Wanna Ask The Old Farts A Question?

[PassionForMaryJ]

ive noticed some wires are rated 300V others 500V or 600V .
im in 220v system, but what size wires should be used for connecting ballast ignitors etc. ive read that starting power is much higher.

Wire gauge is determined by the amp draw, not the voltage.
With 220v I usually go with 10 gauge wire, if you DIY it I'd go 10 gauge, just to be safe to not exceeded the wire/circuit amperage rating by over 80%, then the little start-up spikes won't be a problem.
If you run multiple ballasts, if possible just offset the timer on each by like 5 minutes.

I am not an electrician, but have wired up a DIY ballast before.
Be safe always when working with electricity, especially that high of a voltage, as Hempy said, it could easily kill you!

 

[omgwtf]

SOG/SCROG vs regular growing

SOG/SCROG vs regular growing

I hope it's not a dumb question. I know what SOG/SCROG are, but i just can't wrap myself around a question :
A friend has a big attic ready to build a growroom in (around 322sqf) where he's gonna be building a 215sqf flower room and a 100sqf veg room.
In which way is his yield going to be bigger/faster, using SOG/SCROG or just growing bigger but lesser plants ?
Do you think it's enough space to harvest 5-6lbs / month on average?Considering plants are growing in optimum conditions of course (veg room has CFL for clones+600w MH, flower room 1000w HPS, best temp/correct airflow/ph/water ppm/nutes etc.)
Thanks !

 

[HempKat]

okay thankyou you are right absolutley.

if electrican wires all up, where can i put/fit my ballast and ignitors capaticitor etc, some kind metal box? or can i screw them to some piece of wood and hook it on the wall?


hempkat rules

Well hopefully if you pay an electrician to do it he'll put it all in an appropriate case of some sort as part of the job? But see if you're at that point of hiring an electrician and given their going rates you'd probably save money and end up with something just as safe as what the electrician does, by buying a reputable brand ballast. There are places online that cater to people who like to grow more then just marijuana indoors so buying a lamp isn't as risky as it used to be when you had to go to a place that obviously catered to marijuana growers. Now if you are buying many lamps to set up a large scale commercial grow then you might draw attention but one person, ordering one light flies under the radar.

As for the mounting to wood question, that might seem like a good idea because it would allow the components maximum ventilation if they were mounted to a piece of wood on the wall. Alas the electronics get pretty hot and having them mounted to wood would be a serious fire risk. Ignoring that though exposure to humidity, risk of being brushed against and harming someone or liquid getting on it and short circuiting it are all likely hazards such a mounting would create.

 

[HempKat]

I hope it's not a dumb question. I know what SOG/SCROG are, but i just can't wrap myself around a question :
A friend has a big attic ready to build a growroom in (around 322sqf) where he's gonna be building a 215sqf flower room and a 100sqf veg room.
In which way is his yield going to be bigger/faster, using SOG/SCROG or just growing bigger but lesser plants ?
Do you think it's enough space to harvest 5-6lbs / month on average?Considering plants are growing in optimum conditions of course (veg room has CFL for clones+600w MH, flower room 1000w HPS, best temp/correct airflow/ph/water ppm/nutes etc.)
Thanks !

First off no, it's not a stupid question and the simple answer is for turn around they're not much different so long as you can start preparing the replacement plants as soon as you start the first batch flowering, in the case of ScrOG (since you got to train it to the screen before flowering). SOG since it typically uses clones that were rooted not long before being put into flower, takes less time then training but what you gain in that way you lose in the volume of plants you have to prepare. A worthwhile consideration with SOG vs ScrOG is if where you are at would punish you harder with say 100 plants (SOG) vs say 10 plants (ScrOG).

