400 watt perpetual organic coco perlite, proprietary AF mix.

[Rudy R Alis]

Hello everybody allow me to introduce myself and my family.

This setup is a closet measuring 42 inches by 28 inches painted flat white. It is lit by a 400 watt Philips HPS in a cool tube attached to a 6 inch centrifugal fan. The light is not on a timer (I love AFs) I turn it on when I wake up and I turn it off before I go to sleep, so it is on about 15 to 16 hours per day. Ventilation is provided by a 4 inch centrifugal fan attached to a carbon filter. The medium is a 50/50 mix of Botanicare coco coir and perlite. Fertilizers are slow release processed poultry litter 4-2-2, bat guano 0-12-0 and maxicrop liquid seaweed extract. Each gallon of medium has 1 cup poultry litter plus 1 tsp bat guano mixed into it watered with RO water mixed with 3/4 tsp maxicrop and enough Ph down to bring it to Ph 5.8. When the females start flowering I add more bat guano and foliar feed epsom salt when needed.

Here is a webcam pic of the setup. A good camera should arrive Thursday.



The 1 gallon grow bags all have a germinated seed or sprout in them, sadly all but one sprout had its codyledons eaten by insects. This is severely stunting their growth and I will probably have to replant them. Got some neem tree oil and am making tobacco tea to prevent this from recurring. I am now in a sub-tropical climate it is the hardest environment I have ever grown in, very high heat and humidity, every type of bug you can think of and the mold is so bad that last winter I was going bald and had to shave my head and use sulfur shampoo to kill a yeast infection in my hair. It was so painful I couldn't sleep. This place is a nightmare for indoor growers but it is frost free so when hurricane season is over I will plant some exotic long flowering sativas outdoors in the spots I have prepared.

The 3 inch square pots all have seeds in them that did not crack after a 48 hour soak. They are used as backups for the seeds in the grow bags.

This plant is 15 days old from dry seed. My only F2, I started the few F2s I had left only 3 cracked 2 were duds and didn't come up.



The F1 seeds are 18 months old and were not stored properly, long story, poor germination. I had most of my F2 (LR2 x ML) x BS growing when I had to chop them because my apprentice who is not from Humboldt county developed psycosis from smoking too many blunts of this cross. It really does happen, he was hearing voices and everything, he disappeared after getting off work and spent a week in the woods with no food or water hiding from his imaginary enemies. I was afraid his body would turn up somewhere and the police would come to our house looking for clues. Knowing the police might be coming to my house soon I chopped my plants down and moved everything to a safe, but not air conditioned location were they were stored for many months.

I have 1800 more watts of lights that I am not using, at my last house my landlord let me pay the rent with buds, here in my new place I am not so fortunate.

 

[Rudy R Alis]

The sprouts that had their cotyledons eaten have mostly died, the untouched sprout is looking good but growing slowly.

And now the good news.

 

[Rudy R Alis]

The sprout that was not eaten by insects has been getting eaten by fungi. It was growing very slowly and the cotyledons were turning yellow. I moved the medium away from the stem to look at the roots and they were sickly and brown, root rot. This is the first time I have gotten root rot in coco. This sub-tropical climate I'm in is very hostile to indoor growers. It has rained starting every afternoon for the last 2 months, the low temperature last night was 80 degrees.

Root rot is curable with hydrogen peroxide I have used it at 3% to soak sick roots in DWC but I wasn't sure if seedlings could take it, they can. This plant is a week younger than the big one. Since being watered first with 3% then 1.5% peroxide it has perked up and it even grew a little.


The big one is an F2 bred for fungi resistance. When I first started growing here in local soil I lost more then half of the sprouts to damping off at the soil line. The best of the survivors were used as parents.


It's a girl!


Hopefully I will get a male in time to pollinate it and preserve its mold resistant genetics. If not I'll have to smoke her unseeded and at full potency.

Now that I have the bugs and thugs under control I ordered some more seeds. Nirvana's Northern Lights x Haze, Northern Lights thrives in conditions that would kill less hardy strains and Haze is adapted to the tropical climate. These genetics should make my mix more tolerant of their growing conditions.

Nirvana's seeds are excellent if you get the right strains, their Aurora Indica is very potent and their White Rhino once got me so stoned a chipmunk thought I was dead. After about half an hour laying on my back under a tree staring into nothing not moving even an eye muscle the critter came closer and closer until it jumped onto my chest. I moved my eyes to look at it and it freaked out jumped off and ran up a tree chirping frantically.

 

[Rudy R Alis]

On September 20th I started 40 more seeds, soaked them for 2 days in a quart of water with 2 Tbl h2o2 changing it daily. 3 cracked after 2 days (old seeds) and all 40 went into 3 inch by 4 inch pots of coco/perlite sterilized with a thorough watering of undiluted 3% hydrogen peroxide. It has been my experience that seeds that don't crack after even a week underwater will often germinate after being placed in a medium.



So far 4 have come up and they all look good.

These will get .75% h2o2 until they are out of the seedling stage.

The seedling that was being treated for root rot 2 weeks ago has recovered and is growing again. Sadly? it is female, never thought I would say that. She has been transplanted into a one gallon grow bag and watered with 0.75% hydrogen peroxide. It will be inoculated with serinade in 2 days.

My F2 is comming along nicely. I was hoping 1 cup per gallon of medium of 4-2-2 composted poultry litter would be enough for the whole cycle but it was not. The plant has been turning yellow from nitrogen deficiency about 2 weeks ahead of when I want it to. This is my first grow with this setup, still getting it dialed in. Now it is getting 1 teaspoon of kelp extract and 4 tablespoons of poultry litter per gallon of water with the Ph adjusted to 5.8. Since it started flowering it has also been getting 1 teaspoon of 0-12-0 bat guano and 1/8 teaspoon of epsom salt once per week.

 

[Rudy R Alis]

This lady is 7 weeks old, looks like about 2 more weeks until harvest.
She is the way I like my AFs short, chunky, frosty, huge cola with stubby branches and has a hashy sweet floral smell. Smells like a flower shop with a few open garbage bags full of hash in it.

Group shot under the HPS ages 7 weeks 6 weeks and 2 weeks.

The big 2 week old plant is a boy, my line has not ended I just wish he would have been there in time to pollinate my F2.

I think my root rot problem is being caused by too much poultry litter in the mix providing food for the root rot fungus. I have using 3 parts water to 1 part 3% hydrogen peroxide to keep it under control. I know this is too much h2o2 and it is stunting and possibly mutating them but they would die without it. Now that they are out of the seedling stage I will start using 1 tbl h202 per gallon and inoculate them with Sarenades bacillus subtillis.