NekoSama's Set-Ups

Howdy y'all! This "diary" is more of a home base for all of my guides, set ups, tips, and tricks. If there is anything that y'all do special that you feel gets better results, post em in the comments below! If you have science to back it, even better! Now onto the boring stuff: |STERILIZATION| Before we do anything to anything, we ALWAYS sterilize equipment and pots to keep any bad pathogens out of our operations! This is super easy with a squirt bottle and any Food Safe grade Sanitizer (DO NOT GET DISINFECTANT!!!!) Make sure it says Food Grade! Easy to get at any kitchen supply store or on the internet. Diluted to appropriate amounts, it's easy to spray on anything and wipe off with a clean Terry cloth. Sanitation made simple y'all |MEDIUM| Neko is a big believer in all natural, so we use a housemade, organic soil blend that puts emphasis on using waste product. Neko starts by taking homemade compost, or locally sourced compost. This will help create a unique flavor profile unique to YOUR soil. Something no one can really copy! Take this black mixture and mix it with 1/3 by weight Perlite and 1/6 by weight Spagnum Peat Moss. This helps stop soil from compacting and keep air to the roots, without losing so much water during the day that you have to water daily. This mixture then gets an addition of: 2 pints crushed, roasted egg shells 1 pint dried, brown vegetable material. (Here I use old fan leaves that have been trimmed and dried) 1 pint vegetable Ash (again, same fan leaves just roasted at 500°F for 30 minutes. I usually roast with the egg shells.) 1 pint molasses to help get the soil "living and thriving", dissolved on 2 quarts of water and poured in the soil mix. Appropriate amount of Mycorrhiza. I use great white, but use whatever you like. 1 cup Blood Meal, dried 1 cup Bone Meal 3 cups Earthworm Castings Mix well and let sit for 7 days before using, stirring 2-3 times daily. As a bonus, I add Red Wrigglers to help begin breaking down everything and add Vermicompost to the mix naturally. This mix works best in Cloth pots, or any other pot that provides more oxygen to the roots than a standard clay or plastic pot. This mix can attract bugs quickly if it stagnates, so makes sure to avoid over watering! This mix can get you to flowering without need for nutrients. I still use them when needed for security bonuses but you definitely do not need nutrients for at least 3-4 weeks with this blend! |RECYCLING| To answer y'all's question, YES you can reuse soil. You'll want to re-liven your soil through a couple steps though: 1) Break up root matter and moisten soil with Mycorrhiza, plant enzymes, beneficial nematodes, and/or orangic nutrients such as guano, blood, bone meal, kelp/fish extract, dried plant material, ect. We use a combination of all of the above to not only freshen old soil but to make the soil a living biome before anything comes into contact with it. At this point, we add Red Wrigglers and place soil in large igloo containers and keep moist for about 15-30 days. The Wrigglers break down organic stuff and give more compost material in the form of work poop and work castings. Throwing in another cup of Bone and Blood Meal help bring nutrients up as well. This organic method to re-liven soil will make a special soil that can power through another grow with ease. The easy, quick mans way to do this is to take old soil and 'bake' for 7 days. In a sunny spot on a tarp is sufficient as long as it stays dry. After baking, reinnoculate with Mycorrhiza (at least!!) And feed soil with water and molasses. We don't like baking soil because it can kill any beneficial buddies and destroy the biome of your soil, leaving a "sterile slate" for a new grow. We're all about organic, and we have no issues with Time/Quality over Speed/Quantity. |SET-UP| So I run two 8feet by 4feet Zazzy tents and one 4feet by 4feet Growneer. The Growneer is set with 2 95CPF intake/exhaust fans (no regulators) and one oscillating clipper fan. We use this as the "Suffocation Chamber" and fermenting/drying room. We'll touch on that later. The "Veg" tent is one Zazzy with two 2000 watt Phlizon LED lights with full spec UV chips, 5w chips and a PPFD of 1000 at 30inches. One 600 watt LED Amico full spec light is on the far side for seedlings and younger plants. Intake is a 393 CPF AC Infinity fan with Monitor control for humidity and temp regulation. Exhaust fan is a 393 CPF exhaust fan with speed regulator, and we have 3 clipper fans inside the tent for circulation. 'Flowering' Tent is a Zazzy with two 1200 watt Bestva Reflector Elites LED lights with full spec UV, with a PPFD of 1130 at 30 inches. 10w chips make this light a monster producer. One 393 AC Infinity cloudline T6 with monitoring humidity and temp controls for intake, and a 393 speed regulated exhaust fan. 3 clipper fans for internal air circulation. |SUFFOCATING CHAMBER| The 4x4 Growneer is known as the Suffocation Chamber. Not only do we -pre-ferment and hang dry on this tent, but we also "sufficate" the plants before chopping of light and the roots of oxygen. Sounds brutal but there's science behind it! Starving a plant of a light before harvest is rumored to increase resin and terpenes. This is false. But it does stop the production of chlorophyll, and helps begin to break down existing chlorophyll. In the end, this leads to a flower that tastes smoother and less like 'green' or 'harsh grass'. Light suffcations peak time is around 36-72 hours. After that the plant is in a stage of death that will affect your beautiful terps and trichs! We do 72 hours combo Light sufficate and Root sufficate. The roots: Most people flush, and get good results. You're not flushing anything out of the plant but essentially "half drowning/half starving" the plant. Stress of any kind can increase trichs but not always effectively. Instead of flushing, try suffocation. For 72 hours, keep the roots 100% saturated with water by consistent watering or placing the container in a larger one filled with water. What this does is pretty neat: When the roots begin to die, the sugars in the plant stop moving. Natural bacteria, most notably b.Lacterius, then begin to breakdown the sugars into ethers, carbs and water. The more the sugars break down, the more they're turned into products that can be turned into trichs and terps quickly by a plant who knows her time is coming. As a bonus, you can do an "Ice Suffocation" by keeping a layer of ice on the soil that 1) keeps the soil 100% hydrated and 2) greatly reduces soil and stem temperature to trick the plant into thinking it's winter, and time to produce her last production of terms and trichs. This combo Suffocation is not only backed by science, but can increase both Trichs/Terpene production AND increase palatability of the smoke by a smoother texture and more noticable flavor. After 72 hours, we chop the plant at the base and dry 7-10 days whole. This drying process also begins fermenting the plant, or further breaking down of sugars and carbs to provide a smoother, cleaner smoke. Fermenting is also called curing, which most people do after drying. Pre-fermenting whole plants vs cutting colas off is a quality vs speed thing, so if top shelf is your goal, a longer dry/ferment/cure is beneficial. Any questions feel free to ask, and remember: Happy growin' y'all!! ✌️🌱🌲😎💨