Now there are some aspects of the grow you describe that I would comment on but first there is one thing you asked that would make ScrOG more difficult to manage and that's when you talk of wanting to harvest every month. You could potentially do that with a rotating crop (plants in the same flower room started at different times). To do that with ScrOG would mean you'd have to be able to train to the screen half of your ScrOG plant total, every month. A month is not much time for training. It would be more realistic that you could produce enough clones every month to supply half the plants needed for your SOG...IMHO. I'm not sure if you actually meant every month though or if you meant every harvest. Since your flowering period is going to be 2 months on the short side and 3 months or longer on the long side depending on whether you're growing pure sativas or sativa dominant hybrids vs indica or indica dominant hybrids.

The other things that I wanted to mention attics are notoriously difficult places to set up good grows with stable optimal temps and humidity. They tend to be more cramped then other places and they are usually either very hot or very cold making temperature regulation much harder then say in a basement or a room in the normal living area of a home. Also on the yield in theory you should be able to pull at least 2lbs of cure, trimmed bud from on 1000W light if things are in fact truly optimal. If it's totally dialed in with the right high yielding strain you might even get 3lbs per 1000W. That's with your plants taking up a roughly 4' x 4' space. Realistically though 3lbs is tough to do consistently so I'd say better to aim for two and if you do better then that's a bonus. Either way you would need at least 2 x 1000W lights and 2 4' x4' spaces at a minimum and 3 at a maximum. So it sounds like you'll have plenty of room with the sizes you mentioned. To be fair though, I've never tried to get even close to 5-6lbs per crop or per month so I'm not really one to say for sure what you need to do that. I've done about 2lbs under one 1000W as my highest yielding indoor crop, usually I average 1.5lbs and when things didn't go well it's been as low as .75lb. 1.5lbs is more then enough to meet my needs until I can do another crop, even if I take a few months off in between.

One final thought, I haven't done the math but just sort of guesstimating, given the size the flower room will be you could do the 5-6lbs per month by having 2-3 lights/grow spaces running first and then starting 2-3 more lights/grow spaces a month later and then just keep rotating plants in and out as needed that way if they are both running plants that flower in 2 months you'll make your 5-6lb total per month but it'll be a fulltime job and your friend might want to consider help if he hasn't already.

 

[omgwtf]

Thanks for replying HK. TBH, it's me i'm talking about and not a friend lol , i was being paranoid.
Secondly, i know i'm going to have TEMP problems during summer, i hope i can have a grip on it with some good ACs.. still working on this.
Thirdly, i can't seem to find the edit button to my previous post, i will be having around 8 X 1000W in my flower room which is going to be around 200-220sqf (btw do you think 8 are enough, or 10X1000W are better ?). The more i read the more i'm giving up the ideea of harvesting every month, i'll try a regular 3months harvest, but i hope to get ~12 lbs cure trimmed bud. I'll be growing in soil.

 

[HempKat]

Thanks for replying HK. TBH, it's me i'm talking about and not a friend lol , i was being paranoid.
Secondly, i know i'm going to have TEMP problems during summer, i hope i can have a grip on it with some good ACs.. still working on this.
Thirdly, i can't seem to find the edit button to my previous post, i will be having around 8 X 1000W in my flower room which is going to be around 200-220sqf (btw do you think 8 are enough, or 10X1000W are better ?). The more i read the more i'm giving up the ideea of harvesting every month, i'll try a regular 3months harvest, but i hope to get ~12 lbs cure trimmed bud. I'll be growing in soil.

I figured as much, 9 times out of 10 when someone starts a question with "A friend..." they're actually talking about themselves. Unfortunately paranoia in our hobby is well justified but hopefully one day the laws will change where we don't need to be. However once the laws do change the financial reward to having such a large grow will evaporate.

What you want to do isn't impossible but the temp issue could make it costly especially if you live somewhere where the outside temps fluctuate greatly with the seasons. The best place to pull off an attic grow in my opinion would be a place where the temp is fairly mild and constant year round. Also I'm not sure you're thinking things thru completely. I notice you mention growing in soil, which personally I think is great, but do you really want to be lugging all the soil you would possibly need for the harvest you want, in and out of the attic as needed? In a grow that is hidden and with you wanting fairly large yields, hydro style would probably give you better results.

