Zkittlez
Seedsman Purple - Ghost Candy
Ganja Farmer Seeds - Cheese
Ganja Farmer Seeds - Lemon OG Kush
Garden of Green - Diesel Berry Cough
We'll sow the 24 winners into their cups right now, and discard the 5 losers. We'll be back soon with a view of them in their new home.
Edit, 6 days from the start of germination:
After sowing the cracked open seeds, we have 17 of the 24 above the soil and with their first set of true leaves. The other 7 never showed themselves yet, so we are culling them away. At the end of next week, or in about 10 days, we’ll see where we stand. If there are any less vigorous specimens, we’ll cull some more, and up-pot to 1L’s. Only the strong survive for this grow, and to maximize surface area, we’ll up-pot only if the numbers are small enough. If not, they'll continue until harvest in their 16oz cups.
As of currently, the 17 winners are:
1. HUBA Seed Bank - Purple OG
2. HUBA Seed Bank - Deep Chunk x The OG #18
3. Ganja Farmer Seeds - Skywalker 2.0
4. Ganja Farmer Seeds - Amnesia
5. Seedsman - Critical Purple Kush
6. Seedsman - Black Sugar
7. Seedsman - Banana Jealousy
8. Seedsman - Bubba Cheesecake
9. Seedsman - Peyote Gorilla
10. Seedsman - Gelato 41 BX
11. Kannabia Seed Company - Purple Kush
12. Kannabia Seed Company - Thai Fantasy
13. Kannabia Seed Company - Afrodite
14. Kannabia Seed Company - Skunk+
15. Kannabia Seed Company - Kiss
16. Royal Queen Seeds - Critical
17. MSNL - OG Kush
As a recapitulation from last week, the winners that made it are:
1. HUBA Seed Bank - Purple OG
2. HUBA Seed Bank - Deep Chunk x The OG #18
3. Ganja Farmer Seeds - Skywalker 2.0
4. Ganja Farmer Seeds - Amnesia
5. Seedsman - Critical Purple Kush
6. Seedsman - Black Sugar
7. Seedsman - Banana Jealousy
8. Seedsman - Bubba Cheesecake
9. Seedsman - Peyote Gorilla
10. Seedsman - Gelato 41 BX
11. Kannabia Seed Company - Purple Kush
12. Kannabia Seed Company - Thai Fantasy
13. Kannabia Seed Company - Afrodite
14. Kannabia Seed Company - Skunk+
15. Kannabia Seed Company - Kiss
16. Royal Queen Seeds - Critical
17. MSNL - OG Kush
They all seem to be doing fine so far. We have been watering them with an endo-myco solution, and foliar spraying them with a fish excrement solution.
We made a decision the other day that will affect this grow somewhat. Next week, 2 or 3 of these will be moved into a new home. I had a new tent and light ordered for me, so we are expanding into 3 indoor gardens. As such, 2 or 3 of these plants will be transplanted into more adequately-sized pots, and grown as I normally would. I have not decided which ones yet, nor have I constructed the new growing home. Time will tell...
This week was pretty rough for all of my gardens, indoor and outdoor. We had a heat wave in the triple digits (Fahrenheit) all week, with humidity over 90% outdoors. Keeping my indoor lung rooms under control, and thus internal tent temperatures, was difficult, to say the least. There were times when my tents were 90F or slightly higher, with an average of about 86F the whole week. Some tents (and even outdoor plants) did not like that at all. However, these little ones seemed to not be phased by it. They all seem to be doing fairly well so far, and I imagine we will be flipping them to bloom in a few days, being in tiny cups. We haven't touched them at all...no training or defoliation or altering them in any way. This week, we simply just added dechlorinated water, and quite a bit of it with the temperatures we had.
Welcome to week 3. We switched the lights to 12/12 at the beginning of the week. Yes, we're flowering these in small 16oz cups. It will probably be at least another week before they show themselves, but we're not in a rush, only trying to contain their size for the amount of feet room they have.
It's been two full weeks since I flipped their light schedule, and they are really trying, but might need a little longer :)
We did defoliate some lower fan leaves this week, as well as top-dressed with some bio-char and a potassium-rich fruit cocktail (banana FPJ).
We included pictures of each cultivar individually on the final day of the week, with the label on the cup showing. Maybe we can keep this habit for the end of each week going forward.
They all have buds forming this week, three weeks after flipping to a 12/12 photoperiod.
As expected, this is becoming challenging making them happy. Every day I prune a few yellow leaves from the bottom of a plant or two. The phloem cells are hard at work bringing nutrients to the other parts of the plant, and once an older leaf has lost its color, off it goes. This is just one way I have managed to grow in small cups before -- don't defoliate until the leaves are spent. Those roots are crowded and can't get all the nutrients they want. But, it's a fun little grow, and I expected this to happen. I like seeing what I can produce out of such a small container again. Two of the plants are a foot tall already, and still stretching.
It's been a month since the light schedule flip, and they're all developing their colas now pretty well.
We did have to kill one of them: Royal Queen Seeds - Critical. It had a leaf infection exhibiting tiny black dots which looked like it could have been mold on its lower leaves, and after defoliating, it seemed to spread to higher nodes soon after. It was behind the rest of the pack with bud formation because of that, and I didn't feel safe keeping it around. None of the other plants have been affected, so maybe it was a genetic trait with regards to nutrient needs, resulting in necrosis. No worries, as we have plenty more specimens left in this experiment.
Mid-week, I snapped a few close-up photos of the best performing ones so far. HUBA - Purple OG, is indeed getting purple.
I have continued to let the lower leaves get depleted of nutritional value, waiting until they are fairly yellow before defoliating them. It's one trick I've stuck to for small pot grows, as the phloem cells are bi-directional highways, transporting nutrients to lower or higher regions that need more than the small root mass can provide going up.
This grow was never a serious grow, more of a fun experiment that I try every year with a bunch of tiny cups. This year, something went horribly wrong.
At this point, I scrapped the experiment, and sacrificed most of the plants.
For the last few weeks we have been battling sickly looking leaves. Some of it is lockout of a lot of nutrients from being calcium deficient. Some of it looks to be pathogenic, with obvious fungal colony patterns that didn’t show up very well on camera.
I purged all but 7 plants in the experiment, and sprayed them all down with a fermented citrus and lactose solution. I’m not expecting anything to make it to the finish line, as the infection spread fast, and I am betting in a day or two I will see some of the remaining 7 with disease.
It’s okay though. This was just an experiment, and I don’t even consume THC-dominant cannabis anymore, anyway, so no loss really.
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Used techniques
Defoliation
Technique
8
Week 8. Harvest
7 months ago
Happy Harvest Day!
HUBA Seed Bank - Deep Chunk x The OG #18 - Custom Breeder & Strain
This diary is over.
What I believe to be septoria swept over the whole solo cup garden here.
On top of that, this plant, HUBA's Deep CHunk x The OG #18, pollinated the remaining 7 plants left. It had a single anther split open when I checked it after I noticed large seeds in all of the 7 plants. Hermed on me.
I think this was a sign to stop the grow early. I wasn't going to smoke any of it anyway, as the pathogen spread quickly, and I can't ever be too safe. No harm. Time to spray things down and start anew.
resi_max