As for your question on yield, if you set as your goal 2lbs per 1000W light then 6 lights would achieve your goal of 12lbs per harvest. That would allow no room for error though. If you have to have 12 lbs then what happens if for some reason one or more lights fails to produce 2 lbs? Better to have more more lights and more plants, that way you'll have enough to meet your 12lb mark and quite likely a bit more, unless of course you have some sort of catastrophic failure like a spider mite infestation for example.

Since some aspects of your plan don't seem to be fully thought out it makes me want to ask this question. I don't mean to insult you but have you ever done a grow, let alone a large commercial grow? I ask because sometimes people learn about how they can grow quality marijuana and make money and they think it's all just a piece of cake and they just have to put it together and start making money. It's actually a lot of work, not necessarily hard work but tedious.

The biggest issue from what I know of your plan so far, is that you're wanting to do this in a place where temps may be a challenge. I'm concluding you've never grown in an attic before since you say that you're hoping to be able to control the temps with AC. When doing a large commercial grow where you need to have a fairly large yield you don't want to start that grow hoping on anything, you want to know. So I would say that if you have the time and aren't under some outside pressure to generate a lot of money soon then it might be a good idea just to start a smaller grow of say 2 lights, just to get a feel for how it will all be and where your biggest challenges are. One thing that could help offset the temp issue is CO2 supplementation. I don't usually encourage it because there are risks to it that one growing for just themselves shouldn't take because you don't really need to. However in a commercial grow it's almost mandatory for efficiency. It'll increase yield, CO2 allows the grow room to be warmer without being bad for the plants and because of the yield improvement it could cut down how many lights are need to achieve your 12lb mark. If say for example you could get 3lbs per 1000W (difficult but not impossible) then you could potentially reach your goal with 4 lights instead of 6. Which would help keep temps down which in turn would mean you wouldn't need to do as much to control the temps.

Also if you are giving up on the quick turn around by shooting for a larger harvest goal then that puts ScrOG back on the table. In fact if you want to stick with soil then ScrOG would probably be preferable because you would have less numbers of plants and therefore need less soil.

Finally I want to make sure you understand something. I'm not a commercial grower nor have I ever done an indoor commercial grow. So what I'm saying to you is based largely on things I've heard commercial growers talk about combined with my opinions of how I might go about things if I did attempt a large commercial grow. If you're really serious about this you should seek out advise from someone that has first hand knowledge. There's a lot more things to consider not the least of which is how much more serious the trouble could be if you get caught. Unfortunately I'm not sure who to recommend.

Oh wait a second, I was just re-reading over things and I happened to notice under your avatar that your location is listed as Miami Florida, now that could be a fantasy location but if it isn't and that's where this proposed "attic" grow will be then I'll say good luck and I hope you have a lot of money to put into climate control. One guy I know remember from another site, who lived in Florida ended up turning a garage into a virtual walk in refrigerator to control his crop's climate. Also I have seen many growers from Florida lament about their struggles to keep a good climate for their grows. This of course is to be expected when trying to grow indoors in a location where the climate is more ideal for outdoors.

 

[Midnight Tokar]

One other thing you haven't mentioned and I wonder if you've considered the trimming of 12 pounds of weed. A lot of time and work for one person (or more) and it needs to get done and hung to prevent mold. Also, any consideration about where you're going to trim and dry?

 

[omgwtf]

HempKat,

The temp fluctuating is pbbly one of my main concerns, but i have two solutions for it :
1.decent budget size to buy anything to keep the temp down in summertime and keep it warm in winter (btw , any hints on what i could buy to do this ? do you think a good AC can do the job ?)
2.i'm not paying electricity, not stealing it from a neighbour (i know it's not safe) either but to keep it short, electricity cost is zero for me

Now when i first started this project i was thinking hydro too but since i'm a newbie grower and this is a big project AND from what i've been reading everywhere hydro is less forgiving than soil, i decided to start like this. The whole house is empty so there is no problem lugging all the soil up/down the attic.

I don't want 2lbs/1000W necessarily.. i want 15-18lbs from 10-12 X 1000W ,and i think it's doable.Once again i'm a very precautios and perfectionist guy, i trust myself to be able to pull it off.

By all means you are not insulting me by asking have i ever done a grow, you are helping me with all your answers. I have done a very small one, nothing compared to what i want to do now, but like i said, i have faith in me and i want to give it a try It's more than hard work, i'm preparing myself for a full time job. I'm still reading everything i can and still gathering information, i'm hoping to start the actual growroom building in about one week. But i'm in no rush.

I was thinking of testing the temperature (since it's very cold now also) in the grow room once i build it, for some days to see if i can keep it under control successfully. CO2 supplementation is already thought of , of course.

It doesn't matter if you are a commercial grower or not, your knowledge and pieces of advice are very pretious to me.

 

[omgwtf]

One other thing you haven't mentioned and I wonder if you've considered the trimming of 12 pounds of weed. A lot of time and work for one person (or more) and it needs to get done and hung to prevent mold. Also, any consideration about where you're going to trim and dry?

TBH, there are very few things i haven't got to the bottom of, and this is one of them. There will be 3 people trimming all the dreamed lbs of weed.

I have two choices. I can either dry in the flower room (string them across the room), i can best control humidity in there with humidifiers/dehumidifiers (40%) and also temp (66f/18c) OR i can build a separate room just for drying .It all depends on how things work out, if everything goes as planned i will make a separate room just for drying .
What do you think ?

I always said i'll leave this for later, got more important stuff to figure out first.

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

TBH, there are very few things i haven't got to the bottom of, and this is one of them. There will be 3 people trimming all the dreamed lbs of weed.

I have two choices. I can either dry in the flower room (string them across the room), i can best control humidity in there with humidifiers/dehumidifiers (40%) and also temp (66f/18c) OR i can build a separate room just for drying .It all depends on how things work out, if everything goes as planned i will make a separate room just for drying .
What do you think ?

I always said i'll leave this for later, got more important stuff to figure out first.

I think it sounds awesome..

mgk

 

[HempKat]

HempKat,

The temp fluctuating is pbbly one of my main concerns, but i have two solutions for it :
1.decent budget size to buy anything to keep the temp down in summertime and keep it warm in winter (btw , any hints on what i could buy to do this ? do you think a good AC can do the job ?)
2.i'm not paying electricity, not stealing it from a neighbour (i know it's not safe) either but to keep it short, electricity cost is zero for me

Now when i first started this project i was thinking hydro too but since i'm a newbie grower and this is a big project AND from what i've been reading everywhere hydro is less forgiving than soil, i decided to start like this. The whole house is empty so there is no problem lugging all the soil up/down the attic.

I don't want 2lbs/1000W necessarily.. i want 15-18lbs from 10-12 X 1000W ,and i think it's doable.Once again i'm a very precautios and perfectionist guy, i trust myself to be able to pull it off.

By all means you are not insulting me by asking have i ever done a grow, you are helping me with all your answers. I have done a very small one, nothing compared to what i want to do now, but like i said, i have faith in me and i want to give it a try It's more than hard work, i'm preparing myself for a full time job. I'm still reading everything i can and still gathering information, i'm hoping to start the actual growroom building in about one week. But i'm in no rush.

I was thinking of testing the temperature (since it's very cold now also) in the grow room once i build it, for some days to see if i can keep it under control successfully. CO2 supplementation is already thought of , of course.

It doesn't matter if you are a commercial grower or not, your knowledge and pieces of advice are very pretious to me.

Okay so do I assume then the electricity is self generated via solar or some other alternative form? Otherwise there is one thing other then cost to consider and that is unusually large consumption that draws attention. In many places law enforcement and power companies work together to identify usage that might suggest an indoor grow. If that's not an issue because you're consuming energy you generate then that's fantastic and does indeed make your options more flexible. Still if the house is empty then I really don't get going up in the attic. Why not grow in the living area and use the central AC? If energy use is free and virtually unlimited then you could crank the AC real low and keep it blasting 24/7 if you wanted or needed to. The only reason I can see for going up in the attic is to avoid damage to the living area but if you have a fair amount of money to invest you could do things to protect the house from any potential damage.

Attics are usually the places people go when there are just no other options because they tend to make things harder, not only with temps but in most attics you can only stand hunched over in much if not all of the attic. I mean if that's what you want to do that's up to you but I just don't get why one should make it harder on themselves. I'm also not getting your response to the 2lb per light. That's just for making estimates. If you know 2lbs per 1000 is a solid estimate for a dialed in grow and you want 15-18lbs then you know you need to be running at least 8 or 9 lights in your flower room. If you have 10 - 12 1000W lights then you should be able to get 20 to 24lbs. Or roughly 50% above your goal. Which give you a wide margin with which to absorb unforeseen possible failures in the crop.
Another good thing about the living space is that you already have a bunch of room and so you could section off portions of your grow thereby further insolating yourself from catastrophic loss due to something like mite infestation or other issues that can crop up in a grow.

As for the question of experience I didn't mean that so much in terms of had you ever grown as much as I meant in terms of had you ever grown in that particular attic or any attic, to have a better sense of what challenges you might face. If not and there isn't some time pressure on you I think a trial run on a smaller scale could be very beneficial in the long run.

As for suggestions on what to use for cooling unfortunately no I don't have any recommendations. In my personal experience I've only tried using an ordinary window AC for a one 1000W light grow and while it worked good enough it wasn't as good as waiting for fall or winter and therefore wasn't worth the added cost to the electric bill. If you end up with 10-12 1000W lights in one room that's going to generate a substantial amount of heat and likely require something more industrial strength.

 

[HempKat]

TBH, there are very few things i haven't got to the bottom of, and this is one of them. There will be 3 people trimming all the dreamed lbs of weed.

I have two choices. I can either dry in the flower room (string them across the room), i can best control humidity in there with humidifiers/dehumidifiers (40%) and also temp (66f/18c) OR i can build a separate room just for drying .It all depends on how things work out, if everything goes as planned i will make a separate room just for drying .
What do you think ?

I always said i'll leave this for later, got more important stuff to figure out first.

A separate room for drying will be essential if you want to keep the grow going efficiently. Otherwise you'd have to wait for the harvest to dry which would slow down production, or you'd be trying to dry in an active grow which wouldn't be good.

 

[mendo-local]

Why does my left nut hang lower than my right?.... oops I mean bump

 

[HempKat]

Why does my left nut hang lower than my right?.... oops I mean bump

I'm guessing you wear boxers?

 

[Bud Green]

Why does my left nut hang lower than my right?.... oops I mean bump

I'm guessing you wear boxers?

As another old fart on icmag, I believe the correct answer to his question is:
So the left one and the right one don't constantly bump into each other as you walk around....Ouch!

 

[HempKat]

Why does my left nut hang lower than my right?.... oops I mean bump

I'm guessing you wear boxers?

As another old fart on icmag, I believe the correct answer to his question is:
So the left one and the right one don't constantly bump into each other as you walk around....Ouch!

Google claims it's because he's right handed

•Right handed or Left: Another study points out that your left testicle will hang lower if you are right handed. Conversely, if you are left handed, your right testicle will hang lower.

http://www.askthisdoctor.com/2011/03/one-testicle-hangs-lower-than-other.html

 

[TheHatCat]

I have read and understand that you should harvest when around 70% of your trichs are cloudy for a more heady high and a around 5% amber trichs for a more couch lock high.

I have a 100X loupe coming in the mail but it will be around 2 weeks until it gets here.

Strain: Bagseed
Lights: 600W cooled HPS
Temp: 24-27Cel
Nutes: Lucas forumula (Modfied for soil) Previously Monstergrow
Time since 12/12: 5 weeks (3 and a bit since showing sex)

I understand the taller plant looks unhealthy. This is my first grow and I was/am still learning a lot. They were both defoliated which was probably a mistake as they now both seem to be lacking leaf surface, I know this is how plants convert light to energy. The taller lady also has fairly bad nute burn which has since been corrected (Run off = 6.0) but I fear it now lacks the leaf surface to produce big buds.

I have 2X Triple Cheese and 2X Liberty Haze about 3 weeks of being ready to flower so hoping to get these out as soon as possible, keeping in mind I will need the tent they are flowering in for drying as well.

Any guestimates on yield? I'm guessing around 2.5 ounces dried weight.

 

[waveguide]

they look pretty good for first time.

i got some questions for more experienced growers..

1) hybrid vigour
i have a tiny, sad grow right atm but it's been stable for a few years, so it's my first chance to observe breeding. "what i am finding a lot" (eg. my personal fantasy i want people to agree with me with so i feel observant) is that if i have two average strains and breed them together, even in a tiny population pool (maybe 4 individuals per generation), after a few gens, i seem to end up with somethnig better fairly consistently...

since hybrid vigour is what a lot of people consider a "given" (plants don't care what people agree on..) what do you "old growers" say? is hybridisation, at least between rudimentarily decent individuals, generally a path to improvement? enough that you could recommend it as such?

***you can't ask this question to a lot of people because they are either bean sellers who want you to believe you need to buy their beans to get the best quality, or people who believe them... you gotta ask the old folks who don't give a shit about what other people think.........


2) old timers got any advice on "nurturing/developing your appreciation" for weed over a long course?
like i been smoking for 30+ years, but for 20+ all i knew is i was smoking weed. now i've grown a couple dozen strains and tasted a variety of effects. when i started growing i went for sats, now i go for indicas due to practicality.. eg. i like to get high and have some weed.

so with 20 strains, a new strain is usually less mysterious. and i'm a bit jaded about it. the size of my grow limits what i'm smoking to one maybe two strains at a time, and not too much of anything. i'm looking forward to some fucking decent harvests sometime in an imaginary future without social bullshit, where i can smoke until i'm fucking tired of fucking smoking, right.

but like..... if you could edit your history of smoking and growing, is there any way you think you'd change it that would eg. make the journey better.... or given you a better perspective/experience... you know.. advice for an upcoming longtime pothead....

 

[HempKat]

I have read and understand that you should harvest when around 70% of your trichs are cloudy for a more heady high and a around 5% amber trichs for a more couch lock high.

I have a 100X loupe coming in the mail but it will be around 2 weeks until it gets here.

Strain: Bagseed
Lights: 600W cooled HPS
Temp: 24-27Cel
Nutes: Lucas forumula (Modfied for soil) Previously Monstergrow
Time since 12/12: 5 weeks (3 and a bit since showing sex)

I understand the taller plant looks unhealthy. This is my first grow and I was/am still learning a lot. They were both defoliated which was probably a mistake as they now both seem to be lacking leaf surface, I know this is how plants convert light to energy. The taller lady also has fairly bad nute burn which has since been corrected (Run off = 6.0) but I fear it now lacks the leaf surface to produce big buds.

I have 2X Triple Cheese and 2X Liberty Haze about 3 weeks of being ready to flower so hoping to get these out as soon as possible, keeping in mind I will need the tent they are flowering in for drying as well.

Any guestimates on yield? I'm guessing around 2.5 ounces dried weight.

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=60156&pictureid=1412000&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=60156&pictureid=1411999&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=60156&pictureid=1411998&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=60156&pictureid=1411996&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

Well not to disappoint you but your estimates might be a bit high. It's hard to say for sure though because I can't judge the density of the buds. The denser they are the more they'll weigh. If one of those is some variant of cheese then that generally flowers in 8 weeks, haze strains generally take 10 or more weeks flowering from what I've heard although I've never grown out any fully haze strain. The point I'm making though is you might need to let the Liberty Haze go longer.

Based on my personal experiences, what you see and feel when the bud is fresh from the plant as about 66%-75% less when fully dried.

As for the question on ripeness, everyone has their own take. Mine is that if you want a nice balance between heady and couch lock you shoot for around 80% cloudy and 10% to 20% amber. Where people tend to differ the most is on the clear trichs. Some feel clear is when it's almost pure THC and that cloudy is the signs of degradation beginning. I'm inclined to disagree. In my view clear is an indication of being unripe, cloudy is ripe and amber is the sign of degradation beginning.

 

[HempKat]

they look pretty good for first time.

i got some questions for more experienced growers..

1) hybrid vigour
i have a tiny, sad grow right atm but it's been stable for a few years, so it's my first chance to observe breeding. "what i am finding a lot" (eg. my personal fantasy i want people to agree with me with so i feel observant) is that if i have two average strains and breed them together, even in a tiny population pool (maybe 4 individuals per generation), after a few gens, i seem to end up with somethnig better fairly consistently...

since hybrid vigour is what a lot of people consider a "given" (plants don't care what people agree on..) what do you "old growers" say? is hybridisation, at least between rudimentarily decent individuals, generally a path to improvement? enough that you could recommend it as such?

***you can't ask this question to a lot of people because they are either bean sellers who want you to believe you need to buy their beans to get the best quality, or people who believe them... you gotta ask the old folks who don't give a shit about what other people think.........

That's a bit tough to answer knowing that you want people to agree with you before I've said anything. I would say that they improvement you are seeing is largely due to the plants getting used to the environment you keep and optimizing themselves over successive generations to take better advantage of that environment. The hybrid vigor that people talk about I think mostly applies to the progeny of an initial crossing. Those first crossings tend to be a best blend of the two strains in my opinion with the variations turning up in the 2nd thru 4th generations and then settling down to a stable strain after that. While it's not impossible to pick out some amazing pheno in the first generation, it's statistically unlikely. A good breeder typically might grow out a few hundred or even a thousand candidates to find one true pheno that's inherently better then the parents.

2) old timers got any advice on "nurturing/developing your appreciation" for weed over a long course?
like i been smoking for 30+ years, but for 20+ all i knew is i was smoking weed. now i've grown a couple dozen strains and tasted a variety of effects. when i started growing i went for sats, now i go for indicas due to practicality.. eg. i like to get high and have some weed.

so with 20 strains, a new strain is usually less mysterious. and i'm a bit jaded about it. the size of my grow limits what i'm smoking to one maybe two strains at a time, and not too much of anything. i'm looking forward to some fucking decent harvests sometime in an imaginary future without social bullshit, where i can smoke until i'm fucking tired of fucking smoking, right.

but like..... if you could edit your history of smoking and growing, is there any way you think you'd change it that would eg. make the journey better.... or given you a better perspective/experience... you know.. advice for an upcoming longtime pothead....

That's a tough question because it depends on how someone feels currently about where they are at. My life isn't perfect but generally speaking I'm happy with where I am at. So I would be disinclined to change anything because it was my past that got me where I am now. If I could go back and change my past there is no guarantee my future would turn out better, it's just as possible it could turn out worse because the future is unwritten. You can try to position yourself for what you might expect to be better only to have life throw you a curve ball. To that end it's best not to spend too much time dwelling in the past or dreaming of the future but rather it's better to focus on living in the present.

What seems to be fairly consistently true of us grower/stoners is there is virtually no chance of never becoming a bit jaded. A lot of what made weed so special was all we had to do to get it. Once we attain the ability to have a virtually unending supply of weed mostly better then what we used to get before growing, it looses it's value. I guess if I had to advise anyone on how they can best shape their journey is try not to idolize marijuana so much. At the end of the day it should just be one small aspect of an otherwise diverse lifestyle.